The way a given game engine “interprets” a player character the video game avatars we control are literally invisible boxes that move around according to the game engine’s physics model. Developers start with the invisible box and then dress it up with 3D character models or floating gun arms and throw a bunch of complex animations onto them to try and disguise the fact that you’re really just controlling an invisible box.
This has been a constant truth of 3D games for the last 20 years or more. The only thing “modern” or contemporary games do that’s different is that now player avatars have more and better animation and more detailed characters/gun arms. It looks like you’re controlling a guy in GTA V but really you’re still just controlling an invisible box that encompasses the guy. These days the script attached to the invisible box has a lot more tweakable options for physical interactions like acceleration/deceleration and etc. but fundamentally nothing has actually changed beyond that.
In first person games you are still literally just controlling a floating camera inside an invisible box. Some studios are really good at putting all kinds of animation onto the camera so it looks and feels like you’re inhabiting a body but it’s all smoke and mirrors.
Because developers haven’t really figured out how to move past the “invisible box” way of doing things you end up with difficult problems like matching the animations to correctly sync up with the way the invisible box actually controls. It takes a lot of finesse to get something that not only looks like it should but feels like it should because if it’s even slightly off you’ll feel it/notice it when playing. This is all very time intensive because animation takes time to get right.
Ladders are tricky depending on what you’re trying to do. If you’ve got a slippery, fast-paced game like Half-Life you don’t want to take away the players ability to aim and shoot since that’s literally all you’re doing. So ladders just become special spots of wall that you can slide up and down while still retaining control over aiming and shooting.
Slower paced games can afford to put the extra animations on there to show hands clasping and feet climbing but you’re essentially stuck on the ladder until you reach the top or bottom. Like Cuba said most games that attempt ladders like that make it just a canned animation that you may or not have any control over.
There’s a lot more to be said but I guess the main thing I’m trying to get at is this kind of thing isn’t really a problem of one engine or another but simply a fact of how 3D games are actually made. Until someone figures out something better you’re either going to have one type or ladder interaction or the other, depending on the type of game.
Nah, stuff fundamentally changed technically in modern engines. We now have IK (natural motion to reach out towards something from your current position, without first needing to snap the entire body to the preset position) and we have mixed ragdoll+scripted states. The first game to truly make use of that stuff was Shadow of the Colossus probably, and then it trickled out to other engines from there.
Neither of those apply very much to ladders, though, unless ladders really matter in your game and you want to do a super fancy dynamic naturalistic ladder climb.
What does inverse kinematics change, fundamentally? Like, sure, the characters feet rest at appropriate angles now and stuff but aren’t you still just pushing an invisible box around a virtual space? The box still stops when you push it up against a wall only now the character stops cycling the run animation and puts its hands up to touch the wall.
I mean, I only know as much as I gleaned from dorking around with Unity and reading articles. I’ve never actually written a game engine in C or anything like that. I’m genuinely interested in hearing about what the fundamental changes are that differentiate contemporary games from older games.
It can be used to tack on superficial hand animations on top of that basic model, and probably mostly is, like you say. But in SotC, your hands act as a kind of latch point affecting the motion of your entire body. If your hand can’t reach in time, the IK details could have a real impact on gameplay outcome. (I forget whether SotC actually works like that, but ideally it would.)
Probably one distinction is that multiplayer games are more likely to use an old-fashioned box model as it’s much easier to apply latency correction when your physics are simple and predictable. It might explain why CS:GO sticks to it so rigorously. See also how Journey visibly has a simple box model despite having a lot of climbing.
Notably, both L4D games don’t let you shoot on ladders, but they still have Source Ladders in addition to all of the other nonsense going on in the game (the shit I’ve seen on No Mercy 3’s sewer ladder…). They also still let you strafe climb.
Anyway, the only way you’re going to get non-Valve physics in a Source game is Dark Messiah or Titanfall (which, admittedly, is just used as a base there for multiplatform support)
this is a really dumb question, but how does one download a game demo from the microsoft store? i went there for the recore demo yesterday and i couldn’t figure out what to do.
made the microsoft account and clicked on “try it for free” on the game’s page and now the checkbox say i already have it but i don’t see the download happening.
is it me or have mouse-based strategy game UIs gotten really awful in the past few years? cities skylines’ dialog boxes are hideous, stellaris shipped with what seemed like placeholder graphics, and civ 6 looks at least as bad
Are you trying this through your browser or the Store app?
I experienced something similar, “purchased” the free trial on the webpage. But I had to use the Store app, and log into a Microsoft account. It should download from the ReCore page there.
how terrible of an idea is it to play shadowrun: hong kong without having tried the rest
also i got a steam key so i’m wondering if it’s worth it to revisit The Longest Journey in the year of our lord 2016 (the last time i tried it i was, like, eight, and deep into my adventure game phase)
all the shadowrun games are completely stand alone so it’s not a mistake at all, except for making the mistake of not playing dragonfall which is the better game (though hong kong is good too). then again, if you play hong kong first, you can play dragonfall next and not have it ruin HK for you.
I have tried playing the longest journey like 8 times but always stop early on when i encounter terrible adventure design. i liked dreamfall because it had no game design which i prefer to bad game design.
what happened to Climax
what happened to Banpresto
what happened to the company that made all the anime tie in games on the snes with the domino mask for its local
[quote=“GlamGrimfire, post:531, topic:302, full:false”]
what happened to Climax[/quote]
Schism in the PSX days, some folks left to form Matrix (makers of Alundra, now known as the company that makes of of Squeenix’s C-tier Final Fantasy remakes and spinoffs)
Borged into Bandai Namco in '08
That was Banpresto
Had a 3DS game a few years back and a couple mobile titles last year
I was under the impression Square Enix and Nippon Ichi were still publishing/making some varied stuff. The unending tide of samey formulaic junk seems to come from Idea Factory, Gust, and maybe the Tales of series.