Hanging

Discuss coding questions, pull requests, and implementation details.
Post Reply
User avatar
MeteoricDragon
Posts: 141
Joined: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:23 pm

Hanging

Post by MeteoricDragon »

I did the climbing system, and here's what occurred to me. In games like ones in the Assassin's Creed franchise, Ezio or Altair or whoever can do a back eject and catch an eave that's blocking him from climbing onto the roof. So why can't our highly skilled Daggerfall climber do something similar? Eaves are those overhangs that go off roofs and they prevent the player from climbing on top of the house. I have some ideas on how to make the player hang. Of course, this would be for higher skilled climbers. No promises either. I don't have anything functional yet, and I'm refactoring before implementing.

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Hanging

Post by Interkarma »

That would be a fun improvement to Advanced Climbing. I've often wanted to leap and grab onto a ledge. Look forward to playing with that if you make progress on it.

User avatar
MeteoricDragon
Posts: 141
Joined: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:23 pm

Re: Hanging

Post by MeteoricDragon »

Ok, cool. I think that climbing over the eaves may be like a reverse rappel movement. Since the eaves are variable length, I'll need to program the character actually hanging from the eve before jumping over it. since the eaves are more complicated than a horizontally flat ceiling, the player would naturally be able to Grapple across those ceilings. Slipping would mean falling and having to start over or possibly load their game!

Although I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll see what I can do first.

User avatar
Hazelnut
Posts: 3015
Joined: Sat Aug 26, 2017 2:46 pm
Contact:

Re: Hanging

Post by Hazelnut »

Sounds cool, as long as it requires a significant investment in the skill before it's possible.

Not sure if currently climbing is as classic when it comes to low skills, personally I find it a bit too easy to climb onto the roof of houses to escape from guards even with low climbing skill currently in DFU. Doesn't make me feel I need get it higher for much.
See my mod code for examples of how to change various aspects of DFU: https://github.com/ajrb/dfunity-mods

User avatar
MeteoricDragon
Posts: 141
Joined: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:23 pm

Re: Hanging

Post by MeteoricDragon »

Do you want the player to be able to jump and grab the ceiling if skilled enough? For disambiguation purposes, the ceiling and the underside of eaves are identical as far as the program will be concerned. It won't be able to distinguish between the two. So if the player were to press the space bar to jump he could grab the ceiling if he made contact with it. He'll go into "hanging mode" and he'll have to move towards the edge of the eave before another part of the program takes over and pulls the player up onto the roof. If the player makes contact with the ceiling and has a successful skill check, he'd attach to the ceiling but the player might not want to grab the ceiling. This could happen while walking in tunnels.

If the no-hanging-mode-when-jumping-into-the-ceiling program code path is chosen, then the player will be required to use climbing mode to climb up and press against the ceiling to trigger hanging mode.

I guess I'm saying that jumping to attach to ceilings might not be wanted sometimes, What if the player attaches if he is holding the space bar (still) after jumping?

User avatar
MeteoricDragon
Posts: 141
Joined: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:23 pm

Re: Hanging

Post by MeteoricDragon »

MeteoricDragon wrote: Thu Oct 11, 2018 11:26 pm Do you want the player to be able to jump and grab the ceiling if skilled enough? For disambiguation purposes, the ceiling and the underside of eaves are identical as far as the program will be concerned. It won't be able to distinguish between the two. So if the player were to press the space bar to jump he could grab the ceiling if he made contact with it. He'll go into "hanging mode" and he'll have to move towards the edge of the eave before another part of the program takes over and pulls the player up onto the roof. If the player makes contact with the ceiling and has a successful skill check, he'd attach to the ceiling but the player might not want to grab the ceiling. This could happen while walking in tunnels.

If the no-hanging-mode-when-jumping-into-the-ceiling program code path is chosen, then the player will be required to use climbing mode to climb up and press against the ceiling to trigger hanging mode.

I guess I'm saying that jumping to attach to ceilings might not be wanted sometimes, What if the player attaches if he is holding the space bar (still) after jumping?
any opinions on this?

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Hanging

Post by Interkarma »

I'm not sure how I feel about the idea, would have to play it to see. There are lots of low ceilings in dungeons, so you wouldn't want it to be be too "sticky", or player would start hanging from them quite often. The jump and hold space is a good start, but head-hits reverse quite quickly. It might feel weird if the player head-hits, reverses, then attaches to ceiling. It might feel a bit like a yo-yo instead of a cool leap and grab. But if you make it too quick then you risk ceilings becoming sticky too easily.

I can't say I've experienced this in other games, which does give it novelty. But I also imagine it's really hard to brachiate using just your fingertips clutching at stone and wood which definitely puts it towards the god-tier of climbing. Kind of like how max level acrobats in Morrowind could run across water.

On the whole, I'd want to balance out how much return on investment this brings to the (already excellent) advanced climbing system vs the restructuring work and potential for new bugs. I'd probably rather time spent fixing a few of the edge cases resulting in buggy movement during rappel.

From my end, I'm trying to work down to a really solid stable build and run through the final items in roadmap. We're kind of near the point where fewer new features come in and more bug fixes go out. I'm going to get really picky about what goes into core soon to make sure the vision is completed without feature creep.

But that said, I trust you, and the work you've done so far is very good. If your instincts feel this is a good fit and you don't think it requires too much work or too many changes, then I'll defer to that trust and see where it takes us. :)

User avatar
MeteoricDragon
Posts: 141
Joined: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:23 pm

Re: Hanging

Post by MeteoricDragon »

Ok, thanks. I can make adjustments on the successful-ness mechanics pretty easily compared to the hanging mechanics themselves, so I'm flexible. Once I'm done implementing the transitions. Right now, the transition from climbing to hanging is complete, and the directional hanging movement is 70% complete.

Post Reply