[Suggestion] Body Balance System: Realistic Movement

[Mithras]

EDIT: before reading this post, you might want to read the update at the end of this OP

Hi All,

A rather long and perhaps radical suggestion, but I hope you take your time to read and reply. It all may sound comlpicated, but it's really not hard to implement this in the game, so I hope some devs can look at it aswell.

Introduction
M&B is trying to be a sort of medieval swordfighting sim when it comes to weapon handling and stuff. The systems that cope with the weapon handling are implemented in a unique way, and being perfected with lots of minor effects like stunning etc. However, anyone who as ever done any sort of fighting sports/martial arts/swordfighting in real life knows that the body movement, and especially balance, is a very important factor to control, maybe even more important than the actual weapon swinging itself.

I don't like how M&B totally neglects that factor. The way moving around is now implemented is actually a laughter compared to the nuance of the rest of the fighting. People run around like maniacs when in battle, moving very quickly from one direction to another and turning around in no-time, rotating like spinning disks. People hugging each other in the heat of battle is very unrealistic and looks ridiculous. The devs have tried to counter this in previous versions with limited camera speed and limited body rotation speed, but that didnt work very well and was still very unrealistic.

The system
I have thought of a system that is both very easy to control (just WASD), simple and very realistic. Instead of directly controlling the movement of your body with WASD, you control the balance of your body with the same buttons. Thechnically, you control the position of a point in a 2 dimensional 'balance space'. The position of this point directly determines your movement direction and speed. So, if you move your balance slightly forward, you walk forward (which is very realistic, since that is how walking is done). Moving the point more foward will cause you to run, and it works the same for the other directions of course (see the drawing I made). When someone keeps the balance point in the green area, he just leans, which means he can start moving quicker to the direction he leans in. (Maybe he can even dodge attacks by leaning.) The whole movement system then consists of just two coordinates (I suggest radius and angle) that have a limited range.

(Edit The balance point can not go out of the allowed zone unforced. The only possibility to make the balance point go into the red zone is by recieving a blow from something external (weapon, horse, maybe later on some physical attack, see further below). The system is only meant to make WASD movement more realistic, not harder or something. For example: pressing W long enough will make the balance point move all the way up until the edge (or maybe a little under it), so you start running forward. It will stay there as long as you hold W down. If however you would get hit in the back, the balance point would be knocked a bit more forward, into the red zone, making you fall over. If you recieve a hit from the front however, it would knock it back maybe to 0, so you would just come to a standstill. (/Edit)

The speed at which you can move your balance is ofcourse limited, and determined by the agility statistic and the weight of the gear (encumbrance). This results in a very realistic method of movement.

Turning changes the orientation of the balance point (maybe the angle coordinate). When someone wants to turn around, this can be done very quickly in real life by changing your balance in the opposite direction of the one you want to face to (sounds weird, but try it, thats the way it works). So I suggest turning is always attended with a change of balance to the backward direction, and the speed limit for balance change therefore also determines the turning speed limit. Also, it's impossible to move the balance into the red area in the picture, so turning 180 degrees while sprinting forward takes more time because you need to slow all the way down to maintain the point within the allowed region.

Further applications
So far for just the moving around. I think that if this is implemented, the game would already be much more realistic and challenging. However, much more realistic stuff can be done when the weapon swinging also affects the balance, and vice versa. So, swinging a sword to the left results in a balance change to the right, etc. Also shields have a great effect on peoples balance, having that implemented well would nerfe the shields in a very realistic way.

The coolest effect of this balance system is I think the effect of being hit. Whether you block or not, taking a blow has a huge impact on your balance. So, if you get hit from the left, your balance gets thrown to the right. The size of this balance change depends ofcourse on the weight of the incoming (and the blocking) weapon. If your balance point gets thrown out of the allowed area, into the red, you fall over. So, imagine blocking a blow from the warhammer with your scimitar, you will block it but you get thrown away, maybe even falling over after a couple of steps. That would just look great, be very realist and be a very cool gameplay element.

Summary
Pro's:
- Much more realistic and challenging gameplay
- Not too hard to implement for the devs
- Very cool effects when combined with weapon swinging
- Client system, so no extra bandwidth required
- Would on itself replace some complicated weapon tweaks
- No need for new animations, would be nice though

Cons
- Maybe too large or radical, something for M&B 2
- Requires some extra calculation, so exra processing power (not too much though, only 2 variables)


UPDATE 12-02-2010
I'm a bit bothered by the fact that I see a lot of reactions that say it'll be too complicated to walk, or you need an analog stick etc., because it is not true.  I think those people dont really get the idea. So let me be clear about this:

• It is NOT harder or complicated to walk, and you DO NOT need an analog stick.
  [*]All this system does is make RESTRICTIONS to the way the character can move, in response to the normal WASD and mouse input. It is not like you can fall over by moving incorrectly or something.
  [*]Apart from that it's a great opening to simulating realistic and deep interaction possibilities, in a very simple and straightforward way. Afterall, it's just one point in a 2D plane.
  

Also I see a lot of  reactions about that it's too hard to implement. I admit that especially the interaction rules may be quite complicated to sort out, but when we just start without those and use the system just to restrict the movement. That is not al all hard to implement, I claim that I could write the code within a day, if only I knew anything about C++, which I don't

I would however be glad to help the dev that wants to give it a shot.

 

[Cwvym]

You missed the effect of turning, which would have to be included.

It sounds cool, but I have a hard time picturing how the player is going to know where his balance point is. This is a big problem - do you stick an ugly radar somewhere? Go to top down view? There is no feedback, as in real balance.

 

[AoC]

Cool stuff here, i would like to test it !

He dont missed it. Here is the quote:

Turning changes the orientation of the balance point (maybe the angle coordinate).

People will get used to it, no radar is required.

 

[Mithras]

You missed the effect of turning, which would have to be included.

It sounds cool, but I have a hard time picturing how the player is going to know where his balance point is. This is a big problem - do you stick an ugly radar somewhere? Go to top down view? There is no feedback, as in real balance.

The whole second pragraph under the picture is about turning.

And it's basically a fancy way to limit peoples movements, so no need for ppl to know where the point is. If a movement is not allowed, it will just not happen.

 

[glustrod]

First af all, very cool and innovative idea!

BUT, for this you need a joystick or something similar. Controlling this with awsd keys won't work. Either the sensibility is too high, so u get too fast into the red line or its too low so turning takes too much time. With a joystick you can controll the response speed, perfect for this. Keys can only be hit and released, i think this isn't compatible with your idea.

By the way, the graphic reminds me of an ancient c64 game named "Oil Imperium". When boring a new oil well you had to keep the drill stack (don't know how its called) just with a similar graphic, when u get in the red area it would break. Great times!

 

[Cwvym]

Spoiler

You missed the effect of turning, which would have to be included.

It sounds cool, but I have a hard time picturing how the player is going to know where his balance point is. This is a big problem - do you stick an ugly radar somewhere? Go to top down view? There is no feedback, as in real balance.

The whole second pragraph under the picture is about turning.

And it's basically a fancy way to limit peoples movements, so no need for ppl to know where the point is. If a movement is not allowed, it will just not happen.

Note the edit time and my post time. I spent more then 4 minutes reading it, so I must have missed the latest draft.

And note where it says:

Also, it's impossible to move the balance into the red area in the picture, so turning 180 degrees while sprinting forward takes more time because you need to slow all the way down to maintain the point within the allowed region.

If your balance point gets thrown out of the allowed area, into the red, you fall over.

Red = tumble/fall (visible in the graphic)

So which is it? I assume FALL in red zone. Also, slope of the terrain should be a factor.

People are going to need to know where the balance point is or they are going to fall down like drunks.

 

[looy]

It would be fun for combat but it would make movement feel clunky as hell. It'd be a challenge just to move from A to B.

How about you keep the balance point, but cannot directly control it. Instead it moves depending on what you are doing. Basically the balance point follows your body and not the other way around (excluding external factors like weapon strikes etc).

 

[Orj]

I don't really see this as an impediment to movement. I think this is an awesome idea.

 

[nijis]

Speak purely as a player, as the actual combat is not my department, it strikes me that there is a lot of potential in tracking the center of balance for each troop/agent on the map. I would keep the same controls, though -- just provide some sort of feedback (a stagger, for example) when a player is nearing the edge of his or her envelope.

It might, however, be too ambitious a change for the Warband release.

 

[inox_ionizer]

Seems very interesting. But as others have said, maybe too ambitious right now. I hope something like this will be done in the future.

 

[Chustler]

I completely agree with the OP about the combat in this game, and have made a thread stating many of the same things.  I don't know how your system would work or feel in practice but I'd love to see combat move into a more realistic place for sure.

 

[Koror]

Maybe it's because im stupid but how will you move without WASD buttons?

 

[Mithras]

Ok, indeed some things have not become clear the way I thought of them. Let me clearify this (I've also edited this into the original post):

The balance point can not go out of the allowed zone unforced. The only possibility to make the balance point go into the red zone is by recieving a blow from something external (weapon, horse, maybe later on some physical attack). The system is only meant to make WASD movement more realistic, not harder or something.

The player himself can not move his balance into the red zone, pressing W long enough will make the balance point move all the way up until the edge (or maybe a little under it), so you start running forward. It will stay there as long as you hold W down. If however you would get hit in the back, the balance point would be knocked a bit more forward, into the red zone, making you fall over. If you recieve a hit from the front however, it would knock it back maybe to 0, so you would just come to a standstill.

Speak purely as a player, as the actual combat is not my department, it strikes me that there is a lot of potential in tracking the center of balance for each troop/agent on the map. I would keep the same controls, though -- just provide some sort of feedback (a stagger, for example) when a player is nearing the edge of his or her envelope.

It might, however, be too ambitious a change for the Warband release.

There is no need to keep track of every balance point in MP, because it's just a way to limit the possible movements of an individual player. The data that needs to be sent to the server are still the same, the client itself limits the options. How this should be done in SP I'm not sure about, maybe just write the AI so that bots dont do very fancy moves out of themselves or something.

Maybe it's because im stupid but how will you move without WASD buttons?

The idea is that movement is actually just a consequence of moving your balance, so moving your weight to the right makes you walk to the right etc.

 

[Chustler]

I like it.  It would stop the counterstrike crazy running and would make things very interesting.

 

[Mithras]

I like it.  It would stop the counterstrike crazy running and would make things very interesting.

That is exactly what I'm aiming for, indeed.

 

[Phallas]

The sheild less combat is very fun atm, you need to know how long, fast your wep is and at what angle you are striking.
It is the shielded combat that needs a change. imho.
The slowed  down shields is a step in the wrong direction.

 

[Johnny Morphine]

At first when I saw this I thought it would just overly complicate a system that is simple by nature, but then I realized that this sort of physics could be working behind the scenes, producing a more realistic feel for the game without anyone ever having to know it was there. Sort of reminds me of some of the inertia threads from awhile ago, which I supported. But this goes further into applying a definable system to movement than any other suggestion I've seen so far.

I do agree with Nijis in that this may actually be too radical a change to implement before the game's release. But like Nijis said, it would be pretty easy to keep track of these kinds of attributes for everyone on the field. I figured that velocity itself is very easy to track already, so even with the current movement mechanics, and assuming that the physics engine and collision system are a bit more accessible for the Warband module system, in a simplistic way something like this could be modded in later.

 

[wolfstriked]

Is this an inertion change?By balance do you mean...when you press W you pick up speed until max is achieved?S is faster to max speed since its a slower speed to achieve etc...


EDIT....has the new physics been implemeneted yet.....

 

[kingofnoobia]

In one way I like the idea behind this system, in another way I think it will never work as intended, and will take weeks before players can use it intuitively (if they can do it at all). IRL, you can change your balance simply by thinking about it, here you would have to use 4 keys... And you would constantly have to look at a graph saying what your balance is, making it impossible to actually focus on the fight.

Overall, I would say that this system would do more bad than good. I also have never felt that the current walking system is awkward (it IS unrealistic, but I really don't care, it's fine, the game is enjoyable, that's enough for me). If it would be implemented in a handy way I would love it, but personally I can't see how that can be done, so I vote against it.

(btw wolfstriked hadn't you once suggested something like this?)

 

[PsykoOps]

Would this make movement like in let's say assasins greed? That's my first impression, also that might be an improvement if balanced and done correctly.