Hi Dark, That is quite a number of interesting points you raised here. I happen to agree with you on all points. In fact, this is in large part why Mysteries of the Ancients beta 18 is taking so long to release. I decided to go back in and rewrite some of the various game mechanics such as jumping to resemble that of the classic NES era games where the longer you hold down the jump button/keys the higher and further the main character will jump. As you said this requires a lot more skill and judgment of how long to hold down the buttons or keys before releasing them.
As you know in beta 17 and earlier I had a very simple jump system in place where all you needed to do is press control+left arrow or control+right arrow and Angela would safely land on the other side of the pit, chasm, fire, lava, whatever just about every time. However, not only was that very easy it was also pretty boring. So what I did is I completely redesigned the jump mechanics to be more like classic NES games like Super Mario where you now have to time your jumps in order to make it safely to the other side of a trap. there have been a number of times where I have over estimated a jump or under estimated the length of a jump and Angela ended up impailed on a bronze spike, took a bath in hot boiling lava, or got roasted over a huge fire pit. For instance, one of the traps in the game is a large lava pit with a stone ledge hanging out over the middle of the pit. The trick to getting over the lava pit is to jump from one side of the pit up onto that hanging stone ledge, and jump from there to the other side of the pit. As you might have guessed this takes perfect timing and percision to do it correctly. If you misjudge the length of the jump Angela is going to have a very hot bath in lava. If you don't jump far enough Angela will not reach the ledge and fall into the lava. If you hold down the keys too long she'll jump over the stone ledge and land in the lava anyway. The key to successfully making it is listening very carefully to the drip, drip, drip, of the water dripping off that ledge and judge your jump as best as you can. This way insures you use both some skill and personal judgement to figure out how far and howlong to jump rather than Angela just landing on that ledge as soon as she is close to it as the game use to. So what you are suggesting here is very possible. I've been practicing with some of these ideas you suggested in beta 18, and I think it would be cool if more games started doing this as well. It makes jumping far more tricky and takes practice to get just right. I've learned from my own experience with MOTA beta 18 you won't get it right your first try in a lot of cases. As far as changing pitch of pits and stuff that's another good idea. I should probably put that down in my things to do list for beta 18. You have a point that the deeper the sound of the pit the larger the pit. The higher the sound the smaller it is and you should be able to determine its size by pitch alone rather than just using a look/view command to gather that information all the time. Cheers! On 3/16/11, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Phil. > > i agree this would be a good thing (though the business about damage for > over jumping seems unnecessarily harsh to me), but I think your over > complicating the situation more than it would need to be. > > As I said, the relative width of pits could be shown by altering the pitch > of the sound. Say for instance a pit you could jump normally from the edge > (to use your example a five foot or less), would have a high pitched wind > sound, a pit which was jumpalbe with a long jump has a medium, and a pit > which was not jumpable at all has a low ominous wind. > > A standard two step boundry would be more than enough even when running > given the speed of character movement to tell you when your on the edge of a > pit, ---- heck, many people like myself play games like Q9 with the run > button perminantly held anyway. > > As for jump hight relative to button pressing, well rail racers' jets are a > perfect example of this. > > Of course, the player would need to practice and learn how long he/she has > to hold the button for a given jump, but that is in fact my point, that many > audio games would be considderably more addictive and interesting if they > did! give the player a skill and form of jugement to learn by calculating > their characters movement according to the environment, rather than by > working on a basic stimulous response model. > > Of course, starting easy (or non fatal), and getting harder would just be > part of the experience. > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
