Third person motion

[Thowllly]

This is probably the wrong forum, but I don't know where to put it...



I have occasionally been annoyed by games where I feel I don't have direct control of the character.

One of the older examples of this is Super Mario 64. Mario would often move in a different direction to the one I indicated on the controller, apparently to make his motion look natural by going in half circles instead of abruptly changing direction. The problem with this was that it sometimes caused Mario to walk of ledges, even though I had indicated one the controller that I wanted to move away from the ledge. A few days ago I tried Super Mario 64 DS, and was not happy to see that this problem was still present.

What prompted me to post this was that after reading a Gamasutra article linked to from the 'Games & input lag' thread I ended up at this page:

http://cowboyprogramming.com/2008/04/23/running-in-circles/


Somebody had written about this problem, and even better, in the comments was this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXDZZt7TEAo


Notice how naturally the stickman abruptly changes direction without running in circles! If anybody here is involved in a 3rd person game where the character changes direction by running in circles, please consider doing something like what's shown in that video. Not having the character follow the players inputs directly really detracts from the feel of the game, I think it would be worth the effort to try to do better.

 

[Dargakis]

so would you like resident evil 1-3 controls better?

 

[Thowllly]

so would you like resident evil 1-3 controls better?

No, of course not. Why are you even asking that question? I've already explained what I want, and linked to an article and a video showing what I want. Are you, perhaps, simply trolling?

 

[Dargakis]

No, of course not. Why are you even asking that question? I've already explained what I want, and linked to an article and a video showing what I want. Are you, perhaps, simply trolling?

no no!
I personally liked those games because they would allow for a camera change, while the controls would stay the same.

I once interviewed a Ico1 gameplay developer. He said they removed the turn animations of the main character from a standstill position because people didn't feel direct control over the character.
So you are not the only one in that case!

but if it were to be like in your video: it would be better of course.
Although i believe it is more suited to realistic games, unlike mario64 where you can walljump and jump 5 metres high anyway. Still it would look great on a game like uncharted.

 

[Thowllly]

Sorry! I thought that you were being sarcastic, suggesting that if that I didn't like Mario 64 controls I didn't deserve better than tank controls or something. Sorry for the accusation, I had just not considered that someone might actually like such controls!

But thinking about it, I can see where the appeal is, tank controls are very precise, no danger of falling of any ledges.

But I greatly prefer the freedom of Mario 64 controls. (And I think they were going for realism in that game, despite 5m jumps. They thought half circle turns looked realistic, and that realism was important enough to them to sacrifice gameplay.) But I also want the precision of tank controls. That's what I liked about the video. I mean, I haven't tried it myself, but the controls look amazing, like the stickman does exactly what you do on the controller, but without losing any realism. I don't think I've seen any 3rd person game with such precise and realistic movement.

But if this is too difficult to implement, I prefer precision above realism. Far above.