Why T3 needs candy.

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Special
04-02-2003, 16:20
What do I mean by "candy"? I mean ear and eye candy. Not just flashy explosions, cool looking weapons, and cool environments, I'm talking about stuff that makes your experience as a person in the Tribes universe more dynamic and immersive. Let me elaborate.

In T1 and T2 your player was limited to just a few animations. Yes, you could taunt, but aside from that your character was limited to a few animations that were, well, quite boring. OOH a nice walking animation! WOW that guy's legs move when he jets up! Yeah, boring. Imagine this: You're a defenseman on Raindance, guarding your sacred flag. All of a sudden your teammates yell "Incoming east!" You look to the east, and suddenly high in the sky there is a capper from the other team swan-diving high in the air. His character dodges left and right, barrel rolling to avoid enemy lasers. A few hundred meters from the flag he re-orients himself with his arms spread and legs ready for a landing. Successfully dodging all the enemy fire he grabs the flag, and bounds away like Superman. All these animations do not require any extra effort on the player's part. In Quake if you jump your character does a flip, but you as a player did not tell the character to flip. Same deal here. At the apex of a skijump if you let go of your jets your character will switch to a swan-dive position. If you juke left and right your character will 'barrel roll' to match your movements. These simple things will help enhance the experience.

T1's sound was lacking, and T2 improved upon that, but only slightly. Personally I felt T2's sound quality was inferior to T1's, and I felt it lacked the 'crispness' T1 had. Here is what I think would be great in T3. Imagine this: It is a clear spring day, with a slight breeze. The map begins with a meadow, which is traversed by a meandering river. Trees line the river. You begin skiing to explore this map, much like you used to do in T1 and T2. As you ski along the ground, the blades of grass in the meadow make a slight wisping sound as you glide over them. As you dodge trees you hear their leaves rustle in your left and right ear. Snaking through the trees the river gets louder and softer as you move to and from it. Crossing over the river you hear splashes as your armor touches the water. You follow the river north to see where it goes. You pick up speed, the wind noise building as you get faster and faster. The river seems to go on forever, things fly by you with no remorse as you ski... Suddenly you are airborne. The river becomes a waterfall, with surging power you can hear as it pounds into the rocks below. Looking down into the riverbed you hear nothing but the wind in your ears as your soar into the sky. Looking for a landing spot you see a bed of gravel that you think you can land in. You time your jets perfectly, landing in the gravel perfectly. You skid to the right to reorient yourself to the river, kicking up gravel, all which you can hear to your left.

Why am I explaining my point like a story? Simply because I want to illustrate a simple, but crucial point: T3 requires a fundamentally solid environmental engine. Who remembers loading up Snowblind for the first time and realizing how lonely that map was? The snow drifts, the blind horizon, the intimidating mountains... That sort of feeling was lost in T2, in my opinion. I believe adding little touches like what I described above will no doubt enhance the player's experience two-fold.

Natural
04-02-2003, 19:48
If the next Tribes game lives up to Eric's wet dream, we will be all the happier.

krillin
04-02-2003, 23:18
both ideas sound cool. i like the second idea, if tribes had changing environments, like with changing weather patterns, it would be really cool. starting matches off with a bright sun shining then changing to rain, having changes in light and dark would be sweet. imagine if somehow the weather could affect the game. like if it was dry, then the terrain would be smooth and not affect skiing. if it was raining it could make skiing even faster :o

Special
04-03-2003, 15:24
Dammit!

Bump, I wanted more people to reply to this one than my 'T3: Hooked' thread. Guys, I really would like some input/additions/rants about what I've said here.

Sir Lucius
04-03-2003, 16:10
I want cool **** like this, but I also want the game to run smooth.


I know I'll have to update my computer for tribes 3. I think it's important to have creative enviorments like this though. Also piexel shaded water -- pixel shded water looks sooooooooooooooo cool :]

Uncle Silas
04-03-2003, 19:07
Cool ideas but...no more MAs?

Special
04-03-2003, 20:41
Cool ideas but...no more MAs?

Where do I mention the lack of MAs in any part of my post? :) I don't know if you read it, but I think you have it out of context. I'm simply stating that there have to be fundamental aspects of the game that make it inherently fun to play. Once that foundation is set, then you can go ahead and start adding more 'superfluous' things such as weapons and such.

I'm just trying to convey the fact that I feel Tribes should be a very visual and aural experience, and with technology advances I don't think it would be TOO impossible to tackle. Just imagine skiing by yourself on Riverdance, but imagine a real river flowing through that splashes water (visually and aurally) when you ski through it. Imagine being able to kick up dirt when you come to a stop. Imagine your character actually being animated instead of being a stiff upright figure. The game we call 'Tribes' will be that much cooler to play because suddenly it's like a beautiful ballet (not trying to be fruity, work with me here.)

snow
04-04-2003, 02:30
i agree special, those things would all rock.

also have the models a metalic kind of colour, so before you see the red triangle, you might see the sun glint off the armour. and then when the weather changes you couldnt see it anymore. imagine skiing in the shadow of a cloud so that it helped you stay hidden, especially if the clouds were moving.

have a match like a day, so that when it starts you have a sunrise, and as it ends the sun is setting, with dynamic shadows that change, and the oposite for night maps, which become dark as the map starts and lighten up as it finishes. or even better have it where maps are randomally played like this at day or night.

although small it would be really sweet if you saw a capper reach out when he got to a certain distance from the flag and "grabbed" it, then you saw him putting it over his shoulder and onto his back.

with sound maybe so you can hear the flag behind you as you are carrying it, flapping in the wind. varying with your speed.

but most importantly give the feeling of speed, like T1 does.

R@ND0M
04-04-2003, 03:05
In regards to sound, one word.

Ambience.

With good ambience/atmosphere, comes good realism (I don't really like that word when talking about 'games').
It adds a key factor to (one of the 3 senses possible when playing a game, 4 if you include voice-com)

Imagine watching a movie with no background music or ambience. (Or even turn sound off in your favorite movie)
The final scene where the hero dies (an example) seems cheesy, and it doesnt have that moving effect that it once gave you.
Aside from the odd Generator humming or Rain pattering, the Tribes series has lacked great ambience.
Great ambience makes it MUCH easier to emerse the player into the game they're playing.
Tribes had such great physical (vision and touch) control that the missing ambience wasn't much of a factor for being emersed in a game though.
Try talking to a "hardcore" player while they're in the middle of a Tribes match. All you'll get is a few nods and the occasional yes, and then a big "What?" when they stop to respawn.

Make sure the mappers focus on putting these important details into the maps they design, as you can go through hell and back, or traverse a giant mountain in a snowy blizzard using just sound.
Close your eyes while playing Tribes or standing still, and a BIG void is created. Making the game less emersive all round.
If you can be successful with this, I feel it'll be a really important "hook" factor to those that love realism in their games.

One last key note: Make sure the player voices are whacky and cartoon like.
Nobody needs to sound like Arnold Schwarznegger or that annoying comedian guy who did one of the voices in T2 while playing Tribes.
The T1 voices were perfect (aside from ~wdeath with female5 I think)

R@ND0M
04-04-2003, 03:07
Why am I explaining my point like a story? Simply because I want to illustrate a simple, but crucial point: T3 requires a fundamentally solid environmental engine. Who remembers loading up Snowblind for the first time and realizing how lonely that map was? The snow drifts, the blind horizon, the intimidating mountains... That sort of feeling was lost in T2, in my opinion. I believe adding little touches like what I described above will no doubt enhance the player's experience two-fold.

Snowblind was the 3rd map I played I think.
I remember getting lost in it and going "whoa".
Spending ages running around, flying really high off the top of a mountain just to be amazed at the view from up above.
That was incredible

[UKLans]Khan
04-04-2003, 05:58
I have just read what you posted and I must say that I agree. I don't want Tribes 3 to just be about "the game" but more of an experience. In my opinion this is what makes a good game. The fundamental little tweaks that make you think "wow".

I think they will have to think about this and I'm sure they already have... but it would be nice to hear if this kind of thing will be included or not.

Many thanks,

Khan

Uncle Silas
04-04-2003, 16:16
I read your post and got the context. I'm just saying that someone in swan dive position is going to be a little harder to hit. That's all. :D

I'd like T3 to be very immersive but keep the game play at least as simple as T2 and keep game play fun.

Buk Naked
04-04-2003, 16:51
I don't care about kicking up dirt, or grass waving in the breeze - you'll notice it once, say "cool" then never think about it again as it steals 10 fps from you and screws up your actual game experience. If I wanna kick up dirt, I'll go outside. I'm still bitter about T2 not running on my machine. Unreal Tournament - fine. Quake Arena - fine. T2 - 5-10 fps and I would say a comparable look to the other two games of the same era. If they want it to sell, make it so it runs on peoples machines. At least make it scalable so I can turn some crap off if need be.

I do like interesting and new movement ideas - I still picture a Superman flying style sometimes. These things I could see adding to a fun game experience.

xpdnc
04-04-2003, 16:56
man, zork and eric the unready run fine on my machine, why won't t2?

Buk Naked
04-04-2003, 17:52
man, zork and eric the unready run fine on my machine, why won't t2?

Biatch!

"Unreal Tournament - fine. Quake Arena - fine. T2 - 5-10 fps and I would say a comparable look to the other two games of the same era."

Stop busting my balls and get to work converting maps and updating the TW database of scripts.

xpdnc
04-04-2003, 18:09
i was whoring from work ;)

Blotter
04-04-2003, 18:14
the "little things" definately are a nice touch to any gaming environment, but they take a backseat to the gameplay. so as long as the gameplay is rock solid, i think it'd be great if things like ambient sounds and animations were in the game, it would definately give a well-rounded experience. pretty obvious statement but i said it anyway :/

TeckMan
04-04-2003, 20:50
My only concern (as usual) is from a gameplay standpoint. In ut2k3 everyone uses the female models because they're slightly smaller but also more importantly on a double jump they do a crazy mctwist flip. While the character is moving all around the hitbox remains the same. To me that is lame and detracts from gameplay just to make the game look flashy. I guess it's similar to the decision to use interpolation or not. Some people just want to know where the hell the guy is so they can hit him, some people want smooth movement so it looks nice.
So I guess my main concern is that the hitbox acuratly reflects where the player actually is and what his model is doing, and not remain static while the player rotates around like crazy. I don't think this will be as much of a problem as in UT because switching to a swandive position isn't as drastic as doing a flip, but still I think it is important.
Also I think locational damage should be added if this is. This would help balance things if you are on the flagstand as a hof or lof and a capper comes in diving at you. While his profile may be very small, your hits will do aditional damage because he is going in head first (going in feet first should slow you down). It shouldn't be like 2x damage as in some games, but a small boost for balance's sake would be nice. Also maybe if you hit someone in the feet (as a chaser for instance) maybe it could knock the player around a bit (even more than it does in the case of the disc, gl etc), so the capper has to better at improvising ski routes if he wants to have a smaller profile to his chasers.

Or maybe you could make it simpler by simply having all players that are in a horizontal position (and thus have less wind resistance) be less stable. Any kind of damage would knock them around a bit (make it smooth though, you shoudn't be jittering all around)I think that's actually better but I'm still not deleting what I wrote above :p

Channel 03
04-04-2003, 20:53
I'm totally with you here Special. I wrote an essay to the Tribes Council (you may have seen this) when they gathered and included in it a section that's similar to what you're talking about here. I'm just going to cut and paste what I typed up for them:



I think people like to not only play a game that "looks" cool, but play a game that allows them to interact with it in a "cool" way. I feel that Tribes lacks this in some aspects. Here comes an elite space warrior at 200MPH through rain and fog yet seems to keep a perfectly straight back in a vertical direction while soaring through aerospace. Adding an extra animation of a player doing a swan-dive while swooping in to grab the flag doesn't actually add to gameplay, I think it adds an important mental element.

Look at the very popular game Street Fighter. What's the difference between all the characters? After all they are just blocks of pixels that all use the same movements to perform moves that take off the same ammount of damage, what made the difference is the animations and how each move looked and made you feel when you did it.


In Tribes 1 you can only crouch and jump and in T2 only jump, why not take advantage of the ideas of movies like "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" have made and implement them into the gameplay? I think some extra things should be added to the movement beyond just flips and rolls, but how you control yourself in the air. I think you should be able to press a button that will point your character into a swan dive position that will make them gain speed (enable you to dive under water as well which would not cause you to lose speed or life), as well as pressing another that would spread their arms, raising resistance and slow them down. I picture this somewhat like Super Mario World where he glides with his cape. Also, each capper is able to use one of a list of maneuvers with each life he has.
1. Speed : this will slightly increase the momentum of the person
2. Dodge : This will allow him to 'dodge' bullets for a very short ammount of time (2 seconds) while skiing
3. Juke : this will allow him to swerve in one direction (90 or 180 degrees) suddenly but maintain his speed.


.aerobahn

Special
04-04-2003, 20:54
My only concern (as usual) is from a gameplay standpoint. In ut2k3 everyone uses the female models because they're slightly smaller but also more importantly on a double jump they do a crazy mctwist flip. While the character is moving all around the hitbox remains the same. To me that is lame and detracts from gameplay just to make the game look flashy. I guess it's similar to the decision to use interpolation or not. Some people just want to know where the hell the guy is so they can hit him, some people want smooth movement so it looks nice.
So I guess my main concern is that the hitbox acuratly reflects where the player actually is and what his model is doing, and not remain static while the player rotates around like crazy. I don't think this will be as much of a problem as in UT because switching to a swandive position isn't as drastic as doing a flip, but still I think it is important.

Hmm, very true. I was wondering what I wanted to say in terms of the hitbox when a player entered a 'swan dive' or a 'barrel roll'. To be honest I have no answer. And yes, as Blotter mentioned in his previous post, flashiness should always take a backseat for gameplay.