Bakerman on 20/9/2009 at 09:22

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Thank you, but why is this relevant? Yes, ragdoll sucks. No, it has nothing to do with body awareness.


Neither can I, but that's not what I want. That's what TDS gave us, but it was wrong and poor. It's not what I'm talking about.
How many times?


It has been done, can be done, and I am doing it. If you want to arguing on technical terms, get a clue first. (Sorry, that was harsh.) But frankly, those problems you describe only exist because the developers didn't regard them as being problems. It is trivial to fix them. If you want to look at the floor under your feet, then its easy to detect when the camera is pointed at a foot, and simply move the foot aside to a sensible location. You want to swivel your waist? That's in every sincle modern FPS already. You could use the foot solution for shoulders, to trigger a sort of reverse shrug - but given you'll be pivoting at the waist anyway, that shouldn't be a problem.


I guess you're suggesting that the great animation tech caused the rest of the game to be crap. I'd disagree in most cases.


Whether it was tongue-in-cheek or not it was offensive and unhelpful, and you certainly didn't provide any useful arguments along with it.


No. But just because Thief has managed without it before doesn't mean it would automatically break everything you love about the game. Also, it's not a visual aid any more than wall textures are a visual aid.


Dark Messiah, Mirror's Edge, as we have said all along. Fallout 3 has been mentioned, though I can't say much about that. *Refrains from personal remark* :p


Ostriig is actually coming across as far more logical right now. And what's wrong with saying 'if done right'? Basically, it applies to everything, so we might as well just take it as a given. Sure, Thiaf will be great *if done right*. Blackjacks will be great *if done right*. Body awareness would be swell *if done right*.


Not a good way to treat people, especially when they're far less ignorant than you assume.


Wrong. It does exist, and is perfectly capable of animating an avatar in real-time. See the example of IK earlier. It's exactly what we're talking about and what you seem to be merrily ignoring.


I was going to comment on this but won't.

Bakerman on 20/9/2009 at 10:00

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I guess it doesn't help that I focus on his posts :p.

Ostriig on 20/9/2009 at 12:58

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No, I agreed it's possible there might be more to address with Thief, I didn't agree that such an issue of technical nature could not be adapted to it. I'm, in fact, among the more qualified to comment on this subject on account of having an understanding of the technology behind it, and the past few pages are a pretty good indication of that. I'll also note that whenever I've asked for a description on the invoked control differences, I haven't gotten it. We're not talking something ineffable like fine tastes, nor the difference between various things that move around in the sea and can be eaten, but finer points of game mechanics, something we all claim to have a good understanding of and should be capable of putting in words.

Also, I wasn't a dick because you thought I might be missing something, but because you presented that thought in a dickish way. Had you presented that thought in a civil way I'd have replied that I thought you were wrong in a civil way. Do you really not see the aggression in the post I'm talking about?



Done plenty of times, Mirror's Edge. For the purposes of that game, it's body awareness is well adapted. For the purposes of Thief, a body awareness model could also be well adapted. As it could for any first-person game with a human/humanoid protagonist.


ME does its movements very well, and it uses just standard animations. As for IK, the example I've shown is 100% real-time. This isn't technology from the future, and as I've already explained to you, the reason you haven't seen this (IK) before is because there would've been little point for this fine scaling when so much of everything else looked like shit. Look at the Wiki page I linked ok IK and see it clearly stated that it's decidedly non resource taxing.


Unless you have experience with coding and animation, on an academic or professional level, no offense, you don't. All you're going on is the poor implementations that you've seen not work, and the good implementations that you haven't seen work. This isn't a debate concerning the comings and goings of the industry, or the development of a full game, but on a very particular technical feature.

The rest of your post is generalisms and personal stuff, which I is fine, since you're quoting one of my posts also with personal stuff, but there's little else for me to say there.

I'm not being unreasonable or single-minded here. When Wormrat made me realise that working arms would still be unfeasible in a current-gen game I backed away from that concept. But this hasn't been the case with the rest of it.


Namdrol - Thanks for the link, I know it, but I've played TDS, and I own TDP and TMA. Just haven't gotten round to them just yet. I might end up getting the combo for TDS, since I don't have that one.

jtr7 on 20/9/2009 at 14:35

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Screw off with your "cling to the past" shit, taffers. You are dead wrong and incapable of realizing that. Don't bring that MYTH up ever again. :mad:




The flopping T3 body physics video was a response to ascottk's comment.
How the model interacts with the changes in environment is important, and you gotta have a model for body awareness. To say "Nothing" is incorrect. It's just not a direct connection.




Did I say TDS? I keep saying modern games. How many times? Until we're convinced, even as we continue to disagree.


The devs had playtesters. We're talking thousands of hours of playtesting. Wasn't a big enough issue to bother the devs with. What I was getting at with swiveling at the waist was rotating the camera to get the legs out of the view, not turning on a single axis, since that wouldn't get the legs and feet out of the way. Ideally, the whole spine would twist and bend a little to the side, since for the game, that motion would be used mainly for not looking at the body. So...it's possible to keep the feet rooted while looking 180-degrees behind, like a real person as a normal part of a game like Thief? For climbing gloves, being able to lift the elbows off the wall, rotate the spine all the way to the skull, and swivel the eyeballs in their sockets to see behind and below nearly unhindered, but natural, would make them tolerable.


You should disagree. That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting less time working on the body means more time elsewhere, not "the rest of the game". I already suggested AIs' animations would be a better place to focus. If AIs are lookin' good, then...something else. Something else will suffer for time spent on something less than half deem necessary.


Too much hypocrisy there. Your first post was offensive, if you couldn't tell by responses from others besides myself. You are one in a long line of people asking "Why why why?" when we can't help you understand, and you can't help us understand. Telling you what I don't want and the very simple reasons why, echoed by others in their own voice, is helpful and informative. Don't mistake tone for a lack of information, and I can point out how offensive it is that you only want to hear what you want. You didn't start a thread expecting no opposing views, right? I know you didn't. How many times and how many ways have you insulted me, now? Normally I would be...insulted, but I'm waiting for you to realize what I've said, and that it's different than your interpretations. Don't worry, happens to me a lot. I can't help it on my end.:laff:


Then stop describing it as a visual you need for immersion, connectedness, etc. Since I cannot relate, I can only go by your assertions. It is a visual aid for you. You don't believe you're in that world without it and it's a rare condition in Thief fandom--unless more taffers want to step from the shadows here and say they've never enjoyed Thief as much as they could have for the lack of a virtual body.


Oh don't hold back and pretend not to be offensive. :p Not a lot of body in Dark Messiah, which I previously addressed, certainly not reaching grasping hands for Thief. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acD6s4E3xso) Mirror's Edge, you're taffin' me! Someone find me better footage, stat! Flinging flippers! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZzZXNNfmJs&feature=PlayList&p=3F9F5E80CF936AAB&index=0&playnext=1) Fallout 3 has less body-awareness than TDS, haha, or is there a setting to toggle it? Is there a relevant clip I should see? All I see in all examples is the floating eyeball with limbs popping into view and the traditional floating weapon arms. You mentioned "simply" adding an animation for this motion and that motion and appear to casually ignore how many animations you're talking about in the end. And yes, I can move in a full ellipse around a ladder without falling off (what kind of ladder are you thinking of?)--common playground equipment stuff, it's not difficult if the hands and feet have decent grip. Child's play.


I'd say emotional, and I stand by the fact that you are not getting what I'm saying or detecting my motives, no matter how simple or complex I get, from a single sentence to a pseudo-rant. Glad to see you know as well as I that "if done right" is a great unknown, is a great "Well DUUHH! IF ONLY...", "if only" makes anything possible in the mind immediately, but the work to make it tangible is something else. "If only" even suggests it can be done wrong, which is how I see your current examples working in Thief. I'll ask again for an example of would work in Thief 4, but you just admitted to understanding what's wrong with "if done well." It's ultimately meaningless if it's NOT done well, and meaningless until then. I say it to suggest that's what will have to happen. Ostriig said it almost like it's going to happen in Thief 4. He also thinks I'm afraid of change (dumbass), when it's afraid of bad change (as a side-effect or distraction from fundamentals, like lip-synching--again better AI body animation would've been the better choice). He also went off on me for several things he thought were happening in my statements that weren't, like a "stealth edit" when I always edit my posts repeatedly and can't usually see that someone else is posting as I'm doin it--he's been terribly unobservant and it's my fault. If you'd kindly notice, he was an offensive asshole before I ever ranted and I was taking an frothy-absurdist tone packed with info on many levels, so ignoring him is in my best interest until I can bear to look, as he has little humor or illustrations, heh. As an aside, tangentially related, is it a vote of no confidence that you keep referring to Thief 4 as "Thiaf" or a term of honest endearment?


Correct! You know lots of stuff better than I. Of course! No argument there. But then there's that hypocrisy and assumption creeping in again. I only point that out 'cuz you started that line, and you haven't the foggiest of what I'm talking about, so I still have a better grasp. Anyhoo, can you produce a solid example for Thief 4 that speaks for itself, not just any ol' modern game? Are you suggesting what has already been done elsewhere to be grafted into Thief or something like it but newer than all that?

Can you demonstrate you know what I'm talking about? As long as the answer to the second question is no, as I can easily tell from my end, the debate will remain mostly fruitless with regard to intent. I treat people who launch a discussion with "Why? In the Builder's name, why?" with simple bluntness, and the foreknowledge that it's already unanswerable in your mind, which you've proven. And as expected, others chimed in with similar opinions to mine but in their own way, because I know these guys well enough, and have been participating in this community for years, watching common patterns that have remained, and other patterns that have shifted or perished. And if that doesn't penetrate, I pretend you can't hear us, especially with other loud people spitting on their monitors (a little spittle...maybe a fleck of Cheez-It paste). If that doesn't get the poster at least in the ballpark, I know it will take something very special to create the epiphany. It's out of our hands. You've heard it from a number of sources. It's not really welcome for Thief enough to take the time to do (other games, sure), and you can't provide proof otherwise at this point, so I'm not gonna take any like requests for proof of intangibles or nebulous examples too seriously, as you do not.

The candle-through-the cage could be an example to build toward, since it would demonstrate several things at once, and if pulled off, would be lauded, I guarantee. How much more time will it take me to line up my body like an invalid, or not, to move with this type of full body-awareness so I don't bump into anything like I'm not even a healthy and able human, let alone a Master Thief?

Make a video, and understand words ain't gonna cut it in either direction, no matter how polite and civil, as you can see. By the by, I'm not surprised by the usernames of the presence of the loud people working in your favor. Their reputations precede them and I expect them to not get what I'm saying...ever...but they do surprise and even delight me at times. Too much history among us influencing tone.


You quoted from a post where I addressed the very simple thing about IK that would make me happy, in general, and that would be added to the somewhat more complex desire to have a great Thief game that happens to have your wishes without hindering the basic basics. Ignoring?:erm: When you say "does exist, and is perfectly capable...in real time..." after I said I know it exists, but not in games, are you thinking of a game you can link a clip to for us? I hope you aren't referring to just the fact it exists and has been demonstrated, but that it's part of a full-fledged game. The issues I have with it and the things I like were addressed when I responded to other things. It's always going to be the same few things that all of this needs to line up with for my approval, and the others who have said they don't care for it in Thief. But why do you give a flyin' burrick what ANY of us think? You don't, but you pretend to, or what is going on here?



You're not paying attention. You see arrogance and ignorance instead of the deeper meaning that I keep telling you is there if you'd look. Don't hold back and pretend not to be offensive. Don't take cues from other taffheads who don't know their shit when it comes to myself. I'm talking about a Thief game that never needed this stuff, because the game isn't about this stuff, the focus is skewed from the greatness, and you want developers to spend the time "simply" animating sequence after sequence, or are you going to take that part back? The Thief games' strengths are always the context or subtext of my part in these discussions. Show me an example of exactly what you are referring to, with the player character doing something Thiefy.

The Euphoria engine is great for AIs and I've championed the idea of seeing it in Thief, but it's not seen in too many games. Why? Why are modern games still hand-animating AIs (DX3), or tweaking mo-cap data? Licensing or other major issues? IK starts as a concept, like everything else in a game, but it does not exist in the game without algorithms, complex math, and if it's not typed out from scratch, or copied and pasted and tweaked from a free-source, might a clean strong code, a powerful template, be available for purchase? If I look down and need my foot to move, how does the game know that's what I want and not to look at my foot, or will my foot move because that's the better choice of the two? More info on that "simple" trick would be appreciated. It would be awesome to see an arm and hand reach out to grasp an object off a shelf, at an angle where it will collide with another object sitting next to it without compensation, and while standing too close to the shelf so the arm and hand need to avoid colliding with the shelf, too. I wouldn't miss it if it wasn't there, though, see. And if one hand is holding a weapon, but that hand is the closest to the object, switching the weapon to the other hand would be a nice touch. And if an object is heavy or unwieldy and needs two hands, the weapon will need to be put away. If the angle of the body is such that an object requiring two hands cannot be picked up safely without the player moving the body into a better position, it can't be frobbed. Being able to grasp objects by their contours rather than bounding boxes would really take it to great levels. More vertical movement than ever will be necessary if not a redesign of where loot is placed. If loot is too high for the model's reach, some way of getting to it will need to be in place, because it will all have to be lower than before, otherwise. There was a reason the frob distance was about 6-plus-feet by default, never changed, so that reason will have to be compensated for. Being able to stand on chairs would be nice, and they don't have to fall over like they're made of balsa wood in Thief 4, or bang around when brushing against them.





You suck at assumption about my meaning, heh heh, oog. To answer directly: Wha--? "Moved on" is clearly subjective and "floaty eyeball" is how you perceive it, not us, and as you can see (maybe?) we don't care about other camera options because we're looking at the world, not how we are carried through it, and playing through the environment by aiming and going, not thinking about or missing a virtual body at all. If it highlights, we frob it, we're happy. There will always be a special game plot scenario for more intricate interactions. Contentment is not bad, it's wonderful and rare. Complacency is the evil and unhealthy part, and that's not what our "problem" is. Fan Missions push limits in all directions and go way outside the box and it's most welcome and exciting and a lot of it is not good for the elegance of traditional Thief gameplay but in the fresh[er], different-than-Thief context made for it.

To this day, the complainers are still far less than the contented, so this "ten-year-old," "old", "outdated," boring-ass line of argument is as offensive as shitting on the graphics. And we'll keep telling you--how many times?--we really don't care to see the body, it's unnecessary. If you believe it is necessary, then you do need it. It's limiting compared to the oldest titles until I see exactly what you mean, it's too bad for you, and less on the screen is better... It's less to develop and animate and playtest all the things the player used to be able to do, and adding stuff to it might slow us down, make us rue the day body-awareness became a priority in yet another Thief game, and it will squeeze out the elegant possibilities that existed before pre-animated model movements. I may very well have missed the post that would drive your point home and open my eyes, but that means the others in opposition did too. Is this about making animations ahead of time, or the game determining limb-pathfinding and animating backwards from the end-coordinates? If it is about animating for all possibilities (not possible), and designing and redesigning the environment to work with the few animations that work to their satisfaction, then taff this concept to hell. I hope that's not even close to what you are proposing.

Finally (for this post): Ostriig, you severely diffused the impact of your arguments by having no informed perspective on the older titles and why we give a damn this much. And as many here, don't know the context of what I'm saying, even though it's there.

Bakerman on 20/9/2009 at 16:37

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Now we're talking :)


Mm. I think I see what you're talking about - the way Garrett interacts with the ragdoll body, correct? But for argument's sake, body awareness does not have to include any changes to collision detection/response.


I read TDS from it, because that was a game that included all those things you mentioned. And the way I purchase games, TDS is still relatively modern :erm:. But what game you were talking about is immaterial - the fact is you were referring to poorly implemented body awareness, which is what TDS had. I used that as a touchstone because it's the most relevant example.


Evidently none of the playtesters hated the body as much as you do. If there were, and they mentioned it to the devs, then it was the devs who shrugged and failed to fix it.



These things are eminently possible, and I don't know why the devs didn't choose to include them. Of course the feet-planted-on-the-ground example means you'd be looking away from your blackjack, but if you wanted that, it could be done.


That was the attitude I was getting at. I think we both agree that body animation isn't going to cost the level design anything, because those are two separate labour pools. But I would argue that a proper animation system for a first-person character could have knock-on effects throughout the rest of the game's characters' animations. I mentioned that in my game I'm doing what I'm doing so that players controlled by others over a network will look good to other players - but equally, the AI-controlled characters benefit from all the work I do for client-controlled characters.


I'm sorry if I came over as offensive - I wasn't trying to be offensive then, and looking back now I don't believe I was. I may have appeared incredulous and unready to accept others' opinions, but at least I was asking the question, not stating an ultimatum as if my word were law (and I'm not saying that's what you were doing). As I recall (and have gone back to read), your first posts were characterised by discarding body awareness off-hand based on your conceptions of it formed by TDS (if that's not where you were coming from, I apologise for misreading, but you didn't exactly go in-depth).


Yes, to a certain extent. Not to the extent of shouting (or the FORUM EQUIVALENT) and swearing (or the frakking forum equivalent) to put across your opinion. And when other points of view and argument were brought up, yu continued to rant. I'll grant you that I didn't really believe you were serious, but text is a notoriously bad conveyor of sarcasm.


Quite a few, and I'm sorry about that - but I don't believe my responses were unprovoked.


Sorry - I took 'visual aid' to imply something like a lightgem, an aid to gameplay. It is certainly a visual aid to immersion - again, in the same way wall textures are an aid to immersion. :p


Fair enough, if I wasn't going to insult you, I shouldn't have insulted you. I'm not going to bother reading your post again, but something in it offended me and made me want to respond like I have before.


I was bringing up the games we have talked about as having elements of body awareness that worked well, and would be appropriate in a Thiefy setting. To clarify, someone mentioned that characters' feet adjust to the terrain they're standing on in F3 - a small mention, but still worthy of one. Dark Messiah had more body awareness than most every other game I've played, but in a good way - not the TDS style, where you're aware of it being awkward, but in the real-life style where you can see it, but it never draws too much attention to itself. Granted, it doesn't go as far as I'd like.


I wouldn't, but we can agree to disagree. No, I am not getting what you're saying. Well, I'll admit I am understanding more and more as we go along. My problem was that in a rant I couldn't pick out much relevant to body awareness, and in a single sentence you oversimplified things to the point that I had nothing to respond to there, either, except to ask for clarification. A balance would be nice. Which is what we're getting now, so thank you.


I started this post asking what advantages there were of being a floaty eyeball over having proper body awareness. Obviously the assumption is that both implementations are 'done well', because otherwise you could just argue about implementations all day, and not get around to discussing the fundamentals of the two sides presented.

I think we're saying two fundamentally different things here... I'm trying to argue that body awareness is superior to inviso-body as a concept. You're arguing that the implementation of body awareness is so risky and without payoff that there's no point implemening it. Am I right? Maybe I'm too optimistic about developers' abilities (including my own...?), but I would trust a developer who was serious about body awareness, not just trying to tack it on because some other games did it. EM's stance on this isn't clear.


Haha. It's actually because it's shorter to write, and I try to write my replies quickly (as you can tell from copious typos :p). But just using the name Thiaf amuses me. I'm not trying to say anything by it.


If I haven't the foggiest, I would attribute that to your style of posting :p. You'll notice that once you topped ranting, I started understanding. By the line you quoted, I wasn't purporting to know your argumet better than yourself - I was objecting in general terms to 'our ignorance'. If you meant our ignorance of your point of view, then fair enough - but as I've said before, I didn't feel like you were even trying to help me understand before now, just ranting because I didn't.


Maybe I did believe it to be unanswerable when I posted - and I believed that because of the arguments which I have presented to counter those of the other posters here. Maybe I didn't want to be swayed, but I did seek an explanation of a point of view I had encountered. For me, body awareness will be superior, and that is a personal reaction, but that doesn't stop me absorbing and discussing others' opinions while maintaining my own.


You've got me there. Well, check out Determinance. (There is a trailer on youtube which doesn't seem to be working at the moment, but (http://www.mode7games.com/) they've also got a demo which I reccommend.) It does full-control mouse-based swordfighting. Not sure if it's IK specifically, but the principle is the same. The controls weren't great, but for manipulating an item, rather than a sword, would work perfectly well. I'm not aware of many other games that have used IK, but I've never bothered to research it in more detail than the mathematics I need for my own game.


QFT.

No, but I think it's conservatism. Unwillingness to push the envelope. I don't think it's a bad thing to want to push ahead and try new things, even if they may not work the way they were intended. Someone has to advance the genre, and I would be happy if it was Thiaf doing th advancing. Fair enough, maybe T4 (aha, found something shorter :p) isn't the game that will make body awareness accepted. But I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be.


I don't think it's offensive at all. You have to accept that we can move on. I would not be impressed if T4 looked like TDP, and nor would anyone else.

Now, whether that applies to body awareness as much as it does to graphics is a different issue. I'll accept that it might not be a good idea to move on *just because we can*, like we do with graphics. Maybe the tech isn't as mature as I want it to be. Maybe it's not time to move from 2D to 3D, as an analogy. Not until the tech is more ubiquitous and risk-free.


Again, we don't want to restrict anything, just match the body to what the player is doing. Sigh.


Well, thank you for finally trying to understand my position. (Sorry :erg:.) All along, I have never ever said that the environment or movement should be designed around the animations - in fact, I want the opposite! Maybe you did miss that point - but I don't think anyone else did! I really hope you haven't cottoned on to this just now, but I'm definitely ready to believe that after all the confusion this thread has generated, some misunderstandings have been created.
See IK.
No pre-generation of animations.
All dynamically created from the endpoint.
Designed to fit in with the actions that the player isperforming.
Arrg.



Right, I'm tired.

ZylonBane - Good points.

In this specific case, it'd be as simple as not looking directly at your feet. But obviously the control method could be made more fluid and whatnot. I was just throwing out possibilities.
And I understand that this argument applies to body awareness in general, so my specific counter isn't really useful. But frankly... I don't think I've ever looked directly beneath me when playing Thief. The details in the environment haven't been such that it's necessary to do - floor texture you can judge without looking directly down, etcetera. I don't think the problem of obscuring your view is as big as you make it out to be. Also, if the body changes are purely cosmetic, then it's not necessary to, for example, look at your feet to judge where you are on a ledge.


Hey, it's what I want, which is why I started this. But I see why you don't want it. But as opposed to the body acting on its own in the case of the foot movement, it actually acted according to your input - the input of looking directly at the foot. I'd do the same if I wanted to look at something under one of my feet. Looking at the foot is a way of signalling your intentions to the game, just like pressing W is a signal of your intention to move forward.