Bakerman on 22/9/2009 at 15:37
Quote Posted by Ostriig
Unless I'm misunderstanding. The animation is always a follow-up to the interaction or control command in a logical class structure. By the point that the hand, as an end-node of the arm hierarchy, has extended to a specific point, an interaction method has already been called.
Yep. I'm just looking at it from the point of view of fine interactions, like picking things up. You wouldn't want the hand to animate the same way to pick up a candlestick as it would a bucket. See the problem? I guess it just comes down to lots of different cases with different animations, but it's inelegant.
I'm sounding like I've turned :p. But I remain resolute!
Quote Posted by Myagi
I'd argue that well done first person BA has animations which probably for the most part won't be top notch in 3rd person (or vice versa).
Eh, I don't agree. I don't see any reason why 1st person body animations would look bad in 3rd person. Obviously the reverse can be true, but if you design everything from the perspective of 1st person first (that was an awful double pun :p) then you shouldn't have that problem.
Quote Posted by Jarvis
The whole point to Mirror's edge was "freedom of movement". It was a parkour game after all. Yet, it was disappointingly linear.
Was that a function of the body awareness, or simply the way they chose to design their game?
Quote Posted by Jarvis
What I want is an open environment that I can explore freely. Any new feature that gets in the way of that or makes that more difficult or limited is a BAD feature.
Yep, but I would argue body awareness doesn't have to restrict your freedom in exploring the level. It's something I'm shooting for in my game - to actually have the 'body awareness' augment the freedom of movement. Here it is from my perspective:
When I started with the floaty-eyeball type of perspective, I went to code mantling and tried to figure out how I would do it. Taking hief as my inspiration, it seemed that what I needed to do was detect a flat surface in front of the player, determine its distance and height, and then calculate a movement that would bring the character forward then upwards to the required height. The first part, detection, was simple enough to do. But the second half I struggled with. It would hae been easy enough to, for example, construct a path out of a few precalculated points and have the character move along it at a determined speed, which would seem to be how Thief does it (I'm not an expert, but that's how it appeared to me). But I never tried to implement that, because the whole idea of moving the character along rails repelled me - it defies the physics of the game, ignores other inputs that might enter the equation in mid-mantle, and creates a dangerous situation for collision detection (where the player character actually enters level geometry while moving - always a bad idea).
The way I'm working on doing it now is detecting a ledge, then playing an animation which actually sweeps a collision volume in a downwards motion in front of the character, synched with a body animation, and IK to place the hands on the ledge. That way the game's existing physics are leveraged to move the character up.
Vaulting and wall-climbing (basically mantling on a higher ledge) are planned to utilise the same sort of method.
I don't know if I proved anything at all with that example :p, or whether I'm even talking about body awareness any more. But what I'm trying to say is, I don't consider body awareness to be a restriction on movement, but an opportunity.
EDIT: For some reason I didn't see this post before. Sorry, jtr.
Quote Posted by jtr7
I'm not hysterical, nor have I been. I can write tirades with comic book illustrations without actually being in that mood, as can you.
I appreciate you spelling things out for me. What I didn't appreciate was your previous attitude, which certainly appeared hysterical to me - whether or not you were frothing at the mouth as you wrote it, that was the impression you gave. Even if you meant to convey that impression, you gave me no reason to suspect anything more. Going back I can see where your points were hidden in the torrent, and you did make them before getting into that mode, though I might say in a rather curt and dismissive manner. Which seems to be due to the history of similar arguments that I've missed.
Quote Posted by jtr7
The same parroted gripes against the "veteran" and "old"
Thief players are usually myths and have been addressed point by point for over 5 years.
Okay, but I'm not about to go back and search posts over the last 5 years to find them. I still don't know what on earth these myths are :p. At this point it doesn't really matter if you spell them out for me, but that's what I wanted all along.
Quote Posted by jtr7
What is hard to understand that we don't want complex body-awareness nor care for any in
Thief? How can that possibly be misinterpreted?
It's no longer a matter of misunderstanding, but wanting to delve deeper.
Quote Posted by jtr7
No, I do not imply that you tagged the thread. Don't worry 'bout that. It was someone else who did the same thing before, who for some reason has been less than himself for a couple of years. But calling me hysterical isn't much better.
Good good.
Hey, at least I called you hysterical to your face :thumb:.
...:p
Quote Posted by jtr7
Ignoring all the bulleted points is baffling, and ironically contrarian for any of you calling for constructive discussion. You're shooting yourselves in the foot by acting like we
aren't stating our opinion in a score of ways. This is begging for backlash, and it is cruel. Ignore or accept the fact that there is opposition and why, and simply disagree or maybe learn something, not act like your points haven't been addressed or are too unclear to consider, or that things have not been said.:confused:
I don't think I've been doing that. Maybe it's different from your perspective, but if that's the case then we can leave it right now, because it's pointless to argue about our personal reactions to each other - they are what they are and we can't change them now.
I do realise there has been a lot of stagnant back and forth. Mostly it goes 'why not body awareness?' 'it takes away control/immersion' 'nuh-uh' 'yuh-huh'. Which I believe is everyone's fault.
Ostriig on 22/9/2009 at 16:22
Quote Posted by Jarvis
The whole point to Mirror's edge was "freedom of movement". It was a parkour game after all. Yet, it was disappointingly linear. Sure I had a couple of days worth of fun leaping over things, but the game decided more or less what I should leap over and when.
Yeah, but as you note right after, that's level design so this isn't a counterargument. You construct the body awareness model to the exigencies of control and level design, not the other away around.
Quote:
What I want is an open environment that I can explore freely. Any new feature that gets in the way of that or makes that more difficult or limited is a BAD feature.
Okay, but this doesn't get in the way.
Quote:
TDS body awareness made exploration more difficult.
Because it was a poorly designed model.
Quote:
How much more effort would EM have to put into it to make body awareness work well in Thief 4?
All in all, the animations would probably take about as much effort as Dice put in those for Mirror's Edge. Maybe a little less, depending on number. They're rather antithetic in terms of gameplay (and aesthetic), but the one thing they come together on is the high level of demand with regards to environment interaction, so it's a fair comparison.
Quote:
Are any of us really qualified to answer that question?
I don't think anyone here is claiming to have run COCOMO on this thing. But with some understanding of the technical aspects involved, we can conclude that it is feasible within the scope of the game.
Quote:
Is it really worth any trouble at all in the grand scheme of things?
It's worth
some trouble. Just not so much that it would genuinely compromise priority areas, which may not necessarily be the case. And I've
kinda touched on this twice before in the thread, here's the first instance: "Following that line of thinking, the rooms in T4 might as well have single, large polygons for walls, and contain just loot, guards, lights and crates to hide behind." More below.
Quote:
I hope EM isn't reading this and deciding that this is a major point for us.
And I hope EM aren't reading this forum and deciding that something like body awareness isn't worth any modicum of effort because people wouldn't want it anyhow. That's not the case. Nor does it have to be contrary to your hopes.
Naturally, I wouldn't want something like body awareness at the expense of level design, or AI, or some other major thing. But if it comes down to weighing some new super-duper shiny water shader or the like against body awareness, I think I'd rather have the latter.
Quote Posted by Bakerman
Yep. I'm just looking at it from the point of view of fine interactions, like picking things up. You wouldn't want the hand to animate the same way to pick up a candlestick as it would a bucket. See the problem? I guess it just comes down to lots of different cases with different animations, but it's inelegant.
No, mate, there's no problem there. The instant you've initiated the pick-up action, or another, the program already knows what it is that you're picking up, and plays the correct animation. In fact, following what I was taught, I'd have the
target object react and generate the animation - when you attempt to pick it up, you trigger the target object's
ReactToPickup method (part of a polymorphic implementation) and sidestep the need to identify the object type altogether.
Quote:
Eh, I don't agree. I don't see any reason why 1st person body animations would look bad in 3rd person.
Actually, he's kinda right. It's the same point the Fafhrd (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1909163#post1909163) made with (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcz-3paQ26k) this link. Best to cater the body animations to either 1st or 3rd person, not both.
Myagi on 22/9/2009 at 17:09
Quote Posted by Bakerman
Eh, I don't agree. I don't see any reason why 1st person body animations would look bad in 3rd person. Obviously the reverse can be true, but if you design everything from the perspective of 1st person first (that was an awful double pun :p) then you shouldn't have that problem.
I didn't say they'd look bad, but maybe not as good as compared with other (quality) third person only games. For example because it might be necessary to hold the hands in slightly less than ideal poses to make them work perfectly in first person view, or make the animation of the upper body a bit stiffer than pure third person needs in order to work good in FP (to avoid the camera flailing about too much).
Haven't played Mirrors Edge or Assasins Creed so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm thinking if someone thinks they could make Mirrors Edge BA and they'd have AC quality third person basically for free they'll be in for a surprise.
Chade on 22/9/2009 at 21:33
Quote Posted by Jarvis
I hope EM isn't reading this and deciding that this is a major point for us. I hope they focus on good story, free level design, and immersive atmosphere instead.
I completely agree man. I think someone needs to start a thread requesting shit story, restricted level design, and unimmersive atmosphere.
:thumb:
Jarvis on 22/9/2009 at 21:35
You're right, Ostriig, that body awareness and level design are not mutually exclusive. We can have both. Clearly you hope that we do. If it works, great. It certainly wouldn't hinder my enjoyment of the game. Like I said, I'm pretty neutral to the concept of body awareness... *so long as it's done unobtrusively* (Insert rant about TDS here).
But what I'm driving at here is that the scale of importance between body awareness and level design is not balanced. One is clearly far more important than the other. And that isn't true just with level design either, it's true with story, voice acting, NPC animation, atmosphere, and a host of others qualities of Thief as well.
Of course I'm not saying that the concept should be just ignored. But it shouldn't be weighed equally against so many other priorities. Body awareness, in my opinion, is just a neat add on, and one that I normally ignore anyway. When it comes to neat add ons, I'm personally more interested in a level designer and multiplayer.
It makes me think about something someone already said earlier in this thread. "A jack of all trades and a master of none". Part of the reason TDS body awareness sucked was because it wasn't given sufficient energy.
So when I ask "how much energy and time would it take to do it right in thief 4?", you answer "well we can make reasonable guesses based on Mirror's edge and so on". I remind you, body awareness was pretty central to what Mirror's Edge tried to do with gameplay. That is not true with Thief.
So I pose the question again:
How much time and energy does it take to do body awareness right, and is that worth the effort when weighed against all the other things we hope EM gets right?
The answer might well be "yes". I don't know. But it also might well be "no". But given my lack of trust in the Thief franchise since TDS, I'm inclined to encourage them to just focus on getting basics down right. If Thief 4 rocks my face off... then I hope EM gets a chance to make improvements like this on Thief 5.
But first, I feel like I need proof that they can handle Thief at all before they go tacking on shiny new features. Gift wrapped christmas poo is still a steaming pile of feces.
Ostriig on 22/9/2009 at 22:27
If you're asking for some sort of solid estimate in person-weeks or something, I can't offer that, sorry. I believe that the amount of effort for this detail feature would be reasonably on par with the amount of effort for other detail features (say, I don't know, omg realistic water ripples or something). Also, I'm not nitpicking, but note that when I said "comparable effort to ME" I specifically said "animations". They're more relevant to ME than they would be to Thief, yes, but they're in no way the prime component there, but just something to embellish the mechanics. ME's "thing" is a set of complex movement mechanics and flexible case scenarios involving momentum, 3D orientation, grapple objects, and so on. The animations are just pretty straight-forward recorded ones geared towards a first-person perspective.
I'm not trying to say that if EM got to implementing this it would certainly, or even likely, come out right. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. My entire argument over the last few pages was to try and convince people that it could be done well, not necessarily like it turned out in TDS or anything.
We're gonna get some of that Christmas wrapping on ThIVf anyway. You know that - there's no doubt, otherwise it would never see the light of day. All I'm saying is that body awareness could be one of the ribbons without necessarily making an impact on the delicious cake / steaming turd inside the box, but possibly just at the expense of another non-essential ribbon.
SubJeff on 22/9/2009 at 23:04
Quote Posted by Chade
I'm just suggesting that some sort of hand animation (which would have to be quite flexible, and probably powered by some sort of ik algorithm) would be a good way of providing feedback to the user about: 1) what the computer thinks he's trying to climb on, and 2) if the computer decides that the object he's trying to climb is invalid for some reason, you can use the appropriate hand animation to communicate the failed criteria to the player.
That would be awesome.
Doesn't really need body awareness though.
Fafhrd on 22/9/2009 at 23:25
I swear to god I'm going to FRAPs all these 'But then how do you handle THIS obvious thing that I, for some reason, can't conceive a solution to?' cases in Mirror's Edge when I get home on friday so that everyone will shut the hell up about them.
Bakerman on 23/9/2009 at 02:26
Erg. Okay, I see what you mean. I hould have looked at that before, but I tend not to pay as much attention to the posts of people who I agree with ;P. That really surprises me - the misalignment and clipping should be issues in 1st person as much as they are with a hacked 3rd person. Makes me wonder if they use some additional first-person magic like rendering the player character a layer above everyhing else, instead of having paid the attention to align the animations correctly.
I do also think they paid a lot of attention to keeping the head as level and rigid as possible, making it seem like her brain is made of helium or something :p. I can see why that's desirable, though I'll add that I would personally expect the camera to jerk around a little when I was doing crazy-ass high-speed parkour moves.
Point taken, then. I'll still argue that it *could* be done, but of course, anything can be done with enough time and effort :p.
Quote Posted by Jarvis
But what I'm driving at here is that the scale of importance between body awareness and level design is not balanced. One is clearly far more important than the other. And that isn't true just with level design either, it's true with story, voice acting, NPC animation, atmosphere, and a host of others qualities of Thief as well.
Yep. Though when you consider the manpower on the team working on the project, labour hours spent by coders and animators on body awareness aren't going to eat up the time of level designers and story artists. Later you mention an editor and multiplayer - that's time that will probably overlap, so I see what you mean.
I'd say, though, that multiplayer and body awareness could be linked, like I've implied all along. Granted that Mirror's Edge didn't seem to get 3rd person quite right, but I think they've gotten much closer than if they hadn't planned to include body awareness. At some point, you need to be animating character avatars in 3rd person in multiplayer - unless it's some crazy sort of multiplayer where player characters never see each other (which I wouldn't be opposed to).
Quote Posted by Chade
I completely agree man. I think someone needs to start a thread requesting shit story, restricted level design, and unimmersive atmosphere.
:thumb:
Yeah... :p. I reserve my right to quibble when we know nothing about the game, but an 8-page thread doesn't really convey that it's a small issue :p. Well, let's hope EM knows what they're doing.
Jarvis on 23/9/2009 at 05:04
Quote Posted by Jarvis
...But given my lack of trust in the Thief franchise since TDS, I'm inclined to encourage them to just focus on getting basics down right. If Thief 4 rocks my face off... then I hope EM gets a chance to make improvements like this on Thief 5.
But first, I feel like I need proof that they can handle Thief at all before they go tacking on shiny new features....
The more I think about it the more this statement of mine makes sense. That's probably the core of my apprehension for something like this. I don't see anything wrong with that either. I think it's a valid concern. Video game fans get their trust violated a lot these days. I guess it felt like a double betrayal with TDS because I thought the makes of the original Deus Ex would be more than capable. Now Thief is in completely new hands, and I'm mostly concerned that they won't focus on capturing what made the originals so special.
I can only speak for myself, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of the "old hat" guys you've been butting heads with here share this betrayed feeling with me.
Not that this post is making any kind of point one way or another, but hopefully it'll help us understand one another a little better.
