Can we JUMP? (Dev) Replied

I never had a need or a desire for jumping in UO. It will be interesting to see how it transfers over into the 3D engine. We have the utmost faith in you guys! Thanks for clarifying this for us.

 

Couldn't you just threaten the programmers with a beating for every hole and sticking place in the terrain?

 

Jumping is for action games, and takes away from realism in an RPG. If anything I'd like to see crouching...imagine reduced speed but less chance for an enemy's ranged success.

 

As RG stated implementing jumping isn't difficult, it's the ramifications that come with it going in. I'm most definitely NOT wanting to play a platformer, no please no.

What I'm saying is hopping up and down, sometimes for no reason, other times to yes jump over that log or rock. Maybe I want to jump off this high ledge into a pond.

We should be able to do this. It would feel very... odd if we couldn't. I don't think it takes away realism from an RPG but in fact adds to it. When I play DnD, I'd be shocked if the DM said I couldn't jump...

 

If free jumping is put in the game I promise I will make everyone regret it.

I would rather just have this be an action that happens rather than user controlled. If you:

• Run into a fence you hop over it.
• Run off a cliff with a survivable drop you jump.
• Run off a cliff into a lake you dive (swimming would be nice).

Etc. If you are walking short objects would be barriers but become passable when you are running. Unless there is platforming I don't really see need for free jumping which is just the addition of real-world timing and skill brought into the game-world. Not to mention its becomes another emote to spam.

Also if this is given to players it should also be given to NPCs and Monsters as well.

 

Having jumping and climbing and whatnot as contextual actions would be the best option IMO, but that would require a lot of development time to get it right. Even games designed around those mechanics always have bugs.

Oddly enough, I think Ultima IX handled this really well. I'd say SOTA should have a much shorter jumping range than U9 did, but the way climbing and slopes were handled was really good, especially for its time.

I'd also like to see encumbrance effect your ability to do these things. Having a suit of plate might make you extremely hard to kill, but your prey can escape by hopping over a fence and then run or pelt you with arrows. On the other hand, the extra weight would make your hits land harder if you had the high ground or more capable of simply smashing the fencing down. There could be a chance of stumbling while doing acrobatic things in combat as well, so there would always be some risk involved. Making acrobatics a skill that can be augmented by certain gear could add a bit more depth to choosing a build. Things like that would add more interesting strategy and tactics to combat if handled right.

 

Another example of a relatively recent game that suffers from not including jumping is Space Marine. In the first scenario, I found myself thrown by an explosion into a spot where you were never intended to find yourself, so it wasn't possible to walk out of it. It was a spot between two pipes, and if I could have jumped 6 inches, I could have gotten out of it with trivial ease. With no jumping ability, and no /stuck command, I had to exit the game, delete the campaign, and start over. Explosions happened all the time in that game, but fortunately, I was never again thrown into an inaccessible spot.

Depending on the physics to be implemented, if you don't want to risk jumping, at least put /stuck in the game that will move you to a known safe spot.

 

Jumping doesn't have to be taken to an extreme, similar to Elder Scrolls, where in one of the games you jumped around a whole lot and as you increased level you could jump higher and higher...leading me to jump thousands of times

However, advanced jumping COULD become a skill of some sort, with some type of quests made harder (but not impossible) if you didn't have the ability to jump higher. Same could be said for a climbing ability.

Bottom line...there's a lot of good that could be gained by having some form of jumping in the game. So we SHOULD have it. To what degree and purpose is the real debate we should be having.

 

I'm going to throw my two cents in.. probably only worth one. When talking about jumping and immersion.. how often do you really jump? Unless you're doing plyometrics with Tony Horton, I'd say not a lot. Granted I use to jump all the time when walking around in WoW because it gave me something to do during my endless travels but in all honesty if I saw someone hopping around that much on the streets of Hartford I'd dub them a loon and give them some space. The different map scale should take away the painful travel time and jump puzzles in games are painful. I can remember one in DDO that still makes me cringe years later. Perhaps it's just early and I'm rambling to myself too!

 

That's en extremely contrary statement.

In general it's crazy to see what is and isn't RPG to some people based on their preference for different styles of movement. Most of this seems to be based on peoples acceptance of past limitations as necessary limitations to hone the gameplay towards what they've experienced as being core to the RP nature of the game.

I see this as being a self imposed barrier to progress, wrought by comfort zones and narrowed vision, that deliberately obfuscates the real questions with an "I want..." philosophy.

I was about to say the exact same thing.

We need to look at this from the other direction, working backwards until we find the scope within which additional movement options are not only acceptable, but technically feasible and possible within the scope of the development road map.

There are 3 approaches,

• Restrictive movement
• Freedom of movement
• Context based actions

The obvious answer is that all three of these have merits, therefore lets start by including all three and see where that gets us.

Necessary movement restrictions are, map edges, tall un-climbable objects and structures, ...
Degrees of freedom are, jumping, crouching/sneaking, swimming, sprinting etc
Context based actions are, sitting, vaulting, climbing, ...

So Chairs you sit on, Fences you vault (1.0 height), Walls you climb (2.0 height). And some of the issues are...

• Character height and animation synchronisation. A small character climbing a high wall, or vaulting a relatively large object is somewhat unrealistic and may look funny.
  • This is partially solved by using measurements that are most applicable to all available character heights and by somewhat limiting choices when it comes to play height.
• Action priority, chair walls ... if your contextual action for an object is to sit on it, and objects can be freely placed it would be possible to create impassable barriers.
  • There are few relatively simple fixes for this, but the most straight forward is simply don't initiate object interactions and contextual actions in the same way.
• Huge overhead of defining generic system for z based interactions with objects or simple interaction per object system.

Jumping, crouching/sneaking, swimming, sprinting ...

• You shouldn't be able to jump something from the same floor height that you're intended to have to vault. (jump height 0.6)
• Jumping can get you stuck or give you access to unintended areas.
  • With good fore through the chances of getting stuck should be extremely limited, and with the ability to return to the over world map /unstuck shouldn't be an issue.
  • World design would have to be aware of the extended capabilities of such movements, to ensure gaps intended to be jump-able are so, and that objects that are imperatively not reachable remain so, whilst everything in between remains a matter of player exploration.
• Crouching/sneaking (crouch height 0.9) should be available to all, yet also applicable as a skill to some. I've not read anything about player visibility in regards to skill interactions yet.
• Swimming has to be in the game, because using water as an impassable barrier is so 1996 and possibly the worst of world immersion breakers in a free roam 3D environment.
• sprinting, as opposed to running/jogging is a significant step in the movement interactions between players and would aid in correctly modelling the movement of more agile or more lightly armoured individuals versus their slower counterparts, whilst allowing a varied party to maintain approximately the same base movement speed.
• The majority of these freeform movements could perhaps have a relative stamina cost.

Restrictive movement ...

• Players should not be able to jump outside the map edges. I'm assuming map edges are already tiered with impassable terrain or objects and an infini high invisible wall to avoid this AND/OR the player is moved to the world map.
• Everything that isn't specified individually or part of a set or system as is impassable in a context based system, and as part of jump enabled world so long as the avatar cannot reach it's height minus their jump height.

 

I used to jump all the time in WoW when scaling mountains and structures, to either circumvent traditional pathways, to reach mobs more quickly or to simply get a different and often better view of the surrounding area. I didn't bunny hop around town nor did I run faster with a knife.

Jumping should not mean jump puzzles. The big issue here seems to be that games lately have only added jumping to necessitate deliberate gameplay. Rather than creating a more interesting world, where being able to jump up a small ledge, or out of a stream, or off a bridge is simply the preferred method of movement - persisting the player belief that an RPG only needs two dimensions when really it was only easier and more cost effective from a design standpoint and not at all about creating a world.

 

knoxiTV, thanks for sharing. Believe me I see your point. I'm just not sure we'll need jumping to make the world feel that much more alive. The flip side of that coin is if I end up in a sewer tunnel and step off the curb into the water... can I get back up? Or is the sewer tunnel round so there is nothing to step up? Are the river banks all sloped in such a way I can't fall in? Do all rivers run so fast they just can't be crossed so jumping in and out of them is a non issue? I feel like there are a lot of unknowns until we see some actual game play. One thing I do know is games on rails make me cry but RG & team have promised us exploration and I believe they will deliver. /drinking the koolaid!

 

How about this... Right now we pre-calculate a movement graph, so everywhere you could legally walk to is reachable. Now as much fun as it was in some Ultima's to build bridges and stairs out of boxes or even loaves of bread, we simply cannot allow that, as it makes our "containment" problem effectively impossible. But we don't want a fallen over tree, to stop the most powerful warrior in the world from traveling down the path of a forest. Nor do we want "jumping puzzles" per say, so what about: We add in a jump effect... but the target of the jump MUST be a location contiguous to the walking surface you are on. So, you can jump over a log, versus go around, you could jump onto a bit of stairs from the side as they are both on the same walk surface. You could NOT jump to or from the roof of a house, as they are not connected. You could NOT jump to the far side of a wall that you could not have walked around. thus it is an effect and a short cut, but not a separate puzzle element?

 

I think that is fair. People are just thinking about the jumping puzzles in GW2 and the Vertical Movement from Star Wars Galaxies (Datacron Hunts) etc. Would we love a full vertical axis? Sure, but that adds in a lot of work and cost. Totally understand that.

You can still add in puzzle quests without including a vertical axis.

 

I like it a lot! Especially since that is very close to what I was suggesting. This creates free-flowing, natural movement without free jumping.

Would be nice if we could also have puzzles like something where you need to stack boxes to get to a window. If the boxes could only be moved to a place that was in the same walk mesh this should not create the problem of creating illegal bridges. However, it would still allow for some puzzles related to create bridges over the legal walk mesh.

Thanks for the insight into the game mechanic, LB!

 

More ice for my kool aid!! Sounds like a great idea. Thanks RG.

 

What about dealing with half walls into an otherwise enclosed area? *Ord'Smash the Barbarian stands next to a 2 foot high wall* ... "Oh no! They shut the gate.. those *******s!" ... Or the small gap of an otherwise impassable river or chasm? Just avoid those as a design constraint?

What about jumping passable objects on the ground that don't interrupt the contiguity of the map, such as spell effects or fire? Do these things know you're jumping or do they just respond as if you'd moved through them?

How extensive are you containment issues right now? Primarily just around the edges of maps and perhaps specific areas with limited access or are there intentions for things such as rivers that cannot be crossed? Because I think the contiguous solution dictates more and more implausible (but perhaps acceptable) constraints on map design the more arbitrarily the world tries to contain the player. Such as not being able to jump from bridges over rivers that cannot be crossed, as opposed to being able to jump from bridges over rivers that can be crossed.

 

I'm in the lets not have a bunch of people jumping around through towns like rabbits camp myself. But hey it's a free britannia ... *or is it?*

RG: in your example, does the player still "jump" if the jump cannot be completed? As in just straight up and down, or does the animation not get triggered if its not possible?

 

From the sound of this it seems we'll be running into many invisible walls. So if I was at the top of a waterfall on rocks, I wouldn't be able to walk let alone jump off into the water below? I would just bump bump bump into an invisible wall?

 

Yeah this is kinda what I was curious about. If you could walk to the area below, then it seems, yes you could jump. If you couldn't walk to the area below, then no you could not. Which could lead to inconsistency at the user experience level unless everything was designed and mapped out to play out one way, which might be a huge constraint.

Unless the system just did a distance check before hand and denied all jumps over a certain distance. Which would definately mean lots of bumping and grinding.