Making falling better

First, a quick picture illustration,
(The figures won't be precise to how the posture should be; its just drawn to be serviceable)



Right now when you fall in the game, you always land on your feet, even if you take all but 1 hp of your total health. There are no falling animations.

When you fall, there should be a falling animation, and the greater the distance you're falling, the more you get turned over on your back as you accelerate downwards. By the time you start to turn on your back that means there will be a moderate to heavy fall damage, and you should as a player receive a stun and Knockdown effect.

Safe Fall as a skill would mitigate this, by keeping you in a bracing posture on your way down, then when you hit, you would tumble on your back and roll until you landed in a safe position. Successfully landing safely would mean most of the heavy damage was mitigated, and you received none or little damage from the fall. If you did a safe fall, and still ended up receiving heavy damage because of a heavy damage total, you would still receive a stun and Knockdown effect after you came out of the tumble.

Diving have to be a special case where the player may be allowed to fall on his stomach instead of his back and land in the water safely. If underwater swimming was ever in the game, this would obviously be the lead in. Of course, there would be a big splash.

And I was thinking maybe Potions of Cat's Grace would function a bit differently from a normal Safe Fall modifier and make the game extend the distance for what's considered a "short fall," so you can land on your feet at a greater distance without the tumbling -- like a cat. Same would be true if they ever added a Feather Fall, except you'd fall slower.

 

determining which animation to use would be a problem. in real life, once you're falling, your trajectory can be calculated. in game, we can modify it as we fall, aiming for ledges that would shorten the distance or water that would make a splash.

 

@Alley Oop,

Yea, changing the animation in mid-fall for water would be a problem, and I'm not exactly sure that would work unless it was near the point of impact. The splash on impact certainly wouldn't be a problem. I suppose they could just use the regular fall anims and then find some way to resettle the player in the water. Some way of letting the player dive in the water would be great, though, if they could do it.

For every other purpose, the distance wouldn't really matter, obviously. Your avatar's animation would just change in real time the more time you've spent falling -- and then the way you hit the surface would also depend on how much time you spent falling before you collide. In fact, I'm wondering right now whether your falling in the game has a rate of acceleration as in real life...

 

I just watched the movie "dudes and dragons"* and the guy falling a great distance down from high in the sky had his feet in the air higher and his shoulders were the lowerst point. His head was tucked into this chest. He was not flat like your picture but rotated more. Just a FYI.


* don't waste 2 hours of your life with this movie - my official review. Some guy with the last name of Goldberg was part of it which really tarnished his TV show's reputation. Then again there is Erica and well yea.

 

I asked about an automatic rolling animation when falling high enough and at least that should be there at some point, answered in R41 postmortem 00:28m38s

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/141129846?t=0h28m38s

 

Wouldn't it be the other way around though?

That the easiest way would be if the animation wouldn't be determined by the distance left nor the surface I'm aiming for, but rather by the height fallen so far.
So that if I jump off a cliff, then the animation starts as "short" and if I hit a cliff then it was indeed short, while if I continue it switches first to "falling" and then over to "pancake". (Mitigated by Safe Fall).
Which would give a visual clue on how "ouchy" the landing will be. Where the landing/crashing/splatting animation is determined by the total distance.

So if I were programming this (which luckily for everyone involved I'm not) then I'd do it like

1. Only one "falling" animation.
   BUT it plays just like in @redfish 's example. It starts straight, then twists and turns.
2. Then if that animation takes X time, multiply the time for the animation to execute with the Safe Fall factor. Making a high Safe Fall "falling" look sorta like slow motion falling.
3. When you hit a surface, it immediately stops the "falling" animation and replaces it with a "landing" animation. Abruptly is Ok. Then have 4 "Landing" animations+effect.
   • Short = "BendKneeLanding"
   • Long = "SuperheroLanding" (with a stun effect roll of dmg%)
   • Controlled = "ForwardCombatRoll"
   • Too long = "Splat" (where dmg>health)

 

Yea, I pointed that out in my reply to @Alley Oop .

But the hard problem is for diving into water -- if you want to change the animation (flip around the position) in anticipating of the player hitting water instead of a hard surface.

 

Yea, I saw that and commented on it in Discord and and @Chris responded in channel

....

[1:31 PM] redfish: if you fall and dont mitigate the damage through something like safe fall you should really get a knockdown
[1:32 PM] Atos: Redfish, that would be great in chases in The Fall

....

!

 

Now on my B-Movie night hit list of bad movies I want to see

Safe Fall should change or determine the animation. I'd like that. But I can't see doing a swan dive into the dirt
I'd rather see something like this with safe fall + wings


But what about without... then maybe all of the above mentioned by Spoon.
~Time Lord~

 

Love this! I don't think I would've said it differently. @redfish

 

I like the scene in Vertigo.