Is it possible to implement a mechanic where your character grabs a hold of a minion or whatever and can them do stuff like hold him up in the air by his neck and punch him, or toss him aside, or drag him across the map, or fly up into the air and drop him, etc? How hard would something like this be to do? And then extending that to PVP, you'd have to have a way of wriggling out of it or something I guess.
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R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
How would it handle the varying heights of characters and mobs? E.g what if you're 4 foot and the enemy is a Malta mech?
Spurn all ye kindle.
I would love to see a more physical interaction in the game but it is an absolute nightmare with the type of combat system that CoX had and CoT is leaning towards. aside from Cinnders question, you have to consider things like an separate animation for each enemy in the game as they are grabbed, all the clipping issues of models being in clos proximity ect....
Its possible to do but man I wouldn't wish the crapload of work on my enemies.
The only reason this kind of thing works in "fighting games" (like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter]Street Fighter[/url]) is that they are specifically geared for it with exact 2D character models/animations that are predefined and never change.
As the others have said there are far more variables to deal with in a game like CoT such as hundreds of character combinations and multiple 3D animation views. It wouldn't be strictly impossible to do, but it would require a huge amount of Dev effort, probably far more than it'd ultimately be worth.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Just look at the WWE games.. it has been many years of those games being released, and the various developers still haven't fixed the problem.
Side note: In Streetfighter, it *does* happen as well... although in the 2D games, because it is sprite based (and also way back in the time now), we over looked it.
With the 3D games, it still happens, although not quite as noticeably due to the *speed* of the game. In a slower game, it would be even more pronounced.
As others have noted, this is done by making two animations- one for the actor and one for the target. It works moderately well when you have fixed art assets of predefined build & height- you just match 2 animations at a fixed location and play it out. It also works best if the animations are fast enough that clipping & mismatches aren't as obvious (an art style can also conceal clipping or make it feel less glaring- the more hyperreal you make the assets, the more glaring little mismatches will be. Some games would auto-scale (and auto-slider) characters down to a common scale so that the animations match.
One thing that's tougher to account for is positional lag. We tend to think of positioning data as absolutes, but all engines use a series of path prediction and correction to take into account that the info that you get on your screen may not be delivered in a timely manner. It was easy to see if you play MMO's in the same room as someone else- you can see a notable lag between what you see on your screen and theirs, and vice-versa. The games do a remarkable job in keeping things that aren't REALLY completely in sync appearing like they're working seamlessly. An animation that must run on two actors in two very specific locations in complete sync requires some "overriding" of this, and this usually means allocating time at the start and end of the operation to allow some transition time OR accept that some jarring transitions may occur.
Second life managed to do all of these multi-character animations (I'm talking about their dances,let's keep this SFW and leave the other multiplayer animations unaddressed). The most common method I saw was to provide a "dance floor" tile that was coded. When you selected it, you could choose to enter as "dancer 1 or dancer 2" and you were automatically scaled to the appropriate height and automatically warped to the right animation at the appropriate stage. It was well-matched and in sync, but it had a jarring transition and really locked users down. That kind of tradeoff worked there, but Second Live users were conditioned for those kinds of UI limits naturally. A more action-driven game would have users with an entirely different set of expectations...
Hmm.. 3D Characters do use Rigs... so you could target the Neck Bone (or have a way to define which Bones can be grabbed... like the wrists, ankles, etc... ) and just use those bones as anchors when attaching it to your players Palm bone. So height of either player or enemy doesnt matter anymore. (Well, not if you're playing a midget and want to grab Goliath by the neck, some common sense needed. ;)
Its still a bit of a problem in that wrestling moves (for example) become very unbelievable very fast when not executed properly. When you target point x on a model, the animation that's run has to have defined "flex points" (I don't know the proper term) where it can deviate from its existing animation to make up the difference. Head/neck, shoulder, and torso joints are the most common. The animation that's playing would then deviate as much as needed in these flex locations to make the animation fit, and oftentimes these deviations become more "immersion-breaking" than the mismatched animations would be.
They're certainly getting better (last I was party to demos of this was 3 years ago). It works well for ranged targeting and very simple "use the same animation for "pick up item from table" as "pick up item from shelf" , for example. Complex wrestling moves look unrealistic.
EDIT: I just realized the biggest problem with my post: combining the words "wrestling" with "realistic"
ITS STILL REAL TO ME DAMMIT!
;)
Chase though does have a good point, especially when it comes to grappling moves where there can be a *very* wide range in terms of body size.
Hell, pick up WWE 13 and play as Rey Mysterio up against The Big Show (or vice versa). Even though it "works", you can see where some moves just have a lot of clipping.
It gets even worse when you start using custom created moves... I tend to put my head through Rey's stomach doing a move where he is across my shoulders... and this is with a "normal" sized character and someone of Rey's stature combining.