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Let's Argue: Swinging, how it should be done

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notears
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Let's Argue: Swinging, how it should be done

Alright so we should move the swinging argument over here, so it doesn't consume the realism vs fantastical thread. so radiarc? over here please

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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Already did that in 2013-14 .

Already did that in 2013-14 ...


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Ultimately, I suppose it

Ultimately, I suppose it depends on how work-intensive it would be for the devs to create a full swingline/zipline/grapnel system. There are examples to go by (Batman Arkham games, some Spider-Man titles, Just Cause 3). Who knows - there could even be a solution worked out in Unreal4 already (oh - looky and looky). But even one with specific "anchor points" on structures and objects could take a LOT of time to properly implement across all the possible interior and exterior maps.

The fact that our characters, apparently, can potentially gain access to all the different travel powers mitigates the "less globally useful" nature of this type of swinging, as the hero could possibly pick up one or two other travel powers to help compensate (if desired) to use on maps with few to no anchor points or tall structures to swing from (acrobatics, parkour, wall-crawling, cape-glide, or whatever is ultimately available).

All that said - I wouldn't really care that much if they implemented swinging as they have in Champions Online. It certainly would be a more useful travel power, and easier to implement to boot. And if they find the time later on down the road, maybe they could do a "Swinging 2.0".

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You also have to consider the

You also have to consider the "George of the Jungle" factor.

(insert pithy comment here)

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On topic, swinging often

On topic, swinging often leads to arguments.

(pithy comment inserted)

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How much work?

How much work?
*clicks the download button*

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

How much work?
*clicks the download button*

Is... is that goging to be in the game?

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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notears wrote:
notears wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
How much work?
*clicks the download button*
Is... is that goging to be in the game?

We have to tweak it, but barring something breaks in it between now and launch, yeah. It would be silly not to.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

notears wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:
How much work?
*clicks the download button*
Is... is that goging to be in the game?
We have to tweak it, but barring something breaks in it between now and launch, yeah. It would be silly not to.

Nice! The swinging needs to have a bit of weight/momentum overall it looks pretty good - at least in 1st person. Hopefully the 3rd person will look like the first link I posted above.

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The problem I am having is

The problem I am having is more that the grapple/swing system is too damned fun. Not the easiest thing to do, but fun none the less

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

The problem I am having is more that the grapple/swing system is too damned fun. Not the easiest thing to do, but fun none the less

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

The problem I am having is more that the grapple/swing system is too damned fun. Not the easiest thing to do, but fun none the less

That was a concern of mine - the "fps-ish" nature of it. Then again, really no worse than the CoH Teleport power, and it makes sense for the ziplining - you kind of want to target a specific point to "zip" to, but it might be problematic for the actual swinging/travel part. If it's of any use to you, the guy who made the vid below used an automatic system to target the swinging:

"It's automatic, when I press the swing button, it fires out a bunch of linetraces, and the places it hits in the world, it stores those points and then chooses which point would be best to swing from. I have an imaginary point, above and infront of the character, this point would be the best, ideal point to swing from so it finds the point in the world, that's closest to the ideal point, and chooses that."

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

"It's automatic, when I press the swing button, it fires out a bunch of linetraces, and the places it hits in the world, it stores those points and then chooses which point would be best to swing from. I have an imaginary point, above and infront of the character, this point would be the best, ideal point to swing from so it finds the point in the world, that's closest to the ideal point, and chooses that."

That sounds like it might be fine if you wanted to continuously swing from one side of a city to the other. But let's say there are two buildings ahead of you that are roughly the same distance away and you specifically want to go to one of them. Would this "automatic" system give you enough "manual" control so that you could pick specific final destinations or would you always be forced to swing to points the automated algorithm chooses for you?

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Doctor Tyche
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That is the kind of system we

That is the kind of system we need to build on top of this.

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Lothic wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

"It's automatic, when I press the swing button, it fires out a bunch of linetraces, and the places it hits in the world, it stores those points and then chooses which point would be best to swing from. I have an imaginary point, above and infront of the character, this point would be the best, ideal point to swing from so it finds the point in the world, that's closest to the ideal point, and chooses that."

Lothic wrote:

That sounds like it might be fine if you wanted to continuously swing from one side of a city to the other. But let's say there are two buildings ahead of you that are roughly the same distance away and you specifically want to go to one of them. Would this "automatic" system give you enough "manual" control so that you could pick specific final destinations or would you always be forced to swing to points the automated algorithm chooses for you?

That's why I was careful to distinguish between the "Zipline" and the "Swinging". The cursor/reticle targeting makes sense for the Zipline - you want to go directly to a specific point and you need fine control for that. Meanwhile you don't necessarily have to be so precise when you simply want to swing across the city - the automatic system should be fine for that. The "Spider-Man" in that vid seems to have a reasonable degree of control as well. I'm just wondering if it would be possible to have both systems, or even if the Zipline and Swingline should be considered to be two separate "powers"/abilities.

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I like the grapple line

I like the grapple line shooter thing that Doc posted. As he said, looks super fun. You could even have some super cool GW2-style "jumping puzzles" for that thing specifically. I like that you have to aim it and have a target surface within range that accepts grapnels of the type you're shooting, which is a cool feature, I feel. The whole "swing anywhere and everywhere, even over the open ocean by anchoring your grapple to nothing in particular in mid air for no apparent reason" idea I still dislike and would personally actively avoid doing if the devs' time were mine to manage, but that's just me.

The fact that that seems to require first person POV might be an issue though, no? GW2 has certain specific mini-puzzles called Adventures, some of which involve "pick up the special gun and shoot stuff" which puts you into that POV for the duration of the Adventure. You can also do them in 3rd person, while the crosshair for the gun is essentially the center point on the screen and it remains there as you turn, so that you just have to put the center dot on the target and that's what you shoot. No real aiming needed, just mouse the crosshair onto the target in 2D and click. Not sure if that would work for this or not based on line of sight and line of effect being different.

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
The problem I am having is more that the grapple/swing system is too damned fun. Not the easiest thing to do, but fun none the less
That was a concern of mine - the "fps-ish" nature of it. Then again, really no worse than the CoH Teleport power, and it makes sense for the ziplining - you kind of want to target a specific point to "zip" to, but it might be problematic for the actual swinging/travel part. If it's of any use to you, the guy who made the vid below used an automatic system to target the swinging:
"It's automatic, when I press the swing button, it fires out a bunch of linetraces, and the places it hits in the world, it stores those points and then chooses which point would be best to swing from. I have an imaginary point, above and infront of the character, this point would be the best, ideal point to swing from so it finds the point in the world, that's closest to the ideal point, and chooses that."

I was just about to post this video. ;-)

So...it CAN be done. That's good to know. It's nothing I personally am interested in using as a travel power (despite being a fan of the original Spiderman comics), but I also recognize there is a great deal of demand for such a power as a result of the success of the Spiderman movies.

The grappling hook is an interesting video, as well. Again, I personally have no interest in it, but I recognize that many people do.

Hmm, the video link doesn't work in quotes? Makes sense. I was referring to the "UE4 Spider Man 2 Style Web Swing" video a few posts above this.

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

That's why I was careful to distinguish between the "Zipline" and the "Swinging". The cursor/reticle targeting makes sense for the Zipline - you want to go directly to a specific point and you need fine control for that. Meanwhile you don't necessarily have to be so precise when you simply want to swing across the city - the automatic system should be fine for that. The "Spider-Man" in that vid seems to have a reasonable degree of control as well. I'm just wondering if it would be possible to have both systems, or even if the Zipline and Swingline should be considered to be two separate "powers"/abilities.

Frankly if there were any given "travel power" in CoT that would not let me target specific locations to land at then I probably would not use it. I have no problem with the "automatic swinging" concept or the "manual zipline" concept but if those two things were not somehow fused into one single unified travel power I doubt anyone would be seriously happy with it.

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Swinging is to include the

Swinging is to include the zipline/grapplehook. One without the other just is not that viable. Together, they're awesome. But it does, as I mention, make it a bit more complex. Think a hybrid superjump/teleport.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Swinging is to include the zipline/grapplehook. One without the other just is not that viable. Together, they're awesome. But it does, as I mention, make it a bit more complex. Think a hybrid superjump/teleport.

With the way you are implementing it do you have manually toggle between what I guess we're calling the "automatic mode" and the "manual mode" or will the thing perhaps default in auto mode and require you to press an extra key to "shift" it into manual targeting?

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
Swinging is to include the zipline/grapplehook. One without the other just is not that viable. Together, they're awesome. But it does, as I mention, make it a bit more complex. Think a hybrid superjump/teleport.
With the way you are implementing it do you have manually toggle between what I guess we're calling the "automatic mode" and the "manual mode" or will the thing perhaps default in auto mode and require you to press an extra key to "shift" it into manual targeting?

You might not have to shift between modes per se. - that would make it a bit too unwieldy IMHO. I can see the swinging be handled by the WASD and spacebar while the grapple/zipline could be handled by mouse and click (when you activate the power some kind of reticle or cursor would appear as well to help you aim the zip when needed). Like Dr. Tyche said - kind of like a combo of an inverted superjump and teleport.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

How much work?
*clicks the download button*

I really like the horizontal movement this power allows (0:42-0:55) when there are no large vertical objects to grapple onto. It shows how this ability has the same terrain versatility as other travel abilities.

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:
Swinging is to include the zipline/grapplehook. One without the other just is not that viable. Together, they're awesome. But it does, as I mention, make it a bit more complex. Think a hybrid superjump/teleport.
With the way you are implementing it do you have manually toggle between what I guess we're calling the "automatic mode" and the "manual mode" or will the thing perhaps default in auto mode and require you to press an extra key to "shift" it into manual targeting?
You might not have to shift between modes per se. - that would make it a bit too unwieldy IMHO. I can see the swinging be handled by the WASD and spacebar while the grapple/zipline could be handled by mouse and click (when you activate the power some kind of reticle or cursor would appear as well to help you aim the zip when needed). Like Dr. Tyche said - kind of like a combo of superjump and teleport.

Yeah I figured it'd all be a combination between your direction keys and mouse. I guess I was just curious what happens when you're in mid-air and you've been letting the "auto" mode pick your anchor points for a while and you suddenly decide you want to manually pick a specific spot to perch on. Would we have to hit some kind of "gear shift" key to disable the auto mode so that we could manually aim the zip line at that point?

I could accept that this may be just one of those things where it'd be obvious to me if I was actually able to try it myself. *shrugs*

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

I really like the horizontal movement this power allows (0:42-0:55) when there are no large vertical objects to grapple onto. It shows how this ability has the same terrain versatility as other travel abilities.

There's actually still some degree of "3D terrain" involved during the time hacks you mentioned. Now that you mentioned it I would like to see how this thing responds on truly flat ground. Would it let you sort of hop along the ground like a version of Super Jump that simply doesn't let you get more than a few feet above the ground or does it perhaps not work at all unless there's at least some amount of elevation difference between your current location and your anchor point?

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0:23-0:25

0:23-0:25

0:13-0:23

1:34-2:03 and 2:21-2:28

You can also look at videos for Just Cause, Amazing Frog, Robblox, Wildlands, Advanced Warfare, Superhook, Ark and GTAV mods.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

1:34-2:03 and 2:21-2:28

I'll limit my response here to the Titanfall 2 vid because the others still clearly didn't show good scenarios where the player was cleanly using a zipline to travel across flat open ground.

Now the only reason the Titanfall 2 zipline travel "worked" across open ground is that that game seemed to accept the notion that anyone can normally jump 20 or 30 feet straight up into the air to gain a little "elevation" while traveling forward. As I've said before there's absolutely nothing wrong with explaining how particular individuals would be able to hop 30 feet in the air in a superhero game. Clearly anyone who can do that has some kind of super strength that would allow them to do that.

But once again you are now relying on the pretense that ANY person using a zipline has to have the natural built-in ability to jump 30 feet in the air to make that all work. If you have absolutely no problem with assuming that ANYONE using a zipline could do that by default then have all the fun in the world with the power working like that. When I see a character like Batman hop 30 feet in the air (without any gadget-based assistance) then maybe I'll buy all this zipline over flat ground silliness as well.

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Titanfall does not allow

Titanfall does not allow people to jump 30 feet in the air without something assisting vertical momentum. Titanfall base vertical height characters can get in a jump is roughly the same as what characters had in CoH, about twice the height of a normal person.
And in that video the guy doesn't jump before using the grapnel at 2:21-2:28, he jumps during the zip which shows that horizontal movement is viable even if the only object to grapple onto is the ground.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

But once again you are now relying on the pretense that ANY person using a zipline has to have the natural built-in ability to jump 30 feet in the air to make that all work. If you have absolutely no problem with assuming that ANYONE using a zipline could do that by default then have all the fun in the world with the power working like that. When I see a character like Batman hop 30 feet in the air (without any gadget-based assistance) then maybe I'll buy all this zipline over flat ground silliness as well.

MWM has made it quite clear, that they provide the abilities and it is up to the player to rationalize it.

So I think an ability to jump high is just as fair an assumption to make as a mental attack affecting a robot.


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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

MWM has made it quite clear, that they provide the abilities and it is up to the player to rationalize it.
So I think an ability to jump high is just as fair an assumption to make as a mental attack affecting a robot.

It's worth noting that our default jump height might not be that great, but it might be enhancable, and there will definitely be powers that increase it. If it fits within the character concept - it's all good.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

Titanfall does not allow people to jump 30 feet in the air without something assisting vertical momentum.

The only obvious "assisting" factor in this case is firing a zipline into the flat ground in front of you. Please re-watch the vid at the many points where it shows the guy rising above several story buildings and the decks of tall ships with nothing else but the firing of the zipline.

Brainbot wrote:

And in that video the guy doesn't jump before using the grapnel at 2:21-2:28, he jumps during the zip which shows that horizontal movement is viable even if the only object to grapple onto is the ground.

Horizontal movement is ARBITRARILY ALLOWED by this game even if the only object to anchor onto is the ground. That doesn't make it "right" - it just proves that a game was willing to bend the laws of physics in order to make a travel power more universally useful.

Again if your only argument for why this should be in CoT is that "other games have allowed this kind of stupidity so CoT should as well" then more power to you. If it ends up "working" like this in CoT it'll simply be one less power I'll worry about using myself.

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

MWM has made it quite clear, that they provide the abilities and it is up to the player to rationalize it.
So I think an ability to jump high is just as fair an assumption to make as a mental attack affecting a robot.

If you want to be REQUIRED to rationalize that EVERYONE who uses a zipline to traverse open flat ground has the innate ability to hop straight up into the air 20 or 30 feet to make it "plausible" then go right ahead. I simply don't think universal travel powers should have to rely on other "sub-powers" that I might not necessarily want to have to ascribe to every one of my characters who'd wish to use them.

Interdictor wrote:

It's worth noting that our default jump height might not be that great, but it might be enhancable, and there will definitely be powers that increase it. If it fits within the character concept - it's all good.

Again if you WANT to have to make being able to hop that high a prerequisite ability of every one of your zipline users then have fun with that.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Again if you WANT to have to make being able to hop that high a prerequisite ability of every one of your zipline users then have fun with that.

Who ever said it was a prerequisite? You seem to be taking one example from one other game and then assuming the worst.

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I will note, this also

I will note, this also presumes that there is a plethora of open ground.

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Again if you WANT to have to make being able to hop that high a prerequisite ability of every one of your zipline users then have fun with that.
Who ever said it was a prerequisite? You seem to be taking one example from one other game and then assuming the worst.

I thought I was giving Brainbot the benefit of the doubt since he seemed to be using the Titanfall 2 vid as "proof" of how/why it should work the same way in CoT.

But if you want to take away the super-human "bunny hop" from CoT's implementation of "flat ground zip-lining" then we're left with characters either having to "slide" across open ground (as if they were water-skiing on dry ground) or somehow being able to effectively super speed (as they end up running along the ground to carry themselves as the zipline pulls them towards the anchor points).

Yeah... right.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

I will note, this also presumes that there is a plethora of open ground.

Clearly in "Titan City" there's likely going to be lots of buildings across most of the various zones. But even if we're talking about a small minority of the area (15-20%?) that's flat ground we still need to know how ziplines will (or won't) work over that.

Please tell me that even if you're considering letting ziplines "work" over flat ground that they WON'T work like that over open water. If you let people literally "water-ski" over water it'll look ridiculous.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

The only obvious "assisting" factor in this case is firing a zipline into the flat ground in front of you. Please re-watch the vid at the many points where it shows the guy rising above several story buildings and the decks of tall ships with nothing else but the firing of the zipline.

I have watched the video many times. Even if I didn't it wouldn't change anything because I play the game. The only time a character can get more than 5-8feet off the ground is by the games parkour system or by zip lining off an object above you and allowing momentum to carry you. All those parts where the guy gets the heights you are talking about is because of those two things. Even Titanfall's double jump (jump jet) only gives you a slight (3 feet) vertical increase.

Lothic wrote:

Horizontal movement is ARBITRARILY ALLOWED by this game even if the only object to anchor onto is the ground. That doesn't make it "right" - it just proves that a game was willing to bend the laws of physics in order to make a travel power more universally useful.

When you say 'laws of physics' you mean like how leaping has air control, or maybe the short period of hover after teleporting into the air. Hmm, you could be talking about flight and the rules of propulsion/lift vs gravity. Perhaps you mean the physics behind high speeds and stopping/turning.

Lothic wrote:

Again if your only argument for why this should be in CoT is that "other games have allowed this kind of stupidity so CoT should as well" then more power to you. If it ends up "working" like this in CoT it'll simply be one less power I'll worry about using myself.

I guess with your strict adherence to the 'laws of physics' you won't be taking any travel power huh?

Look, I get you want more real world physics for a grapnel travel power. At this point I think everyone knows you oppose any version that allows the same physics 'cheats' other travel powers will get. So you don't need to pick a fight anytime someone expresses their approval of the way it's going to work to reinforce your view.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

Lothic wrote:
The only obvious "assisting" factor in this case is firing a zipline into the flat ground in front of you. Please re-watch the vid at the many points where it shows the guy rising above several story buildings and the decks of tall ships with nothing else but the firing of the zipline.
I have watched the video many times. Even if I didn't it wouldn't change anything because I play the game. The only time a character can get more than 5-8feet off the ground is by the games parkour system or by zip lining off an object above you and allowing momentum to carry you. All those parts where the guy gets the heights you are talking about is because of those two things. Even Titanfall's double jump (jump jet) only gives you a slight (3 feet) vertical increase.
Lothic wrote:
Horizontal movement is ARBITRARILY ALLOWED by this game even if the only object to anchor onto is the ground. That doesn't make it "right" - it just proves that a game was willing to bend the laws of physics in order to make a travel power more universally useful.
When you say 'laws of physics' you mean like how leaping has air control, or maybe the short period of hover after teleporting into the air. Hmm, you could be talking about flight and the rules of propulsion/lift vs gravity. Perhaps you mean the physics behind high speeds and stopping/turning.
Lothic wrote:
Again if your only argument for why this should be in CoT is that "other games have allowed this kind of stupidity so CoT should as well" then more power to you. If it ends up "working" like this in CoT it'll simply be one less power I'll worry about using myself.
I guess with your strict adherence to the 'laws of physics' you won't be taking any travel power huh?
Look, I get you want more real world physics for a grapnel travel power. At this point I think everyone knows you oppose any version that allows the same physics 'cheats' other travel powers will get. So you don't need to pick a fight anytime someone expresses their approval of the way it's going to work to reinforce your view.

*sigh* After all the times I've said you can easily explain everything by using the "It's a superhero game" excuse you're NOW going to claim that I'm only approaching this from a hyper-strict "it must follow the laws of physics 100% of the time or it's impossible" mind-set? Strawman much?

Can you seriously not understand that it would be PERFECTLY FINE for various individuals to be able to say "my character has super strength so he/she can easily hop 30 feet into the air in order to justify being able to use a zipline across flat ground" but that it would be ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS to expect that EVERY SINGLE zipline user in the CoT game be REQUIRED to rationalize why they'd have that kind of strength too? Do you not get that? It's almost like saying that the only way a character can properly operate a hand gun in CoT is if they have green eyes, if you can't (or don't want to) rationalize why your character would have green eyes then you can't use a gun. It's the same level of stupidity you're expecting us ALL to swallow with this.

You can use the "It's a superhero game" excuse to explain why Tom, Dick or even Harry might have certain unique superpowers. But you can't use it to "explain" why EVERYONE would have the same generically equivalent super human abilities needed to make a piece of real-world equipment do impossible things.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Can you seriously not understand that it would be PERFECTLY FINE for various individuals to be able to say "my character has super strength so he/she can easily hop 30 feet into the air in order to justify being able to use a zipline across flat ground" but that its absolutely ridiculous to expect that EVERY SINGLE zipline user in the CoT game MUST be REQUIRED to rationalize why they'd have that kind of strength too? Do you not get that? It's almost like saying that the only way a character can properly operate a hand gun in CoT is if they have green eyes, if you can't rationalize why your character doesn't have green eyes then you can't use a gun. It's the same level of stupidity you're expecting us ALL to swallow with this.

First, the assertion that people need to leap 30 feet up in order to use a zip line is just another in a long line of arguments you make up in order to have some ground to stand on. You need to stop doing this. Just so I am clear, I am in no way saying in order to use a zip line over flat terrain requires a 30 foot vertical leap. I am saying you don't need to leap at all, but you can if you want.

Second, I have told you that just because you can't think of an acceptable rationalization for why someone can use a zip line over flat terrain DOES NOT MEAN THEY DON"T EXIST. Strength, slippery shoes, robot legs, rubber bones, alien physiology, natural mutation, invisible roller skates or even that zip lining causes a character to become light as a feather.

Third, and most important, has to do with this:

Lothic wrote:

*sigh* After all the times I've said you can easily explain everything by using the "It's a superhero game" excuse you're NOW going to claim that I'm only approaching this from a hyper-strict "it must follow the laws of physics 100% of the time or it's impossible" mind-set? Strawman much?

My examples were to show you that you are asking for a level of reality that no other travel power is following. If I want to use leaping I have to rationalize being able to turn in the air or that after teleporting I float for a short period. If I can't rationalize those things then I either don't use the power or, at the very least, I don't use those aspect of the travel power. The same is true with zip line travel, either you accept the 'cheats' that are inevitable in the power and find a way to rationalize them or you don't use them.

What you are calling strawman is me trying to show the inconsistency in your argument.
Again, I am fine with you not agreeing with how the power will likely be implemented but stop trying to prove you are right by inventing arguments I am not making.

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If a toon is strong enough to

If a toon is strong enough to hop 30 feet straight up, he basically already has a travel power right there. Super Jump. I'm not saying that the grapple line ought to be packaged together with Super Jump to make the guy able to navigate the city better, because to me those are separate powers, really. I don't think using a grapple line ought to require that amont of Super Jumping to make it work, because why not just bleeping Super Jump as a travel power if you have that anyway?

From what the good Doctor Tyche has said and linked on this thread, it seems to me even more evident that there is no need for any mid-air grapple anchoring or baked-in superjumping in CoT. You just use the grapple to pull yourself up a wall, then you get a little upward momentum off of that, then start swinging using surfaces available to you, which there will be many of in the outdoor maps. It's fun, it's realistic enough, it works and it's honest-to-goodness swinging. It does a good job of representing and replicating what it's supposed to be. I don't think all modes of travel are designed or required to be equally convenient. I don't think they could be even if you tried. Even Fly in CoT had an upgraded version that Peacebringers could get that gave you faster flight and better 3-direction control over your motion (Energy FLight was it called?). Anyway, I say just take the version we had in the video Doc posted and leave it alone. That version is perfect, if you ask me.

If your complaint is "Yeah, but I wanted a travel power that could get me around town faster and without any clicking and even over flatter, lower terrain because it's more efficient that way" then my response would be "That wouldn't be swinging." A swinging power that does all of that is not very swingy, if you ask me. It's so much more efficient that it does a poor job of being what it is advertised to be. If you want that, why not just ask for immediate, zero-endo-use, infinite-range teleportation to any spot on the map you choose and call THAT "Swinging" too?

Also, there are other mass-transit options, or so I would expect. CoX had the trains, SG base teleporters, choppers, sewer manholes, etc. Some places will be so far away that you'll want to take the submarine or train or choppah there anyway, I assume.

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Tannim, Tyche, with aesthetic

Tannim, Tyche, with aesthetic decoupling, is it possible to have more unique visuals for swing/grapnel?
In addition to 'web slinging' and 'grapple gun' could we see:
Stetchy Arms

Evil (or cute) tendrils

Electric/Laser Ropes


Mechanical Tentacles


A Really long Tongue

A Tail

Fire (or other elements) ropes

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

I thought I was giving Brainbot the benefit of the doubt since he seemed to be using the Titanfall 2 vid as "proof" of how/why it should work the same way in CoT.
But if you want to take away the super-human "bunny hop" from CoT's implementation of "flat ground zip-lining" then we're left with characters either having to "slide" across open ground (as if they were water-skiing on dry ground) or somehow being able to effectively super speed (as they end up running along the ground to carry themselves as the zipline pulls them towards the anchor points).
Yeah... right.

I agree with you - I'm not too fond of the "flat ground drag/slide". That said - Just Cause 3 has a neat little trick where you can grapple onto moving vehicles and ride them. That could be an option if we find ourselves in the 'burbs. ;^p

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Seemed relevant for some

Seemed relevant for some reason ...


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Literally laughed out loud.

Literally laughed out loud. Thank you Dr. Tyche!


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It's worth noting that pilots

It's worth noting that pilots in the Titanfall franchise actually have a reason for being able to run on walls, slide-hop, and air strafe, and it's also the reason why they can use a grappling hook on the ground to jet them along.

Specifically, three gadgets - magnetic pads in the boots and gloves/gauntlets, inertial dampeners in the pilot suit, and a sort of "jump rig" that puts little booster jets at different parts of the body. All of them contribute to a pilot's ability to gain and maintain speed. And that's for the pilots that haven't gone full cyborg.

Really though, if we can do something similar in CoT, I don't particularly care about realism. I'd rather have the option to do this sort of thing than not, and it's up to us to rationalize why our characters are capable of it. It's not that hard to be creative with that sort of question as there's a ton of answers you can work with.

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The Titanfall video was not

The Titanfall video was not meant to be an expectation of how it will work in CoT. It was a way to answer a specific question that Lothic asked.

Lothic wrote:

Now that you mentioned it I would like to see how this thing responds on truly flat ground.

All of those videos I posted were to show how it might look. That's why I pointed to some pretty specific times in the videos.

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To get things back on track

To get things back on track here ...

There's essentially two different "movements" we're looking for in the Grapnel and Swinging powers.

Grapnel ought to function a bit like a "poor man's teleport" ... in that you target a destination/location to get to, activate the Power and then move through space to reach the destination point while subject to all the intervening world physics going on while you're "riding the line" that's reeling you in to your destination. Teleport would move you to the destination by "skipping" past the intervening distance (and world geometry, and physics interactions). So Teleport functions like a "skip to" while a Grapnel functions like a "pull to" type of movement. You could even use very nearly the same UI controls for both Powers, since it's really all about "take me THERE" types of movement of designating a destination and "going" there.

Swinging ought to function like a "temporary pendulum" ... where all that happens is that you define an anchor point for the swing line (preferably up high, for obvious reasons) and then apply an acceleration vector to your movement pointing in that direction. You know, this kind of stuff ...

The control UI you want to be using for this basically amounts to:

  • Designate/Disengage an Anchor Point (presumably a toggle)
  • Shorten or Lengthen the Tether Line (reel out/reel in)

That's it. That's all you need to give the Player as additional controls.

As far as enhanceable game mechanics are concerned, these are the design parameters you're going to want to (have to?) work with under the hood in UE4.

  • Max Tether Length (range)
  • Tether Reel Out/In rate (determines "pull" speeds)
  • Resource costs (endurance)
  • Accuracy (chance for the anchor point to "not hold" on Power use) (optional)

The max range parameter is really easy to understand, since it's basically how far you can shoot your tether lines.

The Reel Out/In rate is where things could get interesting. As explained in another thread in these forums, the human tolerance limits for G forces are 3g vertical to the head, 9g vertical to the feet, and theoretically(!) 45g in the horizontal direction while "standing" (more or less). The 3g vertical to the head limit is because when you get much more than that the blood vessels in your eyeballs ... fail ... and burst because of all the blood rushing up into your head, and you start bleeding from your eyes (not recommended!). The 9g vertical to the feet is what fighter pilots making high speed tight turns have to watch out for, because blood rushing down to the legs and feet deprives the brain of oxygen and can result in G-LOC (Gravity induced Loss Of Consciousness). As for the 45g horizontal limit ... well ...

All of this then gives some pretty decent parameters within which to set the boundaries of maximum theoretical G loading we ought to be making possible with the game mechanics used in City of Titans. I propose the following limits of performance be considered the Augmented/Refined theoretical maximums for the Grapnel and Swinging Powers.

  • Up to (negative) 2g vertical, which in practice with tethers and pendulums will probably never be relevant, but just in case ...
  • Up to 8g vertical, limiting the purely vertical rate of pull and also the max tether length, since the longer the tether the greater the G forces at the lowest point of a pendulum's swing
  • Up to 40g horizontal, limiting the "reel in" rate of acceleration of the tether

Note that if Augment/Refinement boosting of up to +100% is assumed (for purposes of illustration of concept), this would mean that an unAugmented and unRefined Grapnel and/or Swinging Power would have performance parameters of -1g to +4g of vertical force on the character avatar, and up to 20g of horizontal force on the avatar.

For extra bonus points, the game could assign "falling damage" to impacting stationary surfaces when coming to "sudden stops" simply by hitting them ... as illustrated so well by Doctor Tyche ...

This means that it might be perfectly possible to "reel yourself in" via a horizontal Grapnel move which could be VERY BAD for your HP bar if coming into contact with world geometry at too high a velocity. This would mean that Players using these types of Movement Powers would be well advised to learn how to "dismount" safely after making particularly high speed/high G maneuvers using these Powers.


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Speaking of faceplanting. How

Speaking of faceplanting. How difficult is it going to be to use a swinging power through an area like Dark Astoria?

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About as difficult as it was

About as difficult as it was to figure out where you were without the mini-map.

(insert pithy comment here)

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So. Cake walk.

So. Cake walk.

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Jump forward to when CoT is

Jump forward to when CoT is live and all of us with regular travel powers are waiting for another player to grapple swing their way to the mish.

-_-

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

The Reel Out/In rate is where things could get interesting. As explained in another thread in these forums, the human tolerance limits for G forces are 3g vertical to the head, 9g vertical to the feet, and theoretically(!) 45g in the horizontal direction while "standing" (more or less). The 3g vertical to the head limit is because when you get much more than that the blood vessels in your eyeballs ... fail ... and burst because of all the blood rushing up into your head, and you start bleeding from your eyes (not recommended!). The 9g vertical to the feet is what fighter pilots making high speed tight turns have to watch out for, because blood rushing down to the legs and feet deprives the brain of oxygen and can result in G-LOC (Gravity induced Loss Of Consciousness). As for the 45g horizontal limit ... well ...

All of this then gives some pretty decent parameters within which to set the boundaries of maximum theoretical G loading we ought to be making possible with the game mechanics used in City of Titans. I propose the following limits of performance be considered the Augmented/Refined theoretical maximums for the Grapnel and Swinging Powers.Up to (negative) 2g vertical, which in practice with tethers and pendulums will probably never be relevant, but just in case ...
Up to 8g vertical, limiting the purely vertical rate of pull and also the max tether length, since the longer the tether the greater the G forces at the lowest point of a pendulum's swing
Up to 40g horizontal, limiting the "reel in" rate of acceleration of the tether

As a dev noted in that other thread you might have to "suspend reality a bit". I wouldn't get too attached to the idea of using real world physics with this power. It's much more important that it looks cool and feels fun to use.

Quote:

For extra bonus points, the game could assign "falling damage" to impacting stationary surfaces when coming to "sudden stops" simply by hitting them ... as illustrated so well by Doctor Tyche ...
This means that it might be perfectly possible to "reel yourself in" via a horizontal Grapnel move which could be VERY BAD for your HP bar if coming into contact with world geometry at too high a velocity. This would mean that Players using these types of Movement Powers would be well advised to learn how to "dismount" safely after making particularly high speed/high G maneuvers using these Powers.

Unless the devs feel the need to apply the same collision detection and impact damage to flyers and jumpers I wouldn't hold your breath regarding this. It would be grossly unfair to people who want to take swinging as a travel power. Sadists would love it though ha ha ha. Again - superhero game physics should trump real world physics.

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Look, if you're going to do

Look, if you're going to do Swinging and Grapnel styled powers AT ALL and have them look even approximately right in action, you're going to have to START with the physics and the "engineering" of what's going on as if it were real. You don't necessarily have to LIMIT yourself to just reality (and only reality) ... but it'll pay off in the long run to at least Give The Nod (rather than the head fake) to what ought to be happening so as to build on a solid foundation, rather than just going for wacky hand waving and "pay no attention to the game mechanics behind the curtain on the server" kinds of outright BS from the get-go.

This is not a question of whether the game Can Do It. The functionality is OBVIOUSLY there, because people are already posting demo videos of how they've done it.

No, the question is ... HOW is City of Titans going to do it ... and what you want to be trying to define is the "boundaries of performance" in that case (meaning NUMBERS that you can program with and benchmark with) so that you don't wind up in a Silly Place™ because you just couldn't be bothered to "do your homework" ahead of time.


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All of the best fiction

All of the best fiction begins in reality and then builds up from there. Pure imagination with no foundation is delusion, not fiction.

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If you want your toon to be

If you want your toon to be able to get from place to place via swinging, and you want your toon to be able to get ANYWHERE that way, I think you're asking too much of the swinging power. Swinging is not flying. Swinging is only cool and fun and actually Swinging if it requires a real wall or platform to grapple onto, in my opinion. To allow it to do otherwise might be cool for the 0.00000001% of players that want to play a magic rope trick swinger as part of their toon's backstory, but for the rest, it looks too fake and cheap, I think . I looks like a cheap special effect where you overlay a 2-D image of a guy swinging from ropes over a separate background reel of a city or other landscape. It's bleeping Toonces the Driving Cat from SNL level comedic bee-ess special effects at that point, to me.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

If you want your toon to be able to get from place to place via swinging, and you want your toon to be able to get ANYWHERE that way, I think you're asking too much of the swinging power. Swinging is not flying. Swinging is only cool and fun and actually Swinging if it requires a real wall or platform to grapple onto, in my opinion. To allow it to do otherwise might be cool for the 0.00000001% of players that want to play a magic rope trick swinger as part of their toon's backstory, but for the rest, it looks too fake and cheap, I think . I looks like a cheap special effect where you overlay a 2-D image of a guy swinging from ropes over a separate background reel of a city or other landscape. It's bleeping Toonces the Driving Cat from SNL level comedic bee-ess special effects at that point, to me.

Seeing as how many are okay with it in CO, I'd say you're very wrong :p

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Its not going to be just

Its not going to be just 'swinging' its going to include a winch type grapnel.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Radiac wrote:
If you want your toon to be able to get from place to place via swinging, and you want your toon to be able to get ANYWHERE that way, I think you're asking too much of the swinging power. Swinging is not flying. Swinging is only cool and fun and actually Swinging if it requires a real wall or platform to grapple onto, in my opinion. To allow it to do otherwise might be cool for the 0.00000001% of players that want to play a magic rope trick swinger as part of their toon's backstory, but for the rest, it looks too fake and cheap, I think . I looks like a cheap special effect where you overlay a 2-D image of a guy swinging from ropes over a separate background reel of a city or other landscape. It's bleeping Toonces the Driving Cat from SNL level comedic bee-ess special effects at that point, to me.
Seeing as how many are okay with it in CO, I'd say you're very wrong :p

If everything CO and/or DCUO were doing were right, we wouldn't need CoT.

And for the record I'm fine with the winching effects.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Swinging is not flying. Swinging is only cool and fun and actually Swinging if it requires a real wall or platform to grapple onto, in my opinion.

I totally agree. Well - I really wouldn't care THAT much if we had the CO-style 60's Spider-Man cartoon swinging, but I'd MUCH prefer to swing and grapnel off of buildings, walls, tall trees, flagpoles, street lamps, news helicopters, blimps, what have you. Thankfully the system the devs already have in their hands looks fun as hell. A little refinement and it should be good. I'm just totally unconcerned with trying to apply real-world worries to the system, like "will the G-forces injure my character" and other such nonsense.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Seeing as how many are okay with it in CO, I'd say you're very wrong :p

To be fair - they have no other option in CO, and considering the game is pretty much in maintenance mode, they are kinda stuck with it. Hopefully CoT can do better, but at the very least we have the CO method to fall back on if all else fails.

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

I'm just totally unconcerned with trying to apply real-world worries to the system, like "will the G-forces injure my character" and other such nonsense.

Suspension of disbelief.
It's generally a Bad Idea™ to let your game "ignore" real world worries that produce oscillations in the "suspension bridge of disbelief" that wind up looking a lot like this ...

... because nobody paid attention to the implications (and side effects) of what they were doing before they went ahead and built it.

Just because it LOOKS GOOD doesn't ipso facto mean it IS GOOD Game Design.

I don't know about anyone else, but I want City of Titans to actually be well thought out under the hood, rather than just a case of "it was cool, so we said 'screw it' and ran with it just because" and then leave it at that.

Bear in mind that so far (again) I seem to be the only person in this thread who is willing to even put NUMBERS to use as benchmarks on performance STATS at all ... while everyone else just keeps waving their hands around and saying "it's magic/superpowers/superscience/plot holes/cool!" without bothering to put any numbers to anything, despite the fact that the game mechanics are going to REQUIRE numbers to have anything to work with (see: computer programming). At the rate things are going in this thread, all we have to do is infect the Rikti Mothership with a computer cold and we'll win the movie plot raid.


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I don't get why people would

I don't get why people would even want a swinging power when you have flight or super speed. It just seems too complicated.

I keep imaging walking up to a contact in a narrow street to pick up a mission, and seeing a handful of players miserably trying to swing from building to building as they get used to their power dropping to the ground, or even flying into walls thinking they look cool. XD

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Wolfgang8565 wrote:
Wolfgang8565 wrote:

I don't get why people would even want a swinging power when you have flight or super speed. It just seems too complicated.
I keep imaging walking up to a contact in a narrow street to pick up a mission, and seeing a handful of players miserably trying to swing from building to building as they get used to their power dropping to the ground, or even flying into walls thinking they look cool. XD

People like to play their characters how they envision them, and don't go for the most convenient powers/abilities just because - they go with what fits.

(insert pithy comment here)

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What if Titan city had swing

What if Titan city had swing supports set up all over the place?

Building owners were getting tired of all the damage caused by grappling hooks, harpoons and super adhesives on their buildings, signs and structures. And so the Titan City Commission on Coexistence with Heroes proposed a network of reinforced towers throughout the city to enable swinging and grappling. Many of these towers also serve other uses such as cell phone repeaters, fire detection, wifi hotspots, and lightning mitigation. Some people speculate they also double for more advanced and secretive uses.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Bear in mind that so far (again) I seem to be the only person in this thread who is willing to even put NUMBERS to use as benchmarks on performance STATS at all

First, not everyone is a mathematician, so your equations will likely go over many peoples heads. I suspect that is your intended result because there are ways to discuss the 'numbers' without using numbers at all.
To be clear not knowing advanced mathematical physics is not a correlation to intelligence just knowledge. In other words, not understanding the math does not make someone stupid.

Second, your 'numbers' are related to gravitational force and momentum (both positive and negative momentum) when they should be about velocity and speed.

I will attempt to explain what I mean as simply as possible so everyone can understand and not just those who are math students, it has been close to 30 years since I took physics in university so that isn't an easy task for me. At this point I am no longer just talking to Red but to anyone who finds this interesting.

The reason why gravitational force and momentum are not the defining physics for travel powers, not just swing/grapnel, is because a game does not simulate gravity in a real world manner. Simply explained, gravity is force that pulls (deliberate use of that word) an object to the center of another object. Gravity is also influenced by motion but for the purposes of this discussion, gravity is what pulls objects towards the center of the Earth. One more thing that needs to be understood is the physics definition of mass.
Mass, in physics, is how resistant to acceleration something is. To put it as simple as possible, more mass means it takes more force to get it moving.

Now that we understand a simply way to look at gravity lets completely change things and understand how most non-physics games simulate gravity.
First, a game does not have a center of the Earth so it can't pull objects to it. This might be a bit confusing but it is a pretty big deal. Without a specific point for everything to be pulled towards (center of the Earth) gravity is no longer the force doing the pulling. So games usually use a downward force to simulate gravity. Thankfully the human brain is usually incapable of noticing a difference.
How games use the downward force to simulate gravity involves a lot of different methods that deal with newton laws, vector equations and so forth. It is a lot of complicated math that goes far beyond the equations that Red is using. It's a good thing that game engines like UE have physics engines included so no one has to do all those ridiculous equations. Instead what the devs do is assign a mass (remember that) to objects that will be affected by the simulated gravity and the engine does most of the hard work. Obviously there is more to it than that. But for our purposes that is all we really need to know.

Momentum in physics is basically mass (as defined by physics) in motion. In the real world momentum involves things like velocity, impulse, interaction with other objects that have their own momentum and so on.

Unless the game is a physics simulator it will use 'tricks' to give the illusion of momentum just as games 'trick' players with gravity illusions. These tricks are both simpler and more difficult to do, but usually they are more than enough to fool us as well.
They are more simple because game developers will, in most cases, simply ignore many physics aspects of momentum and just use speed. They don't really need to get too deep into the math of momentum. But at times they do need to understand, on a basic level, momentum when it comes to interaction with other objects. In most cases this is limited to one object colliding with another.
They are more difficult because there isn't really a 'momentum engine' and so they have to rely on collision detection which is not really a perfect tool. I am sure many people have seen videos of games where a car hits an object and goes sailing off into the sky at ludacris speeds.

After saying all that, it basically boils down to a simple reason why gravitational pull and momentum are not the determining factors to travel powers. Both of those are too rigid to be applicable in the interpretive world of this type of game. For a game that focuses on real world physics then the 'numbers' Red was using make perfect sense but this game will not be using real world physics, they will be simulating real world physics through illusions and trickery.

This is why I say travel powers are a function of velocity and speed.

In physics, speed is exactly what you think it is. How fast something moves.
Velocity is a bit more involved but a quick definition would be velocity is how fast you get from one position to another.

I know they seem similar but the difference is that speed uses total distance in its calculation and velocity used the distance between two points. Here is a quick diagram to explain what I mean. It has numbers but they are easy to understand.

Imagine the black line is a road and you follow it. Your speed is how long it takes you to get from one end of the black line to the other. You velocity is how long it takes you to get from one end of the black line to the other divided by the distance between those two points, the red line. There is a bit more to it but that is all we need to know here.

The reason why you need to know that is because that is all the real world physics a travel power will have, the rest is illusion and trickery. The devs will most likely determine velocity of a travel power first. Remember, velocity is directly related to the shortest distance between two points so it won't matter the route you took to get there, just how long it took to do so. They they will adjust that velocity based on other factors that don't have much to do with math like how difficult the power is to use or how many obstacles are expected in the average journey. Once they have velocity the powers speed, how fast you travel along the path, is easy to figure out.

To explain what I mean by all of this further, lets take a look at some travel powers in CoH and how they would relate to physics expectations Red is imposing on swinging/grapnel.

First lets look at leaping, which is pretty much just a reverse swinging, they both operate at an arc similar to the black line in the picture above. Leaping has you travel up and down in the arc and Swinging has you travel down then up in an arc. As you know, leaping allowed a player to jump long distances as well as control direction in the air and the longer you held the jump button down the higher you went (to the maximum allowed height of course). If you applied the same real world laws of gravity and momentum to leaping that Red is suggesting be applied to swinging then there would be no turning in air and there would need to be a way to determine how high you jump before actually jumping. This would make the leaping ability much more difficult and IMO a lot less fun. Instead what the devs of CoH did was throw out those real world physics and instead just used speed and velocity to determine things like how high and how far you could jump to make the power simple and fun to use.

Now lets look at super speed. In CoH you had a max speed and as long as you pushed forward you moved at that speed. That's fine for flat terrain but that game world had lots of hills, valleys, stairs and so forth. When you apply things like gravity and momentum on uneven terrain you create fluctuations in speed because going up cause you to go slower as gravity pulls on you. The devs decided that including gravity, which would probably not even be noticed, in super speed was not important and instead just went again for simple and fun.

Flying is another one where real world gravitational force and momentum were not used. In CoH flying was a matter of pointing in a direction (or using the up/down hot keys) to ignore gravity. If real world gravity and momentum was a factor on flying you would see slower speeds flying up while faster speeds flying down. This wasn't the case because the devs only worried about the speed of the power and not outside influences that would just complicate the power.

Teleport. Well teleport deals with things that physics say are impossible (no, quantum entanglement is not teleportation), so applying real world physics is mostly not applicable but as many remember, after teleporting a character briefly hovered for a short time. Gravity would not ignore an object for a period before pulling it down so that's just another example of the devs in CoH ignoring gravitational force in favor of simplicity.

All of these powers largely ignored momentum as well, most specifically the collision aspect that Red is suggesting for swinging/grapnel. I am sure we can all remember times when we had a character run at super speed into a wall unscathed or jumping into the side of a building and sliding along it until you get to an edge. Realistically momentum, specifically negative momentum would mean that some sort of damage should occur in all those cases. But the reason why they didn't was because the devs understood self preservation is less of a deterrent in a game and that having people hurt them self when moving would be more frustrating than fun. They ignored the reality of collisions in favor of enjoyment.

The expectation is that travel powers in CoT will follow similar rules. When we jump in CoT we are not going to be limited to only linear arcs and when we run in CoH we won't slow down on hills. We also won't bang our head on every building we come into contact with while flying.
Instead of gravitational force and momentum being realistically applied, they will use tricks and illusion to make us 'think' those things are there. The Devs will make a judgement call on what is fun and simple first then try and make the travel power appear to operate under some plausible simulation of reality as much as they can. The only real world physics they will apply is speed and velocity.

The TL/DR version. Red's 'numbers' are not as relevant as they may seem because this game isn't going to be a physics simulator.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

It's a good thing that game engines like UE have physics engines included so no one has to do all those ridiculous equations.

{snippity}

Red's 'numbers' are not as relevant as they may seem because this game isn't going to be a physics simulator.

/popcorn

So ... the physics engine is sitting right there in the core of UE4 (it's not an add on) and you're going to ignore it because you're ... what? Lazy? Can't be bothered? Too much trouble? Hand waving is easier than working with numbers (in a computer game)? Because superpowers "defy" (in game) physics?

/fresh bucket of popcorn

In physics, both classical and inside of game engines, Speed is defined as how quickly something is moving without caring about which direction it is going. That way, 60 miles per hour is still 60 miles per hour regardless of whether the direction is North, South, East or West. Velocity introduces the concept of Speed plus a direction, which then gets into Vector Math. Acceleration then describes changes in Velocity, and how fast those changes occur.

So Speed is a "directionless" Velocity. 32 feet per second, for example.
Velocity is Speed with a "direction" vector attached to it. 32 feet per second, "down" ... for example.
Acceleration is a value that describes how quickly velocity will change. 32 feet per second per second ... which incidentally is the equivalent of ~1g of acceleration.

I am assuming, for what should be obvious reasons, that there will be ... maximum constraints ... on these in-game physics parameters, so we don't wind up with the equivalent of THIS happening ...

And what did that Dev post include in it immediately after the video? Oh yeah ...

Quote:

The performance with 200 physics objects in the scene is pretty good, though.

So there's a physics engine in the core of UE4 that could be used (and I would argue SHOULD be used) which the Devs are already using for all kinds of stuff like collisions and knockback and so on (as demonstrated) and which will be running during gameplay ... and you want to handwave it all away so you don't have to deal with it for Swinging, because ...?

/more popcorn


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*steals a double-handful of

*steals a double-handful of Redlynne's popcorn*

Wow... Physics lessons! Very cool.

*finds comfortable chair and sits down to watch the fireworks*

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

What if Titan city had swing supports set up all over the place?
Building owners were getting tired of all the damage caused by grappling hooks, harpoons and super adhesives on their buildings, signs and structures. And so the Titan City Commission on Coexistence with Heroes proposed a network of reinforced towers throughout the city to enable swinging and grappling. Many of these towers also serve other uses such as cell phone repeaters, fire detection, wifi hotspots, and lightning mitigation. Some people speculate they also double for more advanced and secretive uses.

From a World Building (as in geometry and so on) standpoint, that's just more trouble than it's worth, although it does make for interesting Lore possibilities as you cite.

I'd be quite happy with Swing/Grapnel functioning using a system of Anchor Points that ought to be extremely familiar to anyone who used Teleport in City of Heroes (remember the Target Rings?). The only difference would be that an Anchor Point (meaning World Geometry) would have to be within range of your Swing/Grapnel Power, while for Teleport, if there's no World Geometry closer than the max range of your Teleport, you simply "go" to the distance of your max range, no "intercept" with World Geometry required.

Anchor Points for Swing/Grapnel need to be "solid" objects within a particular "hardness" range. This means that the "type" of world geometry being targeted matters. So you can use stone (brick, concrete, natural rock formations, street asphalt, masonry, etc.), wood (trees, houses, treehouses, etc.), thin metals (car, truck, bus and train bodies) and so on types of world geometries as Anchor Points for the Power(s). By contrast, you could NOT use water (duh!), earth (ordinary dirt and grass), loose rubble (no structural integrity), canvas (tent or airship), ropes and cables (cutting these tends to be bad), glass windows (insufficient structural soundness), structural metals (thick solid steel I-beams used in bridges) and so on as anchor points for "piercing" type Anchors that are supposed to punch a (temporary) hole into things so as to "hook on" and support your weight during the swing.

That then opens up Design Space to make "wrap/snare/hook" and "adherence/sticky" types of Anchors something that gets made available via the Augment/Refinement system depending on what you slot into the Power. That way, with investment, you could make it possible to designate Anchor Points on a wider variety of available world materials, but there would always remain some types of materials that you just can't use as Anchor Points simply because they're not suitable (no matter how much you Augment/Refine the Power).

Doing THAT however relies on differentiation of materials used in world geometry as generated by the World Editor. Tannim, could you speak to that point?


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So this argument of yours,

So this argument of yours,

Redlynne wrote:

So ... the physics engine is sitting right there in the core of UE4 (it's not an add on) and you're going to ignore it because you're ... what? Lazy? Can't be bothered? Too much trouble? Hand waving is easier than working with numbers (in a computer game)? Because superpowers "defy" (in game) physics?

While you eat your popcorn let me remind you that I said this:

Brainbot wrote:

It's a good thing that game engines like UE have physics engines included so no one has to do all those ridiculous equations. Instead what the devs do is assign a mass (remember that) to objects that will be affected by the simulated gravity and the engine does most of the hard work. Obviously there is more to it than that. But for our purposes that is all we really need to know.

Your ATTEMPT to portray me in a negative manner is not appreciated.

Redlynne wrote:

In physics, both classical and inside of game engines, Speed is defined as how quickly something is moving without caring about which direction it is going. That way, 60 miles per hour is still 60 miles per hour regardless of whether the direction is North, South, East or West. Velocity introduces the concept of Speed plus a direction, which then gets into Vector Math. Acceleration then describes changes in Velocity, and how fast those changes occur.

So Speed is a "directionless" Velocity. 32 feet per second, for example.
Velocity is Speed with a "direction" vector attached to it. 32 feet per second, "down" ... for example.
Acceleration is a value that describes how quickly velocity will change. 32 feet per second per second ... which incidentally is the equivalent of ~1g of acceleration.

For the purposes of this discussion what I said was all that was needed. That was why I said 'There is a bit more to it but that is all we need to know here. ' Being pedantic was not my goal, clarity was.

Redlynne wrote:

So there's a physics engine in the core of UE4 that could be used (and I would argue SHOULD be used) which the Devs are already using for all kinds of stuff like collisions and knockback and so on (as demonstrated) and which will be running during gameplay ... and you want to handwave it all away so you don't have to deal with it for Swinging, because ...?

As I have already shown I am not saying the devs should ignore using their physics engine. I was saying that the gravitational and momentum 'numbers' you so proudly claimed as definitive back in post 47 were irrelevant because the physics engine uses different math to create the illusion of gravity. The devs will use the physics engine to get as close as possible to real physics in a swing/grapnel ability but they will bend, break and ignore any real world gravity/momentum physics in order to make it simple and fun.

You are free to make the assumption (and suffer the inevitable frustration) that swinging/grapnel will obey real world gravitational physics but the evidence of other travel powers just does not support that position.

edit-You know what, I am done with this topic. The devs have already shown an estimation of how this ability will work in CoT and I am satisfied with it. At this point it's just arguing for the sake of arguing.

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

What if Titan city had swing supports set up all over the place?
Building owners were getting tired of all the damage caused by grappling hooks, harpoons and super adhesives on their buildings, signs and structures. And so the Titan City Commission on Coexistence with Heroes proposed a network of reinforced towers throughout the city to enable swinging and grappling. Many of these towers also serve other uses such as cell phone repeaters, fire detection, wifi hotspots, and lightning mitigation. Some people speculate they also double for more advanced and secretive uses.

... MINE! *grabs idea and runs with it while cackling maniacally*

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If there was open space

If there was open space beyond the scope of my grapple then I'd want my vine-winder to have wingsuit capability. For instance to glide over water. While I couldn't necessarily gain altitude I might still speed along quite a bit.

But on the topic of physics: I think we also need to account for the colour of these grapple points in the case of lantern-based swinger-travellers. Thuribles are making a comeback.

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

What if Titan city had swing supports set up all over the place?
Building owners were getting tired of all the damage caused by grappling hooks, harpoons and super adhesives on their buildings, signs and structures. And so the Titan City Commission on Coexistence with Heroes proposed a network of reinforced towers throughout the city to enable swinging and grappling. Many of these towers also serve other uses such as cell phone repeaters, fire detection, wifi hotspots, and lightning mitigation. Some people speculate they also double for more advanced and secretive uses.

In addition, Titan city can have a series of super-strong flying drones (plenty strong to support the weight of your typical meta-human) over the city's rivers, which gives grappling hook enthusiasts a means to swing across the water.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:
What if Titan city had swing supports set up all over the place?
Building owners were getting tired of all the damage caused by grappling hooks, harpoons and super adhesives on their buildings, signs and structures. And so the Titan City Commission on Coexistence with Heroes proposed a network of reinforced towers throughout the city to enable swinging and grappling. Many of these towers also serve other uses such as cell phone repeaters, fire detection, wifi hotspots, and lightning mitigation. Some people speculate they also double for more advanced and secretive uses.
... MINE! *grabs idea and runs with it while cackling maniacally*

Little Red Ragnarok wrote:

In addition, Titan city can have a series of super-strong flying drones (plenty strong to support the weight of your typical meta-human) over the city's rivers, which gives grappling hook enthusiasts a means to swing across the water.

Personally I hope not. I don't particularly like these ideas. At least not quite in that way.

I like the "lots of towers" as a general design concept for the city that makes game-play easier--but to me the idea that the city would undergo the enormous expense of making, how many, tens? hundreds? of towers, building additions and custom drones all throughout the city and outlying areas just for the minority of heroes that use some form of swinging who might ignore the towers and swing from buildings anyway? And I don't think ticketing for inappropriate swinging would be enforceable, and anyway that idea would be getting a little tongue in cheek for my tastes.

Even the idea that they could effectively use that excuse to cover towers and drones with a different secret purpose strains credulity. Even fictional people care how their tax money is spent :P.

Now, if there were, say, towers and drones throughout the city for the teleport grid (if there is one like CoH had) or some other widely used service that just happened to be great for swinging, well, that'd be ok.

Just my 2 inf.

Airhead wrote:

If there was open space beyond the scope of my grapple then I'd want my vine-winder to have wingsuit capability. For instance to glide over water. While I couldn't necessarily gain altitude I might still speed along quite a bit.

DCUO did this well. Swinging wasn't JUST swinging, but had a additional contingency tech movement power for places where you couldn't swing. You basically went from Batman to Batman Beyond :).

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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Noooooo.please don't litter

Noooooo.please don't litter the maps with towers!

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Empyrean wrote:
Empyrean wrote:

Now, if there were, say, towers and drones throughout the city for the teleport grid (if there is one like CoH had) or some other widely used service that just happened to be great for swinging, well, that'd be ok.

Sure, I imagine the drones can be multi-purpose: for teleportation, communications or free internet.

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I'm truly surprised the

I'm truly surprised the amount of interest behind swinging/grapnel. Compared to super speed, super jump, and flying, I never would have suspected it was that popular of an idea. I always thought it was horribly inefficient, but that's just me. I'm finding this thread very informative and illuminating. Also amusing.

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Personally, I see grappling

Personally, I see grappling/swinging as a short-range movement power, like combat jumping or hover. It's something to help with maneuverability in mission maps. But, I think it's impractical as a long range travel power with support (like the drones or towers). Note, Batman doesn't always use the grappling hook as his long range travel power (that belongs to the bat mobile). However, it is a staple power for some heroes and for other appeal it's the coolness factor.

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Wolfgang8565 wrote:
Wolfgang8565 wrote:

Noooooo.please don't litter the maps with towers!

Most cities and towns have just that - if you're not scared of electricity. Power poles/lines are quite prevalent. Just be certain you attach to an insulator or you will get a new hairdo.

(insert pithy comment here)

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Dark Ether wrote:
Dark Ether wrote:

Wolfgang8565 wrote:
Noooooo.please don't litter the maps with towers!
Most cities and towns have just that - if you're not scared of electricity. Power poles/lines are quite prevalent. Just be certain you attach to an insulator or you will get a new hairdo.

Ha

My thought was, If they are making the swinging as realistic as possible then I imagine a tower would be needed pretty much in between every building. If the distance of the towers is too far apart i would imagine the player would swing right into the ground. Thus my worry of having too many towers on a map.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Bear in mind that so far (again) I seem to be the only person in this thread who is willing to even put NUMBERS to use as benchmarks on performance STATS at all ... while everyone else just keeps waving their hands around and saying "it's magic/superpowers/superscience/plot holes/cool!" without bothering to put any numbers to anything, despite the fact that the game mechanics are going to REQUIRE numbers to have anything to work with (see: computer programming).

Redlynne wrote:

So there's a physics engine in the core of UE4 that could be used (and I would argue SHOULD be used) which the Devs are already using for all kinds of stuff like collisions and knockback and so on (as demonstrated) and which will be running during gameplay ... and you want to handwave it all away so you don't have to deal with it for Swinging, because ...?

I don't think anyone is saying that the devs shouldn't use the built-in game physics engine to simulate the swinging power (at least I'm not). It looks like the system they have does just that. My argument is that the devs should not constrain themselves by using real-world physiological limitations. The super heroes in this game (and comics, other supers games, movies, etc.) will be able to withstand more forces and preform feats that us ordinary mortals in the real world cannot hope to do. The devs have said that this will be the case already. If my super-jumping character doesn't have to worry about shattering his legs when landing, or my fire armor character doesn't have to worry about suffocating in his halo of flame, then my swinger (that kinda sounds bad actually....) shouldn't have to worry about pulling G's in his swing.

Or, like I and others have said before (one way or another), the devs aren't looking to re-create the real world. They are looking to re-create super-hero comics and movies, which are basically fantasy. And that requires the "fudging" or even outright abandonment of real-world limitations at times.

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Airhead wrote:
Airhead wrote:

If there was open space beyond the scope of my grapple then I'd want my vine-winder to have wingsuit capability. For instance to glide over water. While I couldn't necessarily gain altitude I might still speed along quite a bit.

Empyrean wrote:

DCUO did this well. Swinging wasn't JUST swinging, but had a additional contingency tech movement power for places where you couldn't swing. You basically went from Batman to Batman Beyond :).

The cool thing is that we will be able to select multiple travel powers, so it may be possible to combine it with another if desired.

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If you don't have to make

If you don't have to make room in your build in such a way that taking multiple movement powers would negatively effect your DPS or whatever, I think most people will take more than one for convenience sake. The min/maxers who just want efficiency will likely take super speed and flight at least, I would expect.

Even in later CoX, you could get some good results out of having enough travel powers with enough slots in them.

Swinging really only has any reason to exist because it's what a few really popular comicbook superheroes do (Spider-man and Batman). And those characters do that because despite being awkward and limited, it's the best option they have, since they're not from the planet Krypton and don't have a magic hammer.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

If you don't have to make room in your build in such a way that taking multiple movement powers would negatively effect your DPS or whatever, I think most people will take more than one for convenience sake.

I'm not sure we will be using our regular Primary/Secondary/Tertiary power selections to get travel powers - the Powers update seems to suggest otherwise - that it's a "whole different system".

Dark Ether
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Found: footage of the swing

Found: footage of the swing set.

(insert pithy comment here)

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Dark Ether wrote:
Dark Ether wrote:

Found: footage of the swing set.

LOL. Nice.

Seriously - someone has tried to make a Bat-grapple. Not very heroic-looking, but it works!

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

Radiac wrote:
If you don't have to make room in your build in such a way that taking multiple movement powers would negatively effect your DPS or whatever, I think most people will take more than one for convenience sake.
I'm not sure we will be using our regular Primary/Secondary/Tertiary power selections to get travel powers - the Powers update seems to suggest otherwise - that it's a "whole different system".

Right, so you can pick multiple powers without much improvement to each, or really develop one to its fullest potential.

Technical Director

Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider

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Cobalt Azurean wrote:
Cobalt Azurean wrote:

I'm truly surprised the amount of interest behind swinging/grapnel. Compared to super speed, super jump, and flying, I never would have suspected it was that popular of an idea. I always thought it was horribly inefficient, but that's just me. I'm finding this thread very informative and illuminating. Also amusing.

It's not that swing/grapnel is more popular than speed or flying, it's the unknown and different views on it's capabilities.
Most of us have already seen how super speed, leaping and so forth have been done in CoH and have a reasonable expectation that they will operate similarly in CoT so people don't talk about them as much.
The very conflicting expectations on this new travel power's capabilities means that people are more apt to discuss it.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Interdictor wrote:
Radiac wrote:
If you don't have to make room in your build in such a way that taking multiple movement powers would negatively effect your DPS or whatever, I think most people will take more than one for convenience sake.
I'm not sure we will be using our regular Primary/Secondary/Tertiary power selections to get travel powers - the Powers update seems to suggest otherwise - that it's a "whole different system".
Right, so you can pick multiple powers without much improvement to each, or really develop one to its fullest potential.

I like this. More details on this in the future?

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Interdictor wrote:
Radiac wrote:
If you don't have to make room in your build in such a way that taking multiple movement powers would negatively effect your DPS or whatever, I think most people will take more than one for convenience sake.
I'm not sure we will be using our regular Primary/Secondary/Tertiary power selections to get travel powers - the Powers update seems to suggest otherwise - that it's a "whole different system".
Right, so you can pick multiple powers without much improvement to each, or really develop one to its fullest potential.

Does this idea of breadth versus depth (i.e. more variety of powers or a more fully developed one power) apply specifically to travel powers, to all powers, or just to a subset of powers, which includes but is not limited to travel powers? Or does in not apply to travel powers at all?

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

Dark Ether wrote:
Found: footage of the swing set.

LOL. Nice.
Seriously - someone has tried to make a Bat-grapple. Not very heroic-looking, but it works!

Holy crap. I feel like we should be marketing in connunction with these guys somehow. Most of what they do is Superhero stuff!

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Right, so you can pick multiple powers without much improvement to each, or really develop one to its fullest potential.

Cool - sounds great.

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