It's always a tradeoff between responsive movement and realistic movement. RDR2 has very realistic animations, with the tradeoff being slightly "floaty" controls. Personally I prefer snappy movement i.e. when I press left the screen character moves left immediately. A more realistic looking animation system introduces a delay while you wait for the feet animation to "catch up" to player input.
I’ve always preferred the Wolfire approach[0]: animation should “do no harm” to player control, it’s only there to add flavor, never at the cost of game responsivity [0] https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?si=W7xnQfXt5ulfHklR
His proposition of a Hippocratic oath for animation is a beautiful and succinct way to frame a game design thesis. Great talk.
Of course there is already measurable lag from when your brain tells your hand and fingers to move, to when they actually move! An interesting personal anecdote I have: I damaged my back with bulging disc, which caused horrific sciatica nerve pain. When I was able to walk again, I had some nerve damage. This meant I had lag in my left leg! I’d tell the leg to move instinctively when walking and there would be a delay…
Complete tangent, but how did you treat your injury? Coming back from bulging discs and sciatica is rare, to my understanding.
Yeah a friend of mine had this and he had to get surgery to not lose his left leg to permanent numbness due to the disc pressing on the nerves. I know one other person with the exact same issue and solution, and am also under the impression that without surgery only bad things happen.
Wait, so they have an ECS game engine with a AAA renderer and nanite-like tech along with a lua based scripting engine and Hollywood level facial animation?
They should release the engine. It's a solid competitor to Unreal (more scalable due to ECS, easier to write with Luau)
From the first few sentences of the article: "ECS meant that iteration was quick because adding new or modifying existing systems or game objects was easy, and performance gains were clear when saving and loading the Case Board." and there's an accompanying screenshot with perhaps 20 objects on a case board. I scanned through the rest of the article with one question in mind: what the hell? ECS is not a solution to p…
ECS isn't just useful for performance. It's a better way to architect games and other sorts of software in a more data-oriented (rather than OOP oriented) way.
Considering you walk around and don’t have a problem with it, I’d wager that putting a more realistic walk model into a game and changing the control scheme to be a bit more natural would lead to a learnable system for control that would achieve both goals. Say ZMP
> Considering you walk around and don’t have a problem with it... I think humans are worse than this than you might think. Give it a try! Walk around and try to change directions on the fly, maybe have a friend shout suggestions to you. I can make maybe 2 or 3 adjustments per second, which gives about 400ms response time. That's about where RDR2 sits, and players criticized it for being unresponsive.
But if you take 400ms to respond, and the game takes 400ms to respond after that, the actual response delay is 800ms, which is quite a lot.
In the first example it's still really jarring how much their feet slide around on the ground, or sliding in place as they walk into an object without moving. I wonder when this will ever be solved. Don't get me wrong, the engine is incredible and the visuals and systems are some of the best we have seen.
Probably a pretty critical aspect; typically, the camera is angled in a way where you do not see your character's feet [1]. This was less true in Northlight's previous title, Control [2].
Wait, so they have an ECS game engine with a AAA renderer and nanite-like tech along with a lua based scripting engine and Hollywood level facial animation? They should release the engine. It's a solid competitor to Unreal (more scalable due to ECS, easier to write with Luau)
When I got my 3090 back when it was first released, I was excited to finally play Control with ray tracing on, no luck. Now with Alan Wake 2 it barely runs High with ray tracing off.
It's a visually stunning engine but it's just too demanding IMO.
Wait, so they have an ECS game engine with a AAA renderer and nanite-like tech along with a lua based scripting engine and Hollywood level facial animation? They should release the engine. It's a solid competitor to Unreal (more scalable due to ECS, easier to write with Luau)
Lots of studios do. Turning internal software into a product for others is a different thing.
Wait, so they have an ECS game engine with a AAA renderer and nanite-like tech along with a lua based scripting engine and Hollywood level facial animation? They should release the engine. It's a solid competitor to Unreal (more scalable due to ECS, easier to write with Luau)
I guess the problem there is pretty fundamental - in reality you'd be tensing muscles and shifting your weight etc before the snappy movement, but the game only knows that you want to move when you move the stick or push a button - so it either has to show that realistic motion after your button press and introduce latency, or sacrifice the realism in the animations.
Correct, this is an issue in nba2k but it’s become a fundamental part of the game. As they made movements more realistic they introduced a delay. So when you try and get around you opponent you direct half a second before you move, but your defender also has to move their player - not in reaction to the screen but also in anticipation of your move in order to defend you. I actually think this is more like real life w…
Guild wars 2 does something similar. When you’re running around on your own, the game responds instantly. But all of the in-game mounts take a moment to react to your steering. Responsiveness, jump height, horizontal speed and turning radiuses all differ massively depending on the mount you’re using. As a result, long distance navigation is a complex puzzle requiring you to choose a good mount and a good route at the right time and manage your energy bars and cooldowns. Do you try to hop up this ledge with the griffin you’re already on, or take the time to swap to the springer and clear it in a big charged bounce? Was there a better way around this ledge? It’s shockingly fun.