SF has a huge skill difference between new and old players. I think this is because the movement system isn't very intuitive.

Who here has played mirror's edge?

I've only just gotten the game and I can already perform complex sequences of moves, just by watching someone else perform them first. Skilled speed runners in mirror's edge can upload videos of their speed runs to youtube, and pretty much anyone can mimic them. It's really quite easy to chain together a series of jumps, wall runs, etc.

Source's movement system is accurate, but requires a lot of practice to get things right. It's very twitchy. Newer players don't possess the skill necessary to perform trickjumps simply because they aren't used to Source's movement system (it's very hard to get used to, but it feels very responsive) furthermore, new players can't even see how a certain trickjump was performed. The animation for say, a scroll jump, indicates nothing about how to perform that jump. It doesn't look like the player is simply pressing jump 20 times in quick succession. Circle jumping? How is a newer player to know that they need to strafe whilst turning? It's not obvious at all.

So yeah, fix the movement system, re-animate the models (come on, it's not that hard to do), and this time around, put in a bloody tutorial mode.

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sf_skiff

just that is fine too

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first off, talking about scrolljumping and stuff.
they arent really "moves", more like 'exploits' and flaws in the physic and game engine... so you would have to implement them properly before assigning any kind animation to those moves.

about the modeling part.
It should (or better could) be done in a few hours per model (Using IK Bones/Joints and Autokeying [also makes the animation smooth :3] as they are already utilized for the other animations)

about mirrors edge.
i dont know what to say tbh, the runner vision helps alot on finding jumps/combos. That wouldnt be possible in SF thou (Maybe for the world geometry but not for all the blocks (re: xenon 350block server etc)). It could be solved, yes. The coords for each plate are transmitted anyway so you could just hook there and decide which is jumpable or not by the alignment of the plate... on the other hand that wouldnt be THAT clever because most of the public forts are like swiss cheese and generally a giant shitstorm of blocks (lots o' red glowing plates) so if you cant strafe over it, you can still rj, nadejump etc you get the point...


So, implement all the actual movement as real moves and not just flaws (cept for bunnyhopping maybe, i cant think of an animation that would fit bhopping or speedskating x__x) and make it clearly visible to other players what the player is doing, explain moves in a tutorial, maybe even a small training map with audio commentarys, mark points of interest in the map itself and people will learn how to move (atleast thats what i hope)


<3

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well yes, of course runner vision would be hard to implement (impossible) in something dynamically generated by players, but once you've seen it used in a few places, you can usually see jumps without the need for runner vision at all. You gain the ability to recognise shortcuts and stuff like that without any help from runner vision. All you need to do is teach the player what they can do, and give them a few examples of where they can do their newly learnt tricks, and they'll be figuring things out for themselves in no time.

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sf_skiff

what do you mean by fix the movement system?

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oh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzuzwLEyU5E how2scrolljump?
I HEART BONNIE. MK.

it's twitchy, unintuitive, and worst of all, it's hard for new players to understand what other players are doing (thus impairing their ability to learn from more experience players)

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sf_skiff

hence the name trickjumping?

A trick isnt something someone can just pick up in 10seconds.

Mirror's Edge and SF need to stay separate. Although I think the idea of more complex tj'ing being implemented is awesome, Mirror's Edge style of game play would not fit in at aaaaalll.

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I'm not saying to turn sf into mirrors edge with blocks and flags..

I'm using mirror's edge as an example for a game that implements an intuitive, fluid system of movement, something that SF is in need of in it's current implementation.

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sf_skiff

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Strange as this may sound, but SourceForts isn't the only game in the world to have a skill gap between it's competitive community and it's public players. Take CSS, TF2, COD4, BF2, or any other game that has ever had a competitive scene, take any player from a mid-upper tier team, put him in a public server - he will be accused of cheating. Players who want to bridge the gap between their current skill level and that of competitive players will have to actively go out and do so, it won't just "happen". When I decided to play TF2 competitively I had to go out, find articles, videos, and environments where I could play with better players. I didn't just pub to my hearts content and develop naturally. If it can just "happen", then there is something incredibly wrong with the skill ceiling of the game and players won't stay very long. This skill gap is only an issue when a game is as god awfully unplayed as SourceForts. It causes the ratio of shit : good players to be messed up so they have to play together too often. Take any of the games I mentioned above and the pubbers will only play with the pubbers, and the competitive players will only play competitively or in public servers that are customised for competitively inclined players. There are exceptions but not so many that it budges this balance.

I've never played mirrors edge so really can't comment on your actual suggestions, but I am competitively inclined so the game can be as complex as it likes.