Player Movement - Inertia, Weightiness, and Immersion

Wandering Mist

Tragnar wrote: »

I want realistic inertia, but only in animations - actual player character movement should not be in the slightest a subject to this

What you ask is impossible. Gameplay is directly tied to the animations. If the animations are slow (like in Dark Souls) then the gameplay will be slow. If the animations are fast (like in Street Fighter), the gameplay will be a lot faster. You can't have slower or more "realistic" animations paired with fast gameplay, it just doesn't work.

League of Legends doesn't have realistic inertia in the character movement, except in certain circumstances like Sion's ult charging up to full speed, which is done for balancing reasons.

Tragnar

You literally don't understand my point.

Any added realism for movement should be only in the windup animation - which is usually only few frames (but immensely important)

The gameplay firsthand needs to feel fluid to play and be above all else extremely responsive. By adding movement acceleration or deceleration you basically kill responsiveness - which works for platformers or racing games

Also I have not said anything about fast or slow gameplay - speed of gameplay has nothing to do with the responsiveness or fluidity

Wandering Mist

Tragnar wrote: »

You literally don't understand my point.

Any added realism for movement should be only in the windup animation - which is usually only few frames (but immensely important)

The gameplay firsthand needs to feel fluid to play and be above all else extremely responsive. By adding movement acceleration or deceleration you basically kill responsiveness - which works for platformers or racing games

Also I have not said anything about fast or slow gameplay - speed of gameplay has nothing to do with the responsiveness or fluidity

right but even if you only apply inertia for the wind up or the start of an animation, you are still effectively slowing that animation down, even for just a few frames and this will effect the gameplay. If you don't tie the animations to the gameplay you get a situation where (for example) attacks hit before your character has reached the relevant point in the animation. This is what contributes to clunky gameplay because your eyes are telling you 2 different things at the same time.

Tragnar

That is why windup animations for abilities are supposed to be only few frames long (i.e. up to ~0.1s)

however we were not talking about ability animations (where i believe that animation locking is the worst gameplay imaginable)

For movement itself having players instantly move at max speed is extremely important and the best thing you can do is to implement acceleration animations at already full speed so the only side-effect is slight drifting until the animation matches full speed

maouw

@Tragnar
Yeah! I would love 0.1s of windup - coz windup and follow through are essentially mimicking inertial physics.
Also I'm 100% with you on animation locking - which is why I prefer the 0.1 seconds of actual physics instead of animation locked mimicry.