Realistic saber duels

[Kurgan]

learn the game. n00bs.

[Falkentyne]

Now I'm not entirely sure about this,

But, isn't something like "Vsim" control necessary ?

 

For those who don't remember, I'm talking about " Die By the Sword"; remember, you could use joystick Vsim to control your sword.

 

You, of course, as mentioned above, also need the saber to be an -object-, and not just a bunch of pixels of air. Then once that's done, combined with some physics, such as the position of the enemy saber, which way you are swinging, the force required, which way he is parrying; will his parry be deflected in such a way that he is left in a VERY vulnerable position, allowing you to swing again, and him beinng off balance, and unable to get a clean block = sliced ! ?

 

Or will YOU be off balance because he parried you accurately, leaving YOU wide open?

 

THAT's saber combat.

Of course, Vsim control would pretty much prohibit the "Quake 3" running bunny strafing crap; you never saw them do that in the movies, did you? The most you ever saw was someone step forward a bit, advance and pressure the enemy, or step back, being forced to defend.

[razorace]

I assume you're talking to me.

 

Well, sort of, Vsim is much too complicated (especially to do it correctly) than simple old me could do. The job needs full engine source code and a pro development team.

 

However, my system will hopefully get close or better to that sort of system. My system will operate on you controlling the move selection instead of the saber directly. This simplifies the controls and should put the focus on the combat instead of trying to get your saber to do what you want (the main problem with Vsim).

 

However, my system should have basically everything you described just without the direct blade control.

[Akshara]

Well I've gotta say, the new patch might not have made JA a perfect saber combat simulator, but it sure makes the combat a whole lot more accurate. Very nice...

[keshire]

I'm surprised this never came up.

 

http://moviebattles.jk2mods.com/home.htm

 

The movie battles mod for JK2 did all the things currently complained about in this thread other than vsim, and come on. How hard was that to control back before optical mice were around? It was near impossible. But was fun watching orcs hop around on one leg.

 

They are planning their jk3 version now.

[|DEM|Mosleg]

Originally posted by IG-64

if you ask me, i think they should stop being so... erm... LAZY and drop the Q3 engine and make a similar, yet much better one

 

The Q3A engine isn't the issue. It in fact is one of the best FPS engines ever developed of all time, if not the best. That's why it is continually being used even 4 years after the games initial release. The actual engine was probably written at least 5 years ago, and is still up to par in technology. Although the engine is getting quite old, and they should have written a new engine for JA, but by far is it the Q3A engine's fault.

 

It's the fact that the lightsaber fighting was implemented incorrectly. Anything can be done with the Q3A engine if you put your mind to it. Raven just simply implemented the saber fighting incorrectly. I guess they implemented it like they did since sabers were intended to be used in all gametypes and it would be a waste of time to have it where players would have to be standing still just to kill someone they come across with a saber. Duels however, should have the saber physics implemented how they should be. IE: No strafing around. When you see two people in a melee duel, you don't see them strafing across the arena like they're weilding a rocket launcher.

[Kurgan]

Vsim was a nice idea, but frankly, I hated DBTS... the sword fighting system simply encouraged people to wiggle their mouse back and forth as fast as possible (which made them flail their blade around madly) to win a battle.

 

Sure I guess that's kinda cool, but it's sort of like winning a fight based on who button mashes the most (like winning a saber lock).

 

Sure you could use buttons to do predetermined moves, but that was inferior to the "waggle the mouse like a madman" approach, so, heh...

 

 

The better solution gameplay wise seems to be simply to give your characters lots of moves, combos, counters, etc like a good fighting game. It worked for the Bushido Blade series after all...

[razorace]

I agree with Kurgan about Vsim but I think it's possible to "fix" that sort of system. The problem with it was that it simply didn't "feel" right in terms of mouse movement to sword movement. I beleive it's fixable with some tight mouse acceleration tweaking.

[Iblis Reborn]

i think that what they have now is what they wanted the game to be

 

i like it the way it is and alot of the ideas being thrown around are to make it more RPG like

 

this game was never meant to be an RPG

its a FPS with a lightsaber and thats the way i likes it

[Azymn]

"Realistic Saber Combat" system improvements are not RPG-esque.

[Iblis Reborn]

some of the suggestions seemed to want to take away the control of the fighting just so that it looks like the movies...that sounds rpg like to me

 

and why slow down the fighting and the movement?

wouldnt it just make that annoying?

its suppost to be fast paced

 

how does making the sabers lock for a bit everytime they touch make it more realistic?

 

i agree that manual blocking might have made things more interesting but i have no problem with the way it is now

[Gotaiken]

the fix probaly wouldnt be all that hard.

 

1.make it so that you can control the saber more accurately. shoudlnt be too hard, just give the saber physics, and the smartest thing to do (why the hell didnt they do this) is sort of have a built in aiming system, depending on how much saber offense you have.

 

ive played mp a lot, and ive been right next to a person and hit them with the crosshairs on them, and it didnt hit (for all the cynisists out there, i actually told someone to stand still to prove my point)

 

fighting should be more tactical and strategical, its just smarter for a lightsaber, aiming should be a factor to a point. for instance, there should be an autoaim in the works, but the closer the actual person aims the more of a chance the saber should hit, on top of the auto aim, something like that.

 

auto aim is neccesary, if your running fast you could easily not hit someone, or time your attack wrong when running

 

2.something needs to be implemented to take away the use of strafing

 

thats all for now

[Tigjaw]

if only they added a block button, it would sort this problem out completely. i was veyr very disapointed with the saber fighting when i got used to the game and the only way to win a fight seemed to be to just keep jamming down the crouch button whilst smashing the command buttons and adding some directions in for extra 'confusement'.

but the art of a Jedi is that they arent just normal people running around crouching swaying a Saber around.

but i believe by adding a block button it would sort this problem out, also in the movies when a Jedi blocked an attack from a saber i cant remember seeing them getting damaged.

so in summary:

>Add block button

>remove damage whilst blocking

>use other combo keys on a keyboard or use a different button other than the Right trigger for the xbox for the attack combos, this will add control to the fighting, for example if you wanted to slice to the left click: "left directional button + one of the letter buttons"

what ya think?

[JediCrow]

The problem is that it seems next to impossible to make a sword fighting system (and thats what we're REALLY talking about here) that gives the player as much control as you want in a game and also recreates the coolness of sword (and lightsaber) fights we see on film. To my knowledge, this has NEVER been done. It just seems that it's not possible. The more control you give the player, the less "realistic" the fight is going to be. Give people the freedom to run, jump and roll around, and that's what they are going to do, since you gave them that mobility and they don't want to be a sitting target. And conversely, the more "canned action" you put into your system, it makes the combat look cooler, but at the cost of the players feeling like they are really in control.

[Agen]

if only they added a block button, it would sort this problem out completely

It's almost impossible for a block button to work fairly in mp, ping can and usually will become a bigger factor than skill, end of story.

 

Also, wasn't there floods of complaining about the constant blocking in jk2, I never had a problem with it but people didn't seem to happy about it. In jka with duals or staff just whacking a standing person straight on hurts em pretty bad.

 

I like the lightning speed of JA.

You gotta be joking, JKA is by far the slowest jk game yet. Chaotic - yes, fast - no frickin' way.

 

Also in jka, the hit detection is way off for no forseeable reason imo, in jk2 two singles (obviously) could fight each other and there's be no serious diddy ups but in this, if two singles duel the hit detection still messes up frequently.

[Kurgan]

What is with the constant complaints about "speed" with JA?

 

As far as I can tell it feels just as "fast" (or slow) as JK2.

 

And in fact if you check the g_speed cvar in both games you'll see it's default at "250" in both SP and MP.

 

I can't tell any difference in the speed of the moves either.

 

So what are you talking about?

 

 

JK1 and MotS were of equal speed and almost double the speed of JK2/JA, but that's a different story. You can achieve this fairly closely in JK2/JA by setting g_speed to 400-500.

 

 

PS: If you want a little more "realism" and coolness in your JA duels, do this:

 

(edit your desktop shortcut to your dedicated server, here's what mine looks like in the target field):

 

C:\games\JediAcademy\GameData\jampDed.exe +net_port 29070 +dedicated 2 +exec server.cfg +seta d_saberSPStyleDamage 2 +seta bot_honorableduelacceptance 1

 

 

 

The command in bold makes it so that sabers do "idle damage" like in JK2. Only the idle damage is BETTER because in JK2 it did a "pulse" of 5 hp per pulse. Now it's a steady damage of 1 hp every 1/5 second. And if somebody puts a saber in the way of the idle saber, they "clash" together (not the same as a saber lock, but still pretty cool). It gives the battles a little more of a cinematic feel and a touch more realism.

 

Now before you get worried about a "scratch killing you" it only does a max of 5 hp per second and that's if it's held against their flesh. It is UNAFFECTED by saberdamagescale. So even if you crank saberdamagescale up to 999, the idle damage will still be only 5 hp per second.

 

The second command, for anyone interested makes it so that if you turn off your saber (or turn off one blade with Dual or Staff) a bot will turn off his/her saber near you (if they have saber out) and you can challenge them to a duel! A fun feature. ; )

 

 

PS: Thanks to RazorAce for helping me figure those out!

[Prime]

Originally posted by Agen_Terminator

It's almost impossible for a block button to work fairly in mp, ping can and usually will become a bigger factor than skill, end of story.

Not only that, but having a block button will just mean that players will just have a button to hold down all the time when they are not attacking. It will be the same as auto-blocking, as players will just holding it down when they aren't attacking. Isn't that more or less the same as it is now?

 

Personally, I don't want to be holding down a key for almost the entire time I'm playing.

[Tigjaw]

maybe they should just remove the damage whilst blocking thing in the game then, because i do know what you mean about the holding the button down all the time.

but to be honest i cant find much skill to the game, it is just messy.

i think the only way to get realistic is to get as close as possible to taking 'turns' without the action being non-real-time.

i'm sure they can do this, look at the samurai games like kengo, the blocking and everything is fine and there is skill to it.

[Prime]

Originally posted by Tigjaw

maybe they should just remove the damage whilst blocking thing in the game then

They did this in JO for a time and everyone was up in arms because it was so hard to hit anybody...

[razorace]

That's why I suggest directional manual blocking with a rechargable amount of autoblocking (Dodge).