Idea: Lightsaber uses mouse directions rather than keyboard…

[Zealot888]

Raven please read all of this. I love your game, but I wish that the lightsaber control was better/smoother, so here’s an idea. The purpose of this idea is to create better looking lightsaber fights that are smoother, and more thought out. Rather then the get behind them and click click click fighting, with the occasional accident of locking. As of now the control and successful use of the lightsaber feels very random.

 

As it is, if you want to swing horizontally left you must hit strafe left and attack (mouse1). Why not have it so that a slight mouse movement left while pressing/holding attack swings your saber left? If you slightly move the mouse left or right with attack held down your character will swing left or right. If you move the mouse down with attack then it will vertically swing straight down. If you move the mouse diagonal down left or right, the saber will swing diagonally down left or right. If you move the mouse diagonally up L/R it will uppercut diagonally up L/R. If you move the mouse straight up, it will uppercut straight up.

 

The boundaries of the mouse directions:

Think of a 360º degree circle around the mouse from a birds eye view. “Up” can be considered any degrees from 342.5º to 22.5º, upper right would be 22.5º to 67.5º, right would be 67.5º to 112.5º, and so on. From a coder's perspective, this would be dealing with horizontal and vertical input ratios.

 

Attack mode:

Is when you have the attack key (mouse1) held down. It will only execute the attack movement only when something is in range, rather then when ever you click it. An example of this is the gauntlet for Quake3 as opposed to the axe in Quake. Why? Because real characters wouldn’t swing at a guy that’s 14 feet away, but we see this all the time and it looks bad. In the game you can’t tell if they’re close enough, so your character could do the guessing for you (auto attack), just as how you character auto deflects lasers. Also, if you hold down the attack, the enemy is in saber range, but you do not move the mouse, it will not swing until you give it a direction. Perhaps your saber offense skill will determine better range estimations. The disadvantage to having the attack key down so much is that you aren’t in block mode with it pressed down.

 

Block mode:

You character is by default in ‘block mode’ when the saber is in your hands and the attack key isn’t pressed. Another idea (perhaps it’s too much) is other than having the chance of blocking something that's based on your lightsaber defend skill is to allow players to manually heighten their chances of a block. When in block mode if your opponent swings horizontally left and you slightly move the mouse left (in block mode), your character will parry left, increasing your chances of a block. If the enemy strikes downward and you move the mouse up, he will block upwards. If you do not give a direction or you move the mouse too far in the opposite direction that the opponent attacks, he will get a hit. The higher your saber defense skill, the more amount of degrees you can be off to still get a high chance of a block.

 

The results:

If you keep the attack button down, then all you have to do is slightly move the mouse in the direction you want your character to swing. Light saber control would be outstanding as you could tell your character how to swing with your mouse rather than your keyboard, allowing you to remain in the same spot with only your torso and arms moving. As it is, people are running all over the place (some of them are just trying to swing left or right). With this mouse rather than key direction idea, you could stay relatively in the same spot and saber fight it out like we see in the movies. With the occasional moving forewords or backwards, like the fight between Luke and Vader in ROTJ. This wouldn't eliminate the need for jumping or crouch rolling, and it would get rid of a lot of the ugly, unrealistic, and excessive movement.

 

Please take this into consideration. Modders, if something like this isn’t implemented, here’s a good place to start. The lightsaber animation and appearance looks very nice, but honestly the saber fights could be so much more. Once again, GREAT game!

[seanconnery]

Sweet ass idea man, really, (here comes the big BUT)

 

BUT

 

I have a feeling it's far, far too much coding to put in a patch, and too much for the gaming public to accept (in a patch).

 

One hell of an idea.

[Zagadka]

Another option would be some system where holding down alt fire on the Saber and moving the mouse (or keys) did alternate moves.

[ww1234]

Anyone remember that game? And how impossible mouse sword control was?

 

AS soon as I set it back to "Keyboard VSIM" I completed the game...

 

Mouse VSIM was ok for a while but far too imprecise. Preset 'moves' is the only way to go, because the 2D of the mouse it not enough to direct a saber in 3D. The only way it could be implemented would be if moving the mouse left was just the same as pressing the left strafe key while clicking. So you still be limited to the same 10 or so moves (but it'd be harder to control which one you're doing).

 

-J

[TheDarkSide]

That sounds like a kick-a$$ concept, but the main thing I see with it from a gameplay perspective is that it removes your mobility in the duel. If your mouse is mapped to LS direction, then you can't turn or look up or down. You'd have to either map another "shifting" key to activate the mouse LS as a previous suggested, or use that shifting key to toggle your turning keys to strafing ones. Before Q3A and UT, I was an all keyboard man. I switched to mouse and keyboard and never want to go back to the days of using combo keys to strafe or turn.

 

I'd like to see something that gives you more direct control over the saber though!

[Bridger]

here's the thing with that, you'd be stationary EVERY time you attacked, and i don't know about you, but i absolutly LOVE all the jumping and dashing and quick in and out attacks and how they look.

 

If this system was put in, people would walk up to each other and STOP to swing, when in the movies you just don't see that, they are always moving so as to avoid being hit, and it just looks better.

[SwiftEdge]

Lightsaber combat is one of the main features of this game, I am sure Raven went through a complex design and analysis procedure in developing the current system. Personally I find the light saber combat to be very intuative (sp), however, if there is enough demand for a new system to be developed then you can expect to see some one come up with one.

[Jedi Child]

ZEALOT888, great idea that needs a bump!

 

if mouse controls saber swings, then that leaves WASD to control feet movement.

[Kettch]

Yeah, I like that idea to use mouse directions. It's more intuitive to handle that, also there are mods for MotS and JK like SBX and AOTL which use that system, it's really better than only relying on keyboard movements...

[Mikaserla]

The mouse method does exist in this game to an extent.

If you hit v on the key board then you can use the mouse

to move yourself and thus perform the swings. It's hard to

do but it works.

[Cracken]

This is the same thing they were going to have in the PC version of Obi-Wan...and we all know how that ended up...

[Zealot888]

I don’t understand why some people think that players will no longer move. Just as you can look up, down, left, or right while you are running or strafing, you could now control your saber independently as you move. Your movement would no longer interfere with which way you want your saber and arms to move.

 

You actually have to stand still more the way it is now if you wish to control your saber! Because all your movement is sending directional messages to your saber control, which is causing the swing randomly at everything effect. The only way to regain control is to stop for a few seconds, and once your opponent is in range tap A (for left) and attack. But if your enemy is running away you can’t horizontal attack and chase him. However with the saber based off of mouse direction, your movement is independent from your upper body swinging. Meaning you can pursue an opponent AND pull off horizontal swings. This also means you can strike down or up as you strafe. So you could very rapidly strafe roll left and strike down much more efficiently.

 

People would still be trying to jump or crouch roll sideways behind their enemy. They could now do it more intelligently as their movement no longer changes how they use their saber. People would still use the foreword or backward (W, S) keys when they are winning or losing. Using the mouse directions rather than WASD would simply eliminate all the random and accidental movement. Just as it takes only a quick tap of a key to tell the character to swing in that direction, now it would only take a quick nudge of the mouse. Players might actually know what’s going on in a saber fight once there close to each other! Rather than constantly losing sight because of all their excessive and random movement.

 

Can you imagine if in the Mechwarrior games, if the torso always moved in the direction you told your feet to move, and they weren’t independent? Yuk!

___________________________________

Seanconnery:

Actually from a coding perspective (I don’t know a lot about windows yet...) I’m sure it isn’t much more complicated then binding a key. The mouse sends info, and if by the ratio of the horizontal/vertical data it can tell where the mouse is moving. I’m guessing all you would have to do is define which ratios are what, such as Up down, L/R, etc.

 

As for the community, if it could work the way I am imagining it, there’s no way I could see anybody disliking it. Especially the people that are hardcore saber users like me

[d4rth_b0b4]

i love that idea! i find myself trying to hit a guy to the left but press right when i press attack and it screws me over a lot! i just hope raven finds this info useful and patch it

 

d4rth

[grantnin]

No really, to reiterate ww1234's point:

 

PLAY DIE BY THE SWORD and you will no longer support this idea. It's a great idea in theory, but it just doesn't work.

 

However, it would be cool if you could bind your own custom moves to a key. The game's skeletal animation system would likely support this, and just as with DBTS you could use an external editor to ass about making moves.

[Tank_Comie4545]

you are a moron

[Sterling]

Can you imagine if in the Mechwarrior games, if the torso always moved in the direction you told your feet to move, and they weren’t independent? Yuk!

 

This isn't really a good analogy. A mech is a 50 ton big machine, that isn't supposed to be nible or agile. A jedi is a quick, agile human being who is supposed to be able to twist and turn and manuever around his opponent.

 

Torso twisting worked in mechwarrior because it basically took the place of strafing. It didn't really add to the number of directions you had to keep track of, it just changed one of them.

 

Adding two more axis would be overwhelming I think. How would you circle strafe with the system you suggest? Think about how hard it would be to use your system if you circle strafe around an opponent, then force jump over their head.

 

Sounds like a great idea, but keyboard/mouse has some limitations. I think we'd all need a third hand or arm to do this.

[Sterling]

Originally posted by Tank_Comie4545

you are a moron

 

That was a meaningful, deep contribution to the debate. Thanks for taking up some space on the server and making me use some extra bandwidth to read that reply.

 

[Zealot888]

I’ve never played die by the sword, but I’m sure you misunderstood some part of the idea, and we’re both talking about two different things. Imagine with me a moment. You character is standing still with his lightsaber drawn. You hold down mouse 1, and nothing happens. You then barely move your mouse to the right. All of a sudden your character does a horizontal attack to the right. The same saber attack as the strafe right +attack.

 

That’s it!

 

The other part of the idea is even if you moved the mouse with mouse1 down, nothing would happen until the enemy is in range.

 

Sterling

I was thinking about leaving the analogy out. The point of it was to express the necessity of having the leg/body movement independent from the torso movement. Can you imagine if the only way to look left in a mech was to move your mech legs left, hold a key(in JK2 case it would be attack), and your torso would then also move left? People would always have to be turning left just to move their torso left.

[MechDeus]

Alright, I posted this in the Patch thread up top, but I'll cut-n-paste to show those of you who haven't read it my idea on a new saber control scheme:

 

Enhancement: This deals with a new control scheme idea for the lightsaber.

 

Instead of having it rely on what arrow keys you use (extremely unwieldy, I prefer to move with direction keys and attack seperately), utilize the buttons more. Make Saber Throw a seperate fire function (perhaps under the Force Power selection that only works when the saber is drawn, though that would mean me binding another key to my setup ), and use two seperate attacks for Primary and Alternate attack buttons: Horizontal and Vertical. Coupling these in varying manners would produce combos, and giving a faster response would help immensly (back+attack for always doing the spin backwards twirl, and more quickly, would help fight circle-strafers a lot), and give a much larger feel of control to it all. The idea that was implemented was a good one, but was not very good in execution, too loose.

 

The switching between styles should have a faster effect as well. Instead of attacking, stopping, switching styles, attacking, etc, be able to switch styles in the middle of attacking, so that your next attack will be of a different speed (Before anyone says, "But you could drop a block with Heavy and attack with Speed immediately for quicker kills!" a down time from the heavy swing should be in place to help prevent that) and combo style. That will also lead to a better and larger selection of combos and attacking styles.

 

This is, of course, in addition to the suggestions of increasing the hit detection on the sabers, the clipping is far too heavy and frequent.

 

As another idea, perhaps have block as a seperate button as well (though this could hurt two-button mice users), but in return have more shots blockable (as well as better countering against blocked saber attacks), but perhaps narrow the cone of defense slightly, so one must still be aware of their attackers.

[Schwolop]

I know you'll all find this crazy but I've always used RMB as my walk forwards key and what you guys use as walkforwards is my jump. I haven't played much of the game yet, due to my girlfriend's requirement that I actually talk to her occasionally...... As a result I haven't tried any lightsaber fighting, but I think the current system is going to end up really unwieldy for me. Your system sounds workable but I think I'd have to see it in action and try it out.......

 

I really don't want to have to learn to play FPS's the "normal" way.......

[Zealot888]

Schwolop, you remind me of the people that don't want to learn how to use the mouse for FPS. RMB or whatever is terrible, I don't know how you do it. I'm tellen ya, it's worth the effort and frusteration to teach yourself WASD.

[Retro]

RMB = Right Mouse Button, I believe

[Zahriel Omega]

hmmmm there was a jurassic park game that used that exact control system but for swinging planks of wood, oddly. it was fun, novel, but gimmicky and kind of wrecked the game.

[panacea]

Remember that when you're swinging a sword-like object in real life, you've got a lot of degrees of freedom to worry about. You have a tilt that offsets your saber / sword from vertical: so 90 degrees of tilt possible until you're holding your saber horizontal. Then add in another 90 degrees until you're holding your saber vertical again (only now pointing down). You may think nobody would ever use a saber point straight down like that, but it would be quite useful for delivering a medieval-style death blow to an opponent lying on the ground.

 

So you basically have 180 degrees of inclination for the saber position. At any of these 180 degrees, you can move the saber forward, backwards, left, or right, and also change its inclination. That's a lot of movement options. I think ANY code, no matter how well-written, would be hard-pressed to duplicate this range of motion, because the input device (the mouse), being 2-d, is simply not up to the task.

 

I know you're not really suggesting a system that would perfectly simulate the choices of lightsword movement you would have in Real Life. I think the system you HAVE suggested would be a happy medium, and would be worth the time and effort of some mod team.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that, until we have a system that can simulate the full range of movement we have in real life, all swordfighting games will have to cut corners somewhere. JK2 is no exception. I fully agree that saber battles could be more precise, dramatic, and, well.....movie-like.....if we DID have a system that could accurately simulate real-life blade movements, but I don't think there's really any way to get there from here, given current technology.

 

And the bottom line really is that JK2 is close enough for me. If someone develops a mod that realizes this idea, yeah, I'll definitely try it, and if it's a significant improvement over the current scheme, I'll probably even prefer it over the current method. But if this idea never happens, I'll still have an insane amount of fun playing JK2 as it is now.

[InsaneD]

Great idea! Also, I have to slightly on the opposing side. I have also played Die By The Sword, and, while the "mousesword" idea was sweet as hell, it just didn´t work.

 

About the coding, I mean how hard it would be, I don´t know nothing about it.

 

But even if it didn´t work in DBTS, technology has improved. Isn´t DBTS something like four years old? So, in theory, it should be possible to make a working feature like this.