Game Development Community

Question about Tribes ( 1 )

by Bryan "daerid" Ross · in General Discussion · 01/15/2002 (11:14 pm) · 21 replies

I know a bunch of you guys were in on the development of SS Tribes, and I was wondering, in all realities, what the possibility would be of Sierra releasing the source to that engine.

Mainly ( as if you couldn't guess ), what I'm interested in is the motion/physics code.

As far as I'm concerned, if I could get my hands on that code, my life would be complete.
NextNext Thread
PrevPrevious Thread
More from General Discussion
Page«First 1 2 Next»

Torque Owner David Dougher
Pariah Games
#21
03/07/2002 (7:47 pm)
While you are correct that the Torque engine lacks the directional control that can be applied in the Quake engine this is not a concession to realism, it is a Tribes 2 design decision that is now a torque flaw. When a character jumps in the torque engine it jumps with a maximum force applied to the jump. In T2 the jet pack provided a compensation mechanism for flight, you could control speed, direction and, in practical terms make a "short hop" or a "grand leap." With the jet pack code removed every jump is a grand leap.

In engines like Quake there is no way to simulate a short hop - the amount of force a person might apply to jumping forward to the next stone in the middle of the stream as opposed to trying to leap the river. Due to the high speed nature of the combat there is no opportunity to stop and accumulate the energy for a jump, as is done in engines like Asheron's Call. Instead, the mechanism is reversed. You jump full power but you retain a measure of control to enable you to control the jump after it is initiated. The amount of control in flight is severely limited but necessary.

Try the following experiment. Walk over to a step that is just about knee high for your character. Stop and jump up onto the step. In torque you can't do it. The standing jump animation will make you jump straight up and straight back down. In Quake you can jump up tap the forward key and move just enough forward that you will land on top of the stair. Now which is more realistic? That I can't jump forward from a standing position onto an object which is only two feet high?

For Quake, being able to move after you jump (in a limited fashion) was a compensation for the fact that you couldn't control the initial force of the jump.
In Tribes 2 the compensation was the jet pack. In torque, with the jet pack code removed there is no compensation.

So, some people are looking into ways to put in the Quake solution in order to maintain the high speed pace of the FPS engine.

The other solution would be to "accumulate" energy for the jump like Asheron's Call. But just like the Tribes 2 solution it has a limited usefulness and is suitable only to certain types of games.
Page«First 1 2 Next»