More footprints?


Oywin

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This is perhaps not a very exciting suggestion, but... can we get more frequent footsteps?

The strides these characters take are almost twice as long as you'd expect from reality. I feel like my character is almost floating or having long rubbery legs when moving because of the few footprints I leave behind. I play with a gamepad, and with it I tend to walk slower than max speed (for immersion), because max speed feels like a constant jog at least. But if I move slowly the distance between footsteps remain the same as at max walking speed, making it feel more like my character is moving in slow motion, rather than taking smaller steps. Sprinting increases the distance between footsteps, but that distance is just insane - it's like long jumps. I think if we could see our characters moving like this in third person you'd find it looking very unnatural.

So, basically I think walking and footsteps would feel more natural if distance between every footstep was reduced by like 50-40%.

And in case anyone misunderstands - I am not suggesting to increase or decrease the actual movement speed.

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@Oywin

The idea is not a bad one... but, I think some more context might be helpful to aid explaining why I think it is, the way it is:

  

On 2/18/2020 at 5:33 PM, Oywin said:

The strides these characters take are almost twice as long as you'd expect...

Currently the foot prints seem like they are a good sort of improvised "measuring tool."  I want to say (and perhaps I'm remembering this incorrectly but) each stride represents about a meter.  Sure that's a long distance for a step, but it's useful for gauging ranges... or for pace-counting.  It may also have been one of those little details used by the Hinterland at some point for troubleshooting or level design (kind of like what happens when we "drop" objects, how they always orient the same way with in a region).

 

On 2/18/2020 at 5:33 PM, Oywin said:

I feel like my character is almost floating...

Strictly speaking the character is "floating," in it's current form... "player presence" is represented by arms that occasionally hold things, that all... there is no more to the player's "body" than that right now.

 

On 2/18/2020 at 5:33 PM, Oywin said:

...as you'd expect from reality.

I'll defer to the source on this one...Raph mentioned something about this kind of thing before:

Quote

Wait wait -- please don't use "realism" as an argument for or against a game mechanic (or any tuning around it).
[some text removed for brevity]
We don't design for realism, and we don't use it as a metric to determine how something should or should not work in the game...

:coffee::fire:
All things considered, I just don't see how this one detail would be much of a bother to anyone...

Edited by ManicManiac
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Well, like I said it's not the most exciting suggestion, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm one of a very few who cares about it, but I'm still throwing it out here just in case.

Perhaps it's true that the current step distance is useful for gauging ranges, but... who does that? Or.. why? I've played this game for 400+ hours and never once felt the need to measure or count anything regarding distance or steps. Am I missing something? And I can't imagine how the current long strides have an impact on the troubleshooting and level design, but I know too little of this subject to tell, really. ^^
Also, I know that technically the player is actually floating and that there isn't an actual 3d model walking around. When I mentioned floating before, I meant that the long strides (combined with the very leveled camera) makes the presence feel very floaty - or, like I also said, that the player has long rubbery legs.
When it comes to the reality quote - I get his reply to that topic, as a game designer usually has to choose fun over realism. But my suggestion is not something that is very revolutionary or game changing, I think.

Again, this is a nitpicky suggestion, but also one I suspect wouldn't be too time consuming to change (but maybe I'm very wrong). I just think it would have a positive impact on the feeling of presence in the world.

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38 minutes ago, Oywin said:

who does that? Or.. why?

:D I was just making observations as to how or way they perhaps made it the way they did.  As to the rest, I was just trying to think of other possible uses it might have had.  I'm not on the Hinterland staff so of course I have no way of knowing for sure.

However I will admit, I have used the character's foot steps before:

First, I used foot steps when I was working at getting my skill at throwing stones up to snuff.  This way I was able to get good enough to achieve Stone Age Sniper back before Hinterland "retooled" the mechanic to be a little more "forgiving."  I also use this to be able to better gauge how to throw stones without "aiming in" so I could run off wolves without causing them to go into a charge when stalking me.

Second, I used it to help gauge the radius that charcoal would "clear" when used for mapping (I was trying to get more efficient with my charcoal use).
 

:coffee::fire::coffee:
Anyways, as I mentioned at the beginning of my last post... I don't think your idea is a bad one.  I was just trying to offer up some observations that I felt might communicate my thoughts as to why (perhaps) it was the way it was.

I don't think you are wrong on any particular point, nor do I think it would be a bad idea to cut the "stride" in half... the end result would still be the same... just that two paces would roughly equate to a meter instead of just one.

I didn't intend to sound dismissive of your observation... so, perhaps that was poor wording on my part.  I don't know.

Edited by ManicManiac
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If you use things like doors and vehicles to gauge the player height, you're only standing about 5' tall. I'm 6'7" and my strides are nearly 1 meter in length when moving comfortably, so there's no way the footprints should be 1 meter apart in game. Moving through snow doesn't leave clean, neat prints either. You should see trails of broken snow, not individual impressions. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/22/2020 at 9:54 PM, Silverhour said:

If you use things like doors and vehicles to gauge the player height, you're only standing about 5' tall. I'm 6'7" and my strides are nearly 1 meter in length when moving comfortably, so there's no way the footprints should be 1 meter apart in game. Moving through snow doesn't leave clean, neat prints either. You should see trails of broken snow, not individual impressions. 

That's a pretty good observation. :) And yeah, I'd love to see at least some variations in the "quality" of the footprint. A few could perhaps be clean, but most should have long streaks of broken snow behind them. To leave such clean footprints really requires a person to lift and plant their feet pretty elaborately. Well, I guess it depends a bit on the depth of the snow, but still.

Edited by Oywin
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