Blogs Thoughts on Jumping

t may seem an odd subject to focus on, as jumping doesn't seem to be very important on the face of it – cut it out of a game, though, and it can make a huge difference. Games in which players can’t jump, or at the very least dodge or roll, can seem painfully slow, dull and static. Games in which players can jump around and use that movement to interact with the environment can seem immeasurably more fun because of it....

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/gaming/2011/05/15/thoughts-on-jumping/

 

The 'roll' feature in Ocarina of Time springs to mind too

Now you've got me wondernig whether bunny hopping and circle jumping were intended features of the source engine, or whether they were merely side effects that it is now too late to remove...

 

Some years ago when I was playing CSS on a daily basis, I assigned my Logitech Formula Force GT racing wheel pedals to issue keyboard jump and crouch key presses. I played it that way for a long time. It felt more natural using my feet to control these actions and it was great to free my fingers from carrying out these chores.

 

Jumping that is excessively realistic (e.g. no in-air course correction) is also very unpleasant. It's hard to transmit physical agility via precise input, especially when that input is frequently binary, on-off (particularly with PC keyboard input). A game might require a whole range of different jump distances, from one platform to the another, but trying to do encode the whole range of jumps in a single control is troublesome, even if it's a analogue control. Instead, we turn analogue fine tuning into binary timing, and the intent of the gamer is translated much better.

 

It's definitely to do with varying player speed, or more precisely giving players the choice about how they can move about the environment.

It doesn't have to be jumping, you just need to feel you have the ability to react in a way other than a standard forwards motion.

You can't jump in Doom for instance, but the game's so fast and slippery it doesn't matter. You can't in Mass Effect either, but there's cover and sprint options to make up for it. Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to react to a game event in a certain way and finding you can't because of restrictions on your movement options.

 

FelixTech - bunny hopping / circle jumping are artefacts that Source inherited from Quake (which also has those two), which in turn inherited their root from Doom (which has a movement bug, wall-running (strafing into the wall while running along side it), that at least Quake also has). John Carmack wrote about it many moons ago; they were fine tuning the movement logic for Doom, and there was just something right about the way it worked, and it carried over into Quake; unfortunately, it had edge cases about how it conserves momentum through angle changes and only momentary floor contact.

 

The documentation on wall-running shows it to have a speed benefit of up to 40%, which would imply that it probably has something to do with the squaring of the movement vector circle. Normally, when you give input to a character, you can choose some combination of forward/backward and strafe left/right inputs. If your maximum speed is S, then forward should give you S forward, while strafe should give you S to the side; but using both simultaneously should only give you S along a diagonal (so the components of the fore/back and left/right vectors, at maximum speeds, describe a circle). But wall running, bunny hopping and circle jumping interfere with how the Doom and descendant engines calculate that maximum, and you end up with a square formed from the vectors, not a circle; i.e. you can get up to sqrt(S^2 + S^2) = sqrt(2*S^2) = sqrt(2)*S = 1.414*S, i.e. approximately 41% speedup. Combine that with a bug in not losing enough speed when touching the floor momentarily while jumping, and you end up with the bug.

 

The Gears of War run-jump-roll is a great past-time same can be said for Unreal Tournament double leap. Games that let the player interact with the obstacles on-the-go without loosing much speed are the best, like a perfect timed Mirrors edge rund.

However those oposite that slows you down on whatever speedbump, like Battlefield 2 and Stalker amongst athers is intolerable (still play them though). The jumping in Battlefield 2 and sometimes Bad company 2 is one of the worst in gaming

Anyone still play climb-maps from CS 1.6?

 

and what would happen if you wouldn't be able to jump in wow? i think it would result in the immediate death of the mmo

 

I don't jump for reason. I only jump when the game expects me to, or to get to high ground during a firefight. Seems mildly pointless to do it otherwise, and kind of ruins immersion.

 

I guess it depends on game, but i like to jump. Makes it more real life, image if you couldn't jump in real life when running around..

 

I remember playing multiplayer matches on goldeneye on the N64 that imo were faster/better and more awesome than any other game ive played and iirc you couldnt jump in that.

 

Strange, I've just begun Painkiller and only move by jumping, it feels much more dynamic indeed.

 

Of course not! There are climb maps in CSS for a reason

Part of it probably comes from the fact that moving generally requires holding a button rather than pressing it, so whether it's the W key or forward on an analogue stick the gamer is not doing anything at all while they move from A to B. If you designed a game so that players had to press the W key each time they took a step forward, we probably wouldn't have the spare time to be jumping

 

Two words:

Ninja Gaiden

 

Stating the obvious... but, with FPS games, you could have the best game ever, graphically speaking, but it you fail to get the movement right (incl,jumping). The game could well bomb. No one wants a pretty game where you move like a brick .

Just look at how much people argued about the dodge jump distance when Epic changed it and removed the cool UT2004 double wall dodge jump ability. That totally changed the feel of the game, in place, a more weighted , less floaty feel for UT3. It annoyed the hell out of those that favoured continuity..

 

Battlefield 2 would be greatly improved if bunny hopping was removed and replaced with Red Orchestra's way of jumping.

 

Mass Effect had no jumping, but it didn't feel static.

 

ME did have the sprint + slide to cover thing though, which was cool

 

I should load up quake 2 and make a video on what jumping is really all about..

cs inherited the circle jumping from the quake 2 engine- it's why you could bunny hop and end up in the hall on dust before anyone else.. if you've never experienced double, strafe, and circle jumping before- you've missed out on something in gaming that was great (probably never see again with consoles as big as they are)

jumping across all 3 boxes in the mega room of dm1.. and when mastered you could do this backwards came naturally after a while.. but in a duel it allowed you to get at those resources a whole lot quicker than a guy who was flat footed and jumping up each box

the mega itself was'nt reachable without a rocket jump.. but with circle jumping it was possible to get there without damage

there was many different ways to do it.. that was what was so great- peeps were always finding new ways to shortcut through the maps.. in the end they took out some of the coolness in quake 3 because thresh decided he didn't like it

heck he didn't even like footsteps.. then the guy disappeared as newer players could kick his ass (and he went tony hawk) and started firing squad.. heard he sells insurance now legend my ass