Realistic animation? About time...

The next Indiana Jones game will feature the Euphoria engine. A mechanic that handles physical reactions to impacts and momentum as they happen instead of relying on pre-scripted events. In effect this means the characters will reel from blows based on impact force and mass instead of a standard animation.

Read this:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/702/702423p1.html

The first thing in my mind was: why a platform/puzzle action game like this? Haven't fighters been trying to emulate these kind of things for years. Maybe its a financial issue or something, ah well...

I'm looking forward to some actual features of the way it looks in the end. The end of this year might herald a new era for fighting games as a whole...

Or maybe I'm just dreaming...

In any case, I needed to point this one out.

ps. Of course a mechanic like this in a fighting game would completely destroy the almost mathematical precision we VF-ers seem to appreciate and create a more reflexes and variables insight based game. And it seems Tekken's right/left controls will be a more natural choice as a control for these kinds of models. Adapting a fighting game unto Euphoria must be one hell of a generation scripting job now that I think of it... (that's the programmer bit in me talking.)

 

im not sure what you're talking about, and how this applies to fighting games. Other than point of impact animation being different, i dont see how this caters towards tekken over VF. If anything it caters more towards VF since i dont know why half the things that launch in Tekken actually launches in physics. (IE bryan fury bounce combos).

Then again animations are animations and a game is a game, everything is catered towards a programmers will.
I can see this being a good tool for creating real time movie sequences, but once again i dont how itll affect real time gameplay that much.

 

Well, fighting games have always been at the forefront of creating the most realistic human models and reactions. A lot of liberties are taken with actual physics of course, but as far as a controllable realistic human model goes you can't get past T and VF.

But so far all fighting games involve two dummies punching away at each other. Complex and glorious dummies but plastic things none the less. The variables in hits, counter hits, light counters, stance based interrupts and such, have become more complex but we've yet to see a game that shows a guy getting hit in the face actually growing a black eye, well, not very realistically anyway (MK has such a mechanic in a basic way). There are distinctions based on weight but Jeffry's blows don't do more damage to pai then they do to wolf, which they actually should based on mass, force and impact, at least the pushback should be drastically different.

In VF falling animations are prescripted, in the case of dodges being caught by a full circle sweep you simply flop over just the same as if it hit dead front. While actually you should tumble over the leg in the direction you were moving. One should be able to stick out his hands and scramble upward, the speed of which depends on your input, but no, we have a single catchall animation of a single insta-rise.

Animations between attacks would become more of a factor, besides the amount of time it takes to pull your arm back because you can simply order in another move while recovering from the next, and if you input too many your character will simply start acting clumsy and weak, tossing faint little slaps and sweeps. While if you wait for your feet to get into a proper stance before attacking again your character can lash out with full force. This would certainly switch up the opportunity/counter/mixup game in a major way. And who knows what amount of complexity comes up when you add an actual moveset into the equation, including grabs and reversals. A low leftfooted kick is an entirely different affair depending on where your target is and where he's going.

Also an actual ground game would become an interesting affair with you being able to determine a direction of escape while the enemy is desperately trying to keep you pinned and chuck in a few blows. Depending on how you define the inputs in the game your thumbs could get sore pretty quick there.

Like I said, maybe I'm seeing too much and dreaming along in my merry little way. But hey, its supposed to be the next generation isn't it. Its time fighting games pulled out a true innovation again...

As for my Tekken beingmore fitted, I was merely talking about the control scheme. You could also opt for VF with forward P being an attack with the forward arm and back P being one with the back hand. Quarter circles become spinning punches and kicks. Now that I'm working this out more in my brain I think we'll have to step back to a 2d fighter approach with certain combinations being exceptional moves while anything else is merely standard attacks only based on your current stance and your opponents location.

Let's pull out an example. A fighter in such a game would never go through with a full swing if the opponent evaded it, he would try to adjust or redirect. Stuff like that can be scripted in based on location and potential for hit you've got left. Move cancelling would become prevalent as well, with every move being retractable. Guarding in this instance would become something to mind as well, since you can only withdraw you arms back to block so fast. If you throw a right punch your right side opens up, if your opponent can step into the gap and throw his left into the hole no amount of pressing guard is going to help you, maybe you can deflect a little bit with a cross block from your left though, or try to circle to the left as well and try to avoid the blow all together. Characters themselves will become balances of weight, arm/leg/movement-speed, arm/leg-length and a couple signature moves that they pull out a tad quicker than others or something.

In all, I'm talking about creating a fighting game that's as realistic as possible. And you need a mechanic such as Euphoria to pull it off right.

Once again, I might be dreaming, but I didn't pick up writing fiction as a hobby for nothing, eh? I've got this huge vision swirling through my mind and frankly I'm wondering who else can see it.

 

So, some sort of unholy cross between Fight Night and Rag Doll Kung Fu.

Endorphin would be fine for more realistic transition animations from one canned animation to another, but those terminal states need to be there, be consistent, and be timely for it to work in a fighting game as we know it.