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>sword collisions are genuinely computationally complex Have you played Dark souls and or Sekiro? I've always been a little curious how FROM accomplishes such

>sword collisions are genuinely computationally complex Have you played Dark souls and or Sekiro? I've always been a little curious how FROM accomplishes such a great experience with melee weapons. Also a shout out to Mordhau for similar reasons but with LOTs more people to worry about in a server.

CoolGuySteve 7y ago
I haven't played Sekiro but Dark Souls doesn't really model swords colliding at all. It just plays the animation and allows for the occasional interrupt, like when your sword hand is too near a wall. Your sword slices straight through the enemies and plays a sound effect depending on the hit. But one of the reasons Dark Souls and Demon's Souls feel 'tough but fair' is that the animations are very explicit and mostly uninterruptible by the player. It meant if you made a mistake, it was probably your fault and not the animation or game logic. Demon's Souls actually looked kind of cheap and had janky transitions at the time because of it but the games since then have been getting better at animating transitions between moves. The animation-above-all-else style also leads to some silly interactions with the Havoc physics engine. For example, when you kick through a dead body the rag doll physics accelerate at the speed of the animated player leg causing it to look weightless and kind of ridiculous.
- gunshai 7y ago
  >Dark Souls doesn't really model swords colliding at all. This is a good point, the only collisions are what you said and animations for parry windows. And yes the rag doll physics in DS games is pretty silly. Have you checked out Mordhau at all? Because that is probably more of the collisions/interactions you were initially referring to.
- jayd16 7y ago
  >Dark Souls doesn't really model swords colliding at all. Does this really make a difference? There's nothing fundamentally different about sword to sword vs sword to body is there? The anim set makes hits look good even though the impact is not physically calculated for collision angles and impact velocity and such. Perhaps you mean model in this way? Even still, the game has to at least do a hit detection on a deforming hitbox. Do you happen to know how From accomplishes their hitbox animation and collision detection?
  - nine_k 7y ago
    A lot of difference. Real swords slide, slow down to a stop, jump back, get stuck, and variously swivel and yaw in your hands as they meet obstacles. This is rather expensive to physically model, even harder to nicely animate, and nigh impossible to map to the keyboard and mouse controller combo.
    - CoolGuySteve 7y ago
      The game itself would also probably become less predictable and less fun as a consequence. There was a cool talk called "Phase-Functioned Neural Network for Character Control" that used a neural network to join animations together based on user input: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0Gilv5wvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0Gilv5wvY Something like this where the gameplay outcomes smoothly animate realistic swordplay might be pretty fun. Edit: For anyone wondering what truly accurate physics might do to gameplay, the Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is free on the Epic Game Store for Dec 26: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/totally-accurate-battle-simulator/home?sessionInvalidated=true#/purchase/content-control?_k=rk348r https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/totally-accura...
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      It doesn't make sense to me that it would be expensive to model. It's just four line segments. The math seems like it would be preposterously difficult. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Seems like a very serious algebra problem. But once you solve the equations I can't imagine it's more than a few matrix operations each frame. But it's entirely possible I'm missing something that makes it unsolvable without discrete math that pushes it into the computationally costly realm.

CoolGuySteve 7y ago

I haven't played Sekiro but Dark Souls doesn't really model swords colliding at all. It just plays the animation and allows for the occasional interrupt, like when your sword hand is too near a wall. Your sword slices straight through the enemies and plays a sound effect depending on the hit. But one of the reasons Dark Souls and Demon's Souls feel 'tough but fair' is that the animations are very explicit and mostly uninterruptible by the player. It meant if you made a mistake, it was probably your fault and not the animation or game logic. Demon's Souls actually looked kind of cheap and had janky transitions at the time because of it but the games since then have been getting better at animating transitions between moves. The animation-above-all-else style also leads to some silly interactions with the Havoc physics engine. For example, when you kick through a dead body the rag doll physics accelerate at the speed of the animated player leg causing it to look weightless and kind of ridiculous.

gunshai 7y ago
>Dark Souls doesn't really model swords colliding at all. This is a good point, the only collisions are what you said and animations for parry windows. And yes the rag doll physics in DS games is pretty silly. Have you checked out Mordhau at all? Because that is probably more of the collisions/interactions you were initially referring to.
jayd16 7y ago
>Dark Souls doesn't really model swords colliding at all. Does this really make a difference? There's nothing fundamentally different about sword to sword vs sword to body is there? The anim set makes hits look good even though the impact is not physically calculated for collision angles and impact velocity and such. Perhaps you mean model in this way? Even still, the game has to at least do a hit detection on a deforming hitbox. Do you happen to know how From accomplishes their hitbox animation and collision detection?
- nine_k 7y ago
  A lot of difference. Real swords slide, slow down to a stop, jump back, get stuck, and variously swivel and yaw in your hands as they meet obstacles. This is rather expensive to physically model, even harder to nicely animate, and nigh impossible to map to the keyboard and mouse controller combo.
  - CoolGuySteve 7y ago
    The game itself would also probably become less predictable and less fun as a consequence. There was a cool talk called "Phase-Functioned Neural Network for Character Control" that used a neural network to join animations together based on user input: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0Gilv5wvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0Gilv5wvY Something like this where the gameplay outcomes smoothly animate realistic swordplay might be pretty fun. Edit: For anyone wondering what truly accurate physics might do to gameplay, the Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is free on the Epic Game Store for Dec 26: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/totally-accurate-battle-simulator/home?sessionInvalidated=true#/purchase/content-control?_k=rk348r https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/totally-accura...
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    It doesn't make sense to me that it would be expensive to model. It's just four line segments. The math seems like it would be preposterously difficult. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Seems like a very serious algebra problem. But once you solve the equations I can't imagine it's more than a few matrix operations each frame. But it's entirely possible I'm missing something that makes it unsolvable without discrete math that pushes it into the computationally costly realm.