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I feel like you could probably realistically represent "people don't just walk into walls" by having invisible walls around everything, at a sensible offset, an

I feel like you could probably realistically represent "people don't just walk into walls" by having invisible walls around everything, at a sensible offset, and do some other tweaking - if I guide a character down a corridor at a weird angle, they should just sort of casually turn to mostly align with the direction of the corridor. There are probably many, many special cases that need to be exceptions to this and figuring out the Right Thing to do in each of them may be an insanely complex task. I seem to recall the game "Bound", where you guided a low-poly ballerina through fairly abstract levels, had a really nice solution to "people don't bash into walls": if you tried to guide your character into a wall, she'd just start doing some stretches against it, which feels pretty accurate given how I tend to behave when I'm attending dance classes regularly. :) Other characters might do different things; a mopey teen might slouch against the wall, a gun-haver might press against it and peer to the side, looking for cover, etc. Obvious reasons not to do this start with "oh great, one more thing to add to the character state machine and debug" and "oh great, a few more animations to fit into the budget". Maybe also "it stops feeling like you're controlling the character". Someone whose day job is video games probably has at least a dozen more reasons, possibly even stories from when they tried it and abandoned it.

omgketchup 5y ago
https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?t=674 https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?t=674 It's definitely possible to "not bash into walls" You don't always need to have bespoke animations- sometimes keyframes and realistic constraints can get you there. I think Unity is working on a framework for natural human animation.
- dognotdog 5y ago
  > https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?t=674 https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?t=674 David Rosen pulled off quite a few little masterpieces -- his gamedev competition entries always had fantastically unique aspects. I cannot believe "Black Shades" was almost 20 years ago! (I have no affiliation, but I am glad to see https://www.wolfire.com/games https://www.wolfire.com/games is still alive and kicking!) Lugaru and later Overgrowth have been the outcomes of what can only be called a decades long obsession with getting the player controls just right, allowing very natural and responsive control and movement, through creating emergent behaviors from first principles, resulting in a rich and natural interaction with the environment (and other characters, see the fighting mojo), in contrast to the many, many AAA titles that just constantly break the immersion through unnatural, jarring behaviors and frustrating limitations.
- MayeulC 5y ago
  Overgrowth was such an enticing game to play. It didn't have AAA graphics, but its physics were so much more realistic than the games I'm used to that I was sucked in, and it left a strong impression on me. I wish more games were doing procedural animation, and physics-based damage.
XorNot 5y ago
This is a fundamental gameplay issue to some extent though: you always wind up making a trade off between responding to the player and maintaining animation fidelity, and since controllers aren't a human body with a nervous system you're connected to, it's always going to be a problem. It's significant too: nothing frustrates players quicker then controls feeling "unresponsive" by doing something that's different to what they instructed.
- mmis1000 5y ago
  > nothing frustrates players quicker then controls feeling "unresponsive" by doing something that's different to what they instructed. Which is what some game does fundamentally bad. When using skills in some game. Your action got locked completely and won't respond to your request until animation finishes. (And when the mob hit you in the middle, you can't do anything because animation is playing.) But some games makes more efforts into these and allow you to transition to another action in the middle of one, blend them seamlessly or even play them at same time. That makes the game feels much more responsiveness and enjoyable. Feels you are actually moving your body instead a online character with high action latency.

omgketchup 5y ago

https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?t=674 https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?t=674 It's definitely possible to "not bash into walls" You don't always need to have bespoke animations- sometimes keyframes and realistic constraints can get you there. I think Unity is working on a framework for natural human animation.

dognotdog 5y ago
> https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?t=674 https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?t=674 David Rosen pulled off quite a few little masterpieces -- his gamedev competition entries always had fantastically unique aspects. I cannot believe "Black Shades" was almost 20 years ago! (I have no affiliation, but I am glad to see https://www.wolfire.com/games https://www.wolfire.com/games is still alive and kicking!) Lugaru and later Overgrowth have been the outcomes of what can only be called a decades long obsession with getting the player controls just right, allowing very natural and responsive control and movement, through creating emergent behaviors from first principles, resulting in a rich and natural interaction with the environment (and other characters, see the fighting mojo), in contrast to the many, many AAA titles that just constantly break the immersion through unnatural, jarring behaviors and frustrating limitations.
MayeulC 5y ago
Overgrowth was such an enticing game to play. It didn't have AAA graphics, but its physics were so much more realistic than the games I'm used to that I was sucked in, and it left a strong impression on me. I wish more games were doing procedural animation, and physics-based damage.

XorNot 5y ago

This is a fundamental gameplay issue to some extent though: you always wind up making a trade off between responding to the player and maintaining animation fidelity, and since controllers aren't a human body with a nervous system you're connected to, it's always going to be a problem. It's significant too: nothing frustrates players quicker then controls feeling "unresponsive" by doing something that's different to what they instructed.

mmis1000 5y ago
> nothing frustrates players quicker then controls feeling "unresponsive" by doing something that's different to what they instructed. Which is what some game does fundamentally bad. When using skills in some game. Your action got locked completely and won't respond to your request until animation finishes. (And when the mob hit you in the middle, you can't do anything because animation is playing.) But some games makes more efforts into these and allow you to transition to another action in the middle of one, blend them seamlessly or even play them at same time. That makes the game feels much more responsiveness and enjoyable. Feels you are actually moving your body instead a online character with high action latency.