As an advocate for the jump community I have a quite a few thoughts on this concept. Sorry for the wall of text in advance.
Also, for this post I am going to use the term "Tether" rather than grapple or whip. See my next post just below this one as to why I think this is a much better name than grapple or whip.
1) I think that the tether mechanism should be available at any time to any player. No secondary weapon, no weapon attachment, no pickup, and DEFINITELY not a power up. I think that UrT has always been a game that at its core is all about allowing every player to have access to every part of the movement mechanics and physics. Yes those movement mechanics take skill, and many new players are at a disadvantage against players who have really practiced circle jumping and wall jumping, but new players still have access to those movement mechanics and the ability to learn how to use them. No players are at a disadvantage when it comes to movement, and I think that if this concept is to be successful we MUST find a way to make it available everywhere to everyone.
2) If this were to be implemented there MUST be a cvar to disable it, or even better (or in addition to the cvar):
3) The map maker should be able to determine what mesh can and cannot be "tetherable" (I like making up words). I think a server cvar that allows players to tether to anything would maybe be fun for some servers, but in a jump map scenario, having that would be a jump mapper's worst nightmare. Being unable to control what a player can and cant do on a jump is critical to make your jump fun and challenging. Many existing jumps would become useless since a player might just be able to tether over the platforms or around corners that required wall jumping skills. While "Giving the player the freedom to do the jump however they want" is a nice thought, it ends up forcing us map makers to find ways to limit the way players can complete a jump, so that the jump can actually be challenging.
Under this also comes to a point that i'm sure a few Frozen Sand members can relate to, and that is uniformity and design themes. If it is up to the map maker to decide what meshes can be tethered to and what meshes can't, there is the possibility that map makers will make it super confusing what objects are tetherable and which objects arent. In a game where a large amount of custom maps are made, it can be hard to enforce a uniform design that requires all tetherable objects to look a certain way, or have a certain texture applied to them, or to have some sort of indicator that informs the players that the object can be tethered to.
However, overall I think it is more important to allow map makers/designers to choose what is and is not a tetherable, and allow the community to decide if the map is too confusing. If maps are confusing to play, then most people end up not playing them. Leave the burden of the play-ability of a map on the map maker and not on FS. However, I think a general convention within ALL FS maps and freely released textures/models that follow those internal conventions would be very helpful for map makers and make following the convention much easier for 3rd party map makers.
4) I am 100% in the "Whip" concept camp. I think using a tether to swing underneath or around objects is the best possible implementation. If the player was able to change the length of the tether while they swing, it could have drastic effects to the physics. If you were to "Reel in" while you were swinging, it would multiply your acceleration and allow the you to gain a huge amount of speed in the process of a swing, depending on how fast the you could reel in.
implementing the "Grappling hook" style would allow a player to grapple to a ledge that they cant jump up to, or pull themselves into the air which I think is somehow outside the "feel" of the urban terror physics. Yes the physics are wonky and weird with the circle jumping and wall jumping and crouch sliding, however they all are much more centered on lateral movement and giving the players ways to cross large gaps and cross open spaces quickly. I think having a grappling hook that you could cast out and then use to pull yourself forward or sideways or upward is somehow much more rigid and out of character with the very fluid and smooth feel that circle jumping and circle running have. Letting players tether to objects and swing around those objects seems much more fluid and much more in line with the existing physics.
5) If this were to be used AT ALL in the jump scene, there would need to be skill related to using the tether. I see 2 or 3 basic places where skill could become a factor in using the tether.
A) Aiming the tether
There are 2 ways that the tether could be implemented. The "Easy" route would have an "Auto tether" system where the tether would attach to the tetherable object that is closest to the crosshair and within range of the player, as soon as the tether key was pressed. This would make tethering to objects easy and intuitive and not require much skill. Just aim in the general direction of a tetherable object and it will tether, as long as it is within range. With this method comes the downside of requiring single point objects that are the tether targets, and does not allow a large object to be a tetherable object, where a player can tether to any point they aim at on that object. In order to achieve this, an array of target points would need to be placed all over the large tetherable object and then the auto targeting system would choose the one point that is closest to the player's crosshairs.
The other possible method is to require the player to actually aim at the intended target and refuse to tether if the player's crosshair is not directly over a tetherable object within range. This requires an aiming skill that is not usually associated with movement tasks and in jump maps could be used to make the targets smaller and harder to hit. In addition to making smaller targets, you could also make much bigger targets where a player will tether to the target wherever the crosshair is aimed. This could allow players to adjust their trajectory by changing where on a surface they aim their tether, and would not require a point array or some other overly complex system that map makers would have to follow to create large tetherable objects.
B) Swing physics
Another available place to require skill is allowing for the user to gain height and distance on a swing based on player input. Adding the tether would be novel in jump maps for about a month, but without the ability for players to fail at it, it just becomes a gimmick with no real challenge. Adding a way for players to adjust their swing height and distance is a way to make it more difficult to land exactly where you want. This could be something as simple as a key that releases the tether and thus depending on where in your swing you released it, you will end up with a different trajectory.
Another method for altering the physics would be to enable the forward and backward keys to alter the players CG (Center of Gravity) in mid swing. Imagine how you gain height on a playground swing. If you lean back at the start of your swing, and then move your CG forward at the bottom of your swing, you can get much more height than if your body position stayed static throughout the swing. Similarly, you could allow players to give their swing more power by letting them adjust their CG using their forward and backward keys.
C) In Air Movement.
Now in real life, once your feet have left the ground and you start swinging on a rope, your trajectory is basically set, besides being able to adjust your CG and put more power into your swing. However in UrT, you are able to use circle running to not only gain speed while in the air, but also to curve your trajectory while in the air, so standard physics does not always hold true in the UrT Universe. It could be possible that pressing the strafe keys while swinging on a tether would allow a player to strafe slightly while in mid swing.
There is also the posibility of using circle running during your swing to adjust the lateral angle of your swing in relation to the pivot point. This would (I assume) end up feeling very much like pumping a halfpipe in an icy jump map, only with the added complexity of being attached to a point with a fixed distance between you and that central point. This could be extremely fun to exploit on icy maps and bring a whole new complexity and fun to the genre.
6) I mentioned this in item C above, but one thing that would need to be ironed out is how circle running affects the trajectory of a swing when grappling. I'm not sure if circle running should affect the swing, however it does affect every other aspect of the physics so it would be strange to not be able to use it to at least slightly alter the trajectory of the swing.
7) I think lateral tethers should totally be allowed. For example if a tetherable object is placed at the inside corner of a 90 degree turn, I think that the player should be able to tether to that object as they circle jump toward the turn and then use that tether to swing around the corner (like "Cracking the whip" on water skis), making their circle jump much tighter, and accelerating them in the process. This could allow for some very interesting movement and would also make players much harder to track as a consequence. Giving players another way to be hard to hit can very much up the excitement and even allow for a slightly lower ttk than is currently the norm.
8) Lastly, I think that there should be a limit of consecutive tethers before touching the ground. Like wall jumping, this tethering could end up with players doing nothing but tethering themselves through uptown like spider man. While this would be cool and probably very difficult to pull off, I think having a limit of 1 or 3 consecutive tethers might be more reasonable, or maybe the tether device has a charging mechanism that charges over time, and is depleted depending on how long your tether is attached. Actually now that I think about it, the charging thing is probably the better idea. This way a player could do a bunch of short tethers or stay tethered for a slightly longer period of time for a long large swing, therefore giving the player more freedom and flexibility with the tether, but also limiting it and making the tether charge a valuable resource that the player needs to keep an eye on, like stamina.
Overall I think this add a whole new level of skill and complexity to the movement physics of UrT. On one hand that is super exciting and I can already see how icy jumps could be made so much crazier and wild with the addition of this mechanic. I can also see that it would introduce yet another barrier for new players and another thing that they would have to learn in order to become good at this game. I think that could be both a good and a bad thing.
Mostly I think this tether concept is an amazing idea with great potential, however the method in which it is implemented is critical. I think the key is not allowing a player to reel in or out on their tether once they have tethered to an object.
This post has been edited by KroniK: 28 October 2016 - 06:18 AM
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