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JToeps

imo the best in class here is still Titanfall 2 and Metroid Prime check them out they both did a great job at this. (Mirror's Edge is great too, but it's more focused on the platforming)


Ransnorkel

DOOM 2016 and Eternal have great platforming because you can grab ledges and immediately climb up them


Strict_Bench_6264

One of the often overlooked things in first-person design is that you have no actual depth perception on a flat screen, and that you have no actual body awareness (e.g., knowing when you reach a ledge with your feet). This means that you can't intuitively judge distances the same way you can in reality (or, actually, in VR to an extent). This is what may make it relevant to have various kinds of "close enough"-features that helps the game interpret the player's intention. **Coyote Time** is one such feature, where you can still initiate a jump for a few frames after stepping off solid ground. It's a great feature to use, particularly in platforming where the player is otherwise forced into trying to figure out how to time your controls rather than their jumps. **Ledge Grabbing** is another such feature, where your jump actually fell *just* short of reaching where you wanted to go. In many games, you'd simply fall down and have to try again, but with ledge grabbing you close the last small distance with an animation instead and you are allowed to continue as you intended. I've written fairly extensively about 3Cs design (Controls, Camera, Character) in first-person games, if you are interested: [https://playtank.io/2023/06/11/first-person-3cs-controls/](https://playtank.io/2023/06/11/first-person-3cs-controls/) [https://playtank.io/2023/05/12/first-person-3cs-camera/](https://playtank.io/2023/05/12/first-person-3cs-camera/) [https://playtank.io/2023/07/12/first-person-3cs-character/](https://playtank.io/2023/07/12/first-person-3cs-character/)


mythiii

You have practically no depth perception in real life, it explains why some illusions work on us at all, we need to see something familiar, like a recognizable type of tree, roads, buildings, paths -- recognizable objects in general -- to gauge distance, so altering the size of that recognizable object makes us think it is closer or further than it really is. Using standardized sets of objects as and around platforms is how you make the distance gauge-able.


Strict_Bench_6264

We have pretty amazing depth perception in real life. Being able to judge something like how to pour something from a bottle into a glass, or how far to move your hand to push open a door, is only partly learned and partly down to depth perception and body awareness. At least *most* people do. But the combination of depth perception and body awareness in real life, and the lack of it in first-person games, means that there are certain situations we can never really solve for. For first-person platforming, this simply means we need to consider it more carefully. In many games, any height you can't jump is therefore exaggerated so you never even consider it. (Dishonored does this quite well.)


mythiii

I might have been under a misconception about how powerful our stereopsis is, but it seems like you are ignoring the fact that we have depth perception with just one eye open. One eyed depth perception necessarily relies on the things I mentioned earlier, and is largely equal to looking at a flat monitor. It is much more susceptible to illusions of scale, but it works just fine for pouring something, grabbing a door handle etc.


Strict_Bench_6264

Speaking as someone with friends who don't have depth perception due to one-eyed eyesight, this is actually not true. One friend, for example, "clinks" any bottle against a glass to first make sure that the pour will actually hit the glass. My partner also lacks depth perception (because of a lazy eye), and there are constant little mundane interactions that are affected by this. Things that make you seem "clumsy" compared to people who have this depth perception. But in first-person games, body awareness might actually be even more of an issue. In real life, if I bump into something like a low table, I'll feel it. And the combination of depth and awareness means I can take a look around, back up towards something, and not hurt myself because I went at it too fast. In first-person games, we've all probably fallen off a platform, got stuck in geometry, or otherwise interacted in ways we'd never do in real life because of these two things missing.


mythiii

I've known a person with partial vison. He managed to work as a butcher. I'm not saying it doesn't make you more clumsy, but you still seem insistent on there being no depth perception with one eye closed, so I went and got water with one eye closed and it took no-more time than usual, leaving me unconvinced of your hypothesis. Edit: I did the cup of water thing again, but I did it while crouching down to the level of the water tap, it became impossible to estimate the depth accurately and half of the stream missed my cup. What this didn't prove though, is that I didn't have some depth perception between me, the water tap, the wall behind the sink, etc. I thought I'd just mention this in case you thought there was something from your message I wasn't comprehending.


Strict_Bench_6264

The issues in a game go much farther than just a lack of depth perception, as I said. In the physical world, thanks to many other factors, you can \*learn\* to adapt to a lack of depth perception. In a first-person game, this is akin to having to learn the content. Things like how high cover is, which things you can vault over, how far away you can trigger an assassination move, etc. Good game design goes a very long way here, but many games simply sidestep this issue by either adding "close enough" features like I mentioned before, or simply compensating for the distances behind the scenes. For example by teleporting you or moving you quickly to the point of intersection when you make a melee attack. I've worked with FPS games for a considerable part of my career, so this isn't really just hypothesis, it's pretty well demonstrated. But also more nuanced than \*just\* a lack of depth perception.


mythiii

I think I agree with all of that and would have from the get-go. Basically my contention is can learn to do a lot of stuff regarding depth perception even when technically without it, we sort of have a sense of out body moving at a certain distance and some of that we can transpose onto a videogame character. And what I was on about earlier is my idea of depth perception having diminishing returns even with two eyes open, as the difference of what each eye sees becomes blurred you naturally have no more data to gauge depth. I assume this happens in an exponential fashion, where at somewhere between 30-300 feet it gets lost completely, but I couldn't find any hard data on that to start contesting the idea. You did give me a greater appriciation of depth perception though, I had misconceptions about how some illusions like the Ames room work, I though it would work even with two eyes open, but now I can't find anything to state at what distance that would happen, so I'll give you the point about depth perception being much greater with both eyes, but I'll insist on saying that it has diminishing effects at range and I don't feel like you've yet to respond to this idea. Basically, our two points seem to be: ME: "Depth perception is in large part an estimation not involving the eyes but the logic processes in our mind, but you (and some study) convinced me that the sense of depth you get from binocular vision is actually very powerful in it's normal use range. Also, depth perception is in effect even in monocular vision. YOU: "Depth perception exists only in binocular vision, but you can learn to compensate [how?]." What I don't understand from your thinking is: if depth perception is nonexistent in monocular vision, then how on earth can you navigate any first person shooter map without constantly running into walls, of cliffs, missing every melee attack, missing every shot where there is bullet drop or travel etc.?


Strict_Bench_6264

Because games compensate for it all the time. You have things like sliding collisions, ramps instead of stairs, invisible colliders, etc., that is there to eliminate frustration to the extent possible. How we move in many first-person shooters, since we don't have the aforementioned body awareness and depth perception, is very different from how we move in real life. Navigating a 3D space is a learned skill. A "gamer" skill, in some ways.


mythiii

What sense is that gamer skill tapping into for things like estimating depth?


Mayor_P

You have one of weirdest perspectives (heh) I've seen on here. >if depth perception is nonexistent in monocular vision, then how on earth can you navigate any first person shooter map without constantly running into walls, of cliffs, missing every melee attack, missing every shot where there is bullet drop or travel etc.? Aside from how this was already answered in the thread before you posted it, and then answered again afterward, I want to add that the players compensate, too. That is, if the game's compensatory measures don't make it easy to get 'close enough' and make the missed shot an accurate one, the player can sidestep a little bit first. By doing even a tiny sidestep, it shows the relative motion of various distant objects, by which distance (i.e. depth) can be approximated. This only works because the player can perceive depth in real life, with their two eyes, and has learned that the relative motion thing matches up with the depth thing. You don't have any depth on a flat screen, but moving sideways **will** give you the relative motion, and you can guesstimate distance with that visual info. Think of how in many FPS games, the player can throw a grenade. It usually goes in an overhead arc, with a fixed throwing strength. The player can aim first before throwing it, but if they want the grenade to get over a distant obstacle, it's often quite difficult to do that - until they practice it a lot and just learn by trial and error how far the grenade will go when they aim whatever amount up or down before lobbing it. The key here is that the player **cannot** just look and see how far it is, like they could in a 3D space. They must use other visual clues and then guess - or just practice a lot until they memorize it by rote. Why don't players miss a lot? They do. They miss very much, all the time. Missing is a huge part of playing a video game. But you don't need 100% accuracy to hit something- just shoot a few times in appropriate direction and you'll probably hit it. Nothing wrong with that, especially when your target is moving anyway


mythiii

> You have one of weirdest perspectives (heh) I've seen on here. It probably wouldn't be that weird if I could explain it properly, so I'll try. Everything you lump together as the player learning from trial and error is **part** of our depth perception. I'll just copy and paste the first Quora answer that I found, which explains my view better than I can: >Your eyeballs don’t understand depth but your brain does. Humans with normal binocular vision learn depth perception at a very early age. It happens automatically as your visual system develops. >Your visual system uses several methods to establish the depth of objects in its view, including: relative size of objects, occlusion, parallax (if you’re in motion), and binocular disparity. There may be more I’m forgetting. Of all these techniques for extracting depth information from what you’re seeing, only binocular disparity requires having two eyes (that face the same direction). The others work just fine with only one eye. >So even if you were born with one eye, your visual system would still learn how to perceive depth almost as well as a person with 2 eyes. Note that rabbits and other prey animals that have eyes that point outward from their heads don’t have binocular depth perception either because both eyes see different views, and they get along just fine (but predators, who need very precise depth perception to be successful, need the extra boost that binocular vision gives them). >I don’t think there’s much you can do to improve or disrupt your depth perception ability, since it’s so low-level (meaning you aren’t consciously aware of extracting depth information). You may be able to improve the precision of your depth perception slightly with practice, but in general it isn’t going to change much. This is from here https://www.quora.com/Do-we-actually-perceive-depth-visually-because-our-eyes-understand-depth-or-does-the-understanding-of-depth-improve-through-experience


Iobaniiusername

Have you played quake and cs surf?


possesseddivingsuit

plenty of quake (and boomer shooters in general), yeah surf, not so much why do you ask?


Iobaniiusername

Quake has lots of platforming and so does cs surf, figured you could draw inspiration from there.


joellllll

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCO9QuV-cgM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCO9QuV-cgM) Because quake is not clunky.


capnfappin

Is this a PC exclusive game or do you want it to be playable with controllers? The best and most satisfying first person movement Imo heavily involves the use of the mouse, like with quake/source engine airstrafing, which is tricky to translate to analog stick.


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icemage_999

**Bioshock Infinite** has a system of aerial rails you could travel across, turning the platforms into interconnected islands and the traversal a bit like riding a Rollercoaster. IIRC there were tricks like letting go of the rails mid-way to get launched in unusual directions to get to secret locations, or to catch other rails. **Mirror's Edge** uses a full parkour momentum system, but it is extremely elaborate with full body animation as the camera shifts as you do tricks like wallruns and ledge-vaulting. Normal first person jumping almost always feels boring and terrible, even with assisted jump mechanics like in **Destiny**, though the raids in both Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 feature some really clever platform challenges like timed moving platforms, disappearing platforms, and more. Having some sort of audio cue when various platforming or jumping mechanics are used is very helpful, but the real trick is fully understanding what is possible within the limits you have provided to players and making any platforms reachable within a certain tolerance of skill and timing.


LynnxFall

Neon White might be worth checking out, they have really satisfying movement. I usually dislike floaty movement, but it feels fine in that game.


bramdnl

Not sure about the how but perhaps you can think of what makes platforming fun in a general sense and apply mechanics to accompany that. For me it would be predictability (when I start jumping I should be able to estimate where I wil land) and increasing difficulty to make reach a certain point. You see that many oldtimers like Rayman or Mario excel in this regard. Regarding predictability perhaps some sort of jump curve might give the player the feeling that he/she is more in control than just applying velocity to some rigidbody.


bbqranchman

A few things Anything derived from the id/source family of games is gonna feel good, especially with how ubiquitous games with those engines became in the 90s and 2000s. They're battle tested, snappy, fun, and just work. Getting similar physics will achieve that. Destiny 1 and 2 are incredibly rewarding in their platforming. It's arguable that the most fun parts of the raids is the platforming. Imo 1 aspect of why the platforming is so fun in Destiny is because you can see your legs and there's a lot of visual feedback as to how high you are into your jump ie how much more time you'll be airborne. However, they and other platforming shooters have another aspect that makes them rewarding. Ways to recover. In CS:go, there's no double jump, but there's a shit ton of air control which can help you stick landings on jumps that were less than perfect. Titanfall has grapple hooks and also a shit ton of air control. Destiny gives you triple jumps and boosts and whatnot. If you fumble the jump, there are potentially ways to fix it. Also, destiny and Titanfall have mounting mechanics. So more recovery. Titanfall has wall running, so more recovery.


R3cl41m3r

Have you played Jumping Flash? It's one of the first 3D platformers, and in first person. It did a number of things I haven't seen in any first-person games since.


mistermashu

have you tried adding an indicator which appears directly below the player on the ground


almostcyclops

1. Ability to see your feet. This helps the player gauge their position. 2. Fudging for screw ups. This can take a lot of forms. Ledge grabs, double jumps, etc. Basically you want the platforming to be more about momentum and not precision.