A concept for character physics for combat and beyond

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#1

Yea i know the title is a little confusing but its cuz its a bit hard to explain…

So as it stands right now in Orbus and many other VR games, your head and body parts connected to the controller/headset often clip into other things. Theres no real physics going on, and the few games that do have physics get really buggy. For example, if you block a sword and continue to push towards the sword, your sword will spaz out and snap to where your hand is.

So i have this concept idea that i think sounds extremely useful, but i dont know how well it would work in practice. I like to call it Ghost Control, but call it whatever you want.

The idea is that when moving around and interacting with things normally, you and your VR body will move exactly as they do now, in sync with each other. However, lets say that your in PvP, warrior vs warrior, and they swing their sword at you. You could lift your sword to block it. Right now as things are, both swords would phase through each other and you would be hit. But with Ghost control, what would happen is this: They would swing at you, you would swing back, the swords would collide and engage Ghost mode. From here, you will be able to see a transparent outline of where your controller is. This will be where your VR arm will try to go, but cant because physics are blocking it. Now, i dont know if a Stats idea is going to be implemented, but if this idea does come to be eventually, then maybe another concept could be used, such as mass, angle, weapon type, number of weapons blocking/attacking, etc. But lets say it was with the Stats system. If you have 60 Strength points and they have 50 Strength points and they attack you, you can block. Hold your sword up and you can easily block the strike. From here however, they can push their real life arm more towards the attack. To them, the ghost outline for their controller will go from white, to yellow, to red. As they go up the color, they can start to push you back (assuming you remain at white). These colors represent Force being used. If you however, decide to push back, you can, your stats are higher obviously, and you might only need yellow force to push them back.
However, lets say they are in red and you arent pushing, but suddenly do, hard, they will exceed the Force limit and their vision will go slightly darker, highlighting the Ghost controller and their VR body, and all Force will be set to 0. Essentially, this means that they have no control over their VR arm and must move the ghost arm back to the VR arm to regain control, or perhaps have a timer before the arm will automatically move back to proper position with your controller. During that time, that arm is useless. The other arm can work, and you could lift a shield for example, but if you dont have anything in that arm, you’re an open target until you regain control of the limb.

Anyway, i just think this is a much better idea then the whole phasing-through-everything thats been going on a lot in VR… its a bit complex, i know,but i think the immersion and gameplay value it could offer would be well worth it :slight_smile:

Let me know what you guys think!

#2

It’s difficult to see how that could work in an MMO, I think it would be great in a sword fighting game. It sounds as though, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you are describing a sort of mini-game when the swords meet, which would, in my mind, break the immersion of fast paced combat that would be required in combat with multiple targets. In PVP, outside of duels, there is rarely just two fighting it out. I think a parry option is definitely needed though. Just keep it simple. You swing at your opponent, your opponent lifts their sword to parry. The strike, of course, goes through the opponents sword but instead of a damage number floating up a “PARRIED” message floats up. To prevent the system always registering a parry when they are both swinging at each other you could require the sword to be held at a horizontal angle across your body for an intentional parry. It gives the warrior an extra form of defense without a major coding fiasco of adding a mini-game.
It also opens the door to a dps warrior going dual wield without losing all forms of defense. Provided they ever implement dual wielding, that is.

#3

I guess it could be seen as a minigame in a way. More like a clash of powers though.

It’s kinda based a bit on how a real sword fight works. If you are a very strong person, and someone just walks up to you and swings a sword, you can easily lift the sword to block it. But (this is where the ghost idea comes into play) That person can push as hard as they can to try to push you back.

Having sword physics along with this could also lead to other types of swordplay, such as twisting around the sword to land a hit or deflect a stab.

The only thing i see questionable about having just a true/false parry system is figuring out how the game would see “swing” or a stab. As it is right now, you can just wiggle your sword and deal damage. It might not be a lot, but then again, the whole point of a parry is to prevent damage in the first place.

And i actually got the base concept of the ghost-arm from Raw Data. If you move your controllers far from your body, the arms in game dont actually reach them, but instead are pulled in the general direction. They have a size and shape of their own and are not where the controllers actually are!

Idk, was just an idea :slight_smile: Maybe im taking the whole VRMMO thing a bit too far, i love the crap out of Sword Art Online so im just trying to help give ideas to make that a bit more of a modern-day reality! :smiley:

#4

Let’s be honest, right now it seems close to impossible. But something like that would be almost like combat from SAO!! I know I’m kind of obsessed but a vrmmorpg like SAO whould be incredible!:grinning:

#5

they will only give dual wielding to the player with the fastest reaction time ;D

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#6