Supine position

[Akinaro]

But stll there is no point of it.

Its fight against this:


and this:



One look bad but its efficient, quick and you can move cursor left and right with no problems, and you can jump up after that keeping the speed,  and use jet to retreat up.

And other look cool, but its slow, and most important, when you prone like that you going really quick down(even with jet) and you would need t roll when you hit the ground, because without that you would just lie on the ground and all that speed you had would be waisted.


To be honest sometimes i think this would be more efficient that this supine position:

[Savage]

4 pages of complaints and nothing concrete, additional key for supine position is just bad.

First of all let's talk about current prone position, if we will pass the cursor through red line it will be cancelled(I was always curious why... just lay yourself(in prone position) on the floor and try to look at your ceiling, possible? well, you are probably haunted)

I've always thought it's something like that...

Now let's change it to x axis

When the cursor is over red line we would be in supine position, when under we would be in prone position. Both positions would be cancelled and triggered only on pressing X key, if you would be in straight position then y axis would determine the direction you will be flying after pressing X(just like in current Soldat). If u would like to make supine position while retreating with flag(running to the right) just look to the right -> press X(+activate jet) -> now look to the left side and move your cursor over yourself.

Please, read it again Akinaro cause you probably didn't get my idea.

[Akinaro]

I get your idea :]
And still core idea behind have no real benefits in gameplay.

So what if we can turn up/down when you are in prone to enable that position. If you would use jet in this moment, thanks to magic of gravity, you would go down like bullet, and you would need to play with x key and mouse to correct flight, like you doing now with just prone, but here you would also need to take care to set supine position again.


And for example you would like to retreat right and shoot using eg barrett.

Using your technique we would spend that precious second on moving cursor right, press x/jet look left, then over gostek, and again right. and we would need again press x to cancel it.
And if you would use jet in this moment you would also need to correct aim, because you would go down like bullet, and because speed you would gain you would have less than half of second to make it, AND still think about correcting your movement to land on good position and not loosing your speed.


Im not against adding something new to game but looking at this in overall, you would not gain anything from it.

If you would retreat with flag its better to do cannonball and keep that speed and time to aim your landing position and without loosing that all you can just turn around and shoot, because if you know your speed and position of enemy you can calculate where to aim to kill him, and if you want better aim you turn around prone, shoot, and turn around again to cancel prone and you have that precious moment to land/correct flight.

In 3D game its good because you can jump left/right-back and roll to hide in cover. Soldat is not only in 2D its just too dynamic for that type of movement to make 100% from it.

[soldat-game]

Bad idea it looks unrealistically dont make this game fantasy how rambo...

[Wes]

Savage,

Let's say your face is facing right, and you are prone. You then aim up over the red line, then do you swap to supine with your feet forward or backwards? In other words, does you head change positions or not?

I imagined that you meant that your head would stay in the same place and your feet would continue to face left rather than right, allowing you to shoot backwards more effectively.

In that situation, however, how would one jump into the air, and while moving towards an enemy, switch to supine with his feet forward, while moving forward.

I think I already understand the answer to this question. You would simply run forward, jump, then aim behind you in order to supine while moving forward (feet forward).

Akinaro,

I think the usefulness would more be for midair fights and backwards worming while aiming forward. With supine, one could worm while aiming forward and moving backwards, which would be amazing for the game in my opinion. I don't think it would be used in place of cannonball, and would only be used a bit while retreating in select situations. It would definitely have it's place for that I think. I am not sure if Savage's model can achieve fluid backwards worming or if you would need a different key, still wrapping my mind around it. Also, it would likely replace prone completely in mid air fights where both players are at the same height. Why have your head forward? It would also end up being used at the end of every prone jet dive in order to get your feet forward first, which is always better than your head first (or usually). The process would be a bit odd however without a separate key unless crossing the red line swaps your feet and head. You would have to prone, jet forward, then unprone, aim behind you, and supine, which might not work. But I have to admit, the game would look pretty dumb if everyone was jetting forward then switching to have their feet forward for every dive lol. Savage's model seems pretty realistic, just not sure about backwards worming, which I think would be the only real good purpose of supine.

[Akinaro]

You also need to take in to the account how it would affect eg. Climb mode. Today almost half of playerbase is from climb and to be honest it's best backup plan for soldat(not action game but arcade).

Now imagine how it would affect eg long ice slide. When you prone on ice and when reaching end of polygon you stand up and look back, sometimes doing canonball. If we would have this mode gostek instead of standing up and looking back would go to supine position.

It's only small part of gameplay but those small parts sometimes are really annoying.

If this 5-20% of players really need this position to feel better, just set that position to new key, so it would not affect rest of players that would be more pissed off because they would need to play with mouse and default keys just to turn around or prone.

[%%%%%%%]

Akinaro, thanks for making that mock-up of how it would look. Though, since supine position's main benefit to gameplay will be in midair combat, it'd be better to illustrate it in a map where the gostek is jetting over ground that's sloping downwards (which can be found in almost every CTF map). Imagine the gostek has taken the flag and is retreating back to their base; that exemplifies the usage for seamless shooting capability while maintaining speed and mobility.

My skills are nowhere near yours, so if you could make a .gif illustrating that, I'd be most grateful. Ideally, the gostek would have the flag and pursuers trying to kill him and return it. Please let me know if I can be of help in any way.

The other use would be the straight-up midair fights, which Wes was talking about, where you could supine and unsupine (to varying degrees of 'worminess') in order to dodge shots, have the same moveacc benefit as prone when you shoot, and have your head blocked by most of your body if your opponent is horizontal from you.



In terms of what Savage and Wes are talking about regarding having one key for prone and supine and having prone cancel at the x axis and not the y axis, except prone cancel would actually switch prone to supine instead when you put it above the x axis and then switch back when you put it below: I can see that working, but only if the head and feet are in the same area and the body simply switches from facing down to facing up. The angle at which your body is descending, especially when jetting, doesn't change whether you're in prone or supine.
But yeah, having the feet go to the other side like Wes mentioned also doesn't make sense to me.

When initiating the position, it would depend on which direction you're both running and facing (i.e. where your cursor is relating to your gostek). If you're facing the same direction you're moving and press the button, you'll go into prone position; if you're facing the opposite direction you're moving, supine position (just as Akinaro's .gif depicts).

I really like that idea; it may be a better one than having an independent key for supine.

Note, however, that this, i.e. getting rid of cursor-prone cancel (key-pronecancel would still work) might be a big change for players, and thus might not be well received; then again, neither was this suggestion of supine position in this thread .

[Savage]

Let's say your face is facing right, and you are prone. You then aim up over the red line, then do you swap to supine with your feet forward or backwards? In other words, does you head change positions or not?

If you went to prone or supine facing right(legs on the left, head on the right) then NO MATTER where your mouse is your head is still on the right side(if your head is on the right side and you are aiming left then you would just simply shoot between your legs, this vid explains everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TVN1xrHcUU), the prone&supine would be NEVER cancelled by the game but ONLY by the player.

LOLED so much on this one, it's not even cannonball xDDD


And that one is slow as F**K

If you would ask climbers to add key for cannonball they would laugh from you loudly.

If you would use jet in this moment, thanks to magic of gravity, you would go down like bullet, and you would need to play with x key and mouse to correct flight, like you doing now with just prone, but here you would also need to take care to set supine position again.

IN caves or something like lower part of ctf_Ash I would use ONLY cannonball(you would die quickly with your animation on C key). Imagine now you are going to cap the flag from upper part of ctf_Ash(over that building) what would you do? go to prone with jet to cap flag asap AND I would like to kill some f*gs trying to kill me from behind.(How would your animation do that?!)

Climb community would be affected WITH YOUR C KEY cause it would has it's own animation&trajectory so it would make some new maps with jumps impossible to do with cannonball or backflip. I don't see any problems with my idea in climb.

How would my idea affect? By nothing but only more enjoyable gameplay, I was always mad on cancelling prone itself when i saw enemy under me.

About worming, where's the problem? It's not hard to crawl in supine position but overall I would make changing from prone to supine a little bit at higher angle like this

Bring here all climbers and ctf players and ask them(Your animation would be used by 1% of the players, in ctf you has to be fast and two keys X and C would make everyone confused)

[Akinaro]

And it should be cannonball? Its made by law that you always need to perform cannonball?

And of course feel free to make better animation-example. Or its better to complain about something that was made in less than 15min just as an example?
Be my guest and prepare better one with tips made by %%%%%%%
Ill wait :]


Also I though that you know better than me or anyone else climb. I can ensure you that you would see massive rage and quits because of that. Not only because its "something new that mess with old" but knowing life if it would be implemented with loots of bugs and fixes for few version.
Its almost the same situation with new graphic for gostek. Overall size is almost 90% the same like old one, but still people want to use old one... Just because new have more details that give that "feel" of difference compared to old one.
Small almost invisible change and people compain and we talk about gameplay part of Soldat...



But beside that about what we talking about here?
If someone say me that you can put that method of supine position in game and you cant change menu to be more "modern"/easier to mod or put longer animation in game or even make auto-update... I seriously would think that its somesort of april fool  joke...

[L[0ne]R]

I would much prefer supine/backwards jump instead of cannonball. I.e. I would prefer an actual feature that's explained in a manual or game tutorial and is reasonably easy to master for average player (just like backflip) instead of an undocumented exploit of game's buggy game engine.

prone cancel would actually switch prone to supine instead when you put it above the x axis and then switch back when you put it below

Eh, don't think this is a good idea. When you cannonball or prone-jet while running away - you can't shoot back at your enemy, or in case of cannonball - can't shoot at all. It's a fair trade-off between speed and defense. That trade-off is gone if you can freely aim in every direction while chaining prone-jumps. IMO prone cancel should be left in. Other than that I agree.

[Viral]

You can document the cb as a game feature just as well as you can do it for backlfip lol. When you do a BF you hold A/D+W and hit RMB, when in CB you have to do the same but hold S aswell, then release W. Except for it being harder than any other move in the game, it can be described just as precise as any other one ^.- but i don't see the reson in getting rid of the mechanic just because its harder for new players to learn than other jumps :x

[Akinaro]

I would prefer an actual feature that's explained in a manual or game tutorial

First you would need to update "manual" because in current 1.7 version manual is from 2008(in game files as a "current version" appears 1.4.2 ) :]

[Falcon`]

Not that it's 5 pages too late, but I've asked among active dev team members if there's anyone that'd care to even start considering implementing that, and we all agreed that it's buried so deep down in the TODO list that it's not gonna happen anytime soon, if at all. Sorry guys, there are more important things we're doing right now (GUI, Physics).

[%%%%%%%]

First off, Savage thanks for posting that Matrix clip of Trinity going from prone to supine like we were discussing; it's a very good representation. But then the rest of your post: what the heck are you even going on about.

Then how did we even get to the topic of substituting supine for cannonball? That's ridiculous. Cannonball is independent of, and unaffected by, supine position; it will not be changed and will remain in the game.

I've asked among active dev team members if there's anyone that'd care to even start considering implementing that, and we all agreed that it's buried so deep down in the TODO list that it's not gonna happen anytime soon, if at all. Sorry guys, there are more important things we're doing right now (GUI, Physics).

There are always "more important things". Supine isn't a huge messy project like fixing netcode/packetloss/eats. And the developer(s) that work on it could always just dedicate a little time here and there when they're feeling burnt out from working on other higher priority issues. Plus, it could always be ranked a higher priority on the To-Do list.




Akinaro also wrote something just this past week that I feel applies to this:

And you think that people didnt do stuff here? Most of users here did something, menu mockups, maps, interfaces
So what? People like something, people use something, but all you can do is just wait for devs to even think about it, because they have source code/files of soldat. For all those 20000 years of soldat its always the same: "there are priorities" "Not now" "We cant now".
Soldat is probably only project that I saw in my life that have so much troubles with such simple features like making 1-2 longer animation or making auto-update system.

Maybe it's time you guys sought out more developers and delegated them appropriately. See DC's post in the "Roadmap" thread:

You can use standardised time management techniques and apply them to your programming as well. The below matrix is a very simple but effective one:

[homerofgods]

That priority list is not done. I have just placed some stuff in random order on that list, and it's basically my suggestion to the devs, they do not have to follow it and I don't think all devs have even seen it.

But ye, if you were trying to show there are higher priorities, you are right

[Shoozza]

I would say it is similar to rewriting the netcode due to extensive testing and messy code.
The whole movement code is very fragile.

I had the idea about this movement before this thread actually, but it was always because it seemed cool to have it not because it improves something.

[soldat-game]

and as usual hear ... "Net code"... reportedly 1.7 had to be rewritten all

[You Got Served!]

Please no.

Sorry for my lack of enthusiasm for your suggestion. You've clearly put a lot of thought and effort in to elaborating on this idea but...

Please no.

[%%%%%%%]

Please no.

Sorry for my lack of enthusiasm for your suggestion. You've clearly put a lot of thought and effort in to elaborating on this idea but...

Please no.

Any reason why not?

[You Got Served!]

Any reason why not?

Sure. Core game mechanics. The way that a Soldier interacts with the game and the tactics deployed equate to the games essence. Gameplay on the whole has always felt pretty balanced to me. The way I envision your suggestion being implemented in an in-game situation would amount to a drastic change in gameplay, particularly in CTF. Allow me to elaborate...

A) As I'm sure you're aware, being good at using existing movements is an integral aspect of being good at Soldat. Being able to both retreat and return fire whilst evading enemy fire i.e. switching to & from supine, AS WELL as maintaining momentum I believe would create an unfair advantage. Currently whilst retreating/flag running you can either opt to return fire AND maintain momentum, leaving yourself open to incoming fire OR you can opt to evade attacks (prone switching) AND return fire sacrificing momentum OR you can opt to gain momentum AND evade attacks (prone+jet/switching) sacrificing ability to return fire. These three variables offer good strategic gameplay and overall balance. I think that if your idea was used everyone retreating/flag running would simply opt to supine jet away because you wouldn't have to sacrifice any abilities - speed - evasion - defence.

B) In a combat situation where a Soldier approaches you, you could effectively direct incoming fire at your feet taking less damage whilst still returning fire. Similar to point A and to what L[0ne]R said this would create an unfair trade off.

C) I use X for crouch and C for prone. E has always felt somewhat awkward for me so in my personal circumstance I would have nowhere to map this feature.

D) I went into this a little deeper than I had intended to. Above all I am very stubborn when it comes to Soldat. I don't like change. Especially not such drastic changes to the core game mechanics. My initial reaction to your suggestion was no, no and more no. Simply based on the fact that it is 'change' but I also think the points I make are valid ones. Though I do see some merit in your suggestion in that it could look quite cool to have Soldiers supine off of structures or away from explosions but I think the novelty would wear of quickly and we'd be left with what is ultimately a huge game changer.

I hope that satisfies your query, Sir.