Slow Motion

[WingedWolf93]

Hey guys, today i was thinking about this. Lugaru had slow motion, but it didn't really effect the gameplay, it was just for looks,. But what about making it as an important part of the gameplay? I mean, like sometimes you would need to press the attack button at the right time for example. And overall use the slow motion a bit more than it was used in Lugaru.
Your thoughts about this?

[GDer]

I think that pressing the button at the right time was annoying. But if those moments will be in slow motion and not so much, gameplay could be better. Also slow motion in my opinion is very overused in modern action games so you need to be even more careful with the choice.

[Endoperez]

In Lugaru, slow motion told you you had killed someone. Very useful to know in the heat of battle.

Since Overgrowth isn't supposed to be Prince of Persia or Braid, I doubt it will have player-triggerable time manipulation. It would be nice to have it be available for modders, though.

[WingedWolf93]

Well, the alpha already has this feature, i guess if it wont be in the actual game, modders will use this. But anyways, it could be interesting, if these moments would happen occasionally in a battle, letting you choose what to do, like choosing from different attacks, by pressing the arrow keys.

[Cmyszka]

In Lugaru, slow motion told you you had killed someone. Very useful to know in the heat of battle.

Indeed, and also if you're fighting a group of people, after killing one you get an extra fraction of a second to respond to another attack that might be headed your way. I can remember times when I killed a guy and the time slowing helped me reverse another attack that I probably wouldn't have reacted to in time otherwise.

[Zaphon]

I really like the brief slow-motion effect when you vanquish a foe!
But it is possible to use slo-mo in gameplay if you turn on debug mode.

[Sandurz]

it didn't really effect the gameplay

I don't know for a fact, but it seems to me that gravity is lessened in slomo, e.g. a knife would bounce higher when you miss.

[BunnyWithStick]

I think that's just a glitch with slo-mo, not lo-grav. Another thing that slo-mo does is cause characters to take less impact damage, at least against walls. If you fist-launch an unconscious character into a wall so it triggers slo-mo, there's a much lower chance of the wall cracking. Depending on the distance from the wall, you can slo-mo launch a corpse directly at a wall and have no crack decal or anything.

[Sandurz]

That may be, but when I leg sweep em in slomo, (I can't really describe it well) they kind of fly as if you double punched them from behind, when they're supposed to just fall.

[invertin]

As far as I can tell, slo-mo in lugaru affected the physics. Slamming an enemy into a wall in slo-mo is alot harder than in normal speed.

For instance, rabbit kick an enemy towards a wall. If it's still in slo-mo when they hit the wall, they will just bounce off or stop. If they aren't, there will be a loud "CCRSHSH" noise as the ragdoll breaks the wall.

I think overgrowth should only really have slo-mo for killing enemies like in L1. Actually, this reminds me of a game where whenever a projectile got too close to you it would activate "death-brushing" where everything is in slo-mo and your character is much easier to control. Maybe something similar in L1 for dodging ranged attacks?

That would balance ranged weapons enough to be used in normal gameplay while giving us awesome slo-mo crossbow dodging moments.

No idea how it would work in multiplayer though.

EDIT: Ooo! Multiplayer blancing of slomo!(Theoretically) for a short while after the slo-mo, everything goes a little faster. Basically making slo-mo catch up.

Either that or just force slo-mo on everyone at once.

[Jimmy3280]

Perhaps, in OG, Slo-Mo could be used as a sort of brief "focus" mode, where the idea is that Turner thinks faster, and therefore, moves slightly faster than the others while in it. He won't be moving at full speed while the others are in slo-mo, just a tiny, eensy, weensy bit faster, due to his enhanced speed of thought

[Skofo]

I'd get rid of slo-mo altogether since it probably wouldn't work in multiplayer and it's good to be consistent. Making everyone go slo-mo when someone else kills someone would be rather annoying. Lemmingball Z is a fast game in theory but because of all of the slow motion caused by you and your opponents, it plays like sludge.

[Johannes]

As far as I can tell, slo-mo in lugaru affected the physics. Slamming an enemy into a wall in slo-mo is alot harder than in normal speed.

I think there is no difference. with debug mode on you can test of slow motion changes how the physics work by permanently turning it on. from my experiments at least I've found that if an attack is executed in the same fashion in both slow and fast motion, the result is the same. you can confirm this by filming the same action once in slow motion and once without, and then speeding up the slow motion footage to match that of the normal speed one. The actions and reactions will look identical.


I mentioned in the Critical hits topic that I think OG should have dynamic Slow motion. Instead of it being either on or off, the amount of slow motion would depend on the epicness of what you're doing, for example getting a combo of 6 hits would result in the next hit being in slight slow motion, or Leg Cannoning an enemy that normally is very good at reversing, at just the right time would cause a larger slowdown, to let you really enjoy seeing them fly, and if they are on a direct collision course with a wall or another character the slowmotion should ease even slower and you could really see the dust and particles spray as the collision occurs. I'm not necessarily talking about blood and gore here, i don't much care for that per say, my point is simply to have the game confirm to you that 'what you did there was epic, and you basically just totally owned that guy'.

[Ozymandias]

I'd get rid of slo-mo altogether since it probably wouldn't work in multiplayer and it's good to be consistent. Making everyone go slo-mo when someone else kills someone would be rather annoying. Lemmingball Z is a fast game in theory but because of all of the slow motion caused by you and your opponents, it plays like sludge.

The simple solution would be to make slo-mo only happen in single player, or activate for just one person when he dies in multiplayer.

We could also steal what The Specialists did and have slo-mo be a power-up... but that's for the modders to do XD

stuff

A slo-mo variable ranging from 0 (paused) to 1000 (regular game speed on 'normal' difficulty) would be very neat, especially for when it slides smoothly into slo-mo, then eases back into regular motion. That would just look nice and such. Besides, slowing the game down a lot, then suddenly speeding it up again would give you a bit less time to react to the change in game pace than a smooth transition.

[Johannes]

The simple solution would be to make slo-mo only happen in single player, or activate for just one person when he dies in multiplayer.

Heh, as I had pointed out before ;P but yeah, in multiplayer I don't see a practicable way of applying slow motion, at least while both players can attack. while doing a leg cannon, at least between just two players, it would be feasable, since it would not give any advantage to the player that didn't generate the slowing down, since he's disabled after the kick.

We could also steal what The Specialists did and have slo-mo be a power-up... but that's for the modders to do XD

yuck yuck yuck, noooo. I am absolutely against it being a powerup or even a button you press like some games have. it has to be context specific, as otherwise players mis-use it to get an unfair advantage at times where slow motion just wouldn't make much sense (for example using it to more accurately time a jump to land on an enemy to get 'death from above', before you have even engaged in the fight. having manual control over it then would give an unfair advantage in many cases when the player just doesn't deserve it.)

stuff

A slo-mo variable ranging from 0 (paused) to 1000 (regular game speed on 'normal' difficulty) would be very neat, especially for when it slides smoothly into slo-mo, then eases back into regular motion. That would just look nice and such. Besides, slowing the game down a lot, then suddenly speeding it up again would give you a bit less time to react to the change in game pace than a smooth transition.

Yup, that's exactly how I was envisioning it =)

I'm sure having free easing control of the level of slow motion also has lots of benefits that we haven't thought of yet, for example in use in machinima and recordings, which I'm pretty sure the team wants to implement at some point, or for that matter just experimenting with the physics engine.