On epic.

[Zhukov]

This post is in response to the April 23rd blog post*.

Exactly what makes a fight scene 'epic' is bound to be subjective. To illustrate, some of the youtube videos linked under the blog post strike me as utterly ridiculous. Yet at least one other person evidently regards them as epic.

So, with that in mind, here is one set of suggestions.

Fluid and seamless character movement.
This one really separates the slick choreographed look of movies from real-life fights. When people in the real world get in a tussle there is lots of feinting, stumbling and sharp or sudden movements. Those of you who watch or participate in combative sports will know that even in a contest between two highly competent fighters the movements are far from graceful. In movies the exact opposite applies. Cinematic fights often bear more resemblance to painful dance numbers then genuine violence.
Lugaru doesn't quite nail this quality, but it comes close at times. My favorite thing to see in Lugaru is the following sequence: player performs a roundhouse kick, enemy ducks under it, player goes straight into a leg sweep, enemy reverses, player counter-reverses. It looks so beautifully fluid. If, in Overgrowth, you can get Turner's moves to flow into one another so that a random sequence of moves still looks like a 'combo' it would, in my humble opinion, enhance the epic feel. This could also provide a way to distinguish between ordinary enemy mooks and skilled characters.

Brutality.
God of War. Need I say more? To be honest, I really don't like the GoW games. They feel like playing through the wet dream of a 16 year old male. Also, the aesthetics are hideous**. But the brutality! It is so very... delicious. I do not know what degree of violence is planned for Overgrowth, but a dash of virtual savagery could go a long way...

Atmosphere.
Someone left a comment (21st from the top) to this effect on the blog and I really have to agree. Atmosphere can count for a lot. I recall one game*** in particular which managed to turn what was essentially just a jumping/timing puzzle into a truly climatic moment through atmosphere and story-line.

That will do for now. There was some more, but it's 5:45am here and I desperately need sleep.

Cheers.


*Yes, I am aware of the blog's comments function. It's just that I am more comfortable with the forum thread structure.
**Am I the only one who think Kratos looks like a stereotypical beer-drinking, wife-beating, motor-sports fan on steroids?
***What, you thought I was going to get through a whole post without referring to Oni? Ha!

[Johannes]

Ah yes, some excellent examples, though I have only seen a bit of the games you mentioned.

Concerning fluidity/character movement:
Just wanted to throw out there, a personal pet peeve of mine is when they have set cutscenes during a fight for special moves. I don't mind the cutscene element as much, but when they do it the camera tends to teleport to the preset position and then back to the normal playing position. what I want to see is the camera easing towards a predefined position, but being more procedural, not always the same and it definitely needs to feel more organic when moving there. During Slow motion moments think this would be -very- effective.

It ties into what you were saying about fluidity, with which I absolutely agree. The potentially wonderful thing about procedural animation is that you can have moves tie together much better and without you being able to tell 'this is the standard hit animation', 'this is the standard block animation', 'this is the standard jump animation' which is something that even brand new, modern games still suffer from.

Brutality:
Absolutely, the most badass moment in Lugaru for me is legcannon-ing a guy right into a wall or tree, and watching him impact in slow motion with a huge 'CRUNCH'. Remember, brutality does not necessarily require blood and guts or even the active breaking of bones.

Atmosphere:
Again, for sure. dust, light and effects in the right places can do wonders for making a fight feel like you really are part of an epic movie. And no, I haven't played Oni yet. I'm a terrible person, I really should >_<

[Kalexon]

Here's something that has gotten on my nerves before and this doesn't much have to do with 'Epicness' but I'll reference it anyway. I've always hated in cutscenes how some games have fight scenes that are completely awesome, yet you yourself could never do stunts like that in the actual game, even if you were a complete master at it. So yeah, don't do it.

[Renegade_Turner]

Am I the only one who think Kratos looks like a stereotypical beer-drinking, wife-beating, motor-sports fan on steroids?

Ahh, I see someone can't be a muscular skinhead without being typecasted.

[TheBigCheese]

I think the first point is by far the most important. At best the moves should be completely procedural, with variation factors that made it slightly different every time. I'm sure the Inverse Kinematics system already used for the legs could be put to use and told to move towards certain points on an enemy.

[Johannes]

Am I the only one who think Kratos looks like a stereotypical beer-drinking, wife-beating, motor-sports fan on steroids?

Ahh, I see someone can't be a muscular skinhead without being typecasted.

Once again Ren is the first to completely ignore the point of a topic and go off on a tangent about a side note that really was irrelevant to the original topic, and not bother contributing to the actual topic at all.

[Renegade_Turner]

I could start talking about how I agree that achieving combat fluidity should be a very core aim of game developers, and how repetitive the same fighting move animations become tedious over time. Then I could reference the lightsaber dueling in Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy as a prime example of this seamless combat fluidity being achieved, and how I think a lot can be learned from how Raven Software did it.

You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd like me to contribute to the thread, wouldn't you? WELL I WON'T DO IT!

...oh wait. Aww crap.

Jokes aside, I didn't ignore the original topic. I actually read every word of every post, was impressed by the ideas expressed there, and agreed with Zhukov almost entirely.

However, I felt "Yes" was not sufficient input to form a post. My apologies for the lighthearted off-topic comment.

[Zhukov]

Guys, please, there is no need for dramas. 'Kay?

[Renegade_Turner]

I didn't see any drama. There's definitely no chipmunk.

[Johannes]

*Pats ren on the head* There ya go, that wasn't that hard was it =)

It was not meant as an attack or anything, merely a remark that you tend to do that a-lot. I have absolutely nothing at all against lighthearted off-topic comments whatsoever, just at least a little bit of on-topic every once in a while would be good too. You're a smart guy and the few times you've actually shared your opinion it has been valuable and insightful. I wouldn't mind seeing more of that

[zamzx zik]

JA (jedi academy) sure is fluid, although, freaking repetitive. Looks good, but OG can do better

[Kudoku]

Prince of Persia. Combos are epic.
'Nuff said.

[turbochop]

What about Ninja Gaiden for Xbox? Fights in that game got real epic at times. On one hand, the combos in that game were pretty cool, and every weapon had its own set of combos. On the other hand, some of the weapons had ridiculous combos, like the nunchucks: once you started you couldn't stop lol.

[nutcracker]

Epicness is, when you kill hordes of enemies with awesome moves quite quickly and dodge every blow, like in matrix...Thats epic

[Endoperez]

Shouldn't posts concerning blog posts be in some non-secret forum? I mean, lots of people who haven't even registered to these forums comment on the blog posts.

I really like this thread, though. I tried starting a thread in the Randomness, but it didn't catch off, so I'll move my post there in here:

Many, many animes have awesome epic fight scenes. They very rarely have -just- melee combat and often use magic and whatnot, but there's still a lot of material to use. Here's one neat anime fight scene with (sort of) hand-to-hand combat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPMDyYOkLVU

I didn't find this fight epic. If something in this was epic, I don't believe it's the actual FIGHT, but rather the power-levels revealed and how it affects the series and the plot. That could be quite impressive indeed, but the actual fight was paced slow and not that exciting.

Some people can jump insanely high ;O
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW8mA0nG0_Q

That was impressive, surely, but it was just showing off. Epic isn't just showing off, it's looking good while doing something else. Seeing a person like that in real life would be great, and seeing someone do one of those jumps or tricks in everyday life, seemingly nonchalant - that could be epic.
I could also say that the person could be epic, but the video isn't.