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[noah!]

In regards to your coupling of realistic (jumping) physics with realistic gameplay, maybe we should take a step back and ask ourselves why there's jumping in the first place, and what problem it solves that can't be solved by other means.

No, bear with me for a moment. In the real world, for example, jumping is nigh useless. Sure, you can cross small gaps, but there's few other functional uses for jumping that are exclusively solved by jumping. Think about it. When you want to get up to the roof of your house (a mere 1.5 body heights off the ground for most people), you get a ladder. If you need to scale a large gap, you don't just tiptoe to having one foot off the edge and cross it Megaman style, with arms splayed out and mouth open (though it is fun to jump like that). No, you either find a way around it, try to bridge the gap, or call Rush Jet, depending on the situation.

To me, the reason for the physics-bending jump is because that is pretty much the only way to make jumping an entertaining core mechanic for a game (though I'm probably wrong, feel free to prove it). Same with the lack of momentum. It's more difficult for the player to feel like they are truly controlling the player when said player is sliding all around and conforming to those silly Newton laws.

[John Nesky]

In top view 2D games, you have two axes of free movement: north-south and east-west. Having two axes, as opposed to one axis, gives the player an opportunity to explore instead of moving in a straight line.

A side view 2D game, however, eliminates one of those axes. If nothing is done to compensate, you'll end up with a linear path and no opportunity to make interesting navigational decisions. One way to solve this problem is to give the player the power to fly freely, but that's pretty much the same as making a top view game. A second way is junctions, such as doors or warp points, that transport the player to another zone, linking zones together in a graph. However, graphs don't necessarily have any spacial representation, so it is difficult for the player to make educated decisions about how to navigate besides trial-and-error.

A third way to enable exploration, and my favorite, is to give the player constrained abilities to navigate the vertical axis, such as:
-elevators
-ladders
-early-castlevania-style stairs
-jumping, double jumping
-grappling hook

I love these constrained abilities because they make navigation more complicated. I am not a casual gamer, so I welcome anything that makes the task of navigation nontrivial.

Of these abilities, jumping is the most flexible. You don't need some plot backstory to explain why the player can jump at any point in the game. This is why most side-view 2D games have jumping.

[Chris Whitman]

To me, the reason for the physics-bending jump is because that is pretty much the only way to make jumping an entertaining core mechanic for a game (though I'm probably wrong, feel free to prove it). Same with the lack of momentum.

Prince of motherfucking Persia?

[Chris Whitman]

All right, or Flashback or Abe's Oddyssey or any of the other games using that movement style. Also, for all the controller throwing, the old Castlevania jump lent the games some serious tension.

[gimymblert]

lode runner  

[lansing]

Running often has little to no momentum behind it.  Running full speed into a wall stops you rather than injures you.

If you run full speed into a wall in Bubsy: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, you go splat.  However it's a cartoon splat, so you can get up and dust yourself off in a second.

[inkBot]

You have kinda taken my quote out of context.  I was saying I had yet seen a system implement a jump system where you could specify the initial amount with a single input, and instead the common solution (because it works and works well, really) is to hold the button for longer jumps, or not hold it for shorter jumps.

I think the NES jump is probably the only way to achieve this without having more than one button for jumping, which albeit could be kinda interesting (Button 1: Short jump, Button 2: Medium Jump, Button 3; High jump. XD )

The way I see it, pressing and holding the jump button counts as one input, although a prolonged one. Unless you can specify what you mean by "specify the initial amount with a single input" I don't think it's out of context.

[baconman]

A one-command option, though similar, wouldn't be too hard to accomplish. Just "charge" a jump, ala Mega Buster, then release it for a jump with appropriate height/momentum. At first, proper timing/planning would be a pain in the ass for players to execute, but once mastered (along with fitting level/obstacle design) would also lead to insane TAS-looking playthroughs, too. Only catch there, is making controls friendly enough so that if you have to pull of something else, you can... and if it gets overcharged and under death spikes (or some similar height-sensitive obstacle/setback), you have a way of "abandoning" that jump as well, and starting it over without being penalized for it. In fact, you could even have it auto-align with tiles or half-tiles before takeoff - many real people have that kind of actual definitive control of their feet/pacing.

As for double-jumping... somersaulting isn't all that different from it. People CAN shift their weight/momentum in mid-air, for real. It's how lots of stunts and skater tricks work, in fact. It's just not to the grossly exaggerated level that platformers take it to. Real degrees of it along with a "tiled" approach to landscaping, would make them practically worthless, anyways.

But tripping should be a real part of games like these. Just not an overused one... mostly a "watch where you're dashing/charging your jumps" kind of thing, if that.

[snowyowl]

There are games with charge-jumps like that; the physics game Dominoes was one example. They specifically removed it for the sequel. That should show you how it impacted the gameplay, but if it doesn't, I can corroborate: it is very irritating. If you are on a collapsing tower of blocks, you want to be able to jump across to the next one, now.

And I think there was a Flash game somewhere where the entire point was to time the beginning of your charge-jumps right (while the player kept running the whole time, Canabalt-style). That was the only challenge in the entire game, and it was still very difficult. Now imagine charge-jumping while under sniper fire.

Charge-jumping doesn't work. Adjusting the jump height after the jump begins (by holding down the jump key for longer) is very playable, and having several buttons for jumping is too (Worms makes it work; you also backflip if you double-tap Jump, but that's best for turn-based games), but it has to be possible to instantly make a large jump if it is at all possible that an enemy will catch you by surprise.


(On reflection, it might work in a turn-based game, or in a platformer with no moving enemies like Super Meat Boy.)

[Mikademus]

To me, the reason for the physics-bending jump is because that is pretty much the only way to make jumping an entertaining core mechanic for a game

I think it is also because extreme jumping with mid-jump control is a good compromise between catering to one of man's oldest dreams--to be able to fly!--while still preserving a modicum of "realism" and while not breaking the game mechanics as true flight would.

To me, the reason for the physics-bending jump is because that is pretty much the only way to make jumping an entertaining core mechanic for a game (though I'm probably wrong, feel free to prove it). Same with the lack of momentum.

Prince of motherfucking Persia?

Are we talking about the original PoP? If so, yeah. In the newer games jumping is still more "realistic" but we have a freedom of gravity-defying wall running and super-athletic fatigue-defying environmental interaction that might as well be flight, so it is still basically an adaptation of the same arcade physics as above.

[JamesGecko]

Running often has little to no momentum behind it.  Running full speed into a wall stops you rather than injures you.

If you run full speed into a wall in Bubsy: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, you go splat.  However it's a cartoon splat, so you can get up and dust yourself off in a second.

IIRC, they tried something like that during the development of Sonic 2, but took it out because it became too annoying.

[gimymblert]

bubsy didn't have momentum, it worked better without.

[Trevor Dunbar]

I'd like to mention the platformer 'physics' in littlebigplanet would be better if they didn't use their actual physics engine to drive it.

[SirNiko]

bubsy didn't have momentum, it worked better without.

Bubsy did have lots of momentum, though his top speed just wasn't as high as Sonic. More importantly, his levels were designed in such a way that running at full speed was never a good idea unless it was a speedrun, like this:





Bubsy was killed by everything in a single hit. I'm actually surprised hitting a wall at top speed isn't lethal to him, too!

-SirNiko

[ansel]

Though this is mostly a thread about 2D platforming rather than the FPS, I think a great example of 'realistic' jumping physics done well, if not technically right, is any installment of Half-Life 2. There are no enormous pole-vaulting leaps -- you can only achieve an altitude of a foot or so and jump maybe two yards at a stretch -- but nothing more absurd than that is required and the fairly small-scale precision jumps are still challenging. It's also worth noting that you CAN change direction and position while in free-fall, and that Freeman can survive falls that would probably break a leg, but at least there's an attempt at realism.

[Carrie Nation]

The problem with adding realistic precision jumping to FPS' is that in real life jumping is pretty much a boolean value, you either make it easily or you know you'll never make it. And you can basically tell if you're going to be able to jump a distance or not just from looking at it. However in a 3D FPS where they have to fake 3 Dimensions using your 2 dimensional screen, you'll never have the same accuracy of depth perception as you would in real life.

tldr version games need to stop trying to be realistic, jumping 80 feet in the air is fun as hell.

[Wizard]

The problem with adding realistic precision jumping to FPS' is that in real life jumping is pretty much a boolean value, you either make it easily or you know you'll never make it. And you can basically tell if you're going to be able to jump a distance or not just from looking at it. However in a 3D FPS where they have to fake 3 Dimensions using your 2 dimensional screen, you'll never have the same accuracy of depth perception as you would in real life.

tldr version games need to stop trying to be realistic, jumping 80 feet in the air is fun as hell.

Agree completely. I don't like this hyper-realism that seems to be so oft-associated with games these days. I wanna be able to run constantly and jump really high and fall for 10 minutes, and yet still land without turning into a pizza.

[slembcke]

Well, and then they mix those "realistic" jumps with with frustrating jumping puzzles that make you want to scream "I HAVE HANDS! WHY CAN I NOT JUST CLIMB ONTO THIS 2 FOOT HIGH SHELF!?" Personally I thought jumping was not terribly well done in HL2, though I've certainly played much worse too.

I think Metroid Prime is the only 3D platformer game that didn't frustrate me horribly. I'm not sure what it was about it exactly that made it so playable either.  Probably just a combination of the nice camera panning during jumps and the "boost" jumping like in Mario where you can hold the button longer for a higher jump.

[gimymblert]

@ metroid

large platform + enormous margin of error + Fixed distance

[Derakon]

I think it's the "fixed distance" that's key. I know in Half-Life 2 there were a couple of points where I got stymied because I couldn't tell that I was supposed to make a jump to a distance roof. I knew I had to get over there somehow (I could see a ladder and some health pickups), but the jump looked too far to make, so I didn't even try.

Metroid Prime makes everything either obviously a feasible jump, or obviously completely infeasible. Eliminating that middle ground means you don't waste time on jumps you can't make.