I was and am a big guy (6''5) lots of people used to challenge me to fights in highschool. I won some and lost some. (got my jaw broken once) I was amazed when watching Gladiator... espically the battle scene at the beginning... the camera view in those scenes reflected how it was like for me when i was fighting.. everything was a reflex.. you couldn''t really focus on anything... and the world seemed unreal.. the adrenalin was roaring in my ears and i couldn''t feel anything, and after taking a fiew hits ot the head often my vision would be filled with stars and it was difficult to focus as my body tried to take in everything at once. Fighting was definatly the biggest rush i''ve ever had in my life. Though i would not reccomend it to anyone. Fighting is stupid and immature and there is large potential to get perminantly hurt or worse perminantly damage someone else. There are far better ways to resolve conflict.

...
Praticing Kung-Fu (wu-shu), it''s really different from any game experience I''ve had, and I don''t think you can implement a realistic fighting system in a game yet.

And I don''t think it would be interesting too.

Most players never fought, so I don''t think it''s really important to be or not realistic.

(gya very late and still @ work )

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

only thing is in a real fight you have so many options at any one time. you can punch, kick, back up, jump, swing galore or actually aim your punches, use your knees, elbows, then you have grappling, certain holds, choke holds ... any of these can be used in lots of different ways. you can use your elbow to press into somebodies neck when grappling on the ground, swing it behind you, or use your entire arm for certain throws.
then you get into weapons, knives, bats, clubs, swords, and the numerous other weapons out there... etc etc etc

i cant imagine a way to have the user have so many options in a fraction of a second in a fight simulation. if you can think of one, let me know.

It is like what we were saying in the swordfighting thread. Just make damage more realistic (if you get hit in the head, you are more likely to be seriously injured than if you were hit on the torso) and add a bit more variety into the style of fighting (ie, make the player actually need to fight a little more and have the ability to block and dodge etc..)

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Hi all,

Since starting college (this is my 4th year) I've taken a number of different martial arts (a semester of Okinawan Karate, a semester of Aikido, 6 semesters of Northern Wu-Su Kung-fu). I've also been introduced to the basic of Tae-Kwon-Do.

With the exception of Tae-Kwon-Do, all the martial arts I've taken are structured in a rather limted set of generic punches, blocks, kicks, etc. It lends it's self almost perfectly to a finite state system of combat AI. I find that, to the contrary of what Ingenu said, that Wu-Su lends itself to this kind of finite state animation better than the other martial arts (at least it'd create more complex and interesting combat sequences kinda like the Matrix). The only problem would be that the number of possible moves would be a lot higher in Wu-Su, which might be what he was getting at.

The same holds true with weapons. So far I've taken Shaolin long staff and the same concept of individual moves being strung together to create all the more compex combos still applies.

The best example of this can be seen in console/arcade fighter games. I'm sure this is the kind of animation system used in games like Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast. The only extra thing to concider when you add weapons into standard martial arts melee combat is that a decently large number of blocks have to be automatically eliminated from concideration when fighting unarmed against an opponent with a bladed weapon. This same concept has to be concidered when trying to do realistic combat between a huminiod PC and a non-humaniod monster. Me and a friend of mine had this exact same conversation about what would realistically happen if a human fighter was fighting a dragon. We came to the conclusion that virtually all of a trained fighter's blocks would have to be thrown out in this engagement. The only thing he/she could really do in defense would be to dodge out of the way.

P.S.- Ingenu: which style of Wu-Su do you study, northern or southern?

P.P.S - I'd also like to add, for all you Tae-Kwon-Do guys out there that might be wondering what I was implying about Tae-Kwon-Do not being structured, that thats not what I was trying to say. Tae-Kwon-Do does have structured sets of moves, however (in the one class I took) the emphasis of the martial art seemed to be very different from the others I've taken. It seemed to me that it was much less driven by "perfect form" like Kung-fu and Karate and more focused on improving the raw focus and speed of kicks and punches. Not trying to knock the martial art, but it just doesn't seem to me that it'd be as easy to implement that realistically in an animation system.

-Daedalus

Edited by - Daedalus on October 28, 2000 3:47:20 PM

Fighting games sometimes really shine for us real-world martial artists. This is because there are two factors in fighting matches, physical and mental challenges. The physicval is the actual speed and power with which you move, the mental is your grasp of timing and distance.

Tekken, Soul Calibur, and even Street Fighter all rely on timing and distance. Not matter how far removed from physical reality the moves get, most serious martial artists can derive a lot of enjoyment from standard fighting games.

It''s other genres that worry me. The classic console-like RPG interface relies heavily on abstract statistics, which is fine... but it seems to be more often than not lacking in strategy or coordination. At a time where I see many designers going for realism, I question the legitimacy of the little things.

Actually Landfish, I''d have to disagree with you on that. I''ve never been much of a fan of actually playing the fighting games. It mostly has to do with all the non-sensical combinations of button pushing that you have to do to get the "special moves". I play pretty good without them, but whenever someone like my brother would come along they''d cream me because he''d memorize all the combos.

What I''m personally looking for in the implementation of realistic martial arts in MMORPGs is more of a "Jackie Chan" effect rather than actually having the players micro-manage every single punch, kick, or block. When I say "Jackie Chan" effect, I mean adding atmosphere and excitement to a combat situation by having fast acting/well choreographed fighting. Kind of like watching a Jackie Chan movie. The action gets your heart pumping even though you''re not actually taking an active role in the fight. After all, combat is something that happens in an RPG but, unlike fighting games, its not supposed to be the sole focus of the game.

The idea would be to have the Players and the monsters "play act" out attacks and block/dodges based on the dice rolling results that you find in most RPGs. It would be a lot like Final Fantasy 7 where the players do complex attacks that they actually act out after you select the attack. Howeever, unlike FF7, the goal would be to actually have the attacker and the defender make contact with each other instead of being on opposite sides ofthe screen. In order to keep the combat fast passed, maybe some of the action moves could be automaticaly decided by the computer based on the combat skill levels of the character and the surrounding environment. The user would would then make general tactical suggestions to the PC as to how to carry out the attack (attack target x, attack high/mediem/low, attack hard/medium/soft, be agressive/defensive, cast a specific spell, etc.).

-Daedalus