Verticality in 3D

[Hiver]

Vertical dimension is one thing that 3D technology has largely completely missed since it started overtaking graphical-visual representation of games.

At most it is used as a background or space for props and architecture - that cannot be interacted or used at all, as a gameplay relevant feature.


Some games did touch it, is some limited ways. Thief and such similar sneakers come to mind first.
The ability to climb to a second floor up the stairs and then shoot trough a window in other first person shooters isnt really what im talking about here.
Not even Skyrim, which is fully open 3D world enables the player to use verticality of the environment, except in some rare places where the player himself can basically cheat by jumping or falling onto some high vantage point and then use it to your advantage.

And its not that kind of games we are talking about here, in the first place.


The RPGs we do like, got it the worst.
We are forever grounded on a flat 2D surface where any sort of angle (oblique or isometric or top down or whatever), or additional 3D vertical dimension. that is there ... is there just for the show. A background.
Its not actually a part of environment. Its not something we get to actively use or even explore.
Let alone a part of the gameplay, except in some rare extremely limited or linear ways.

I would very much like to see Wasteland 2 take this opportunity and kick ass in this, so far so underused, dimension too.
Look at that art piece of rangers standing down on the street, casting their long shadows amongst the tall, overgrown with vegetation, skyscrapers. Look at the illustration of Scorpitron ...

Wouldnt it be great if we could climb onto those skyscrapers in places (not everywhere of course since you cant just climb everywhere)? Wouldnt it be great to traverse old ruined cities over those skyscrapers, finding hidden communities on top of or inside them, connected by cables and overgrown shanty bridges and vines?
Wouldnt it be terrifying to see a Scorpitron following you up one, or crawling down onto you from one? Or shooting at you from way high up there?

Wouldnt it be better to find hidden bases with vertical interiors that are all part of one big active map, so you can use the vertical dimension and height it provides in entirety? With enemies chasing you up and down or you finding an advantage over them like that?
Wouldnt it be great to be able to explore and reach hard to find places like that? By climbing or grappling your way up or down?

Or an old western looking city whose rooftops would be at your reach, to explore, or to have rooftop fights on?
The trees, hills, old tankers or battle ships and airplane carriers, truck husks, ruined buildings or houses, ... whathave you.

One small game that is isometric, completely 3D and very vertically enabled in parts, that i liked very much, was the recent Lara Croft and the Guardian of light.

Take a look at a part of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQYHIJbVaYU

There are other maps that are even more vertical, like these screenshots show:









The pics where you see the big inside of some temple are basically big maps that are all one big piece.
There are no loading screens or such mechanics to traverse them.
You can freely go up and down and often have to use the verticality to open some passage or solve a puzzle.

Of course, this is an adventure game and so limited to that kind of gameplay.

Wasteland 2 could do much, much more.

-edited for spelling etc -

[ButchinMelancholy]

Wouldnt it be great if we could climb onto those skyscrapers in places (not everywhere of course since you cant just climb everywhere), wouldnt it be great to traverse old ruined cities over those, finding hidden communities on top of skyscrapers or inside them, connected by cables and overgrown shanty bridges?
Wouldnt it be terrifying to see a Scorpitron following you up one or crawling down onto you from one?

I actually had those kind of ideas.

This would be very pleasant to find like a few ladder here and there which gives access to other zones, nice little areas, or different perspectives on the map indeed, or to be able to explore huge buildings, etc...

[happy04]

i like huge structures. vertical climbing i love.

[Hiver]

I have to point out Its not just about climbing but having at least combat, quests and exploration (counting in puzzles, secret areas, and similar), applied.
Leading to possible scenes such as simultaneously traversing some difficult breach, over an abyss, over broken rails or collapsed bridges, grappling and climbing, jumping over, with the group split up, all the time being under attack from different heights, and while solving some environmental puzzle too, while being involved in a furious, tricky discussion with an important NPC, who found just that moment to go weird on you.

[Hertzila]

Sounds nice in general, especially if it can be used to get a high ground advantage in fights. Or help the sneaky rangers flank the enemy even if there's some rubble, buildings and other crap in the way.
Would/could this be tied into a seperate skill, like climbing, parkouring or something? The higher the skill for the ranger, the more hazardous/harder to climb places he could go. The less skilled/agile rangers wouldn't be able to climb the side of a building, but the sneaky guy just might...
Would be especially nice if there would then be an option to deploy rope ladders to help everybody else climb (kinda like in Commandos 2).

E: Aw crap, didn't realize this was old.

[Hiver]

Yeah. of course. All that included.
Whether its a separate specific skill sounds alright as a concept but that would also lead into situations where one of your team, or an NPC follower, could not go across some map, because his skill would be low.

Having some ladders handily waiting at every turn so such members of the group could eventually cross over or climb up or down would be too fake.

One solution would be to design a whole system of abilities, or any other ways to make, build, invent, or create passages, throw down ladders, ropes, and otherwise make these difficult parts of the map traversable for team members with low skill.
But that, ofcourse, just escalates complexity of the whole deal, maybe unnecessary.


Which is all solved with just having grappling hooks and good coils of decent made rope, as Samwise Gamgee would say.
And all creatures in the game having some level of inborn natural capability to climb, (as all men do, themselves), slither, fly or jump.

Of course, some would be better at their respective abilities then others, and some poor.
Some monsters and creatures would be ill fitting for the job, some would be exceedingly good. I imagine some humanoid looking synthetics, for example, could climb over walls and even upside down very easily.
Not to mention other non-humanoid types of creatures.



btw,
Its not old! It just started!

[Hertzila]

Having some ladders handily waiting at every turn so such members of the group could eventually cross over or climb up or down would be too fake.

One solution would be to design a whole system of abilities, or any other ways to make, build, invent, or create passages, throw down ladders, ropes, and otherwise make these difficult parts of the map traversable for team members with low skill.

Using Commandos as an example, one option is to have a rope ladder/grappling hook/climbing rope items that allows low-skilled members to travel hard-to-scale areas. Usually it would be behind the specialist who would deploy those items, but I can imagine a 'throwing' guy using a grappling hook to climb stuff, whenever he can.

Another nice addition would be traversible ropes, like dangling on a power line. Or deploying a wire over a chasm with a grappling hook or something similar.

Of course, some would be better at their respective abilities then others, and some poor.
Some monsters and creatures would be ill fitting for the job, some would be exceedingly good. I imagine some humanoid looking synthetics, for example, could climb over walls and even upside down very easily.
Not to mention other non-humanoid types of creatures.

I can imagine giant spiders and geckos suddenly being almost nightmarish for being able to climb like it's nobody's business.
Or if the structure can whitstand the weight, the Scorpitron...

btw,
Its not old! It just started!

Depends on the forums. Some places get all uppity for resurrecting a month old thread, while others don't seem to mind whether the thread is 6 minutes, days or months old, as long as it contributes at least somehing.

[Hiver]

Ladders need to be fixed onto something to be used. They are also heavy, generally. Heavier than a single rope.
Grappling hooks are more flexible but they do require a good position to catch onto, too.

The point is that it cannot be a specific skill, because that forces fake solutions for NPCs and team members who do not have the skill, or whose skill is low.
So... all creatures should have the "skill" from the get go but some could and should be better at it.

I would connect this to be reliant on synergies of attributes at the start and then allow it to be improved... maybe with perks or specific build options available only to specific builds.

This would then play out as all members of the team being able to climb through ordinary sort of obstacle, for simplicity purposes, and some being able to reach places or positions or parts of the map others cannot, but that wont be crucial to success.

-EDIT-
bad expression at the end there. I meant to say ...that you can go through some normal "places" more or less through. But occasionally some parts of it would be hard to reach without a "better at it" members. (however thats designed in the end)

Special places in quests like underground bases and stuff would of course have all the ... depth, i hope, that is preferable, or at least it would be nice if some of them would have features more rewarding for exploration in this way.
Its not necessary to overdue it and spam such features all over the game, anyway.
(the more the better i say!)


but of course, all that would depend with how good system they would come up, of course.
And maybe making it a skill would be more efficient in the end, from their perspective...?
im certainly not an expert.

-
edit-


Instead it would make it easier, in the sense that it wouldnt make it unreasonably or unnaturally difficult from the start. And ultimately more interesting and rewarding. - in the right places.

-/
its not the threads fault that people are lazy scumbags. (meatbags)
Anyway, its not a problem.
There is no need to discuss it. You either write or dont.

[Woolfe]

-/
its not the threads fault that people are lazy scumbags.
Anyway, its not a problem.
There is no need to discuss it. You either write or dont.

Maybe we all agree with you Hiver .... Have you considered that

[Hiver]

:squints suspiciously at woolfe:

I trust all of youz as farz as i can throwz you.
Which is about a mile... give or take,... depending on wind velocity, direction, humidity, atmospheric pressure and aerodynamic of the clothes youre wearing.

/
I was just joking there. The point is that if someone talks about thread being dead or old then all the other people will think its a bad idea to write anything in it.

[DethRaid]

Speaking of old threads, I definitely think it would be a good idea to include multi-level maps which could be used for height advantages and such, but I'm not really sure how it would play out in-game. Would it take so long to climb up that the battle might be over, or the character might be dead, before he arrived? Would you simply have one character who always traveled at the maximum possible height?

If done right, this could turn into something amazing, whereas if done wrong it could end up just being a waste of time. I think the former is more likely, though.

[DonnyBrook]

Some type of short distance flight can make multilevel movement and gaining height advantage less tedious. I do think height advantage is a feature that has yet to be done well in more games and perhaps there are complex programming challenges tied to it.

[Hiver]

I mentioned a lot of ideas and crazy plans about possibilities, but none in the sense of actually thinking all of it should be in the game.

I think it would be best if there was a few such, very well selected locations like that, with strong setting and story related reasons for which such design would fit very beneficially, maybe surprisingly so.

I would love to see some more general, natural types of verticality included in all of the game visual art design.
Hills, canyons, rocky crags, shorelines, cliffs, forests and communities living in, under or on them.

There is actually no reason why it wouldnt look literally awesome in "isometric" perspective, if used a bit sparingly, where appropriate.
- going deep into an old secret research/army/secret ops base could take a whole different meaning - visually.
Instead of using elevators or other "loading screens" to traverse between different "floors" of the base, as usually goes, - floors that all all completely flat spaces - you could be descending through one big cavernous chasm, seeing parts of lower levels directly under you as you traverse damaged construction down to them.

- a usual type of shanty settlement built on a face of a cliff. Or under dried up waterfall ledge, or a crater, canyon, hanging on parts of the construction of an old bridge.... etc, etc, etc...

- climbing over hanging paths of a giant tree with some settlement on tops of it.

- climbing up through and over one of the skyscrapers overgrown with vines.

only... actually as a single continuous gameplay, with camera following all of you up and up all the time - of course.

- i mean.... it is 3D, right?

[rahul12]

Why not? I wasn't asking for every single element to be animated. Obviously there would be limits. But can you say that having a character with a certain skill, perform an idle action unique to that skill wouldn't be cool?
Its not that hard programmatically.
Randomly select an idle animation from a list, that list is created from a generic everyone list, and a specific character list.

[paultakeda]

I'd say that the most recent screenshot hints at there being multi-level combat.

[dorkboy]

http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=3096

[zypher1]

I agree with the idea of expanding verticality. In fact that is exactly what I thought as I first looked at the game's title poster. There are huge buildings on either side of the rangers and it would be a waste of space if one could not explore at least a few of them.