The Importance of Prone, Leaning & Crouching, and a suggestion for NightDive.

[673f65ed99416Learonys]

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Have you seen the new movie trailer of that ad yet?
 

[673f65ed9962cKolya]

Nice. I plan to go back in time myself in a few months, I only spent the summer in this timeline.

[673f65ed997c7ZylonBane]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73jSnAs7mq8

[673f65ed9994bvoodoo47]

pretty sure anyone traveling back in time would only manage to f!ck himself, big time.

[673f65ed99a8dfox]

Yeah, same thing like memory deletion: bad-fucking-idea. Let the past be past.

[673f65ed99eedJoin2]

people not seeing things your way does not equal to them failing to see or understand. I understand perfectly, I just don't agree with you

Sorry, but it is absolutely an issue of perception when you make claims such as "it has no place in a games like System Shock", which is an absolute black & white objectively false statement as it falls in line with LGS' design philosophy to a tee and has no notable downsides in offering the player that freedom (assuming it is executed well) beyond "it adds UI complexity", something all inputs do. You're welcome to hold the opinion it has no place, but opinions do not negate facts.

[673f65ed9a014voodoo47]

if game = military sim, then prone. System Shock ≠ military sim, so no prone.

the end.


but I have to say I wouldn't mind having it implemented, as long as it doesn't interfere with the control scheme, is not required anywhere, and can be safely and completely ignored.

[673f65ed9a318ZylonBane]

...has no notable downsides in offering the player that freedom (assuming it is executed well) beyond "it adds UI complexity", something all inputs do.

And yet LGS dropped it from Dark, the very next FPS engine they designed. So they must have thought there was some downside to it.

I know you hate this argument because it's a reality you can't deny.

[673f65ed9a588voodoo47]

not necessarily a downside - it's just a product of a time when nobody had a real idea how a FPS control scheme should look like. evolution has taught us that it's mouselook + run/walk forward and backward, sidestep left and right, jump and crouch for a standard FPS (and, for certain open world games with stealth elements, prone and crawl). plus lean if you want to have something extra. everything else is unnecessary, impractical to use, or simply inferior to what we have now.

and there was quite a bit of odd stuff out there, like "look over your shoulder", "turn around temporarily" etc.


also, let me remind you - SS1 did not have prone. it had a system where you could use the UI to position the body in any way you wanted (within the borders of that particular chunk of UI). this system proved to be impractical, and infinitely inferior to the standard FPS controls.

so this is not a "preserve this feature in the remake" thing, it's a new feature request. a request that makes next to no sense in a SS game, just like sniper rifles, for example (as there is virtually no place where a scoped weapon would be useful, considering the environment).

[673f65ed9a9f8ZylonBane]

not necessarily a downside - it's just a product of a time when nobody had a real idea how a FPS control scheme should look like.

I'm not referencing the control scheme, but rather the feature itself. Being able to go prone (or supercrouch or whatever) would arguably be far more useful and thematically appropriate in a stealth/exploration game than on a space station, yet they decided it wasn't worth implementing.

As I've already noted, I believe this decision came down to:

1) Complexity. Crouching is easy-- when standing you can crouch, when crouching you can stand. So your state can be managed with a simple toggle. Adding prone into that mix makes things exponentially more complex. Standing links to crouch or prone, crouch links to stand or prone, prone links to crouch or stand. No matter how you implement this, you're going to end up with a system where the player has to consciously think about the controls and/or the player body simulation when managing it. That's bad for immersion.

2) Expressiveness. Crouch gets you into a vent, prone gets you into a smaller vent. Crouch lets you duck under an obstacle, prone lets you duck under an even lower obstacle. Crouch lets you see under things, prone lets you see under lower things. Prone is thus (in the absence of ground cover or aim improvement) just a subdivision of the player decision to stand or not stand, with nothing uniquely interesting about it.

[673f65ed9ae7eOlfred]

And yet LGS dropped it from Dark, the very next FPS engine they designed. So they must have thought there was some downside to it.

I know you hate this argument because it's a reality you can't deny.

Anything which was in SS1 but not in SS2 = bad.

[673f65ed9af77ZylonBane]

SS1's interface was in SS1.

The lurching, bouncy player movement was in SS1.

[673f65ed9b092Olfred]

Again, you are just picking out specific stuff.

[673f65ed9b17aZylonBane]

As opposed to...?

[673f65ed9b276Olfred]

Well, you could also make a list of all the good stuff which isn't in SS2.
But no, that would go against your argument.

[673f65ed9b390Kolya]

For what it's worth, I've always been a bigger fan of SS2 (also played that first), so I don't think that list would get very long. (Cyberspace,...what else?)
But then this is about an SS1 remake, so I may not be the best judge.

[673f65ed9b84eMarvin]

(Cyberspace,...what else?)

The cyberspace I could live without, but the weapons are much more fun (and more numerous), all of the great implants/upgrades were reduced to +X% stat in SS2, the level design doesn't go to shit in the last quarter, SHODAN is, arguably, presented better/is more of a threat, and the overall variety is higher in my opinion (minigames, environmental obstacles, enemies, level architecture & design).
SS2 plays more fluid thanks to advancements in FPS and 3D engine design and has better replay value thanks to stats and PSI.

[673f65ed9ba1bcallum13117]

Cyberspace is an interesting point. It was used to cool effect in System Shock Infinite, although it probably would have been immersion-breaking in vanilla SS2.

I concede the points about implants/upgrades, level variety, and SHODAN (although imo SS2 was better narratively in every other way). I have to disagree about the weapons, though, Marvin - they handled way better in SS2 (impact, recoil, etc.), and they felt like real survival tools, unlike SS1's smorgasbord of guns and ammo.

Regardless, I'm in accord with the basic argument that elements dropped for SS2 weren't necessarily dropped because they were bad.

[673f65ed9be9ffox]

I concede the points about implants/upgrades, level variety, and SHODAN (although imo SS2 was better narratively in every other way). I have to disagree about the weapons, though, Marvin - they handled way better in SS2 (impact, recoil, etc.), and they felt like real survival tools, unlike SS1's smorgasbord of guns and ammo.

Finding out what is usefull for you and what not, was part of the fun for me. If everything that you find is essential or one-upping what you currently have, it feels too much like standard game design instead of a living, breathing word full of possibilities.

As an example: instead of finding increasingly stronger weapons as you progress through the story (which is mostly the devs attempt to control the difficulty balancing) I'd much rather find them in what would seem to be consistent with the setting - not really random but 'organic'. You may find a powerful machine gun earlier then a measly stun gun because there's a that dead guard who had one with him when he died. The actual balancing can be achieved by making the ammo very scarce, instead.

Another example: you may find different handgun types, some of which are ultimately redundant or worse then what you already have, performance-wise, but it's up to you to decide what you keep - not always knowing if your decision was a good one. Same with other items like edibles. Clutter is not necessarily a bad thing.

Those details contribute to the sense of being in a living, breathing world that exists with or without you instead of making you the center, around which everything was designed. That feels very "gamey" to me. It's one of those things I dislike in Bioshock and Dishonored - they feel too designed (streamlined) in that sense (and even did away with inventory as a result). Stalker did it very good and to some extent also the various Fallouts, TESs and Ultimas. Although I don't want to get that argument started again, the same applies to prone and lean - but since those are tied to limited space on the keyboard and accesibility, the cost-benefit-analysis has to be tighter then for additional items.

[673f65ed9c507Join2]

As there may be some still susceptible to the bullshit in this thread:

if game = military sim, then prone. System Shock ≠ military sim, so no prone.

the end.

The design logic of the opposition in this thread, ladies and gents. You take a similar approach when designing SCP?

Alright, alright, that's not fair when there's ZylonBane who at least makes slightly relatable arguments which may be misinterpreted by some as relevant:

As I've already noted, I believe this decision came down to:

1) Complexity. Crouching is easy-- when standing you can crouch, when crouching you can stand. So your state can be managed with a simple toggle. Adding prone into that mix makes things exponentially more complex. Standing links to crouch or prone, crouch links to stand or prone, prone links to crouch or stand. No matter how you implement this, you're going to end up with a system where the player has to consciously think about the controls and/or the player body simulation when managing it. That's bad for immersion.

Speaking from experience: it becomes second nature/muscle memory very quickly with the proposed input system. Granted military shooter multiplayer gives you more frequent  reason to go prone than Shock, but ideally Shock's design will be optimized and that includes prone-related design. I think you're also underestimating the player's adaptability to control complexity. Yes System Shock was too much, yet that is mostly the fault of no mouselook in addition to a GUI that enabled you to do everything the keyboard does. With two options available (minimum) for every input it slows the rate in which you would have learnt just one input setup, this one ideally being the perceived "optimal" method (that the player can rebind to their liking if desired). It was unnecessary control overload to present to the player all at once. 

2) Expressiveness. Crouch gets you into a vent, prone gets you into a smaller vent. Crouch lets you duck under an obstacle, prone lets you duck under an even lower obstacle. Crouch lets you see under things, prone lets you see under lower things. Prone is thus...

Going by this exact same logic, run/sprint is just moving "but MOAR", and therefore has little expressive value either and there's nothing uniquely interesting about it. 

Prone is thus (in the absence of ground cover or aim improvement) just a subdivision of the player decision to stand or not stand, with nothing uniquely interesting about it.

Check your perception. Unique examples had already been given, more than just ground cover and aim improvement, yet you still remain stubborn and ignorant. You want and accept the ability to lean & run yes? I don't think you'd argue that lean is an irrelevant alternative to strafing or crouching, nor run an irrelevant subdivision of walking. Lean is not of great importance, it's on the same level of relevance as prone if not less. What mostly separates lean from prone in any kind of argument for one or the other is prone requires notably more work to execute to a satisfactory standard, Shock didn't make great use of prone in its design, and lean requires one or more of its own dedicated keys whereas prone can be merged intuitively.

And yes, I'm aware that run is leagues more important than prone, but then why not just have run as the default and leave out walking? Shall we move on to the relevance of walking and potential removal of it? Note that I don't want that, but that's the path you're headed down. None of the movement control in Shock should go, only the methods in which they are used should be addressed and optimized.

[673f65ed9cb3cZylonBane]

Lean is not of great importance, it's on the same level of relevance as prone if not less.

It's so adorable the way you think saying dumb things over and over makes them true.

- Leaning provides a uniquely useful posture option.
- Prone does not.

These are facts, not opinions. Prone in SS1 is, technically and undeniably, merely MOAR CROUCHED. Just because you prefer to derp out in front of enemies instead of leaning doesn't make it useless, it just makes you someone who refuses to use a useful feature. You may as well argue that turning left is useless because hey, I can always face the way I want by only turning right, right?

I've been replaying SS1 over the weekend, and I found I've been using the prone button almost exclusively instead of crouch. But you know why? Because there's no movement penalty to prone vs crouch. There is absolutely no reason to waste brain cycles on deciding "Do I need to crouch a little or a lot here?" For all practical purposes, prone IS my crouch button, and "actual" crouch is, like, this useless half-crouch thing. That's why having both in SS1 is pointless complication.

[673f65ed9d029Join2]

It's so adorable the way you think saying dumb things over and over makes them true.

- Leaning provides a uniquely useful posture option.
- Prone does not.

It is you who is repeating dumb statements.

Just because you prefer to derp out in front of enemies instead of leaning doesn't make it useless

I will prone when the situation calls for it, and will lean when the situation calls for it. I won't do one over the other unless it produces the best results in any given situation if I can help it, as intended. In this life I don't lean when I want to sleep, crawl through something or take cover behind a low down object, and I don't prone when I want to peek around a corner or lean over to grab something.

I've been replaying SS1 over the weekend, and I found I've been using the prone button almost exclusively instead of crouch. But you know why? Because there's no movement penalty to prone vs crouch. There is absolutely no reason to waste brain cycles on deciding "Do I need to crouch a little or a lot here?" For all practical purposes, prone IS my crouch button, and "actual" crouch is, like, this useless half-crouch thing. That's why having both in SS1 is pointless complication.

We're ultimately talking about what we want in the remake here, where a movement penalty greater than crouch can fix this. It does provide movement penalty in shock 1 anyway: leaning is less effective from prone than crouch. Regardless of any movement penalty, both puts your head and body at a different position, resulting in maximum freedom to move your body into any form of cover, and any line of sight advantage.  Crouch may be more desirable than prone in some circumstances, and vice-versa.