I wish more people read your posts in this thread, I gotta say I've enjoyed your explanation of the mechanics a good deal, seeing as you had a good amount of hand on time with it as well makes me feel like you know what you're talking about.
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Spider-Man 2018's webswinging is concerning as a Spider-Man 2 fan
- Thread starter Lady Bow
- Start date
I wish more people read your posts in this thread, I gotta say I've enjoyed your explanation of the mechanics a good deal, seeing as you had a good amount of hand on time with it as well makes me feel like you know what you're talking about.
Why would a building being underneath prevent conservation of momentum?
In SM2 it wouldn't, because they were aiming for accurately conserving vertical momentum.
[I am inferring based on available information] In SM2018, it would, because they are aiming for a system where the game put the training wheels on to some extent, and limits the degree to which you can manoeuvre outside of the intended style.
Neither of these is inherently a better decision, but it's reasonable for people to have a preference.
Let me ask you an irrelevant question since I guess that's what we're doing now: how many times have you gone to the bathroom in your life?
Sarcasm?
He does move faster out of a dive.
In fact faster than the animation.
Am I wrong?
...because trying to initiate a swing after a vertical drop with five or six feet beneath you wouldn't leave enough room for an arc to complete. You'd either jolt upright or smack into the building.
Sometimes there was a risk and reward.
Yea exactly I call that the Freakazoid effect lol.
Web of Shadows has way better swinging than Spider-Man 2. The only thing Spider-Man 2 has over it is the ability to piledrive people off of the Empire State Building.
This game looks to have way better swinging than Web of Shadows, so we're in good hands.
This game looks to have way better swinging than Web of Shadows, so we're in good hands.
I think what the poster is trying to say is that it's a decision not conserve momentum when you're on top of a building like that so the player doesn't smack into it.
They just went with a different traversal and swinging than Spider-Man 2 and that's totally fine, people will pick which they prefer more when the game releases. After watching that Spider-Man 2 video above and refreshing myself on how that looked, Spider-Man PS4 looks 1000 times better to me, but I don't know how it feels to play yet and Spider-Man 2 felt amazing.
P
Pretty much it's so apparent , same with SFV got shit over it not being multiplatform
Pretty much it's so apparent , same with SFV got shit over it not being multiplatform
- If you're falling vertically and throw a line straight forward (90º respect of the movement speed), you are indeed going to move at the exact speed you're falling during the entirety of the pendular trajectory. That's precisely how a pendulum works.
- If you throw a line at any other angle, any speed you lose is going to be immediately converted into a jolt that, at a significant fraction of terminal velocity, and a significant angle differential from the orthogonal (and thus, any significant speed loss) will rip your arms clean off, no matter how much spider-enhanced your muscles and bones are. It would also make you (or rather, your recently emancipated arms) to bounce like a yoyo, not shoot you forward.
So yes, in fact the "magical" physics are the ones not depicting a 1:1 preservation of the original speed. Let alone, of course, that this magic midair stop happens before the line even goes taut.
Sorry, I should have specified forward momentum. Since the web shot isn't at a 90 degree angle.
Yes, correct. So in SM2 you have to pay attention to the environment, and nail your timing, to pull off certain manoeuvres during traversal. That is fun gameplay.
It looks like, in this particular regard, SM2018 has the training wheels on. That's OK, and it might work great for this game, but having to pay close attention to getting your swinging correct, and managing your momentum correctly, was really fun in SM2.
Correct, for whatever reason they've adopted a system that leans away from modelling conservation of momentum. I'm sure they had their reasons for this, but it does feel like somewhat of a loss.
Well thanks for that! I really just want to communicate some of the more nuanced elements of the swinging. Granted, my conclusions on it being a design choice are chiefly made from my experience with the game, not from anyone at Insomniac. For instance, I did a "drug bust" and had to chase down the car as some of the goons got away, and you have to get a maintain a certain distance behind the car in order to close in on it and zip to the top & dispatch the remaining goons...if you had to do that with by building momentum and then maintaining the right amount of momentum, it wouldn't exactly be a fun experience, or rather, *as fun* as it could be.
There are a lot of options to move faster, but most gameplay videos didn't articulate that well. For instance, if you press X at the bottom of your swing, he'll vault forward with a speed boost, and you can increase your speed this way. If you press X at the top of your swing (the end) then you vault upwards, which gives you a good deal of altitude, enabling you to "vault" over big buildings. If you're over the top of a building, you can press L2 + R2, zip into it, and press X to immediately vault off the building into a swing. I found myself just vaulting over and around buildings to take shortcuts to locations instead of swinging around them and then running to the top of buildings. When you master these little nuances (it doesn't take long) you'll find yourself effortlessly navigating the city with great speed and it's so much fun.
So while the sandbox element of physics isn't there to "see what you can do", there is a lot of meat and potatoes there to experiment with and keep the traversal interesting and fun.
I played about 45 minutes and never once had the swinging stop. So long as I held R2, Spidey was swinging. I'd say that was likely either a controller issue or a freak occurrence. I could be wrong, but in my experience that didn't happen to me.
I can assure you, most everyone in here posting is aware of that.
Most of the praise about the traversal system has directly referenced Spidey 2 in some way, either saying this matches or flat out surpasses web-swinging in that title.
..yes, and you agree with what I was saying. Since there would be a jolt and it would not project you forward.
The guy in the Polygon video on page 1 says you have to let go of R2 to release the web. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They didn't want to momentum to break. They've said this a bunch of times. They keep saying an experienced Spidey wouldn't faceplant into a building. They give you so many options but they sort of automate Spidey's moment so that it's non stop unless you want it to stop. Browsing YouTube and hearing nothing but good impressions on the traversal. There are some canned physics in there but I don't think I mind.
This comes at a cost, so I can understand if people don't prefer this direction.
Yeah, that's what I'm confused about.
Thanks.
While holding the swing button Spider-Man would sometimes jump off the web without me letting go of the button. It kinda felt like Amazing Spider-Man 1's swinging and I didn't like that.
Maybe there was something wrong with my build? The game crashed towards the end of my playthrough so who knows.
I know that which is why I was shocked when it happened a few times.
I....I....kinda agree? I'm definitely seeing a pattern here. People better buckle up for next year's exclusives.
It wasn't like you were building up unwanted momentum that you couldn't deal with....if you wanted to swing slower you just didn't swing boost, or released yourself on the upward arc and placed your next shot as you fell.
I see what you're saying, but I can also see that mission type being totally doable with the momentum physics from 2. I'm surprised more people aren't for a skill based approach to the game, vs. cinematic swing assists.
I've been saying this since the game was revealed.
The game doesn't look built to handle SM2 type swinging. To make such a game, they'd have to build it from the ground up to accommodate that type of traversal.
I also think transitioning from swinging to combat and the animations would take hit as well.
This game is gonna be phenomenal. Everything I've seen looks like the Spider-Man game I've always wanted. I played all three original PS2 Spidey games as well as Ultimate Spider-Man, and they were all great. I think Ultimate was probably my favourite out of the bunch though. Based on gifs and impressions alone, this is gonna be a hit and will play incredibly well. Even swinging round New York and doing nothing else will be a great pastime.
It would also rip your arms off and make them bounce like a yoyo, which clearly isn't happening, so, again, Spiderman 2 (with actual pendulum movement) is far more realistic and less "magical" than Spiderman 2018.
Even assuming Peter has indestructible arms and his web lines have an elasticity of zero, for a line to stop you in midair like the ones in Spiderman 2018 do, they'd have to be angled at nearly 180º with respect of the vertical movement speed. This obviously makes zero sense for traversal, even more so for stopping high vertical velocity in a safe way, and is not what's going on in these videos either. He's throwing them at around 130-140º which would lose little speed, especially considering they're depicted as being reasonable flexible.
Again, this is all ignoring the fact that the lines stop you before they have a chance to go taut. All of this is why I find calling Spiderman 2's movement "magical" in comparison to be downright surreal.
It has been confirmed several times, including Game Informer's preview, that if you don't release R2 you dont let go of the web. There's even a video of people playing the demo at E3 and trying it.
Well, it has been over a decade since I last played, so my memory is probably pretty rusty.
It's not that it isn't a skill based swinging system, there is still depth there, it's just in the traversal options and navigation, instead of just understanding the physics of the swing. You also have to keep in mind that, for Insomniac, this is a HUGE game for their studio, so making the swinging mechanics more complicated than they realistically need to be for the mass market would be, in my opinion, a mistake. Especially so close to the Spider-Man / Avengers movies, this game needs to be pretty accessible & fun, so I can certainly understand why they'd want to ditch the physics and opt for something more approachable, while still giving players optional depth through the other traversal mechanics.
I know, and everyone else who's played the demo knows, lol. If this were a regular, normal occurrence, people would bring it up. You likely experienced a bug, or your controller had a defect that initiated that result. It isn't normal behavior and isn't cause for concern at all.
From what I can see here Spiderman 2018 has better physics than Spiderman 2. It's just that the web is attached to a more distant building in the 2018 game so there is less acceleration.One of my favorites things to do in Spider-Man 2 the video game was climbing the Empire State Building and jumping off to plummet towards the earth, and then at the last second, shooting a web right before hitting the ground, giving you a whiplash sort of effect and violently shooting you with speed/momentum. Unfortunately it seems a lot of Spider-Man's swinging is canned/animation-based instead of physics-based as shown by the gif below. The other thing that is annoying is that Spider-Man starts arcing before a web even attaches to a building. (at the same time the game is artificially slowing you down)
Don't get me wrong, the game still looks fantastic as a whole and the way Spider-Man does contextual animations while swinging looks flashy and great.
I just wish they opted for a more physics-based route and added an advanced swinging mode or something for fans looking for a more skill-based swinging system that did less on faking speed. I doubt they're going to make any major changes to the systems since the game is close to going gold but we'll see.
lol oh my god, really?
Well that is true, guess we might as well just swing assist absolutely everything so that the player never reaches a fail state, I mean Spider-Man would never die or miss a swing so we can't have the player do those things.
Do you happen to have a link to the video? Not doubting, just curious as I haven't seen it before.
I wasn't calling Spiderman 2's movement magical though. I was saying that it surprised me that people expected him to magically shoot forward at full speed in the 2018 gif.
What? If he slams into a building he just sticks to it. What do you mean miss a swing? If you don't hold R2 you will just fall to the ground.
I don't see how anyone can look at the 2018 gif and think it looks right.
The way he starts to move forward before he even connects the web stands out so much to me, and the lack of speed that should have been built up as he was falling, it just looks weird and doesn't feel right, regardless of what kind of "physics" you are applying to it.
The rest of the new Spidey game looks great, but the swinging has issues like this, like when you are swinging in your mind you picture what you'd expect applying real world physics to happen and when things happen like this it can be jarring to see because you don't expect that kind of thing to happen, for him to slow down so much when he was falling from such a height, for his forward momentum to suddenly change even before he's applied the force to do so (the web attaching and pulling).
The way he starts to move forward before he even connects the web stands out so much to me, and the lack of speed that should have been built up as he was falling, it just looks weird and doesn't feel right, regardless of what kind of "physics" you are applying to it.
The rest of the new Spidey game looks great, but the swinging has issues like this, like when you are swinging in your mind you picture what you'd expect applying real world physics to happen and when things happen like this it can be jarring to see because you don't expect that kind of thing to happen, for him to slow down so much when he was falling from such a height, for his forward momentum to suddenly change even before he's applied the force to do so (the web attaching and pulling).
I saw it on Reddit, in this video I think there are a couple of moments like that (I saw the one at 4:45) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98ytCxjzEMA&feature=youtu.be
Thanks! I did a big write up on my blog, I can copy it here later with some more detail, chiefly there ARE things that bothered me / disappointed me from the demo, but most of that was rooted in the combat mechanics more so than the swinging. The traversal was honestly the funnest thing for me, likely due to it being so easy and intuitive. Within minutes it was completely clicking, but despite a similar amount of time in combat scenarios, there was still some room for improvement there, or areas where I wanted more.
Nobody was expecting him to do that; we were expecting him to swing forward like in Spiderman 2. Isn't that like the entire premise of the thread? :D
Sure, it appears based on OPs gif that the freefall broke before the web line had to time to connect but, I think i'll live.
If it saves the game from being clunky or janky, I'm all for it. I will not fault them for going a more polished route, while also giving players as much control as possible.
This looks more like how a Spider-Man experience should be than any game before it.
But sure, you can be reductive and claim they are assisting us faceplanters (even though SM2's swinging was easy as fuck).
I'm just saying it's a little dumb to use ludonarrative dissonance as the excuse for why they couldn't avoid momentum breaking. "Because Spidey would never faceplant" lol
I'm just saying there's tons of things a player can do that "an experienced Spidey" wouldn't. It's a fucking videogame.
Thanks, I was about to link the same video, lol.
After watching this, I'm not really concerned with the speed of the swinging at all. This guy is getting some pretty good speed going. There's multiple times where he screws up, too, and the game punishes him for it.