Movement on 41 is very janky.

[Cleave]

It seems like one of those attempts to emulate realistic pivoting that just results in the character feeling like they have a shovel up their @$$ and there's a delay to all input as a result. Yet the zombies of all things are perfectly capable of moving like they haven't drank the local bar out of business by comparison.

It's pretty jarring to me. Hopefully this is just something they're tinkering with.

Anyone else notice this? What are your thoughts?

[DivineEvil]

This is far better than 40's ability to turn instantly in place, which makes fighting zeds very casual. 41ths model of movement is far more realistic indeed, as all movement takes time.

[Cleave]

Originally posted by DivineEvil:

This is far better than 40's ability to turn instantly in place, which makes fighting zeds very casual. 41ths model of movement is far more realistic indeed, as all movement takes time.

I get what they are going for but so far it is more drunk than realistic. Here's hoping they find a good middle ground.

I enjoy when they try to get things "realistic" it's appreciated but the delay becomes jarring when the aim is for more believable movement but it becomes worse than real life.

Like taking excessive fall damage from dropping from an average single story building in most games, whereas irl I've done that several times just fine, never broken a bone yet. Sometimes the attempt at realism goes too far and overshoots.

The worst part though is when the zombies break the same rules around movement and can instantly do some 360 no scope level movements. It's pretty funny.

Anyhow, hopefully we get a good middle-ground going where it doesn't range between instantaneous or drunken as the build is still a work in progress.

[Cleave]

Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:

Originally posted by The Fast:

The worst part though is when the zombies break the same rules around movement and can instantly do some 360 no scope level movements. It's pretty funny.

I have no idea as to what this means. They’re animation driven just as the player is.

Try to move in a circle around a zombie that sees you.

They will be able to follow perfectly. Now imagine trying to do the same thing if you were in the zombies place following something circling you. It would take forever due to the way the character pivots now.

[Cleave]

Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:

fumbling stub the keyboard and mouse bring the issue, something zombies don’t have to do.

What?

[Raven]

you can jog, stop jogging just for the period it takes to turn (literally just for the stopping animation) and then start jogging again, this is how I do my sharp turns in desperate situations if I'm forced into one.
The sprinting turn is really slow, but it should be, so that's fine (also, you don't ever need to sprint if you're not playing sprinters).
I think the movement has a learning curve, like controls in Gothic or piloting in Starsector. The control schemes in all these games make sense and do their job really well, but they're just not what people are used to, so, same as here, it just takes getting used to.

[Cleave]

Originally posted by Raven:

you can jog, stop jogging just for the period it takes to turn (literally just for the stopping animation) and then start jogging again, this is how I do my sharp turns in desperate situations if I'm forced into one.
The sprinting turn is really slow, but it should be, so that's fine (also, you don't ever need to sprint if you're not playing sprinters).
I think the movement has a learning curve, like controls in Gothic or piloting in Starsector. The control schemes in all these games make sense and do their job really well, but they're just not what people are used to, so, same as here, it just takes getting used to.

I've played both of those and the movement is much better than this.

[Raven]

Originally posted by The Fast:

Originally posted by Raven:

you can jog, stop jogging just for the period it takes to turn (literally just for the stopping animation) and then start jogging again, this is how I do my sharp turns in desperate situations if I'm forced into one.
The sprinting turn is really slow, but it should be, so that's fine (also, you don't ever need to sprint if you're not playing sprinters).
I think the movement has a learning curve, like controls in Gothic or piloting in Starsector. The control schemes in all these games make sense and do their job really well, but they're just not what people are used to, so, same as here, it just takes getting used to.

I've played both of those and the movement is much better than this.

It took me a rly long time to get good at piloting some of the bigger ships effectively.
As far as Zomboid goes, d'you feel it's too sluggish even when walking? How far ago did you start playing b41?

[Cleave]

Originally posted by Raven:

Originally posted by The Fast:

I've played both of those and the movement is much better than this.

It took me a rly long time to get good at piloting some of the bigger ships effectively.
As far as Zomboid goes, d'you feel it's too sluggish even when walking? How far ago did you start playing b41?

In starsector there's a way to allow your mouse position to dictate the direction you face until you use a modifier key or toggle to change the functionality.

Made it much better.

Gothic movement is fine because the view angle at least assists you in orienting yourself easily enough.

Zomboid is an oddball in a negative way, always messing with the zoom to either see farther away or orient in relation to objects and zombies by zooming in closer. Never really finding a happy medium of being able to see the extent of your character's perception and being able to orient properly in tight locations at the same time.

Tacking on delayed pivoting on top of that just exacerbates that flaw even more. At least movement was concise and responsive before.

But anyhow, I've been playing zomboid since the earliest days and check back every couple weeks/months to see what the progress is like. I don't mind it taking a while but lately it seems like there's a bit of feature creep going on here in regards to movement and care should be taken when revamping the system that players have to interact with the most. Movement that is.

The pivot and full sprint play like they were just tacked on and I don't really know why you'd even need to use sprint and using it would feel pretty awkward with it defaulting to the alt key.

At this point I would prefer RE1 PSX tank controls over this.

[Raven]

Originally posted by The Fast:

Originally posted by Raven:

It took me a rly long time to get good at piloting some of the bigger ships effectively.
As far as Zomboid goes, d'you feel it's too sluggish even when walking? How far ago did you start playing b41?

In starsector there's a way to allow your mouse position to dictate the direction you face until you use a modifier key or toggle to change the functionality.

Made it much better.

Gothic movement is fine because the view angle at least assists you in orienting yourself easily enough.

Zomboid is an oddball in a negative way, always messing with the zoom to either see farther away or orient in relation to objects and zombies by zooming in closer. Never really finding a happy medium of being able to see the extent of your character's perception and being able to orient properly in tight locations at the same time.

Tacking on delayed pivoting on top of that just exacerbates that flaw even more. At least movement was concise and responsive before.

But anyhow, I've been playing zomboid since the earliest days and check back every couple weeks/months to see what the progress is like. I don't mind it taking a while but lately it seems like there's a bit of feature creep going on here in regards to movement and care should be taken when revamping the system that players have to interact with the most. Movement that is.

The pivot and full sprint play like they were just tacked on and I don't really know why you'd even need to use sprint and using it would feel pretty awkward with it defaulting to the alt key.

At this point I would prefer RE1 PSX tank controls over this.

I agree to a degree that the pivoting has a bit of a delay, I guess they'll fiddle with it a bit more before the full b41 release. Although tank controls do sound fun, would save me holding down 2 keys just to go up a street...plus they felt rly natural in RE1-3 (never played RE0 or CV that much)

[Cleave]

Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:

That you need to zoom in and out to figure out your orientation tells me that you struggle with the isometric camera and translating that into mouse and keyboard movements, just as I suspected when you described an inability to turn smoothly.

Try it with a controller.

That was an entirely different issue which is that your character can see very far away, up to the maximum zoom possible yet at that point you're so far zoomed out that you may as well be a helicopter pilot. You then have to choose between the game looking better and seeing farther.

The inability to turn smoothly is based on the faux-realistic pivoting added in build41 and wasn't an issue prior. This issue exacerbates the previous issue though.

In your last comment I didn't even know what you were getting at because you seemed to be struggling with hitting the proper keyboard keys or you didn't proof read, maybe both?

Anyways, you sound like you have a preconceived notion about what I'm describing being an issue with the user rather than an issue with a mechanic that is unique to the latest build and perhaps isn't implemented well enough yet at this stage and it is rather rude to assume that I'm struggling with the camera and keyboard movements when you struggled typing your last response so badly that I wasn't even sure what you meant.

Playing a game like this with a controller is pretty counter-intuitive to me considering accessing the context menus(like right clicking) would be seriously hampered. Not to mention I am on a computer playing games because I prefer standard computer interfaces since they have vastly more options and ability to have more keybinds.

[DivineEvil]

Originally posted by The Fast:

Try to move in a circle around a zombie that sees you.

They will be able to follow perfectly. Now imagine trying to do the same thing if you were in the zombies place following something circling you. It would take forever due to the way the character pivots now.

Try to jog past the zombie, and it will take the same amount of time for it to reverse as it would take for you to do the same. I seriously do not understand what is the problem here.

Originally posted by The Fast:

In starsector there's a way to allow your mouse position to dictate the direction you face until you use a modifier key or toggle to change the functionality.

Made it much better.

Gothic movement is fine because the view angle at least assists you in orienting yourself easily enough.

Zomboid is an oddball in a negative way, always messing with the zoom to either see farther away or orient in relation to objects and zombies by zooming in closer. Never really finding a happy medium of being able to see the extent of your character's perception and being able to orient properly in tight locations at the same time.

You can orient in relation to stuff at any zoom level. All you need to do is to hold RMB, and that is really the only mode where precision view is meaningful.

Originally posted by The Fast:

Tacking on delayed pivoting on top of that just exacerbates that flaw even more. At least movement was concise and responsive before.

No, the release movement model is terrible. With it you basically can safely fight hundreds of zeds because at any point you can just make instant 180 and run away. 41's movement model is much better and best perpresents what that movement would be like in reality.

Originally posted by The Fast:

But anyhow, I've been playing zomboid since the earliest days and check back every couple weeks/months to see what the progress is like. I don't mind it taking a while but lately it seems like there's a bit of feature creep going on here in regards to movement and care should be taken when revamping the system that players have to interact with the most. Movement that is.

Lately? This movement model was around for at least half-a-year now, and little to nobody had any issues with it, aside from it being just harder compared to pretty generic and unrealistic arcade model of the release version.

Originally posted by The Fast:

The pivot and full sprint play like they were just tacked on and I don't really know why you'd even need to use sprint and using it would feel pretty awkward with it defaulting to the alt key.

You'd use it precisely for what it is made for - to run fast between two points for a price of increased exhaustion and potential of running into stuff or tripping if you're not careful. Alt key is perfectly fine because you don't need to use it often and you need to press it once, instead of holding it like Shift for jogging. There's nothing preventing you from using a thumb for Alt, pinky for Shift and the rest for WASD controls.

[Cleave]

It in fact takes longer for the player to pivot than the zombies. Easily confirmed with a 2 minute test and a decent set of eyes.

"Lately? This movement model was around for at least half-a-year now, and little to nobody had any issues with it, aside from it being just harder compared to pretty generic and unrealistic arcade model of the release version."
First off if you play zomboid for realism then you're playing the wrong game, but even when I had a back injury I could pivot faster than the character in this game, maybe I'm some sort of super mutant with the special ability of doing a 180 degree turn faster than football players but it should be obvious to anyone with functional legs that this is tacked on the way motion blur is tacked on badly to games.

There's many faux-realism effects that games try to implement and they end up worse than IRL, pivot speed, motion blur, and depth of field are prime examples.

Pivot speed is always needlessly exaggerated in the amount of delay it has which feels awful and it is pitiful that I could pivot better even if I had a severe back injury.

Motion blur is always over done which isn't realistic because your brain naturally compensates for the motion blur you do experience, so unless you're spinning in a chair for 5 minutes straight the amount of blur you see when you tilt your head quickly is always less than video game implementations.

Depth of Field effects assume your focus point is always the center of the screen which isn't always the case and so unless you vehemently refuse to let your eyes wander it will not be accurate.

What these all share in common is the attempt at making a realistic mechanic and the failure to do so at the same time because the implementation doesn't take into account how the human brain works around them.

This kind of stuff is why anatomy should be a required class.

Anyways "Lately" is relative to how long 41 has taken. Even after all this time it is still in the experimental phase a year and a half later. I doubt as many people out of the entire population pool play the experimental build compared to stable. I bet there would be a lot more complaints about it if exp went stable right now.

[Cleave]

Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:

The pivot speed is faster than in real life. Once you get to under 0.35 s, you’re basically doing ballet.

Is 3/4 of your above post basically advocating that the game should compensate for the slow speed of human reaction, thus making it even faster? ‘Cause that’s how you get the game version of a famous Benny Hill skit. (Otherwise I’m lost on the purpose depth of field and motion blur has on a game has neither. They’re also more often used to compensate for a lack of realism, as it allows programmers to imply speed when it doesn’t exist and obscure details in the distance, not just for realism’s sake.)

We tried faster animations, by the way. They looked ridiculous. So if the choice is occasionally angering someone that thinks they’re a ninja in real life and requires the game to reflect their prowess or that I’ll live with the anger.

You seem to take personal offense to legitimate criticisms. Were you the one that implemented the pivot speed as is? If so I would ask what is your occupation, age, weight, height that you came to the conclusion that it is absolute perfection compared to reality.

I must be some sort of supermutant with the innate ability of being the only human being able to pivot without looking drunk. I wish I knew how our ancestors survived before modern times when they couldn't pivot fast enough to run away.

Lastly if you really cannot see how two additional examples of how other games ruin "realistic" implementations by not considering how anatomy and brain function interact with it in real life relates to this one different examples' implementation being of the same level of quality then I think you're a lost case that is just looking to argue a pre-determined point rather than consider maybe it is complaint worthy because it feels wrong to a rather average human that can pivot better.

The only people defending the pivot also seem to think that the zombies follow the same turn speed rules which is demonstrably false.

All I want is for the game to be as good as it can possibly be and movement is the one mechanic that players have to interact with the entire time they are playing so if it isn't up to snuff then the whole thing falls apart and they stop playing.

It's not like I hate everything in the game and every new thing that's implemented, it's great that you can get dragged to the floor and eaten now instead of awkwardly being stuck in a walking speed loop as it was before. But do I have to praise something every time I give criticism so that you don't emotionally jump the gun and assuming you need to defend the honor of an inanimate piece of media that in fact has a couple flaws so obvious I could immediately notice them?

Like jeez learn to take things in stride even if you won't agree with it. Needless hostility and assumptions towards someone giving detailed well meaning criticisms doesn't really help anyone.

Lastly if the animations don't look good at a higher speed then lowering the speed is likely just a way of hiding the low quality of said animations. Perhaps someone doesn't want to reanimate it and just said screw it, good enough, tune it down and it will look passable at a glance. It's really starting to sound like that's the case.

But it's whatever, I can play something else without drunken pivot speeds. I mean what do I know it's not like I work in the industry as a professional that tests and gives feedback for games that are in pre-alpha/beta states or anything.

[Alabeo]

I want to comment on this.

Enigma, I personally like animations however I think that sprinting animation on sprinter zeds needs to be more erratic and faster.

Good example on animations done well for the sprinter zombies is left for dead 2 and I know you'll say that it's fast paced shooter, but I do think it can be balanced somehow. I know you guys worry about them being too fast, but I do believe you can speed animations up a little but somehow make their movements speed remain the same, right?

Same for walking. I feel like walking animations for player are stiff. They need to have more flow to them and be slower in fact.

May I suggest making current waking speed a light jog instead and slow down the walking speed to make it more natural?

I do believe this game can achieve better feel becuase don't get me wrong, animations are cool and all, but I feel some of them are actually too fast or too slow. There's no fine balance yet between them.

I know this runs contrary to OP's post but honestly OP's post shows lack of awareness on their part of what Zomboid is meant to be.

[DivineEvil]

Cool. There's no point in arguing with someone who just asserts his feelings as paramount and his criticism as valid. I disagree, I've stated my opinion, and I don't find there to be a problem worth half the word salad being served. It's just rhetoric layered on top of itself.

I have very high level of confidence in that the moment the 41th is finally released for multiplayer, everyone will jump immediately into it, and nobody is going to give a damn about any of this "valid criticism" anyway.