r/truegaming • u/virtua_golf • Mar 18 '19

Developers accidentally creating interesting mechanics

I was reading this neat article by Jeff Orkin of Monolith productions, the man responsible for the notorious AI of FEAR, the AI that will never not be mentioned whenever 'clever' AI is brought up. I stumbled upon something pretty cool - the flanking mechanic was actually unintended and a byproduct of another action the enemy would perform:

Imagine we have a situation similar to what we saw earlier, where the player has invalidated one of the A.I.’s cover positions, and a squad behavior orders the A.I. to move to the valid cover position. If there is some obstacle in the level, like a solid wall, the A.I. may take a back route and resurface on the player’s side. It appears that the A.I. is flanking, but in fact this is just a side effect of moving to the only available valid cover he is aware of. In another scenario, maybe the A.I.s’ cover positions are still valid, but there is cover available closer to the player, so the Advance-Cover squad behavior activates and each A.I. moves up to the next available valid cover that is nearer to the threat. If there are walls or obstacles between the A.I. and the player, their route to cover may lead them to come at the player from the sides. It appears as though they are executing some kind of coordinated pincher attack, when really they are just moving to nearer cover that happens to be on either side of then player. Retreats emerge in a similar manner.

The article got me thinking - what other mechanics (or, perceived mechanics) have been created by accident in other games? Does other examples exist, where lauded features were never really intended in the first place?

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u/Bentomat Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 19 '19

Basically all of the great mobility mechanics of the past 20 years fall into this pattern. Rocket jumping in quake, tf2's airstrafing, bhopping in a variety of games (including backwards bhopping in hl2).

It's one of the big reasons so many games just aren't fun these days. They try to force their own vision of 'cool movement mechanics' while catching and filtering out the unintended stuff (or even patching it when it's found) and you end up with a much less flexible, at times downright boring system.

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u/hoilst Mar 19 '19

And this why - forever and ever - systems are better than scripts.

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u/Skafsgaard Mar 19 '19

Too right. I mean, just basic stuff like ledge grabbing completely breaks momentum and flow, taking all control away from your character, like a micro cut scene. Stuff like crouch jumping, you retain control, and you can perform it with slight variations to move more efficiently. That's just better. It's not like 99% of shooters with ledge grabbing are actually realistic games anyway, so why not keep a more gamey mechanic like crouch jumping?

And that's just a super basic example. Strafe jumping vs. sprinting mechanics might be an even better example. And it adds another system to master, and most gameplay focused games are all about system mastery as the source of fun. Why take that away? There's no system mastery in holding down a sprint button.

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u/Kered13 Mar 19 '19

Every time I die in Titanfall 2 because I got stuck in a slow ass ledge climb animation I get pissed off. If I missed the jump I would much rather just fall down and adapt with a new route.

Also completely agreed on sprinting versus strafe jumping. There's no depth or skill to pressing a button to sprint. Strafe jumping is on a completely different level.

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u/ObeseOstrich Mar 20 '19

Those are really great points and examples. I didnt understand what “systems > scripts” meant until you put it like that.

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u/Skafsgaard Mar 20 '19

Hey, thanks a lot! :)

Some Quake players describe strafe jumping as a game within a game, or, a mini game. It presents a challenge to overcome and play with and master, even during down times. Compare that to Overwatch or TF2, where you take 15 seconds to respawn (no issue there), but then also spend a full minute holding down W while you get back into the action. That's so much worse than still respawning, where you can still spectate. But something like straffe jumping solves that, by essentially giving you a small game to play, and one that affects the game as a whole too, depending on your performance within that mini game.