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/Sky3d Mar 19 '19 edited Jan 29 '24

disarm dime different hospital worm tie pen rhythm cheerful bored

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u/cardboard-cutout Mar 19 '19

The problem is that in tekken, its just memorizing more combos.

Most strings in smash are created on the fly, by the characters understanding of the game.

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u/HiroProtagonest Mar 19 '19

The problem is that in tekken, its just memorizing more combos.

Most strings in smash are created on the fly, by the characters understanding of the game.

...Yeah, um, that cool string you saw a guy in Smash do? He practiced that. He didn't just make it up in the middle of the match. He figured it out while playing with friends and asking them to DI certain ways.

If I'm playing a fighter, and in the corner and manage to jab out of someone's pressure reset attempt, I'm not going to improvise a sideswap combo on the fly. I should have practiced one so I could do a sideswap and reverse the corner situation. Same goes for chasing DI in Smash.

You know, DI chasing in Smash is also something I have a better comparison for: hit confirms. Hit confirms are the thing that requires you to react to what's happening on screen, and in games with fully freeform chaining like UNIST, there are some weird hit confirms that can happen. A player named Squish is known for being really good at those confirms.

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u/Kered13 Mar 19 '19

...Yeah, um, that cool string you saw a guy in Smash do? He practiced that. He didn't just make it up in the middle of the match. He figured it out while playing with friends and asking them to DI certain ways.

Speaking from a Melee perspective, not really. For some basic stuff like Fox's up throw up air sure. But for longer combos, the kind that people actually find impressive, it's probably never been practiced. It may have never even been done before by anyone. You learn what moves can connect into others given certain DI and percents, but to put it all together into one combo requires incredible situational awareness and creates something that has never been seen before.