Game Maker's Toolkit - The Mechanics of Movement
[Game Design/Analysis] Video
Mark Brown talks about the way different games implement player Movement. Assassin's Creed is feature for a short time at one point, and besides that, what he says is a good idea to think about.
I'm all for having to pick up speed for a big jump.
Yeah, I believe Jermaine and I were as well, something like, the Assassin already runs at a pretty fast speed when you begin Sprinting, but picks up even more speed after which allows for big jumps and Air Assassinates.
I like that idea because it makes sense. I can't believe I haven't thought about it before. Starting your sprint 3ft from a big gap should not magically warp you over it. I've seen (in AC3 and 4 I think) the assassin actually pick up speed in mid-air so the animation sort of makes sense. Away with that.
How hard is that to implement though? And how do you make that mechanic not overly hard or complicated?
I feel like a scale of run distance corresponding to a scale of sprint speed corresponding to a scale of leap distance could be too complicated. It would mean the player has to estimate how far the run-up has to be to make a leap, depending on the size of the gap.
An better solution might be to have a threshold. If your run-up is longer than x, you'll reach your max speed and you'll clear all gaps, while with a shorter run up (and thus not reaching max speed) you'll only clear small gaps. This may mean you'll have to classify gaps in two categories, small and big. Small gaps are always cleared, even with little to no run-up distance, big gaps can only be cleared after reaching max speed (which is achieved by having a run-up longer than x).
Thoughts? Am I still making sense?
Gerund, you are overthinking this. Simply couple the maximum jump distance to the speed of the player in the jump direction. This is readily available and how it's been done since forever. You really don't need to count the number of steps taken until the gap.