The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

nice! its been a loooong time since ive played ac1, but i dont think i was ever aware of that feature.

Good video!

The mechanics behind those roof dents are briefly covered here:
http://www.thehiddenblade.com/assassins-creed-ii-faq#runningledges

The mechanics are the same in all three games. Those roof dents are dips in the floor height, bringing them slightly below the minimum tolerance for the character doing a catch-and-grab rather than simply running off. I like how they put those into the first game and gave a very clear graphical representation.

Do they exist in the same visual way in Acre and Jerusalem? If not, it was probably not an intentional feature.

There are many edges of similar or lower elevation, but you can only run off the roof dents. They are special.

Good question. Now that I think about it and just looked around a bit, I've never seen anything similar outside of the poor district of Damascus. Maybe I should have checked that before I advertised it as a feature of AC, hehe. Let's say it's a feature of the poor district of Damascus. And yes, I too think that that suggests that it may not have been a conscious design decision.

When something is destined for perfection, it's unavoidable that fate must round it out with perfection-by-coincidence.

That completely disagrees with my findings. I did extensive research when making the AC2 FAQ, and it's the same mechanics in AC1. I confirmed it while playing AC1 last night.

Let me clarify.

This roof dent is at the same height as all the others. The street level is standard, the building type is standard, there's nothing special about it. The edge that Altair is hanging at is lower than any part of the roof dent, which can be verified by stepping up and down between the two. There is no part of the roof dent that is not higher than that ledge.

Still, the edge that Altair is holding behaves as a high edge. You can't step down from it by holding high-profile.

Also, it is possible to step down from a roof dent in walking mode, without pressing high-profile. It doesn't behave like a low edge.

It's some kind of a mishmash of point-like handholds or beams and disconnected edge segments. It very much seems to me like something that could be at any height, it would behave the same.

There are some steps thirty or so steps north of the Damascus bureau, where I made some experiments.

There are twenty steps, which are just enough for the first-story roofs upstairs to be second-story roofs downstairs. So 20 stairs = 1 story. (First and second stories are of the same height.)

The white line is the maximum height that Altair can run up. (So that he runs up the wall, and holds the edge.) The red line is the maximum he can step down from when holding high-profile.

It's four steps, that is one fifth of a story higher than the first story roof.

Which would mean that the border between high edge and low edge behaviour is at 1.2 stories height, and not close to the 2nd story height.

What do you think?

Edit: The white line is totally irrelevant, disregard that, I just measured it for reference, but then I realized that I can measure by the number of steps compared to the story height, which is more revealing.

I can't really comment on your experimentation based on a couple of screenshots. But I was playing tonight and it was definitely working as I mentioned above.

I don't know what to say.

You are right, the screenshots don't tell much, so I made a video.

I don't really see how you came to the conclusion that the roof dent goes below the height limit for high-edge behavior.

I don't know how it is in ACII, but it seems to me that in AC1 the limit is less than one and half stories height difference, and not near the two stories height, where the roof dent is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1hPvKvXCXQ

I see where the problem lies now. You're overestimating story height.

True, individual floors tend to be a bit taller in AC1 than in AC2, but a story is generally considered to be 9 feet. For residential buildings in my city, 9 feet is the standard (according to a local realtor). In the past I've measured with the guy living above me and his patio is exactly 9 feet above mine (less than an inch off). There's also the fact that, at least in North America, 8-foot ceilings are the typical standard for homes, condos and apartment buildings, which supports the 9-feet-per-story measurement. That's why I went with 9 feet = 1 story when determining heights for the AC2 FAQ.

Altair is 6 feet tall, so one story = 1.5 times Altair's height.

Ladder rungs are an inconsistent way to measure because some ladders start with rungs a few inches above the ground, some about a foot above the ground, others a couple feet above the ground, etc. There's also the fact that ladders are on an angle, not perpendicular to the ground. But let's go with it anyway, just for comparison's sake.

Let's overestimate in your favor by saying that 4 ladder rungs = 6 feet. 16 rungs = 24 feet = roughly 2.6 stories. 7 feet would probably be more accurate, which would result in 16 rungs = 28 feet = 3.1 stories.

Stairs are a poor way to measure because they're much narrower than Altair's character model, so the game could take either/or when running towards a particular step.

If you use wall-running as a measurement, there are a couple points to notice. When there is nothing to catch onto, Altair runs up a wall and maxes his height where his head is just under twice his height, around 11.5 feet. If there is a ledge/handhold above him to grab onto, he will grab onto something that is around 2.5 times his height, about 15 feet. If you find a rooftop where you can do such a climb and then it's just another 3-4 feet to the roof above the caught ledge, that is a two-story height at 18-19 feet. And yes, Altair will run off such a ledge while holding .

It should be noted though that anything taller, even just a foot (20 feet total height), will result in him twisting and catching the edge instead of dropping down. So that aspect is slightly different from AC2 and ACB. There were less non-standard heights to work with in AC2, giving only heights of full and half-stories. At 2.5 stories (~23 feet), Ezio will run off a ledge, but at 3 stories (~27 feet) he will twist and hang. Thus it was accepted that anything under 3 stories will allow him to run off the ledge with .

You are correct regarding the no-edge behavior of the roof dents. It was probably missed while doing the climbable surface overlay of the maps in development, implying that these graphical features were probably added in later. But that's something we'll never know.

To be honest, I am not completely following you.

I thought it was more than obvious from the above video that those 9 steps are less than half a story, and that Altair is still above those 9 steps when he turns and catches, meaning that the limit is less that 1.5 stories, and thus the dent, just slighly going below the 2 stories height can not possibly dip below that level.

I left really big margins for possible errors when demonstrating that, haven't I, Asaic?

My hunch is that it has something to do with the beams in the dent. The no-edge behavior may come from standing upright at the edge of a beam.

As for it being a glitch or a feature, the more I think about it, the less I think it was unintentional. It often leads to a bench, which completes its gameplay function, and it's hard to believe that the people who designed that model didn't see its effect on climbing.

They were working on this game for such a long time, maybe it's something that was put in there at an early stage, but then, as the concepts evolved, it was not followed through in the rest of the levels. (Having a dent in the roof doesn't make much sense outside of the poor district, anyway.)

But you're right, we'll probably never know for sure.

It sounds as if you two agree on the no-edge behavior of roof dents. That's the important thing. So now you're debating about what - whether to define the word "story" in terms of 12th or 21st century construction? It doesn't matter. Use feet or meters to communicate heights.

I agree with stabguy.

It was easier in AC2 when each building floor was much more in line with realistic measurements. That picture al-Assas posted is a perfect example. Look at how bloody huge a single floor is there. The scale is way off. Altair looks like a midget.

It seems to me that the scale is exactly the same.

Frontpage this, now.

I've been investigating the midget effect that Asaic pointed out, and here's what I came up with:

The mathematics of 3d projection geometry is way over my head, but I think I found a way of looking at it that seems to make sense:

The angle of view in AC seems to be very roughly 80 degrees in the horizontal direction. tg 40° = 0.84, so if you're looking at the monitor from a distance more than 60% of the monitor width, the picture appears as a wide angle image. And that means that objects that are further away seem to be smaller than they actually are.

And that's why the story height seems to be be smaller than it actually is, until you stand Altair next to the wall, and actually measure it.

Well, actually, objects are always seen smaller as they actually are. It's nothing but logical and the system in AC games does this. I don't know if it's realistic (haven't checked), though.
In any case, the door still seems to have roughly the same height-width ration, so that's alright. Also, if you look at the tower behind Altair in the first picture, it seems nearly as big as he is. It's like covering a skyscraper with your thumb by holding the latter close to your eye and getting some distance from the skyscraper.

I like little things like this in this game. I just checked it out, I could jump off and take no damage. I then tried to run off the roof right next to it, and he simply catches his balance. this game has other things like merchant stores, and sheets on objects starting free running sequences. You seen anything else, small objects that are meant to aid you in some way?

Carpets on walls sometimes denote spots that can be interesting climbingwise. For sideways wall jumps, and the like.

It's amazing, if you delve into it, how much thought they must have put into the arrangement of those freerunning and climbing features. When I find a really stylish way of getting from one spot to another, I always think that can not be a coincidence.

Great, never knew about the carpets on the walls, will definatley keep an eye out for them. I just did the very first district and I love the whole layout, every free running obstacle seems to have a purpose. I also love escaping after killing the merchant, running through those beams through the souk and into the haystack at such a fast pace

The developers researched the city structure for AC1 thoroughly. How long were they working on it? 6 years? I'm thinking that the doorways could have been slightly larger than ours today. I don't really have any proof, and none of you do against my point either, but then again, none of us really lived back then, now did we? I'm just wondering if we're overthinking what the argument is over, here. It's a virtual world on a disc. Nothing's going to be structurally accurate 100% of the time.

Very interesting discussion, the architechture from AC1 is simply remarkable

It's a virtual world on a disc. Nothing's going to be structurally accurate 100% of the time. ~JoeyFogey

I'm prayin someday though! But they'd better start with fps, I think it'd probably be easier, what with basically being the camera of view and all..