Advanced Movement and Maneuver

Advanced Movement & Maneuver

When initially thinking about it, movement sounds like a no-brainer.

Assign all the movement options to the WASD keys and left joystick on a controller and assign the ❎/🅱 button or the space bar for the jump.
If your game is an FPS game, then add the sprint button to the L3 button on a controller and the SHIFT for keyboard.

And that’s it, right?
Or so it seems..

Movement can be so much if you are not planning to make a Cod4 clone, especially if you’re developing an action game like Devil May Cry.

Can I instantly turn around to face another opponent? Or is the character gonna turn slowly like in the modern Ninja Gaiden games?
If my basic movement isn’t fast enough, is there any advanced maneuver tech I can use to gain some distance from/to my enemy?
For example, in Devil May Cry, you can use Dante’s Tricker to quickly & stylishly maneuver around the battle arena
If I dash, can I use another move to cancel the recovery frames of the dash?

The following video demonstrates the last 2 points I mentioned.

In Devil May Cry 4, the basic movement for the player is very limited, especially with Dante.

Players can use Tricket’s dash ability to cover ground much faster, but the recovery frames of the dash are massive.
So, to cancel the recovery frames and dash again, players use Royal Guard to cancel the animation and immediately dash again to cover more ground faster

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but the feel of the movement is very crucial for players to enjoy playing the game without feeling like their movement is stiff or junky.

Going back to AVGN’s clip, he mentioned that the choppy stiffness is gone.
Not only that, but he can also control his landing and crouch walk.

I can say the opposite about Devil May Cry 4 and 5. In those games, you have the option to buy the ability to sprint.
The sprint ability is a passive ability that the player can’t use during battle.
Which is honestly a shame because some characters like Nero, Trish, and Lady would have benefited from this ability.
I often find myself spamming stinger moves or Nero’s Calibur to catch up to my enemies.

Ironically enough, Sengoku Basara, which is a game created by the same Devil May Cry team, allows players to sprint by double tapping the left analog in the direction they want to sprint at.
Not only that, but Sengoku Basara also has a unique mechanic which I like to call “Sprint Cancel”.
I am planning to cover this whole Sprint Cancel subject in a separate post, which I’ll link here (someday)

When is it okay to make the movement less “responsive” or fast?

Some games restrict players’ movement for intentional reasons.
The reasons may vary but are justified. Let’s look at a couple of examples I know of:

For realistic purposes

While I often hate how games try to be more realistic in terms of graphics, I do appreciate it when they implement a gameplay mechanic such as movement.

Such example can be found in the old Killzone games for the Playersation 3.
Have a look at this commentary by one of the developers of Killzone 2.

The developer emphasizes that players can’t shoot while hopping around.
Also, in Killzone 2, players simply cannot turn left to right instantaneously such like old FPS games like Counter Strike.

For balance purposes

This type of reason can vary depending on the genre of game, but in general, I dislike this reason but not entirely
In traditional fighting games, balance is a must because players often times can find exploits to abuse in battle.

On one hand, heavy characters are slow and sluggish but powerful, and light characters are fast and agile.
These agile characters can often be used for complex setups and pressure to break the opponent’s guard.
If the character can dash out safely from every move he does, then pro players can use it to bait opponents.

When playing a horror game, you wanna restrict players from running around the levels dodging zombies.
Maybe you would rather give them old-school tank controls to intensify the fear.
This is also a good reason to restrict the movement of the player, as it serves the horror’s genre.

When Maneuver tools change the game unexpectedly

This is less common from what I have seen in video games, but it is worth mentioning here.
Speedrunners usually find crazy movements that they can exploit to complete the game faster
Prime examples of such things can be found in Ratchet games, Mirror’s Edge, and many know I probably don’t know of.

But I am not gonna talk about the speedrunners’ techniques, as they’re usually way harder to pull off than it seems on their streams.
I am specifically gonna mention 2 multiplayer games that don’t have an end goal to reach for.

Tekken’s wavedashing and 🇰🇷 Back Dashing

These techniques are widely used in the Tekken community to cover ground faster.

While KBD (short for Korean Back Dashing) allows you to gain distance from your opponent faster, wavedashing is used to close the gap.
Both of these movements look ridiculous on screen for any non-Tekken player, which can imply that the developers didn’t think to animate those types of movements.

However, these movement techniques are widely accepted in the community and even endorsed by the developers.
If you played Tekken 8’s story mode, then you might have noticed that the final boss, Kazuya, does a wavedash to attack you.

But what happens when the movement technique changes a game’s concept entirely? 🤔

Gears of War’s wall bounce

In 2006, when the Xbox 360 was released, the first ⚙ of War game was released for the console as one of its flagship titles.
The game’s vision was a statigic cover-based shooter, where players would smartly use their cover system to flank enemy players and more.

The game’s primary weapon both in-game and in marketing was the Lancer, a standard rifle
with a chainsaw attached to it, but that’s not relevant now 😅.

Anyway, despite what developers tested in the Studio, players naturally found an entirely different way to play online.
Instead of relying on the Lancer rifle, players would immediately switch to the Gnasher shotgun, which was a secondary weapon in the startup loadout.

Players would rush down their opponents by using the cover system to maneuver around the map safely.
So, how does it look in gameplay?

Credit to the YouTuber “Tyler’s Ambition” who made this slick montage where he outmaneuvered his opponents.

This technique right here, was so good that it changed Gears of War’s entire game design.
From a strategic cover-based shooter to some wacky yet sort of stylish shooter.

Instead of relying on teamwork to surround the enemy team, players would opt to go solo and try to clutch rounds in Execution and Warzone.

Epic Games, the original developers of the franchise, didn’t quite endorse this play style, so when developing Gears of War 2, they tried to add new mechanics to stop players from overusing the shotgun.
This was documented in their official developer commentary

The stopping power was not the only thing they added, but they also tweaked the smoke grenade to knock down anyone who was in its blast radius, making it less reliable for the run-and-gun play style with the shotgun.

However, the Gears of War community hated that change so much that the developers gave in and updated the game to allow this play style to be as effective as it was in Gears 1, more or less.

From Gears 3 and onwards, the dev team behind Gears endorses this mechanic and even improved the wall-bounce in Gears 5.

So the lesson here is: Know you game’s community better

Check out my main post about the “Importance of control“, where I cover many topics that revolve around the controls, commend list, and more.