Swinglines!

It is less biassed, because humans running on all fours don't HAVE to look silly. It's how a player uses the animation that determines whether it's silly or not.

There is NO WAY to make Swing Lines not look silly, and that's including using it near buildings. When the swing lines don't shoot at walls to attach them but instead shoot straight up in the air, there is no way to get around that fact. There is no instance of grappling air that looks non-silly.

The difference is running on all fours is only silly when the player goes out of his way to make it like that. Swinglines in the current engine are always silly regardless of what you do with them.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I don't have an answer for air control, other than "without it, the power would suck," but I do have an answer for things jumping out of the water. Great White Sharks can weigh several tons, yet they can jump clear out of the water a fair distance. Flying fish get their names because they can jump out of the water and glide around 50 metres through the air. Submarine-based ballistic missiles are shot from underwater, yet have no problem leaving the water's surface and flying through the air.

And that's just "real life." If you look at contemporary fiction, Soul Reaver's Raziel is able to leap quite a ways out of the water, about two storeys high, by diving down from the surface, then swimming up really really fast. I'm pretty sure Kevin Costner did somewhat the same thing in Water World.

Can you quote even one instance of a character swinging from point to point to point over open ocean? Because even Spider Man doesn't do that. He will occasionally swing from a hovering helicopter, yes, but a lot of the times when there are no buildings around, he'll start wondering what to do and usually whip up a web parachute so he doesn't pizza on the ground.

This is a question of pure visuals, and there is no way that the visuals for such a thing can be anything but god awful. Imagination is one thing, but we're not playing a text-based adventure here. Visualisation is a very important part of the game.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Good point, I know this may sound cheesy, for it is, but...

Simply have the swing animation create a balloon or some kind of aerial object to attach itself too. It could get really, really interesting if one tried to give origin "look" to those graphics. For instance:

Magic: Your line attaches to some kind of energy portal in the sky.
Science: You could have some kind of micro-rocket shoot from the user's wrist which has a line attached to it for the user to swing from.
Mutant: You can use magic's animation with a different color portal.
Natural: You can summon a giant bird to fly over head and catch your line for you to swing from.

These are just a few samples, on how "it" could be done, just to illustrate a point. I believe if we put our heads together, we will likely bump so hard and give ourselves a big headache...J/K

If we work on this, we could come with an amazing new travel power set and stunning graphics as well.

What could be in the swing pool? Grrr Spidey, what you doing to me? based on the cartoon...

1. Web Parachute, it would be an automatic power, and it prevents you taking falling damage.
2. Swing, self explanatory
3. Shield, gives you 3% Defense vs all but psionic, its a toggle power.
4. Hold, MAG 3


Hugs

Stormy

Honestly, I don't see any of those as being any less silly as having grapples shoot past the flight ceiling and grapple outer space.

Incidentally, I wouldn't be against an animation for holding onto a balloon as an alternative for Flight. Seriously.

However, the point of grappling is to swing from existing objects in the environment. That's what a grappling hook, as an example, does - it grapples onto a surface. The thing with swinging from birds or balloons that you create yourself is that once you have ability to make those, you can use them to fly directly, and as such would make at least halfway-decent flight powers.

As far as the pool you're suggesting, it's not too bad, but it seems to assume WEB swinging, which is not only problematic from an IP standpoint, but ignores the larger proportion methods for swinging that people who aren't Spider-Man tend to use, which is grappling hooks either fired from guns or thrown, linked to ropes, cables or chains. In fact, a lot of older-style cartoons will tend to have a character pull out a hook on a rope, swing it in his hand and toss it over a wall where it hooks onto the edge for him to climb up the rope.

Believe me - I have nothing against swinging as a power, not as a concept. Hell, that and climbing sheer surfaces are some of the things I'd really like to see in the game. The problem is mechanical, however - swinging requires things to swing from, otherwise it looks absurd.

Personally, I'd like to see a grappling hook like what they had in Tenchu, which is basically you point to a surface and if it's in range, your character throws a claw on a zip wire and zips to that surface, falling down if you zipped to a sheer wall. It's not exactly "swinging," but then even Spider Man cheats when he swings, because he can be standing on the ground, web to a street lamp and somehow "swing" himself 50 feet in the air from a standing start. Even the ninja rope in Worms couldn't do that.

*edit*
Come to think of it, Batman: Arkham Asylum had a fairly interesting system for swinging and zipping. You had a climbing grapple which could get you up to tall ledges by zipping to it, a swinging grapple which was only ever used to swing between Gargoyles ala Teleport, and a zip line which attached behind Batman and in front of him, carrying him along a plane, usually over a pit or electrified water or poison gas or some such.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Right, but that whole game clearly had two major design criteria for every area. First, look gothic and scary enough to possibly creep out even Tim Burton. Second, make sure the Bat Gadgets will actually work. The whole island is Bat Friendly. In fact, if you could somehow play through it as a flier or speedster, that whole game would be a nightmare. Superman would have to walk or get hung up constantly on all the Gargoyles and gothic details, and trying to use superspeed in there would make people think of the Circle of Thorns caves with actual fondness by comparison. And even on an island built from the ground up to be a playground for Batman, going outside mostly means that you're walking from point A to point B.

*Edit* And just to clarify, I'm pretty sure that it's the standard Bat Grappling Hook for swinging from gargoyles and for zipping up to ledges. There's a separate "heavy duty" grapple/harpoon that he can use to pull down "weak" walls and a handful of statues, and yet another system he uses to get across the bottomless pits.

Oh, certainly. What I was talking about was sort of... Call them "secondary travel powers." For instance, a grappling hook that can climb you up to very tall ledges would be useful to someone without much vertical movement ability, such as a Super Speeder or one of those "natural" folk who used to use Swift and Hurdle before they became inherent. As would climbing, actually.

I believe DC Universe Online allowed jumpers to sort of cling to walls and jump off them. That's what I mostly foresee a grappling hook being used as - getting to inaccessible places without having to run around for a mile to find the on ramp.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Most of the zones actually have plenty of things from which to swing; such as buildings, statues, power towers, giant black fortresses and war walls. It shouldn't be too hard to add a few more power towers (or the odd off shore wind farm) leading to distant islands to help explain water crossings. Though honestly that kind of thing isn't really required for a swinging travel power to be fun.

I always saw that as him leaping into the air (up to 50 feet unaided by some accounts) and using the web-line to whip him himself higher into the air when he hits the right point of the upward swing arc.


^

I thought there was an inherent elasticity in his webs that helped yank/pull him forward.

Me too but I couldn't find a reference to it so I left it out. You also have to take into consideration that over time swinging would become so second nature to him that he would easily be able to get maximum speed, height and distance out of each maneuver. That's to say nothing of Spidey's superhuman agility and Peter Parker's natural genius for physics.

Swinging vertically from a flatfooted stance may seem impossible to us but for someone like Spider-Man it's child's play.


^