Minimum time between items

[Kaz]

Have those of you who have worked with other engines and toolsets ever encountered a tool that allows you to compute the minimum (or approximation to minimum) time it takes for a player to move between two items? I'm thinking mostly of Quakeish games, but I'm not sure that it actually matters.

Secondly: how useful do you think such a tool would be? Obviously you can empirically run around and such, but I think it would be neat to see different minimum times given different constraints (rocket jumping vs not, etc.) - maybe it would help people to design more interesting positioning.

[Bliccer]

Minimum time or distance? What would be the sense of such tool?

[Kaz]

Time, because it is often something you would want to have be above some minimum number between pairs of important items. Like I said, you can do it manually, but it just seems like it would be useful if you could get immediate feedback without having to do a bunch of timing runs.

[Eraser]

Movement in Q3 is a peculiar thing, so it'd hard to determine an exact minimum time.

[Kaz]

You're right, I don't think that even in more serious applications "optimal" solutions are actually computed. From what I've read, motion planning algorithms are designed so that each iteration will be guaranteed to converge toward the optimal solution, but the number necessary may be arbitrarily high, so the user would find some suitable number that gave a "good enough" answer. I can't imagine exact timing being actually necessary for a designer.

[cityy]

I don't think such a tool would be usefull because the time it takes for a player to go from one item to another usually depends on his opponent..

See Bloodrun for example. The time it takes to drop from RA to MH technically is two seconds. Practically someone will stand in the MH doorway and kick your butt.

[wattro]

I can't imagine exact timing being actually necessary for a designer.

depends what you are trying to make... but i typically prefer to know the player's progress through an area rather than exact timing. In my recent cases, the overall timing has been variable, whereas the systems at play are all in sync. That is, I don't care if you get there in 5 seconds or 35 seconds, just that the stuff i want you to experience happens when you get to place X. if it's a one-off thing, then i just use a trigger. if it's a system, then i track your progress and drive elements of the system from that data to create a more predictable & dynamic experience or from the system itself depending on what i want your gameplay experience to be.

/i was never here