[MUD-Dev] Re: Simulation (Was Re: Room descriptions)

[Adam Wiggins]

On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> > Interestingly enough, the reverse is true with graphical games.  Descent
> > melee fighting didn't show up in arcade games until the genre with over a
> > decade old.  Now that 3D is all the rage, the vast majority of
> > combat-centric games are based around projectile weaponry (Quake et al),
> > since it is much easier to implement.
> 
> Well, not really. Lots of very successfull melee fighting games have been 
> made with 3D ..Tekken (I?,II,II) (hand2hand), Soulblade(swords etc.), and 

Reread the quote.  Actually, doing so myself, I realized a silly typo:
"with" should be "was":

"Descent melee fighting didn't show up in arcade games until the genre was
over a decade old."

Starting in the mid/late 70's you had games like Asteriods, Space Invaders,
Gorf, and so forth - all games where your character fires projectiles at
other characters.  The first game to feature melee combat was Karate Champ,
which was in the early/mid 80's - as I said, nearly a decade later.  Even
then shooting games remained the standard; it wasn't until street fighter, in
1989 (~15 years after the birth of the industry) that good melee fighting
in arcade games became common, and the games to which you refer were not until
the middle of the 90's, nearly 20 years after the birth of the genre!

I guarentee you the number of games which feature projectile weaponry
outweight melee fighting games by a truckload, even today.  It's still easier.

> so on.. Ofcause i'm talking mainly console games, not PC games. I'd actually 
> _love_ to see something like Soulblade handle the melee in a MUD-like game.

Agreed.  Check out the physics and character motion on Virtua Fighter 3; one
can quite easily imagine such a thing as a multiplayer game on the PC.  But
don't hold your breath.

Adam W.