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Half life style surfing

Started by neonic Aug 6, 2008 at 6:30 AM 4 replies 1.7k views

Original Post

Aug 6, 2008 at 6:30 AM

I'm not sure if any of you have ever "surfed" in either Counterstrike, or more recently Team Fortress 2, but I am absolutely addicted to it. I was really interested in trying to make a sort of minigame dedicated to the same type of gameplay, just flying around the map. What I needed to know is how would I go about recreating the physics required to "surf." In the half life games, you're required to change a variable called "sv_airaccelerate" up. Any ideas on how to replicate this using a physics library such as PhysX? Or what about using the same physics system as Hl2 games, Havok. Any help is appreciated.

ToohrVyk

Aug 6, 2008 at 6:44 AM

So, what is surfing? Any detailed explanations or relevant links?

neonic

Aug 6, 2008 at 7:08 AM

Excuse me for not linking:

That should give you the idea of what it is.

Evil Steve

Aug 6, 2008 at 7:24 AM

Looks like they're just reducing the friction applied on surfaces. I don't know what sv_airaccelerate does, it sounds like it increases the player acceleration when they're in air - Dunno if that's the same as gravity though.

Baiame

Aug 6, 2008 at 10:36 AM

Evil Steve, you're right, sv_airaccelerate is the extent to which (dunno if it's a multiplier or something else though) the player can accelerate through their input with their feet off the ground.

Played alot of HL2 mods and haven't come across surfing before.

neonic, I guess it's pretty simple: you have a normal character controller (of course ask if you need help with that), but you allow players to move while in the air. And, keep low friction between the surfer and the world. The rest is up to the level geometry.

Valere

Aug 6, 2008 at 11:34 AM

Surfing was a pretty key mechanic in the original Tribes. It worked by abusing the "slip" (and the tap of acceleration you could get off your jetpack) when you landed at the end of a jump to move even heavy armored players across the map at high speed. I assume you'd just need to reduce the friction coefficient between a player and the ground in your physics engine (and maybe give players a means to "kick" to get it to go).

A team that could manage surfing had a huge advantage in assaulting bases. I'd love to see a simple graphics + modern physics update of that game. It was way too much fun.

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