[Movement Mehcanics] The Warframe Slide

[Klizard]

The Warframe Slide

Its the dance we all know and love, now with more moves

 

If you read my post on Movement you may find some similarities. This is obviously intentional. (Especially the visual aspects)

Some Tweaks and upgrades to sliding in general. Lets get to work.

 

Tweaks

Some basic QoL improvements to sliding in general:

• Different Surfaces have different amounts of friction.

I though this one should be obvious, having longer slides on ice than on gravel.

• Keeping momentum more effectively and actually gaining it on higher grade slopes.
• Sliding into bipedal enemies can trip them.

This is for higher speeds, you gotta be going fast enough to actually knock them over, "heavier" enemies requiring you to be going faster to actually tackle them.

• The Frame will catch itself when sliding into a wall.

This is supposed to stop momentum and let you change directions faster.

 

Now with those in mind lets get to the fun gimmicky stuff.

 

Skating

Skating is sliding while standing, originally thought up to help with the awkwardness of initiating a slide and immediately standing (creating some... unattractive animations), and it comes with some interesting features.

A skate will occur anytime the character is sliding across the floor while in a standing(ish) position. This occurs when:

• You just tap crouch while moving for the momentum boost.

Most obvious is when you do it and immediately stop pressing forward.

• You initiate a slide attack. 
• You activate an ability during a slide

Watch their feet during these and you'll see why.

• Any other time the frame is being affected by friction while standing.

As an example in most cases this would be when sprinting forward but currently travelling faster than your character's max sprint speed.

This is of course not the case when being pushed by something, where obviously the frame is fighting against the force. The skate being a representation of voluntary slide.

 

Function

Skating has a few advantages over just sliding with crouch, though they can seamlessly transition between each other and share the same modifiers. These are considered intentional slides.

Oppositely a skate initiated because of over-max-sprint speed while on the ground has normal friction (For instance landing from a speedy jump and holding just forward and sprint.) and is essentially just an animation fix for player movement at that rate. This is because it is assumed that you want the regular sprint speed thus this is considered an unintentional skate.

An intentional skate will continue until you stop (like a slide) and an unintentional skate will switch to the other motion when the proper speed is reached.

 

Skating's advantage is the player has a small amount of control on the skate direction. With input the character will intend to lean the skate into the direction indicated (Forward, back, and side to side). Most noticeable on flat surfaces as gradients tend to force you down them, but if sliding on one you can control sideways movement along it if it is flat enough and attempt to increase or decrease the speed when going down it.

 

During a skate tapping crouch will give it a push (Just as it does now but much more intentional) and this is what really gives it the feel of "skating" and may also be the most gimmicky part of it, but this is there to give a proper function and feel to something many of us use anyway. This can be used to keep skating and keep up the momentum you have going on. This push is only as powerful as the initial slide modifier, if losing momentum at speeds faster than that it only gives slight benefit. On the other hand if using it while going slower will put it back at that speed.

 

When hitting a wall during a slide or skate the character will catch the wall, stopping the opposite momentum entirely (As mentioned above) But this only affects the momentum perpendicular to the surface used. What this means is if you hit the wall at a diagonal you'll still be sliding forward along the wall, this is a bump. Though if you hit the wall directly you'll stop completely, this is a catch.

 

Tapping crouch in a direction away from a wall while next to it will push off in that direction into a skate.(Much like jump does right now except this is on the ground and used for skating) It is more powerful if done right after a bump or catch.

 

At any time a roll or a jump can break a skate immediately. Also not holding directional input will have friction act like normal, having you stop faster.

 

Visual

During a skate the Frame holds a stance that oddly enough can be represented somewhat by my current clan emblem (This was unintentional but it helps.)

Having the stance be lower or higher depending on the speed at which you're currently skating.

While skating the lower portion of the legs light up from channeling much like this effect:

Having this effect occur on any skate be it intentional or otherwise.

Another effect I am enjoying is any time our power is channeled through our Frame we leave behind a void trail so when skating the feet that touch the floor would leave a streak of void energy in the Frame's color behind for a few seconds before it fades away. Would be especially interesting on slide attacks where the character spins around.

The cake on top is to have proper inverse kinematics (I think it is called) on the legs during a slide (ziplines too).

 

This has been sliding put through Klizard's grinder.

I do hope you enjoyed some of these ideas and as always thank you for taking the time to check this out!

 

Changelog

Last time (undated) - Cleaned up the original messy post

2016.01.23 - Reformatted the page to work for Night Mode, reworked some ideas and added example pictures to the visual section. Also added the Changelog.

Edited January 24, 2016 by Klizard