OK - scenario: You (you = the character you''re playing) walk into a tavern, and see someone you know. You go over to talk to them. They order drinks for both of you (grr - I can''t get them out of the screen ). Then, you sit down to talk. Problem: DESIGNER: Umm, hang on - this is a game, you can''t sit down!! PLAYER: But I want to sit down - I''m going to be here quite a long time talking to this person - I want to sit down. DESIGNER: But it''s a game - the fact that you''re character may be getting worn out by having to stand the whole of his life is irrelevant! PLAYER: But it doesn''t look right. DESIGNER: I don''t care!! ------- Anyway, the problem (which you may not see as a problem) is - how do I get my character to sit down? This is really an interface problem, what should the player do to get the character to sit down - do they just walk into a chair (puff of smoke - character has sat down), do I have to back into the right part of the chair (the characters knees bend as you go backwards, and he sits down). Or what? I just need ideas. Or is this a totally stupid problem - do normal players adapt to the lack of chairs? Is there some method used in RPGs (which I don''t play very much btw), that is usual, that I don''t know about. John B

As a player, not a programmer : I think the best way to implement this would be to make the chair useable. It would mean : I walk to the chair, click on it. If then get a visual feedback of the character sitting down (I assume first person perspective here), like the camera wobbling a bit sideways and moving slightly in front of the chair and then back- and downward(perhaps with the sound of the chair being moved), while after that staying still but lower than the normal walking view, I would assume that I am indeed sitting on the chair.

Btw. I''m not aware of any game which lets you sit in a chair. So far, when you enter an Inn and see chairs, you just assume that they are for other people and that you, being an epic hero and stuff, just wince at the idea of showing any sign of fatigue. (That, of course, is not true for MMORPGs, in which your very heroic and epic nature forbids you to use such mondane stuff as chairs or beds but allows you to kneel or sit down in very convoluted ways on mostly quite hard ground, sometimes (Everquest) for extended periods of times)

You could sit in UO. *shrug* I don''t know where you guys have been.

Dave Mark
President and Lead Designer
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

Then excuse my ignorance ... never played UO as the isometric view didn''t appeal to me. How was it solved there?

You could sit down in The Realm. An older 2d MMORPG. They got used quite often as a matter of fact. In game parties and such you would always have people sitting around just chatting with friends especially if they were vets and were getting a little bored of the hunt.

Herein lies the problem.

Hero: Person in game who is an extension of what player wants to do.

Player: Person at keyboard who wants to play. While he is sitting, watching the guy on the screen sit down isn''t exactly fun.

Result: Hero never sits down. Reason? It''s not fun for the player.

quote: Original post by solinear
... watching the guy on the screen sit down isn''t exactly fun.

Hmmm, well, OK - I already knew sitting down isn''t fun.

So does *anyone* think it would be worth implementing a sitting system? Or is it totally pointless?

And how was it organised in UO, and The Realm?

John B

You could also sit in Ultima VII, and it came way before Ultima Online.

In Ultima VII, if I remember correctly you could click on a chair and the character would walk there and sit on the chair. Also, all characters would sit automatically if they got aboard a cart/ship/flying carpet. The pathfinding broke sometimes in crowded situations, though most of the time they all would sit down correctly. It was weird, however, to have chairs in a flying carpet!

On Ultima Online, you just had to walk on top of a tile containing a chair. The character''s graphic would receive a weird distortion, and it appeared convincingly that it was sitting down(you could also sit on some logs in the map). UO had no hand crafted graphics for the "sitting" position. Oh, and it was implemmented in one of the first patches.

On both games, there was no animation for this. The graphic would just get changed.

I believe that, depending on your game''s style you can get away with not allowing players to sit. But it sure looks weird if NO NPC in your entire game is found sitting. Hey, someone has to be resting sometime... (also, not everyone is standing in taverns).

I don''t get why this is a big deal. "Sitting system"? What''s that supposed to be? If there is an approximately horizontal surface, the character can sit. If the surface is less than a certain height above the floor (and this can be an object property for "sittable objects"), the player sits lotus or something equally Hero-like.

Unless I''m missing something here, this isn''t an issue.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Yeah, I really dont see it that big of a deal in most games.

RPGs where you talk to people, you usually arent talking to them for hours, because the player would get board clicking through dialog. And your not usually going to sit down to say three lines to someone.

But, on a side note: you can also sit in Everquest and in Anarchy Online. It seems to be popular in mmorpgs.