How Far Is This Jump?

Leon learns Blender, the camera doesn't do what he wants and he becomes obsessive over cameras due to this: the video

This was awesome but I'm not sure if I can look past tricking poor Bungler like that

Oh god the 20 minute jump video essays are back.

I was born blind, with a little bit of vision on one eye. Depth perception has been a pain for as long as I can remember, both IRL and in games, which is one of the reasons I pretty much only play fighting games.

I love what your content has developed into in recent years. Such a unique perspective on game design topics bundled with a fun deadpan humor and now with these great charming animations. Keep it up king

That's it, Leon Massey is the best in the game at the moment. Nobody hits the combo of insightful, well explained, and entertaining quite like him

Dude holy shit your editing has gotten so good

This is such an interesting topic, I remember playing Mario 3D World when I was younger and feeling super frustrated at missing jumps I thought I landed because of the perspective

One eyed idjit here. It is quite a common mis-conception that people with one eye have absolutely zero depth. It's true you lose some of that depth, but it's mostly to do with objects that are at a very similar depth to another. An example would be when reaching out to push the button on a Monitor to turn it on or off or Trying to wrap your fingers around a fridge handle, it becomes a tad bit more difficult to understand the depth at a very fast glance, you get used to it obviously, but no matter how used to it you get you'll always end up bumping your finger tips against that fridge door just gently when before you'd be able to avoid that entirely. Same with the monitor pressing, at the incorrect angle of perspective if your one eye, you might miss the button very slightly to the side or above/below it. Apologies for going off on a tangent, this kind of thing never comes up for people like me, Thank you for making this video though, great entertainment and insight as usual.

I haven’t watched the video yet but looking at the thumbnail assuming that the pig is approximately 1.3 meters long with a jump height of just under 1 meter (normal for pigs) and that it landed in the center of the platform and we are under the effects of earth gravity the answer is between 7.2 and 5.4 meters approximately if I had to guess 5.9 meters total travel distance in air and a total displacement of 3.9. Edit: … damn it.

I recently coded the camera for my own fighting game and boy did I quickly start appreciating them. There's a lot of decisions a designer must make to make the information clear. You'd think it'd be as easy as anchoring it to the middle point of the two players, but no, while chasing that point horizontally is important, vertically if one player jjumps, the camera would be yoinked towards that middlepoint, obscuring the other player. But you WANT the camera to follow the jumping player to sell the change in verticality and more importantly to not let them jump out of frame to mask what move they'll be going for. The solution for this is to slow down the vertical camera chase speed But if you do that, and the player does a double jump, the camera catches up late and is now briefly stuck in the air while both players are only half visible. The solution for that? Slow down the chase speed for going upwards, but keep it fast for going downwards. BUT! There's another issues! Consider a quick character that has a triple jump, or perhaps even a character with a short flight who can go pretty high! Suddenly the middlepoint shows the top half of player 2 and the bottom half of player 1, neither clearly so you have to make a decision to prioritize a player at certain heights! I have worked on this piece of shit for a few weeks now and I'm still not happy with it. And this is a 2D game with a fixed perspective for the most part, not a fancy 3D game with free camera movement, which i imagine is another level of complexity.

It's interesting to see that you show Trackmania clips, cause the game has 3 camera systems (well technically more, but 3 main ones) that each have pros and cons. There's the classic more arcade-y "far away and looking at the horizon" driving camera (Cam1), that shows you a wider area and lets you see what's coming ahead. There's one that's closer to the car and that follows its rotations more closely (Cam2), which is useful for specific maps and is comparable to something like the classic 3rd person shooter cameras. And there's the "first person" camera near the nose of the car (Cam3), that shows you very accurate direction and rotation, but depending on the maps you're gonna have trouble seeing where you're going. And the game gives you the ability to switch on the fly (hell, in certain maps i've seen players "reset" Cam1 so it re-aligns to the car instead of smoothly following it in specific parts, very reminiscent of all the camera manipulation from speedruns of 3D Mario games). However, it's interesting that if you look at all the top players in the game, even if Cam1 is the standard, a lot of players also play Cam2, and there are even some Cam3-only players such as Granady, currently one of the best players in the world. Also to note, the newest Trackmania title (the one released in 2020) added even more versions of these 3 cameras. For example the default "first person" Cam3 is from the pilot's perspective and it shows you the wheels and steering wheel of the car, but pressing the Cam3 button again will enter the classic "nose of the car" view. EDIT: also to note, older Trackmania titles had even wackier cameras, such as side cameras, a top down camera and such. Trackmania 2020 only has 3 default cameras, 4 if we count Cam7 (the freecam). On top of that, a common thing mappers do in the game is they make it so that when you enter a loop or certain wallrides, the camera automatically switches to Cam3 or Cam2 to better let you track its movement and what's important at the moment, then switch back to default camera (again, by default Cam1) after those parts of the map are passed. Though technically speaking, mappers have full freedom to make the camera track and move whatever way they want in their map, so some people have made top down "micromachine-like" maps that play like those classic games, or challenge maps with weird cameras, and such.

OMG I remember playing Airblade and at times not even knowing if I was going forwards or backwards because of the terrible camera. Great video. Thanks for the relived trauma.

Leon's talking about jumping again.

Very different to your usual content, but very entertaining and informative

I really liked the presentation of this video, very clean 🫡

It is a shame that we never got to see Bungler make that leap in the end. (Great video though, it was a fun watch!)

Your editing is insane. Like that part where you showed the getting over it map, and rotated the angle.

Another wonderful video to add to the Leon Massey upload playlist. I enjoy the jump in video production. Thank you Mr. Brit.

Absolute banger video! I love how you point at certain aspects in games that, like in this video too, are unnoticed unless they are done poorly. I always go back to your videos once in a while, it's relaxing? Therapeutic? In a way. I look forward to seeing more of your content