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MrSmileyFaceDude wrote a really good post about design decisions and why sitting wasn't implemented in Morrowind.
The KISS principle is a great one to follow. But for every feature one might think is simple to implement -- even in its simplest form -- 9 times out of ten, it ends up being a lot more complicated than originally thought. OK, so you want sitting in the game. We have to first make some decisions:
1. Do we allow everyone, including the PC, to sit?
2. Can people sit on anything, or just chairs, or just some particular class of object, perhaps based on its height?
3. Can sitting NPC's get up? If not, how do they behave when you attack them, or if they respond to another NPC's alarm?
4. Is there going to be a script interface to make NPC's sit down? To sit down anywhere, or in a particular place? What if someone else is already sitting in that place?
5. What happens to clothing and armor when you sit? Is it OK for it to clip through the chair? Is the physiquing of the clothing models going to have to be tweaked to allow for the bending that occurs in a sitting position?
6. Do we have canned sitting/standing animations we can use? If so, how long to tweak them? If not, how long to make them? Are there any changes that'll need to be made to the biped models in order to facilitate these animations?
7. What about Khajiit and Argonians? They have a different bone structure and will require their own animations. And where do they put their tails?
8. What if you manage a critical strike on a seated NPC. Will we create new death animations for dying while seated? What about the collision involved, with the chair, with a nearby table or bar, when dying?
9. What if you manage to knock out a seated NPC? Similar collision problems with the falling down animations. Are we going to need new animations for this?
10. Make sure NPC's sheath their weapons before they sit down. Also they should probably put away any shields or carried lights they have.
11. If NPC's can sit only on specific objects called "chairs", are they going to have different heights or sizes? What if a wood elf wants to sit on a big chair, or a nord wants to sit on a small chair?
12. If NPC's can sit only on specific objects called "chairs", need to have a way to mark them as such when added in the editor. Also need to define guidelines for them, such as size of seating area, height of seating surface, restrictions on nearby objects, etc.
13. Right now, furniture can't be moved. The AI and scripting needs to be smart enough to avoid making NPC's sit at chairs that are too close to other furniture. Either that, or new code needs to be added to allow NPC's to move chairs -- bringing up its own set of problems (collision with other NPC's and objects in the room). Or we can just ignore collision when they are sitting or standing, which of course will look terrible.
14. Need to come up with some reasonable idle animations for seated NPC's. Gotta be careful though -- what if they clip through nearby furniture? What if we want to do idles where people are eating or drinking? Gotta make sure these only happen if there's a cup & food in front of them. What happens if they're eating and you attack them?
15. NPC's will turn around to greet you if you get close. Do seated NPC's ignore you until you get in front of them? Do they turn & look over their shoulders? How far? In which direction? Or do they get up to talk to you?
16. Do we always want NPC's to get up to fight? If not, we'll need all new animations for spell casting and fighting while seated.
etc. You can see though how these things can quickly become very complex.
Anyway, you ask all these questions and come up with the answers that a) are doable, b) are doable within the time & money allowed, c) won't adversely affect other parts of the game, d) are worth the time & effort anyway. And it's like that for every feature in the game.
Here is a link to the post in the Offical Forums. |
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Morrowind Forum Tidbit: Design decisions... aka why sitting wasn't implemented in Morrowind.
