X@COM

Okay, so there's no swimming, we already have running (though X-COM soldier endurance leaves much to be desired), and we aren't going to have high-tech bikes.

Today we instead have climbing, jumping, and hurdling for you. (Maybe.)

Climbing:

This could open up a lot of new strategic options for movement. Terrain would have a "climbing difficulty" while units would have a new climbing skill that determines how easy it is to climb different terrain, if they can at all. Unless climbing something far beyond a unit's skill level, failure would usually just mean wasted time and stamina rather than outright falling to the ground.

You'd simply face the terrain you want to climb and use the standard upward movement commands (or let the pathfinder do it for you). You can change facing while climbing to look around, but must again face a surface in order to climb it. Reaction fire is also allowed while climbing, but only with one-handed weapons. If shot while climbing, there's a chance you'll fall. Upon reaching the top you'd climb up onto the roof or whatever flat surface is there. To climb down rather than jump down, you simple walk backwards (this would be a new command) over an edge.

Jumping:

The ability to leap across gaps would be nice, even better if jumping allowed you to fly off a roof and crash through a window in another building.

Hurdling:

It would be useful to quickly jump/slide over shorter movement-blocking terrain objects like bushes and tables, rather than going around them.


So... none of this is implemented yet, but I've been thinking about them for a while and still there are quite a few details to be ironed out before coding could begin. Because it may take some time, I've decided to put this up to a vote! Let's decide whether all this should wait until later (in the interest of actually making it to 1.0 this century), or go in now. Rather than using a poll, I ask that anyone with input leave thoughts in the comments section. There are certainly some gameplay implications to consider here, like the ability to climb trees to escape zombies (which would then attack the tree and bring it down?), and no doubt a lot more interesting aspects than that.

Keep in mind all of these features can/will be optional, and that even if not implemented in the current version they would still probably make it in one day, so even if you want to vote nay, feel free to bring up any relevant details I may want to consider when the time does come to add these features.

As cool/fun as these would be, I'm somewhat tending towards skipping them for now, even though I've already put a lot of thought into them. They're fairly complicated and there is a good bit to take into account and test so these systems work smoothly with everything else.

Anyway, I'll leave this topic in the incubator and work on the list of assorted loose ends and general improvements for now.


EDIT 2/1: Well, not as many opinions came in as expected based on the readership, but I think the general trend is apparent: Hold off on this until later (I am combining responses from here and Bay 12). So the parkour skill/actions have been pushed back to 1.0+ territory.

In the meantime I've heard that Linux/Wine and some Windows users have been unable to play the mods using the new standalone format. I've repackaged them all with a second batch file inside the actual game directory which should work in cases where the original/primary batch file does not.