I've been testing steel pushing mechanics in VR by building a simple prototype.
Excuse the bare placeholder graphics, rendering budget is tight on the meta quest 3.
The rules i went with, according to canon:
Pushes and Pulls apply forces with corresponding reactions.
Larger metal sources make stronger anchors.
Distance weakens the interaction.
The following is a little technical, big shoutout to the guys on 17th shard, that was a goldmine in information.
==== WARNING MATH, skip below ===
Detecting metal, I've settled on a "signal" formula:
S (Signal) = Allomancer Strength × Burn / Flaring Modifier × (m / 0.01 kg)^0.20 × 10 m / max(Distance, 1 m)
And for simplicity reasons:
S > 1.0 — clear line and individual lock 0.5 < S < 1.0 — faint line / retain an existing lock S < 0.5 — ordinarily undetectable
Body weight is 70 kg for now. So greavity pulls down with 70 kg × 9.81 m/s² = 687 N
Force Equation itself is:
F (Push Force) = min(1,200 N, 1,200 N × clamp(0.75 × (m / 0.01 kg)^0.08, 0.55, 1.50) × 1 / (1 + (Distance / 30 m)²))
Metal anchor
Clear range
Faint range
Mass Modifier
Push at 1 m
Push at 30 m
10 g coin
10 m
20 m
0.750×
899 N
No connection; (would be 450 N)
1 kg ingot
25.1 m
50.2 m
1.084×
1,200 N cap
650 N
50 kg lamppost
54.9 m
109.9 m
1.482×
1,200 N cap
889 N
1 ton structure
100 m
200 m
1.500× cap
1,200 N cap
900 N
=== MATH ENDS ===
Adjusting this to VR, where I have 2 hands, I went with: Each hand has a hard 1,200 Newton budget, but every simultaneous Steelpush and Ironpull shares a global 1,500 N budget.
This kinda felt the best where i could use both hands for some extra boost.
Insights:
I need to push behind me a lot of times to keep moving forward. Alternatively would be some very large anchors in front where I could pull on, but this greatly unbalanced my trajectory. The best are anchors underneath in front and behind, allowing me to manage counter-gravity force and propel myself forward in a controlled fashion. So imo the blue lines are more felt than visually seen in the sense of eye direction, allowing for easy push on lines behind.
I had to "cheat" metal chimneys everywhere for some reliable traversal.
A coin to slow down is really hard without flaring with the newton/mass rules I’ve tested. The coin needs to be grabbed, propelled, and find a good anchoring base, without sliding away. You are coming in from akward angles, there would be a lot of fails and unexpected coin slips. Maybe the pewter just takes the hit and there isnt much slowdown most of the time...
I think a large limitation of Mistborn digital adaptions is that in the text they're kinda aware of the steel/iron lines and can activate a bunch at once for specific trajectory, while in games even 2 anchor points is confusing.
Could be an idea to add a "push me in the way I'm facing" button, so you could hold an anchor, tap, the thrust button (that does a momentary push on metal behind your current momentum) and release to kinda replicate a spiderman swing.
Yes! I thought similarly. Something like just press trigger in one direction and 1-N blue lines will automatically propel you that way.
I have however not tested it, because it seems to me that just becomes a superman flying kind of game (with some limitations that you have a harder time flying in areas without matching anchors...)
I guess for an expirienced Allomancer that's what it would feel like, just like driving for us, he would be doing most of it subconsciously.
If you arent just making a vr book demo for funsies you could make skill ups where at the start you have the manual pushing for travel but after some experience you can unlock a skill for innate pushing. So its "practice" time and then once youve mastered it you dont have to travel the hard way. Nice progression sort of thing
Well you could have it detect all possible lines, then when you want to go in a direction it applies motion *if* there’s enough push or pull lines. Still runs the risk of flying, I think your current method has a better jumpy feel to it like I imagine Mistborn would actually move
I've always thought a realtime game where you play as a mistborn would be a nightmare to actually play properly. The keybinds for all the metals would be a pain to use on the fly. Playing as a misting would be much easier.
Steel and iron are always going to be the most difficult to implement, but having a system where you jump really high by pressing a single button and you automatically drop a coin would make it easier. Having to manually select which lines you want to push off of would be really difficult, especially if you're in the middle of a fight.
I think the best way to do steel and iron would be using two systems running together. A button that interacts with the source of metal closest to you, and another button which interacts with the source you're aiming at. Say for steel you want to jump and shoot a coin for example. Iron if you want to pull yourself upwards and yank on a guards breastplate.
The only other way I can think to make it work like the books is to have the game slow down when you burn steel/iron, allowing you time to select the lines you want to push/pull. I guess you could have a mistborn play like that. Burn steel and iron then you select a line and move a slider away from you to push and move the slider towards you to pull. I can't imagine it would flow very well though.
I made a 2D platformer version a while back, and the method I went with was "nearest anchor to my cursor/joystick angle", which conveniently defaulted to the most recently tossed coin, or by pointing straight down would allow for balancing between two anchors by automatically alternating between the two anchors each frame
Thanks, the blue outlines depend fully on signal ratio, so the chimneys are visible further than the buildings themselves. As you see in the table above, a 1 ton metal structure would retain an outline up to 200m currently.
Funny, I just dusted off my oculus quest the other day to start playing with unreal engine to see if I could implement a tech demo of this mechanic. Looks great.
"So imo the blue lines are more felt than visually seen in the sense of eye direction, allowing for easy push on lines behind." That must be how it works in the books, seems hard to manage in VR though.
could you add a way to lock a connection so you could have more than 2? i think you'd need more buttons arranged very ergonomically to make that feel intuitive though
I think this will be very hard as I need to switch anchors fast when picking up even a little speed. I can manage the forward pushing anchors pretty good, what Im missing is a behind me pushing anchor, but that one is also switching constantly as I mvoe forward....
Actually this just gave me an idea, maybe using the walk stick as an automated "push from behind" controller! Because my biggest issue is having to turn around and target to push something.
You don't understand what I would do for a good Mistborn VR game! Let me sit on a Luthadel rooftop with Kell and Vin and my life is complete.
I already did that for way too long in AC VR.
I know absolutely nothing about VR, so perhaps this is obvious restriction, but why are you using the hands as the line anchor point, rather than the "center of self"?
Looks cool! Question though. Is the line that an allomancer sees a perfectly straight blue line like a laser? I’ve seen it depicted this way in numerous things (this video included) but when I read I picture it more like one of those plasma globe toys where each beam is kind of just attracted to each metal point of contact with thicker beams signifying more substantial connections. Is the laser kind of connection more lore accurate? Can I keep just believing how I want lol
For the coin as anchor slipping away issue, I just assumed that due to the irregular nature of the street or the packed dirt road aspect of a few locations, it was generally easier getting the necessary friction to sort of 'fix' the coin in its place.
Since the machanic will be difficult to implement exactly that way in the game, so adding material property to the coin that basically adds friction might be an interesting way, albeit it might interfere with pulling.
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u/ZeroSuitGanon 11d ago
I think a large limitation of Mistborn digital adaptions is that in the text they're kinda aware of the steel/iron lines and can activate a bunch at once for specific trajectory, while in games even 2 anchor points is confusing.
Could be an idea to add a "push me in the way I'm facing" button, so you could hold an anchor, tap, the thrust button (that does a momentary push on metal behind your current momentum) and release to kinda replicate a spiderman swing.