Perfecting Marvel Spider-Man’s Web-Swinging Took Some Time
Whenever you think of Spider-Man, you think of a web-slinging, web-swinging badass hero, right? Well as it turns out, the very thing that sets Spider-Man apart from other superheroes was quite difficult to perfect. According to Insomniac, developing all of these perfect motions that can be found in Marvel’s Spider-Man wasn’t as easy at it might seem.
Insomniac knew that they needed to come out swinging with Spider-Man, quite literally of course, and that the web-swinging needed to feel incredibly smooth and amazing in order for fans to truly be happy with the game. And while they’ve received plenty of praise for Marvel’s Spider-Man, getting the web-swinging to the level it’s at wasn’t an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Ryan Smith, the game’s director, recently spoke about how this web-swinging was the very first thing the studio ran head on at and was one of the very last things to perfect.
At first the studio thought that making the swinging completely physics-based would be the best course of action, they realized this type of traversal didn’t work as well as first imagined. Instead of creating a pendulum-like feel to the movement, they discovered Spider-Man would often run into walls at high speed. Additionally, any type of barrier that would get in the way would cause issues for the web-swinging, whether it was a corner or the fire escapes New York is famously known for. As it wasn’t exactly feasible to take these barriers out of the game, they needed to come up with another way to fix the movement and make it flow better.
They came up with a solution, which Smith explained, “Carrying momentum through transitions – that was something where, when we unlocked some of that momentum transfer between big swings and different places you can leap off in a swing, that was a huge game changer for us. Adding an expressive camera that makes you feel like you are Spider-Man – how would you feel during those swings, during the dive, and how can we emphasise that with the camera? All of that was developed over the space of two or three years, finding those opportunities based on the prototype we had.”
Isn’t it amazing to see how far the developers have to come sometimes in order to see success with their games? What do you think about the original movement issues? Let us know your thoughts on the game in the comments below and don’t forget to keep it locked for updates!