Quadrille Dressage - What do you think?

[Kiralynn]

More than once, people have mentioned doing formation horse riding in game. This is something called "quadrille dressage". I have gone over many of the standard figures and maneuvers, and a think that a good number of them could be performed in the game. Done at a walk or center, perhaps even synchronized to music, I don't think lag will be a problem. A few easy diagrams make it easy to understand the maneuvers. A quadrille dressage team would look really awesome performing at the Spring Racing Carnival, next year's Weatherstock, and other big events.

Here it is, the first version of the instructions on formation riding!

How To Ride in Formation:
http://windyacres.mymiddleearth.com/?page_id=1806

Each quadrille team would need 4 riders, a couple of backup riders, and hopefully two musicians.

Would you be interested in participating? If so, what time and days would work best for practice?

[Carica]

Ooh great idea! Weatherstock would be too laggy, but it would be perfect for SRC.

[Aldekim]

/agrees with Carica

[Byrcha]

Sounds like fun!

[Kiralynn]

Great! I'll start working on little diagrams of the most common maneuvers.

In the meantime, I'd love to see screenshots of things you think would make good dressage uniforms!

[High Life]

Hi Kiralynn, it's Lifebringer. I had a great time at the impromptu practice and would like to be part of the team. I'll be back home and able to play regularly after the 25th or so. Any time in the evenings or on weekends would work for me.

And sorry I logged off so suddenly earlier; the Internet crashed.....sigh.

I'll start looking through my outfits!

[Andeon]

wow Kiralynn - you put a lot of thought into that - so much, that I found myself skipping over the last half (I'm at work, so I don't have time to concentrate quite the way I might like)

it sounds like you found solutions or workarounds for several of the problems we encountered during our earliest attempts at formation riding :)

I assume you chose the drummer because it turns out voice is a terrible way to coordinate horse riding teams, as there appears to be a variable 1-2 second delay between when anyone says anything over voice and when the other teammembers hear it - if you haven't mentioned it in your notes, it might help to point that out, as that was one of the first things it occurred to me to try, and it turned out it didn't work so well

I'm wondering if you've found a way to have a row make a turn (I think it's called "wheeling" in formation talk) as the 2-speed limitation of LOTRO horses seems to make that conceptually difficult
(for those wondering - having a row make a "coordinated" turn requires the horses on the outside to be able to move incrementally faster than the horses on the inside, which is effectively impossible given the 2-speed nature of LOTRO horses)

also, I didn't see anything in the current run about team coordinated obstacle jumping...or any sort of "aerial" maneuvers, which I'd like to see - formation (line) fence running - fence running gap jumping...hurdles...open field maneuvers involving coordinated jumps - oh, and of course, stunt jumping (how many hobbits can a jumping horse clear? how about with a slope?)

one thing that occurred to me for wheeling, is simply having the fulcrum horse stop, and have each horse on the outer line line up in the new position, and then have the line resume it's motion when they've all reached the agreed upon point of turn - it'll be rough to coordinate, of course, but there's an idea

also - thinking ahead - ROR might provide new possibilities with horse maneuvering - certain skills may allow all kinds of new effects during the course of formation riding which could look really nifty - PLUS - theres the "possibility", however remote, that there might be some sort of combat advantage to particular formation riding out in the fields of rohan, depending on how mounted combat skills work, and what their AOE's might be like - for an example, if a line could line up on a single target, and each member could hit the target as they pass by, and each one adds a stack of something

I don't actually think they included anything that subtle or precise for mounted combat, but there may be unexpected side effects from certain skills that could be used to advantage - overlapping frontal AOE attacks in a block or row formation, repetitive stacks from a column passing by, etc...

(unedited - above post contains references to "line" formations, which, according to Kiralynn, are actually called columns - assume columns when I refer to lines)

[High Life]

Wow, Kiralynn, this is going to be so cool....

I watched some quadrille dressage on YouTube last night, and I'm excited to try out some of the manuevers. I was thinking, if we perform in a field without lines or marks, it might be helpful to have some captains plant banners as markers. Not sure how long they last, though.

Another thought - for music to synchronize us, what's the range on player music? I think you can set it in Options, but how far is the max range? And will that be enough to cover an entire performance field?

I'm curious to see how many hobbits I could clear, if we introduce quadrille jumping.....

As for outfits, I don't have anything that looks vaguely like a professional horseman's outfit. I do think we should all sport a black tophat though, as that seems to be traditional irl. I also believe I've seen some low-level crafted pants that look like jodhpurs, though I don't know if that's the route you're wanting to take.

For horses, amongst various toons I have the Elf Ambassador, World Renowned, Minas Ithil, and Jester (though that one's a pony.) I also have a number of 62% rep and festival steeds. The World Renowned is probably the easiest 68% to acquire; we as a team can help farm the rep items someone would need to get it. The others require extensive questing, deeding, or TP.

So just some suggestions there; I'm coming along for the ride no matter what, hehe. Cheers!

[Kiralynn]

Andeon wrote:

wow Kiralynn - you put a lot of thought into that - so much, that I found myself skipping over the last half (I'm at work, so I don't have time to concentrate quite the way I might like)

Heh, I've heard that a few times. It's a manual, not light reading. No worries.

Andeon wrote:

I assume you chose the drummer because it turns out voice is a terrible way to coordinate horse riding teams, as there appears to be a variable 1-2 second delay between when anyone says anything over voice and when the other teammembers hear it

Yes - But also because we can position musicians at every edge of the field during a real performance, not only so that the riders can hear them everywhere, nice and synced up, but also the audience can stand anywhere.

Andeon wrote:

I'm wondering if you've found a way to have a row make a turn (I think it's called "wheeling" in formation talk) as the 2-speed limitation of LOTRO horses seems to make that conceptually difficult

Wheeling, pirouettes and other such maneuvers can't be done reliably. It's not just a matter of speed but of lag. Also, I want the routines to be fun and not super-tedious for the particpants. All of the maneuvers I designed require riders to hit key positions on the field. They could technically practice solo. With a drummer, no rider has to check his position based on another rider - only upon his location on the field at the right time according to synced music. Otherwise, lag causes a sort of domino effect with one rider trying to reposition, causing another to do so, and so on.

Andeon wrote:

I didn't see anything in the current run about team coordinated obstacle jumping...or any sort of "aerial" maneuvers

The jump animation is terrible in the game. I discovered quickly while working on the racing video that groups of jumpers look terrible. They really look like horses on a merry-go-'round. What a shame!

If you want to work on coordinated jumping, join the team and add that to the practice.

Andeon wrote:

certain RoR skills may allow all kinds of new effects during the course of formation riding which could look really nifty

Unfortunately, your War Steed (as such) can't leave the one zone in which mounted combat is enabled. Once you leave that area, it becomes a standard horse. We'll have to work around that.

It sounds like you have a lot of nifty ideas. I hope you join the team and make lots of comments on the Windy Acres site!

[Harperella]

The creative use of /follow can give you a middle speed between walk and run. Basically, if you are on /follow of something that is far away, but you are walking, you will walk faster (around 1.5x normal) until you catch up to the target.

Also, imagine the following very impractical setup:

......
.1..2.
......
......
.3..4.
......

The 1,2,3,4 represent player characters or other selectable items. Let's say they are 4 burglars or pets in stealth. We will refer to them as the "marks." To start, we have 4 horses who each select one of the 4 points. Let's call our horses A,B,C, and D for simplicity sake. The horses start off in a block like this, walking forward:


......
.1..2.
......
......
.3..4.
......
..AB..
..CD..
......

Step 1: Block moving forward
C /follows A
D /follows B

Step 2: Separate and hit marks
A selects 1
B selects 2
C selects 3
D selects 4
--Signal--
All riders /follow their new selections.

That would allow a way to smoothly transition from one shape to another. The nice thing about this technique is that it makes the turns very precise, since you are always making a bee line to the precise mark you want. I'm not sure if that "waypoint /follow" technique would be useful or not, but it is worth experimenting with.

--Harper

[Harperella]

One more crazy idea... if you put multiple horses in a /follow line, then have the head /follow the tail, you get a neat effect of an infinite loop. What happens if the entire line selects the horse immediately following and the entire circle executes a /follow swap at precisely the same moment? It seems we'd get a very interesting reverse and circle.

--Harper

[Kiralynn]

I thought if you hit any key you drop out of follow, so I'm not sure how you could stay in a turn. Any tips? Come out to the Horsefields tonight and show us how it's done! :)

We did try /follow in some places, but in general the spacing was too far apart. The ideal is to have all of the horses one horse-length away from each other, either front to back or side to side. People seem pretty good at figuring out the right distance and adjusting as they go. I have been very impressed with the folks at training so far.

The real key is music in the background. When everyone knows where they are supposed to be at a certain time, regardless of the other riders, it really cuts down on spacing problems caused by lag. When I did drill team as a kid, we all were able to perform the entire routine solo based on the music alone. Once we could all do that, stitching us together into a group performance took only a day or two of practice.

[Harperella]

Kiralynn of Rohan wrote:

I thought if you hit any key you drop out of follow, so I'm not sure how you could stay in a turn. Any tips? Come out to the Horsefields tonight and show us how it's done! :)

The idea is not to turn at all, but let autopilot do the work. Any movement key will pop you out of /follow, but any other key is fair game. Take this simple example. A single /follow line:

A <- B <- C <- D

If A /follows D and B hits forward at the same time, you should have A peel off and join the back of the line:

B <- C <- D <-A

I'm not sure I'll be able to make it to practice tonight, but I'm happy to share my learnings from using /follow on 2 boxes.

--Harper

[Aldekim]

Practice session one is now hstory. That was really FUN! Now we just need to muster up 4 drummers for some future show. It would be really easy to sync up with one in each quadrent.

[Anthemisi]

Aldekim wrote:

Practice session one is now hstory. That was really FUN! Now we just need to muster up 4 drummers for some future show. It would be really easy to sync up with one in each quadrent.

I wish I knew what time it was! *sobs*