These are all very good ideas, and ones worth dealing with. Realism is of course a tough act to follow these days with current technology and we'll do our absolute best to duplicate it - or at least fake it enough - to be convincing. Realistic fall damage, getting knocked down, and basic physical real-to-life movements will hopefully all make their way into version 3. We all agree that things should be kept as simple as possible for both the new user and those who don't like to fiddle around before the fun begins. Others like to fiddle and perfect something just before they leap into combat. Finding a happy medium might be tricky, but is certainly doable. Some parts of version 3 will take practice, like having to push a button to pick up an item when you walk over it- then of course a possible solution to this would be when you walk over an item, a small menu quickly appears that lets you pick up the items if your weight/credits allow it, or if you just continue moving forward, the menu quickly disappears. There are a multitude of possibilities for every option we have planned in our Roadmap, so there's certainly no reason to be discouraged. We'll also ensure the defaults set will please almost anyone so there's no need to reconfigure everything if you don't want.
Many things about the basic movement of a player will probably need to be adjusted- even for UT. I totally agree with the frustration of a bot- or player zigzagging left and right without any apparent slowdown. Or moving forward at great speed, then instantaneously backward with no hesitation. We'll see if we can play with the animations/code enough for a more realistic aproach.
I like the idea of being able to jump forward and have the distance vary depending on your current speed. It'd be even better if we could allow the player to dive out of the way to avoid many things. Then it'd take a sec to be able to get back up, but it might save your life.. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
Adjusting the speed of your turn after a certain degree would be difficult to make realistic. First off this wouldn't really effect you if you were walking or standing still. If we did throw this kind of a feature in it would have to vary on speed and IMO after 80-90 degrees. We'll certainly keep it in mind though.
Making the player stumble or even fall depending on his movements would also be fairly tricky. With so many combinations, it would be difficult to tell what's 'allowed' and what would require a slip up. If we make the movement more realistic though, it should keep people from being able to do a circus act in front of an M16 being fired at them and get away with it. People will be forced to take less chances and rely more on the cover or shadows around them... now if only bots could see shadows too...
The idea on weapons moving at different rates than the player view would be cool, but probably not very possible. My thoughts on this are if a weapon is at the hip, you'd be able to swing it around without much difference in view (except for the AT4), but when you aim a weapon, there would be a huge difference when you turn your body left and right. The fact is, you wouldn't aim your weapon straight out in front of you while you maneuvered through a forest or building- reason being, your eyes would be distracted by your weapon instead of focused on potential targets- not to mention the fact that larger weapons would be harder to keep aimed perfectly in front of you during drastic turns.. As cool as this whole process would be, it's not likely to be possible.. but it doesn't mean we won't try it..!
