I was thinking, does all current parkour, and possibly queued parkour actions get cancelled once you let go of the "sprint" key?
Or possibly, if you are in the middle of a parkour action, and must keep the "sprint" key depressed to maintain it, but look away, does the activity reset, being replaced by a new action determined where you are looking?
I'm hoping once you set an action, and start performing it, it is locked, and you can free aim while doing it.

Also, a possible problem I see with the current system, what if I'm sprinting, and I want to look down, or below me to the side, say off a bridge, or below it, will the game put me into an auto slide?

If anyone has any info on this, it would be much appreciated.

There are no canned animations, so: yes, if you release the Sprint/SMART button, you cancel the current move.
However, while performing SMART-movements, you can aim and shoot.

Sprint =/= SMART
Sprint is a toggle, SMART is a hold.

All the crazy parkour moves can be done by jumping, crouching and sprinting. If you look down while holding smart you will slide. If you need to aim while sliding, then you sprint, and hit crouch and you will slide, thus allowing you to aim wherever you want while sliding.

Gonna try and do SMART moves manually since they have stated it can give you an edge compared to using the automatic smart button.

We will also be able to perform these same actions and movements via manual controls, those who learn to use the manual controls can give players an even greater edge

Whether an animation is canned or not does not determine whether it can or cannot be cut short (Also the animations in this game are canned, unless it uses Euforia, or an inhouse custom animation creation engine, and I overlooked that).
I know you can aim and shoot while performing SMART moves.
I know sprint != SMART.

Now with all that aside, sprint is a toggle feature in BRINK? Well that will allow me to look freely while sprinting, that's a good thing, but how does the engine handle the holding a sprint key while sprint is already toggled? Keeps it toggled and enables SMART functionality? That would solve a lot of issues I had foreseen.


You're not answering my question, what if I want to aim downwards while sprinting? (Actually the sprint toggle thing answer my problems, thanks for that Revoluzzer!)

Looks like I'll be learning the manual controls then. I'd actually prefer if the SMART functionality was as efficient though, I believe as much focus that can remain on actual core FPS gunplay the better.

The problem is that SMART can't anticipate your intentions. That is the real reason the manual controls are better.

They didn't want the SMART button to be auto pilot. This way, the button will take care of the potentially complex controls, and make it simple to move around for the new or casual player, while allowing more advanced players room to grow and be better at movement than each other.

And SD obviously uses pre-made animations. What they mean when they say "no canned animations" is that there is never a point in the game where you arent free to move just because you started doing something. You can stop any action by letting go of the corresponding button; doesn't matter if its an objective, the objective wheel, a command post, or even climbing. You can even cancel a reload and start shooting again for part of the animation by pulling the trigger, up until the point where you have removed the magazine.

So there is no SMART queue. SMART anticipates what you want it to do by the direction you are looking and when you are pressing the buttons.

And of any complaints I have heard about the game, from people who have played at an expo, SMART has never been one of them. It's supposedly very intuitive, even when starting the game. Whether this remains true for the more-efficient manual controls remains to be seen, not too many people have enough game-time to say one way or another, and most of the ones that do are in-house and probably wouldn't say anything bad about the game this close to release.

Yep, SMART is just basicly sprinting + the attempt to understand when you want to slide or jump.

Also worth mentioning, even if I don't have a quote or reference...

I'm pretty sure I read or heard somewhere that sprinting in the open and looking down won't make you slide. SMART will only kick in when you're approaching an obstacle, so to slide when you're not approaching an obstacle, you need to hit the crouch button.

Can you explain please how would these manual controls work other than slide?

A jump will automatically turn into a vault when you go over a low barrier, or a wallclimb/mantle when you do it close to a wall you're sprinting at, and you can wallhop by pushing the movement stick away from the wall and jumping when you're on it.

In a very http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2xXKTgVfGE Paul mentions that SMART works on certain obstacles, such as the Security Sensor on the Airport.