Author Topic: Improvements to walk/run  (Read 928 times)

mizaan

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Improvements to walk/run
« on: August 12, 2011, 08:03:03 am »
Although I guess it is sometimes not the highest priority, realistic walking in games ads to immersion, and like ambient noise is one of those things that you don't notice but makes you feel like you are really there. So I wanted to quickly suggest:

*Acceleration in walking/running - Add (or increase?) the acceleration time to get to full speed walk/run, to perhaps 0.5sec (?) for walk, 1.5 (?) for run.
*Step frequency linked with movement speed - Timing the walking animation so it corresponds precisely with character speed (ie. feet push backwards and ground moves at exact same speed), to prevent floating/moonwalking/iceskating feel to character movement. Easier said than done I realise, perhaps you are already planning this :)
*Subtle movement bob - I realise this is not doom but a slight superficial movement bob in first person mode would add to the feel I think.
*Slight delay to jump - 0.2sec (?) half crouch before jump. Running jump this would be slightly different I guess.
*Sprint feature - Run quicker for short period. Gives something to do on long foot journeys, adds pve/pvp quick escapes, potential for jumping crevasses etc. :)
*Footsteps audio - Quiet enough to not be distracting, again if possible timed with step frequency. Potentially, play a sound based on shoes, ground type, armour type (chain mail chink-chink).
*Jump/fall audio effect - In particular a good old crunch sound if you fall from a great height, or feet landing for lesser height.

I assume altering speed and jump size relative to agility trait is already planned?
 
Ok hope at least one of these ideas is useful! Thanks for making a fine game, looking forward to future developments!

Primordial

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Re: Improvements to walk/run
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2011, 10:40:18 am »
As I understand it, making walk speed match up and be flexible is actually fairly tricky. I only vaguely remember reading something somewhere about having a node on a character's foot which tracks animation/step speed and can alter based on movement and code.
I'm sure the developers of Overgrowth have posted a video on how they made it work for them, but I couldn't say for sure - anyway,their engine is an entirely different beast for an entirely different game than the Crystal Space Engine is for Planeshift.

Mordaan

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Re: Improvements to walk/run
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2011, 11:09:03 am »
Having all of these things in game would be AWESOME!  BUT, I imagine it would take a lot of work.  We barely have any animations as it is.  An animation would have to be added for each variation and then properly sequenced together.  I don't think putting the animations together would be that hard (and I'm not a programmer so I'm not sure), but the animations themselves would take a long time.  From what I can tell, it's a painstaking process.  We are still in need of a lot of basic animations, especially for common emotes.  Even the existing running animation could be improved as you say...and it would have to be done for every model.  So it's all on the to-do list.  Having more 3D modelers around would be a big help too.   ;)
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LigH

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Re: Improvements to walk/run
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2011, 12:04:50 pm »
At the moment, PlaneShift still uses a quite limited skeletal animation based on predefined movement loops. Your wanted changes would at least require a kind of transition between motion definitions. Or even better, free ragdoll based skeletal animations ... that is planned for "not too soon™". So as long as the "good old" CEL system is used, we could only try to make the predefined animation loops better... yet, they are already better than before in several situations, we are already more or less proud with the current results.

"Sprinting" with potions or spells might be possible, I guess ... but the developers who know the movement code better than me will know better what's possible; e.g. I still don't understand why falling needs to limit the forward component so suddenly, I know no other game which needs to be so unrealistic. I believe it was somehow related to the cheat detection and prevention system.

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Primordial

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Re: Improvements to walk/run
« Reply #4 on: August 21, 2011, 07:12:45 am »
You wouldn't need to sequence animations, just support animation blending (ie: what every single game engine support nowerdays - I'd be extremely surprised if Crystal space hasn't implemented it yet). Then you would still need to do the code, but the engine would handle the animation end of it. Animation blending would also open up quite a few new possibilities, as well.

LigH

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Re: Improvements to walk/run
« Reply #5 on: August 21, 2011, 04:38:11 pm »
Well, some animations are even misordered, like the Kran waving. If PS will change something, it will probably be wholesome.

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Talad

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Re: Improvements to walk/run
« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2011, 10:40:38 am »
One element we are looking at right now is the walk/run speed. Our animations look innatural due to the fact the walk speed is innatural. At this point the walk is about 10km/h which is too fast for walking. We are planning to bring the walk speed to 6km/h. This will allow us to fix the animations and fix the sliding effect. We already did some tests on this, but it will require more time to fix it.

novacadian

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Re: Improvements to walk/run
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2011, 11:35:35 am »
Just a suggestion if you are working on that area. It appears to me that all character walk/run at the same speed. If that is the case perhaps it could be considered to take factors like stamina or what-have-you so that some character that is really in good shape could catch up with a more whimpy character. Just a thought if more realism is the goal. This could mostly be addressed with running.

- Nova