Animations and Movement
Lazurah
Join Date: 2011-06-04 Member: 102655Members
Join Date: 2011-06-04 Member: 102655Members
Ever since I first saw footage of NS2, I've looked at the marines and aliens running around and noticed that their movements appear very jerky and twitchy. I don't mean that the animations themselves are bad though. For example, a skulk could be running straight forward and look perfectly normal, but the instant the player presses another key to change direction, the skulk will snap into a different animation. I've noticed this while playing as well as in NS2HD's videos.
My question is: will the game continue to look like this, or is it only one of the many tasks that UWE will eventually begin working on as the game comes closer to release? I hope that the game doesn't continue to look like this because, in my opinion, it breaks the illusion that these are living breathing creatures that are running, crawling, and flying around inside the game world. Their movements need to be smooth and lean into one another as they transition.
I seem to recall a post on UWE's twitter page that said something about a bug that they found that prevented their animations from blending. Is that part of the problem? I thought they had resolved that a few builds back.
My question is: will the game continue to look like this, or is it only one of the many tasks that UWE will eventually begin working on as the game comes closer to release? I hope that the game doesn't continue to look like this because, in my opinion, it breaks the illusion that these are living breathing creatures that are running, crawling, and flying around inside the game world. Their movements need to be smooth and lean into one another as they transition.
I seem to recall a post on UWE's twitter page that said something about a bug that they found that prevented their animations from blending. Is that part of the problem? I thought they had resolved that a few builds back.
Comments
I suggest putting some smooth rotation on the lower body of marines when standing still and looking around. Say, you turn 90 degrees to the right, your upper body moves instantly, but your hips and legs follow behind with a smooth delay and falloff (while keeping withing 45-90 degrees to the upper body, so doing 180's doesn't look funny). Strafing does do this and it looks very fluid.
Besides that, it looks like the jump animation is slightly broken. It only animates for ~20% of the jump, then goes back to walk. Probably just a small error in the code.
No blending when going in/out of a sprint.
Another thing is the way mouse-look affects the models. They just spin around on the spot. It would be much better if the legs remained in the same place for smaller angles and the torso and head moved all depending on where the player was looking. It would also be really cool if skulks and other alien lifeforms had this too. Their heads would move depending on where the player was looking.
To me, the skulk animations at the moment seems kind of floaty and the sounds don't sync up with the footsteps all the time.
Just while I'm posting about animations, the shotgun currently annoys me because the animation and sound lasts longer than the time between shots. It makes it difficult for the player to know when he can fire the weapon again because there is no visual or audio cue.
Also, when reloading the last shell it plays a longer animation. That would be fine if you could still fire the weapon and interrupt the animation, but you can't. It means that reloading the last shell gives the player a disadvantage so if you want to fire quicker you should fire on shell 7 to avoid that animation. This doesn't really make any sense. It would be better to have it like in NS1 with a short delay at the start of reloading. Although I feel with a shotgun you should be able to fire at any time even when you are reloading, to allow for reloading individual shells quickly in the heat of battle without worrying about not being able to shoot.
I suspect UW are aware of most of these things, but their focus isn't on this kind of polish at the moment. They are still changing the alien movement and things so it would be silly to work on animations before that is finalized.
The skulk model has always had the animations/pose parameter for this. I also remember creating a crude implementation of this behavior in the engine test but it always suffered the ugly animation snapping behavior when the biting animation finished .
There have been some updates to specific animation problems with specific structures and units. Here are recent ones related to more general animation problems, though I noticed no difference in game yet.
181:
"Integrate the animation graph system into the script code transitioned from Started to Delivered"
In 180:
"Added new animation graph system (not used yet, but will be basis of new animation tool and system)"
179:
"Fixed animation blending"
There have been some updates to specific animation problems with specific structures and units. Here are recent ones related to more general animation problems, though I noticed no difference in game yet.
181:
"Integrate the animation graph system into the script code transitioned from Started to Delivered"
In 180:
"Added new animation graph system (not used yet, but will be basis of new animation tool and system)"
179:
"Fixed animation blending"<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If i understand this correctly, this system is to be the ground foundation of a new animation system.<b> I could be wrong tho, so don't quote me on that.</b>
You haven't noticed any changes yet because they have only implemented the system, not started using it.
Once they have completed the foundation and ground rules of it they can start working on the different animations itself.
If they fixed animations first, then rewrote the system and tools they would have to either build the new system around the old animation "style"/rules or scrap the old work and write new animations once the new system was finished.
you can already stop reloading in the middle and start firing.
The animations are one of the things being worked at, so it wont be like this in the final game.
There is a small delay while it completes reloading a shell though. Press R and then immediately try and fire, you need to wait a second before it will work. As well as the delay on reloading the 8th.
Personally I don't have a issue with the small delay.
The system is hooked up and we are doing some test cases with some of the game assets already, but we'll likely need to go through most of the animations in the game and set them up properly using the new system.
Regarding the player model turning in place spinning, we still plan on creating some specific animations to handle that.
--Cory
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Very cool. Can't wait to see how everything improves once the new animation system is in place. :)