Awkward animations for larger creatures

aiat_gameraiat_gamer Join Date: 2017-02-20 Member: 228099Members
in Subnautica General Discussion
I just started playing this game and one thing I noticed is how bigger creatures swimming is buggy looking. They twist and turn or flip mid animation, or when they reach a solid wall, start hitting it constantly until they swim high enough to pass it. At times it almost feels like they are floating in air instead of swimming in water. I hope this is something they are working to fix.
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Comments

  • IcremunIcremun Join Date: 2016-09-12 Member: 222276Members
    give them time to complete/ improve animations.
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  • aiat_gameraiat_gamer Join Date: 2017-02-20 Member: 228099Members
    Icremun wrote: »
    give them time to complete/ improve animations.

    Well, I am giving my initial feedback. Before encountering any bugs or odd design choices, I noticed this one.
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  • FathomFathom Earth Join Date: 2016-07-01 Member: 219405Members
    Pathfinding for AI is always a complicated matter. Usually it's done with waypoints, scripted routes and/or path grids. None of these seem to exist in Subnautica, probably for practical and performance reasons.

    I could imagine extended trigger boxes on creatures that detect objects in a certain direction and giving the AI information to react to before the actual mesh and physics hit terrain. Could also work for staying close to the ground or inside caves, turning around, when the seabed/cave walls are no longer inside the box. It's imitate a certain situational awareness. Only issue I see would be the amount of system resources needed to do those checks regularly for a large amount of creatures.
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  • AvimimusAvimimus Join Date: 2016-03-28 Member: 214968Members
    The other factor is that they simply move too fast... it is designed to make the creatures threatening... although I feel being slowly run down by a giant would probably be more frightening and give a better sense of scale!
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  • CaptainFearlessCaptainFearless CO, US Join Date: 2016-12-14 Member: 224941Members
    Giants move fast though.
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  • Morph_GuyMorph_Guy Join Date: 2016-04-21 Member: 216034Members
    edited February 2017
    Pretty much every creature moves way too fast when running away, and some just move too fast in general. The Eyeye is a good example of a creature that moves way too fast in general, it's lack of animation combined with it's speed and weird AI makes it look more like it's magically gliding through space than swimming. Sandsharks also move way too fast for something that just kind of wiggles it's body to swim.

    Some other weird animation things I've noticed:
    The Crabsnake doesn't actually move the fins on the side of it's body.
    The Reaper doesn't move it's fins. If you look at old dev videos you can actually see that it was once intended to to move it's fins, but they removed it and I have no idea why.
    Crashfish don't move at all.

    The Ghost/Crimson Ray's swimming animations also always looked kind of off to me, but I'm not completely sure why.


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  • zetachronzetachron Germany Join Date: 2014-11-14 Member: 199655Members
    You should have seen the leviathan animations some time ago. They have improved and probably still get tuning.

    Getting the Emperor to animate well is probably the most difficult task in the game development. Of course he'll only move in the prison, but his size and tentacles will make it far more difficult to look well enough.
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