Horse

[demagogue]

Watching the Mount & Blade videos, it almost looks like the horse animation stays the same but the horse pitches forward and backward on the center axis to stay roughly level with the ground. It looks great because those nice animations play whatever the angle.

 

Might there be a way to pitch the entire model based on the z-difference between the ground-points at its front and back feet?

[Arcturus]

The carts would be bound to their respective horse plus there is a bind orientation spawnarg which might help. Otherwise, the carts are just movers sync'd with a horse. Their wheels would be permanently rotating at the correct speed but carefully scripted, a horse could pull up in sight and some trigger stop the wheel rotation.

 

In the cart I wonder if we could have a sitting AI.

We have buggy which has realistically rotating wheels. We can theoretically make cart that can be pulled or pushed without any scripting.

 

Watching the Mount & Blade videos, it almost looks like the horse animation stays the same but the horse pitches forward and backward on the center axis to stay roughly level with the ground. It looks great because those nice animations play whatever the angle.

Might there be a way to pitch the entire model based on the z-difference between the ground-points at its front and back feet?

I don't know. I don't think existing code supports that.

[demagogue]

If there isn't, I wonder if we couldn't either code it ourselves or find something in the neighborhood that could be coopted to do the job. It just seemed like a good solution.

 

Looking at some of the things in the code that I found in a quick search (there might be more)...

- In anim.cpp there's a place it sets the origin and alignment of animations for models. But I think that's way too high-level to be tweaking just for the horse, though I wonder if its value can be tweaked just for the horse AI, in its function, when using its values (not sure the mechanics of how it works).

- In ai.cpp, under idAI:idAI, there's actually values for fly_pitch_scale, fly_pitch_max, & fly_pitch. I wonder if we couldn't make the horse technically a flying AI that can pitch (also roll and bob, for the record) according to the ground z-values, but can never actually go any altitude so always stays on the ground. Either we might coopt that code or invent a horse_pitch_scale, horse_pitch_max, & horse_pitch that basically mimics the fly_pitch functions (using its code as a model) tweaked for the horse case.

[demagogue]

Just thinking about this today... If you're going to be adding any more skins to the horse, might I recommend: undead haunt revenant horses! Skinny to the ribs, maybe even an exposed bit of rib or 2, pale gray and tattered cloth and fur, some chains, an exposed fore leg bone?, red eyes, with surreal and mean huffs...

 

I think the vision of four mounted haunts revenants on haunt revenant-horses galloping screaming towards me would be awesomely terrifying! The horsemen of the apocalypse!

 

Edit:

[Arcturus]

Yeah, why not. It would be nice though to have normal horses working first.

Edit: I think it would require more than just new skins.

[Sotha]

Yeah, why not. It would be nice though to have normal horses working first.

Edit: I think it would require more than just new skins.

 

 

Black skin with red eyes, mapper binds some flames Glenham style?

 

EDIT: could be also done on a simple black horse with normal eyes. Bind prop red gems (or something) as red eyes. Bind bones sticking out of the body.

[Springheel]

A lot easier said than done.

[demagogue]

Yeah, why not. It would be nice though to have normal horses working first.   Edit: I think it would require more than just new skins.

 

Of course it would have to be a new entity with its own def, barks, behavior, animations, etc. I just thought it wouldn't hurt to try a new skin while we're waiting to figure out the normal horse. But I guess you mean you can't even do that much since it really calls for a completely new model first to give it justice, which is right, I think. Well it was a long-term suggestion for down the road anyway.

[Arcturus]

I've reported major bugs on the tracker. Three are for rideable only:

 

0002364, 0002365, 0002366, 0002367, 0002368, 0002369, 0002370, 0002371, 0002372, 0002373, 0002374

 

 

 

 

 

[Arcturus]

I made separate saddle model and turn into a ragdoll.

[Springheel]

Nice.

[Arcturus]

I uploaded clopping footfall sounds for horse. I isolated them from this file: http://www.freesound...le.php?id=33848 . I set them for stone material only. What do you think of them?

[OrbWeaver]

Might there be a way to pitch the entire model based on the z-difference between the ground-points at its front and back feet?

 

That seems like the correct solution to me too, looking at those pictures it is very obvious that the fundamental problem is that the back of the horse is perfectly horizontal when climbing the steps, whereas in reality it should be angled upwards.

[Ishtvan]

That seems like the correct solution to me too, looking at those pictures it is very obvious that the fundamental problem is that the back of the horse is perfectly horizontal when climbing the steps, whereas in reality it should be angled upwards.

 

It seems like there should be some IK settings for this. Maybe we could look at how they did it with the D3 Pinky demons? Or do those also have this problem?

[Arcturus]

There are no IK settings in Pinky's def.

[demagogue]

I found code for pitching (and yaw & roll) entire models, but it's for flying AI (you see it in AI.cpp for flying AI). Not sure if it could be coopted here or not.

[OrbWeaver]

I suspect for this you need "full IK", whereas I'm guessing that Doom 3's "walk IK" only goes as far as positioning the feet on the ground, rather than propagating motion up the entire skeletal tree. This works fine for spider-like creatures with long spindly legs, but is probably inadequate for a more rigid horse.