Remaining Player Melee Attacks

[Ishtvan]

I know our animators are busy, but I was wondering when we might be able to get the remaining player melee attacks done. In theory we could do fine without them for a while, but there's a chance some deficiency of the melee system could arise when testing these that would mean I'd have to rewrite things, and I'd rather find that out sooner rather than later. This is especially true of the thrust attack since it's handled a bit differently from others.

 

The overhead attack is just raising the sword up over the right shoulder and coming down vertically, ideally with arm extended to get maximum reach out of it.

 

The thrust attack involves winding up by pulling the hand back towards where your lower ribs would be, then thrusting forwards (again fully extending the arm, with the palm turned about halfway between up and to the left). It's probably important that for the "wind up," you are still able to see the point of the sword on the screen and it's pointing where your thrust will actually go, so you can aim with it.

[squill]

I know our animators are busy, but I was wondering when we might be able to get the remaining player melee attacks done. In theory we could do fine without them for a while, but there's a chance some deficiency of the melee system could arise when testing these that would mean I'd have to rewrite things, and I'd rather find that out sooner rather than later. This is especially true of the thrust attack since it's handled a bit differently from others.

 

The overhead attack is just raising the sword up over the right shoulder and coming down vertically, ideally with arm extended to get maximum reach out of it.

 

The thrust attack involves winding up by pulling the hand back towards where your lower ribs would be, then thrusting forwards (again fully extending the arm, with the palm turned about halfway between up and to the left). It's probably important that for the "wind up," you are still able to see the point of the sword on the screen and it's pointing where your thrust will actually go, so you can aim with it.

 

this shouldn't be to much work to setup. But I'll have to see how i can put this between the rest of my animation work. I'm currently the only one doing the animation because Dom is still gone and we haven't got anyone else to do this quickly.

[Flanders]

Actually I was looking at the player weapon model today and I thought I could make some animations for this, although I don't know how to bring it into doom3. If I make some mb files for this, can someone get them in doom 3?

[Springheel]

Probably. What version of Maya do you use?

[Flanders]

7.0 But I need some instructions for this, should I make one anim for weapon raise and one for releasing it? How long should these be?

[squill]

Do you have access to the weapons_viewmodels folder in model_src and i assume you know how to animate using Maya?

If so you can open up sword_idle_pose.mb which is the default weapon pose to start any new animation.

[Flanders]

Yes and yes. I'm working on it . Too bad there's no attack animation for a reference in that folder.

[Springheel]

I'm currently the only one doing the animation because Dom is still gone and we haven't got anyone else to do this quickly.

 

I'm still trying to get us some animators through a contact at a local animation college, but it is slow going.

[squill]

I'm still trying to get us some animators through a contact at a local animation college, but it is slow going.

 

Sounds great if you can find some students willing to do some work. Do you know if they teach from a traditional background (2D animation)?

A friend of mine might also be willing to do some animations, i'll ask him this week.

[Flanders]

Ok. I uploaded my first attempt to model_src. they're called attack_overhead and attack_thrust. Just as the parry animations I made the raise weapon and release anim in one file. The thrust attack can pause on the 21st frame (when the player holds the attack button), the overhead attack on the 22nd frame.

[Springheel]

Do you know if they teach from a traditional background (2D animation)?

 

Not sure. It's a game design program at a nearby college. My contact is a friend of a friend who teaches a course there on skinning and textures. I've only just met him, so I can't pester him too much, yet.

[Ishtvan]

@Flanders: Cool, thanks a lot, I will test those out. 21 frames for the wind-up to thrust sounds a bit long, but we can always speed it up using code for now.

[Ishtvan]

Where are these files located and in what format are they? Does someone still have to export them to be usable in Doom3? I haven't used the model_src repository before.

[Flanders]

They are not md5 files yet, I don't know how to import them in doom. The mb files are model_src\weapons_viewmodels.

 

edit: Found wiki info, I'll try if I can import them myself

[Flanders]

I made the md5 files and tested them in Doom, I can upload them if svn is working (not at the moment). If it is necessary to have shorter animations I can make some of say 25 frames in total. How would I know what number of frames I should use for animations? 60 per second? 24 per second?

[Ishtvan]

I believe we usually use 24 per second. Our animators will correct me if I'm wrong, I hope.

[squill]

24 fps it is

[Flanders]

Ok, I used 60. I just put slash_overhead.md5anim and thrust.md5anim in the broadsword folder.

[Ishtvan]

Great, thanks. I'll check them out.

 

60 fps means we can't speed them up in the code any more than they are currently without dropping frames. I'm not sure what the consequences of that would be.

[Flanders]

Second attempt, now used 24 fps. Uploaded with same names.

[Ishtvan]

Sweet, thanks!

[Ishtvan]

Okay, these are now ingame. The thrust attack has physics disabled for now because of a crash I'm still trying to debug, so it won't hit anything.

@Flanders: Good job! Here are some minor nitpicks:

 

Overhead attack: The wind up and attack are perfect. The recovery after the attack is a little weird, and I don't know if this is actually in the animation or if it's caused by animation blending back to the idle anim. What happens is that instead of coming straight back to the starting position, the player's hand overshoots a little to the right and then circles back to the ready position. It makes the recovery feel a bit sluggish and looks weird.

 

Thrust attack: The "wind up" also doesn't come straight back, but makes a little circle before coming into position ready to thrust. It would be good if it could be all one motion, pulling the sword straight back with the tip in line ready to thrust. The thrust itself is good. The recovery has the same problem as the overhead attack: Rather than come straight back to the start position, the hand kind of veers off to the right and then circles back. Again I don't know if this is in the animation or if it's happening due to animation blending. Please let me know what you think.

[Flanders]

The things you mention are in the animations, I'm sure of that.

 

Very cool to be able to use these attacks now. I noticed that to use overhead attack you have to move your mouse down and for thrust you have to move it up. That's a bit counter intuitive I think. Isn't it better to reverse that so you have to move your mouse up to get your sword up and move your mouse down to pull it back?

 

I wanted too use ik handles too make the animations more smooth but they screw up the idle animation so I couldn't have the animation start and end in the idle animation. Anyway, now that I can see how the animations really look like in game I can tweak them to improve them on the things you mention.

[SneaksieDave]

I felt the same (or exactly the opposite... hm). Thus the inclusion of the tdm_melee_invert* cvars.

 

I currently use _parry 0 and _attack 1.

[Flanders]

ok thanks! I'll use those.