Failed KO animation

[Noisycricket]

Im working on my laptop and don't have my bow animations with me, so im trying to do the failed KO animation. Is there a way to make it end in a pose that will lead to a draw weapon without jumping between animations?

 

If nothing is planned i'll just have the head and torso return close to their original positions.

[greebo]

I'm not sure if the player will be able to notice any "glitches" in the animation - imagine you're blackjacking some AI and you realise it fails, would you rather watch out for smooth animation transitions or look into getting straight out of the room?

 

I think the animation ending up in the same (idle) pose is fine.

[Noisycricket]

The start of the animation is going to return the A.I. model to the idle pose as well, causing a jump. I don't suppose there is a way to keep the leg position the same, like the way the idle animations are played while running?

[greebo]

Sure, I can tell the model to play the failed KO anim only on the TORSO channel, this keeps the legs as they are (though I'd invoke a "StopMove()" call anyway).

[Noisycricket]

How about making a separate animation for each weapon carried? Making the action seemless from the point of contact all the way to drawing a weapon? It would be pretty easy on my end. I'd just do a little cut and pasting with existing animations. I've basically finished one, which could be the one for weaponless characters. Would torch carriers pose an issue?

 

Heres another issue, if the legs are frozen and the torso animates, there will still be a jump when the draw_weapon animation starts at the idle_pose. The draw_weapon animations also involve leg movement, so the legs couldn't be frozen if we had separate animations.

 

Hmm, so if we don't freeze the legs, there will be a jump back to idle_pose right when the player hits and if we do freeze the legs, there will be a jump when the A.I. switches to draw_weapon. I'd say the latter is better unless some programming magic can be done.

 

Is there such a thing as a slow blend between animations allowing for a slow transition between the animation taking place just before the failed KO and and failed KO? That would let us have the different animations for each weapon. But would it look ok.....

 

Your call.

[greebo]

The code can specify a number of "blendframes", which are used to interpolate between animations. An usual value is 4 or 8 frames to blend between anims. So actual jumps should be rarely observed, rather "quick" transitions.

 

I'd suggest we look at your first animation in-game before we decide what transitions would be better. I think the combination between playing the anim on the torso and choosing a higher number of blendframes might look quite convincing.

 

Torch-carriers need to be considered, yes.

[Noisycricket]

Ok, i have an animation done that is kind of elaborate, i could tone it down with a much shorter, less animated reaction as well.

 

Edit: Ugh, i completely forgot that the bow in the left hand and the sword in the right need to be taken into account as well. So i guess i should make the shorter, less animated one instead.

 

The one I have now reaches up instinctively with the right hand to protect the head and the left forearm goes out. If you want me to upload this too for unarmed or torch carrying A.I. I will.

[Noisycricket]

I uploaded a simple one in md5anim and .ma format. That should probably do fine i think. Let me know.

[greebo]

I'm trying to get this working today. I'll let you know if I need something. Thanks so far.

[greebo]

This is in code now, a new PK4 will be uploaded soon. You can test it on the builder guards in test/walk (you need to spawn an atdm:weapon_blackjack beforehand, of course).

[Springheel]

This might be a bit late but this was an example of a failed KO animation I always liked:

 

http://www.mindplaces.com/save/anim_failedKO_00.avi

[squill]

thats more theatrical, i remember i also made one in which he stepped forward which i personally liked more. It's easy to recreate.

 

edit: in a quick setup, it would look something like this:

 

KO front view

KO back view

[Noisycricket]

So I figured less was more. Its the fact that you have to return to the idle pose that really causes the trouble for me personally. For me less was more. If we could create animations for each type of item being held in hands, that would bring new possibilities, but in the meantime, Ill upload the longer one. Tell me what you think, its failed_KO long.ma

 

It still needs to be loaded into Maya7 and re-saved, I can't do it for some reason on my laptop, Maya 7 keeps crashing.

[squill]

So I figured less was more. Its the fact that you have to return to the idle pose that really causes the trouble for me personally. For me less was more. If we could create animations for each type of item being held in hands, that would bring new possibilities, but in the meantime, Ill upload the longer one. Tell me what you think, its failed_KO long.ma

 

It still needs to be loaded into Maya7 and re-saved, I can't do it for some reason on my laptop, Maya 7 keeps crashing.

 

i'll check when i'm home. Why would the idle pose cause you trouble? You could make it as long as you want to but in the end it comes down to how well it plays. You don't want to wait 2 seconds before the animation is finished to do your following action but you also want some clear feedback if you hit the person or not.

[Noisycricket]

I couldn't get your videos to work before, but there working now. Your animation looks really good, i agree, but i think the neck should bottom out more before the torso goes forward as no force had yet acted on the torso. Your anim also gives a better feel for why the anim comes back to the start position. Do you want to make that one then? Ideally, we would make both, then have everyone on the TDM team test them in game and vote on it, so we could get the best idea for what the community would like.

 

I forgot, i don't think my longer one will work because the hands go up near the head to protect it instinctively from further blows, yet the guard will impale himself if hes holding a sword or bow. I'll change it tomorrow so it will at least work while holding stuff.

[SneaksieDave]

<butts in> I don't suppose there's any way this could be affecting the difficulty of blackjacking? In case I sound kooky suggesting that, I'm just wondering maybe about defined KO regions, or maybe the fact that these anims being added to characters means that programmers are adding the ability to miss... or something like that?

 

I'm finding that in recent days, blackjacking a builder guard has become much harder, and I'm missing frequently (even in non-alert, notarget situations). And I do literally mean days, because in working on training_stealth, it was always easy (almost too easy?) to KO the guards, but suddenly it's too hard to be accurate enough, and I'm frequently missing. I doubt the change is me.

[angua]

My guess is that either the m_HeadCenterOffset or the head axis needs moving, maybe this changed when the AI were switched to the new skeleton. Here's what the current knockout zone looks like (you can see this when you switch on "tdm_ai_showko"):

I don't know how this looked before, but at the moment it is only possible to ko the AI when you hit it in a quite small region at the neck.

[Springheel]

That certainly doesn't look right....

[SneaksieDave]

Looks like it's in the front of his neck. Anyway, I usually have this view enabled. I just stepped into training_stealth to take shots, and here's the current unalerted and alerted states. Looks normal... I think? Should the unalerted state be missing the green cone? I'm not sure what else to suggest at this point. Something changed, that's certain. I've been KO'ing these guys daily for weeks and suddenly it's much, much harder to get right.

[Springheel]

Any chance the hammer is set to solid? I think we recently switched over to using the normal, movable hammer instead of a special ai_weapon one.

[SneaksieDave]

Hm. I tried temporarily setting solid 0 on the warhammer in the moveable_weapons definition (if that's how it's done) but it didn't seem to change the behavior. There's also the pauldrons but I think they were already in flux before this prob came up (if it is one -- others should confirm that KOs are failing a little too frequently).

[Springheel]

Hmm, I just tried the three AI in test/combat and KO'd them all without anything seeming out of the ordinary.

[Noisycricket]

This is in code now, a new PK4 will be uploaded soon. You can test it on the builder guards in test/walk (you need to spawn an atdm:weapon_blackjack beforehand, of course).

 

I get unknown command when i try this. Any clue why? I'm trying this after the map has loaded.

[SneaksieDave]

Hmm, I just tried the three AI in test/combat and KO'd them all without anything seeming out of the ordinary.

I guess maybe the question should be, why were they so easy before. If we do go with this harder way, that's fine (maybe? pending user feedback; IIRC there were complaints about it being too hard a ways back, which probably led to it becoming easier, which is now not the case anymore ), but for some reason, a week+ ago, they were easy to KO. Maybe KO zones weren't working correctly yet, or with the old model, or something else entirely.

 

Don't know if Ishtvan will see this thread (I think he was doing this work)... I'll see if I can find a better thread.

[Tels]

With SVN, you could go back a week (or days) in time by updating to a particular revision, and then check if it is suddenly easier or if something has changed.