I have quite a radical (probably overblown) idea for a way to handle weapons, weapon animations, etc. for a more weapon-based game than CS:S (something more akin to Raven Shield). Instead of each weapon model having some hands in it, and all the animations based around this, why not have each weapon just have a set of attachment points where the usual finger positions on the grips, trigger, etc. are, and corresponding ones on a hand model? (On the surface of the skin, and the surface of the gun, of course.) When you want a gun to appear on screen with some hands, you link each hand attachment point to the corresponding weapon attachment point (e.g. hand_finger01 -> gun_grip01_finger01) With regards to weapon animations such as reloading, it would be the attachment points on the weapon that move around, guiding the hands (so to speak) into doing a nice animation - the hands would be ragdolled, effectively (a cut-down ragdoll mode without collisions, for example), by the attachment points on the gun model. For example, with a reload animation, the attachment points for the hand on the gun barrel grip would float their way to the clip's surface, move down with it as it moves, and so on. In fact, this could be taken a step further, with a weapon itself being only the stripped-down weapon body (no silencer in the normal model - the M4A1 has animations for with a silencer and without, no clip, no scope, etc.), with attachment points for such things (silencer, clip, scope, etc.). At buy-time, the player would then be able to choose which addons to buy for his gun - what type of silencer, what type of ammo and how big the clip should be, what type of scope if any, etc.; and these would all be attached to the gun, and removable during gameplay. Managing to animate this using the aforementioned moving attachment method would be slightly more complex (I haven't thought about it much yet), but would be possible.
My question to you (finally) is: is this feasible, and what sort of overhead would it put on a game - would it be considerably more laggy than the current system? _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
