The idea also of programatically controlling the locations of the viewmodel hands is interesting too. Programatically as in you say "Put attachment point X on view model at given coordinate". I was talking about this at a conference a while back for medical applications. I wanted to have a player hold a stethoscope in their hand, and have it actually "touch" what ever surface (the patient) was in front of the user, not just do a generic arm extend. Or have the player grab or hold or somehow put hands on a fixed object that doesn't move.
The idea is to make it like how it is in say XSI. You grab a model's hand and move it around, and the arm just goes with it like it was a marionette or puppet. For example... Let a view model hand push buttons or interact with non-moving world objects (or appear to) when using them. For example if the player had to hold down a button, they might switch to "hands" mode (put down the gun!), put their xhair on the button, then hit the mouse button. Hand extends to pointing finger and holds down button as long as player holds down mouse button. If player moves their view around (mouselooks or moves), the hand keeps on target. If player moves too far off target, the hand lets go. Let melee type weapons (or other physical "touch/hit" type objects) actually impact and stop moving on impact with objects or targets. Sword fights with NPCs? Crowbar goes "clunk" not just "swish"? Let the player actually pick up an object - not the "floating in front of you" style. This would be tricky because making the hand actually grasp an aribtrary object would be difficult. One could I suppose do some basic stuff based on the approximate size of the phys object being picked up. Small and light? One hand generic grab. Large and/or heavy? Two hand grab where hands just grip either side of the object. Quoting DrBob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 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 > > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
