Lost Dragons - Total Modification Alpha

[HorribleGoat 1473]

WK-209 got new sexy legs:

 

 

And with that started with new walk cycle

 

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Some more of the same, just a bit more cleaned up. It still needs something though.

 

[Polyus 139]

Oh my god. I can't wait to use this.

[HazardousJay 83]

those mech walking animations.. just... perfection! it actually moves like an actual mech. thats one heck of a job!

 

keep up the great work sir!

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Progress!

 

 

Major changes being less vertical movement as it was waay too much and also it is progressing to have more fluid and constant forward motion.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

 

One more for the road. Pretty smooth forward vector with around 30km/h speed. 

Added some pelvic action in there and stabilized the torso movement a tad more. In the end while "bouncy" torso looks cool and all, it makes the machine unusable so it would make sense that the torso would be as stabilized as possible.

[DL++ 397]

Fantastic !!  

[x3kj 1247]

Second walk cycle looks a lot better than before. The only thin i see with the current one is that the forward movement is extremely fast - almost too fast to see. MWO mechs with fast speeds have a bit of jumping in their walk, so that the legs dont have to move so fast. Not sure if that would be in-character with your mech.

[Polyus 139]

While I'm sure you guys are working on your own audio, part of me really wants this to use the ED-209 walking sound.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

On 11/15/2017 at 7:42 PM, x3kj said:

Second walk cycle looks a lot better than before. The only thin i see with the current one is that the forward movement is extremely fast - almost too fast to see. MWO mechs with fast speeds have a bit of jumping in their walk, so that the legs dont have to move so fast. Not sure if that would be in-character with your mech.

Thanks! I think its starting to work quite well. Problem with MWO is that there is no proper weapon convergence whatsoever and while the mech and arms bounce while moving it affects nothing in aiming. Which is cool looking but utter crap as how they are supposed to magically stabilize instantly the moment you press fire. :L

 

Our walkers will be as stabilized as possible to make them work without fake aiming as we want to make our guns fire exactly where they are pointing at. This may make them look more rigid while they move. But it also makes them viable war machines. Terrain formations/rocks/etc stuff they walk over will already make them bounce enough and If we could we would negate that too as the walkers are supposed to run with intelligent semi-autonomous "fly-by-wire" controls that keep it stable.

I calculated that with current speed it would be "walking" about 50km/h which is more like a fast-walk/jog speed. Default walk speed will be around 30-40km/h. The speeds we will make this things to move will not always be super realistic tho so its one of the areas we will bend the realism-ish  scifi approach we try to have.

 

 

On 11/16/2017 at 6:07 PM, Polyus said:

While I'm sure you guys are working on your own audio, part of me really wants this to use the ED-209 walking sound.

That could be neat indeed but we are still a bit far away from making new sounds. We will focus on asset modeling for the time being. :D

[HorribleGoat 1473]

From left to right "single step" - "walk" - "run" 

[HazardousJay 83]

it just keeps getting better and better! awesome job!

 

question regarding its speed. i assume it goes into the "run" animation once a certain speed is reached? example of this would be Wanzer mechs where they start to glide once they reached 75 KPH.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

6 hours ago, HazardousJay said:

it just keeps getting better and better! awesome job!

 

question regarding its speed. i assume it goes into the "run" animation once a certain speed is reached? example of this would be Wanzer mechs where they start to glide once they reached 75 KPH.

In that regard our walkers differ from any other mech mod there is as our legs are not build on a tank. They are separate class man based unit that moves just like any man in Arma meaning theres walk, jog, sprint, crouch and prone modes we can utilize for different movement modes unlike the tank that "rolls" forward etc. 

The "Man-Leg" approach has certain limitations, for example we will be restricted on set speeds on different modes, like the walk and run for example. They will both have animation defined speed that will not be linearly adjustable. Walk mode will be around 40km/h and it will go "full speed" all the time, bar some terrain related modifiers. So when you press W it walks forward if you are in "walk mode" and with shift down it will go into faster "jog" mode and so on.

[Macser 776]

You might tell me to sod off for saying this, but it's just an opinion. 

 

I think maybe the knees are going a little too high. Particularly in the walk sequences. I can see what you're going for. Some mass. A feeling of weight. But without a massive drop of the torso over a short space of time.

 

Maybe the feet are keyed a bit to far to the rear.  So when a foot leads forward it's dropping instead of reaching out. if you see what I mean.

 

That's meant constructively of course.

[reyhard 2082]

On 26.11.2017 at 9:37 AM, HorribleGoat said:

The "Man-Leg" approach has certain limitations, for example we will be restricted on set speeds on different modes, like the walk and run for example. They will both have animation defined speed that will not be linearly adjustable. Walk mode will be around 40km/h and it will go "full speed" all the time, bar some terrain related modifiers. So when you press W it walks forward if you are in "walk mode" and with shift down it will go into faster "jog" mode and so on.

Couldn't it be somehow solveable with https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/setAnimSpeedCoef ? Not sure how it would look in the end but just wanted to throw an idea, in case you were not aware of that command

[HorribleGoat 1473]

5 hours ago, Macser said:

You might tell me to sod off for saying this, but it's just an opinion. 

 

I think maybe the knees are going a little too high. Particularly in the walk sequences. I can see what you're going for. Some mass. A feeling of weight. But without a massive drop of the torso over a short space of time.

 

Maybe the feet are keyed a bit to far to the rear.  So when a foot leads forward it's dropping instead of reaching out. if you see what I mean.

 

That's meant constructively of course.

There is indeed purpose behind the high foot rise which is to get high vertical clearance to walk over stuff nicely and it does add certain powerfulness to the step. 

You do have a point with the step length in the walk sequence, it may be a bit too long, got to investigate that! There is room for tweaking it still.
 

3 hours ago, reyhard said:

Couldn't it be somehow solveable with https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/setAnimSpeedCoef ? Not sure how it would look in the end but just wanted to throw an idea, in case you were not aware of that command

 

Thanks reyhard for the suggestion, I am aware of the command but have not yet had a  chance to try it out! It may indeed give us ability to adjust speed linearly in different movement modes, which would of course be awesome!

 

Only thing I dont think we can properly address is taking different length steps short from using some sort of "micro movement" mode where each key press plays an animation for different length step like 1cm, 10cm, 50cm and  so on as we do not want the movement to "glide" like arma man can if you tap movement keys and the animation never properly plays the step but to actually take at least one full step each time key is pressed. What length step that is remains to be decided though.

[haleks 8212]

41 minutes ago, HorribleGoat said:

Only thing I dont think we can properly address is taking different length steps short from using some sort of "micro movement" mode where each key press plays an animation for different length step like 1cm, 10cm, 50cm and  so on as we do not want the movement to "glide" like arma man can if you tap movement keys and the animation never properly plays the step but to actually take at least one full step each time key is pressed. What length step that is remains to be decided though.

 

Just a quick idea, but would it be possible to use a combination of key press EHs and animationState checks to work on that? If the animation cycle isn't nearly finished when the key is released, you could "cancel" it with a special anim - walking and running anims always start the same, so you would need only one for each different speed. That special animation would just be the walker interrupting its step, re-aligning its feet to transition back to the default standing position.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

5 minutes ago, haleks said:

 

Just a quick idea, but would it be possible to use a combination of key press EHs and animationState checks to work on that? If the animation cycle isn't nearly finished when the key is released, you could "cancel" it with a special anim - walking and running anims always start the same, so you would need only one for each different speed. That special animation would just be the walker interrupting its step, re-aligning its feet to transition back to the default standing position.

Releasing key animation blend from walking to standing is not really an issue as it can go "standing" -> "one step" -> "walk" - "one step" -> "standing". The one step should probably be very short one so it stops in reasonable time. 

That will also solve the issue of gliding as when W is pressed it starts the one step animation and it will be set to blend to with the walk if W is held down but if W is just tapped it will just play the one step.

What I meant with the step size adjusting is more like small positional adjustments like stepping 10cm to your right or 50cm behind you. It could perhaps be its own "precise position" dialog that has like 3 sets of buttons to take different length steps to different directions since I dont think its something that would be needed in combat but more like getting in position in a hangar etc. It would utilize similar moves as V does when stepping over stuff.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Long time no news!

Well here's some!! Little teaser of things we've combined from various tests! Still a bit raw here and there..

But you can see where this is going! The legs are still the old version but new ones are on the assembly line waiting to get stomping!!

Music by the great Tommy Iberg: https://soundcloud.com/tommy-iberg/sets/lost-dragons-ost
 

 

 

[R0adki11 3949]

This is amazing work 

[lordfrith 401]

some mighty fine stomping coming along here. The cockpit getIn sequence is really cool as well.

 

I already feel bad for the altis rabbits :D 

[haleks 8212]

What a beautiful beast! <3

[Strike_NOR 898]

Magnificent work man!

 

Amazing what you are able to get out of this game :D

[paecmaker 23]

xD, from the walking animations to the video...I did not expect it to be That big,

 

wow, that's some amazing work.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

22 hours ago, paecmaker said:

xD, from the walking animations to the video...I did not expect it to be That big,

 

wow, that's some amazing work.

Yes its big so it can carry all the DAKKA!