Player animations

[Sgt. Stryker 0]

Ok, so i was sitting at the student union at UCF and i noticed something strange (this is after playing OFP for about 3 hours) EVERYONE WALKS DIFFERENT!!!!! So what does this mean you ask me? Well thats simple make about 10 different player animations for walking, standing, shooting. I know its a lot and will prolly be a pain in the rear, but can you imagine how awesome thatd be? You see people running across a field and they all have differnt strides and different angles of arcs in their backs, so on and so on. So how bout them apples?

[Impavido 0]

Not a bad idea, but there are a lot of features and small details I place higher on the priority list.

[CopyCon 1]

Good idéa, I'd like to see this as well as different body types that were mentioned in a thread a while ago.

[Raw 0]

Would be nice, but there's probably a lot of things that would give more bang for the buck.

This is a common problem in request/suggestion forums. People tend to think in terms of all the cools stuff that could be done instead of thinking in terms of a certain amount of money for development and what they consider important enough to use part of that money.

[Sgt. Stryker 0]

It woundt be that hard, all im saying is that they should take the allready made animations and tweak them all just a little bit, enough to make a difference, and then assign players random animaations that "stay" with that player. I.E. Have 5 diff running anims and 5 different "ready positions. Each player gets random animations and they stay with that player forever.

[Schoeler 0]

LOL! I can just see people bitiching about getting the character with the fat guy animations, or whining their guy runs like a fem.

[Sgt. Stryker 0]

ok, how bout you can choose your own set of animations? Or maybe the dev team wont make gay animations. Geez man, just trying to add more atmosdphere for the game, its people like you that force all games to share similar charateristics.

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

I just hope OFP 2 turns out better than Söldner: Secret Wars. I mean, in terms of vehicle control, IMHO OFP rulez, better than Battlefield 1942 and better than Söldner: you can look everywhere, turn on lights and whatever else you can script into a vehicle (maybe they could also have windshield wipers and turning lights in OFP2   ). As for the soldier animations, heck, they GOTTA be improved... I mean, sometimes I really thought: WHAT A DUMBASS THIS SOLDIER IS!!! I'm sure you've all stood by a small wooden fence and if ya didn't have any explosive ammo or vehicle nearby had to walk ALL AROUND to the entrance just to get inside... how PATHETIC!!! There's gotta be an animation that just allows a soldier to jump over it effectively (it's astonishing how long it takes to jump across a fence in Söldner, without practice...). Plus, even high fences are an obstacle for special ops guys... I mean, come on... if they wouldn't have a cutting tool with them, why wouldn't Spec Ops guys be able to climb over the fence? Heck, we've all seen such moves be performed IRL, and probably done it ourselves too!      (add a cutting tool animation to get rid of the barbed wire on top, if for stealth reasons it's too obvious to leave a gap in a fence created by said cutting tool, which should be an essential tool in any Spec Op arsenal)... Furthermore, one thing present in Söldner is swimming which also should be adopted by OFP 2, as well as its taunts... and maybe also its unit clothing customization ease as well... that's my buck for OFP 2.

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX 0]

They do have a tool to get through fences.... satchel charges.

[Dutch soldier 0]

Just remember that animations of walking crouching ,proning and dieing are very important , u can see the difference between Hunters mod and the originial

[Impavido 0]

We DEFINATELY need an ass-scratching animation!

[-FHA-Dynamo 0]

for getting over a fence or a concreat wall.. why not have a script where u you run at the wall or fence.. and hit jump just befor hitting it.. and then you'r soldier jumps and pushes him self up high on the wall, grabbing the top then climbing over it?.. isnt that a basic army thing?.. all soldiers have to be able to jump high walls

also.. give the players bones!.. lots of them!.. or let the addon makers define how many bones to use!!

i want to see a 150foot spider running around eating stuff up!

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

They do have a tool to get through fences.... satchel charges.

Right, waste your satchel charges on a friggin fence, and blow up a tank, ammo depot and whatnot with harsh language... you know, there's only a limited supply of satchel charges a spec op can carry, and those aren't meant to blow up fences...    

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX 0]

The enemy have plenty of other things which can do the job of satchel charges.

[SpecOp9 0]

Different running aniamtions might not be put in...I wouldnt think... But I'm sure if a skinny guy and a fat guy are running next to each other, the fat guy would have the slower running animation.

Would be cool

[Silver Falcon 0]

Sets of different moves would be much work and quite expensive on Motion Capture.

But at least, I'd like BIS to make improved moves in MC by real soldiers. This time, I'm making new set of anims, more realistic then those in OFP, but those made by professionals on motion capture would be better.

Just one pic to show the amateurs at least, compared to real.

[sbsmac 0]

I'd also like to see a broader range of animations.  When I first started playing OFP in campaign mode it was the way that the soldiers moved that gave such a feeling of immersion.  Just one example - the way that a soldier on patrol will occasionally break into a little jog to catch up with a comrade knocked me for six.  

But then the vehicle entrance/exit animations just blew that feeling if immersion out of the water.  I remember playing that mission where you have to take a snipers rifle and assasinate some spetznatz officers at their base.  First of all I noticed how the enemy just seemed to warp into position in the armoured vehicles (I was kind of hoping to shoot the gunners as they scrambled up the sides of the vehicle   ).  Then on the way back I got cut off by a truckload of russians.  I was pretty astounded to see them dismount by appearing 10 feet up in the air and gradually sinking to the ground.  By now, any sense of immersion that I had was thoroughly ruined.

Now, I fully recognise the practical difficulty of creating animations for entrance and exit of every single vehicle type

(and presumably it would increase the difficulty for mod makers as they would have yet another thing to worry about) but my point is simply that for me at least, the naturalistic way that soldiers moved was a big part of the feeling of being 'in the game'.

I play multi-player (CTF) exclusively now and I still have to say that I rate the way that players move as being far superior to any similar game.  I would like the movement to be a bit more constrained to deal with the kind of unrealistic 'dancing' that some players now do when they come under fire.  (If you haven't seen this, it is a technique whereby players keep running back and forth by moving the mouse very quickly from side to side.) IMHO it's the OFP equivalent of bunny-jumping.

mac

[Architeuthis 9]

It would be nice if every weapon had a different animation. A character holding a machinegun would use a different animation then if he would be using a assault rifle. Same goes for sub-machineguns and shotguns. This would make the game seem more lifelike.

Arch.

[bmgarcangel 0]

I give one sentence.

The Matrix game had over 2,400 different movements that you could do all captured by actors from the movie or just ordinary people using the motion capture system. If they can do it, Bohemia can.

~Bmgarcangel

[Silver Falcon 0]

Wasting of "resources" (work and money). It would miss the point, if there are 2400 animations in style of old ofp. And at all, Matrix focused on anims, but the game was weak, OFP have many points to get focused on.

I think, the point is to make those animations more realistic (such as weapon in shoulder!, position of AT weapon at back, proper CQB moves!). If you look at VBS1 trailer, I think its basic moves which are the weakest part of chain.

Especialy sidesteps -> axis of body=axis of weapon and smoothnes ("Slow is smooth and smooth is fast!")! (i made my own, and the effectivnes in short distances combat is much, much higher), also forward move shown up here on deltas makes it better, leans to sides! and much more (AT weapon moves)... (well some kind of "leaping" to cover-objects like in Vietcong should be cool, but in other hand it would be usefull only in areas with many such objects).

Those are anims, that directly deals with playability and should be priority No. 1!

The second is to make it more nice - compatibility with weapons.

A) - thousands of moves (waste of money and work)

B) - some kind of script that would recalculate the position of arms to leap hands on weapon, using some sort of preselected points on weapon model...

C) - only houndreds of moves and making basic categories of weapons with same or near positions for hands (and in addition use basic categories of movement for riffleman, machinegunner, sniper, (SF),... which could differ a bit at all

I think that B and C could have future...

[Silver Falcon 0]

Well I made myself leaning animations for OFP, but i dont have special keys for leaning and so on, so I had to sacrifice back-side movement for it. I guess some covering animations would be good and relatively easy to do having a right buttons.

I would be nice and perhaps not too difficult to make such a system:

When you touch specific (new) button, then side arrows won't make you move to side, but just lean, back arrow make you lower stance a bit (still staying or in kneel but lower to be covered in window/behind sandbags and forward arrow will make you higher the stance (to fire over higher objects)...

and so on.

If the AI could do it too it would be even better (great combination with suppresive fire to make enemy cover himself).

I liked the covering system in vietcong, so I tought bit about it and I thing this could give you quite same features while its much easier to implement in OFP engine.

BTW: I wrote something like that to CQC thread but then I realised this thread is better for it.