Infantry animation & viewpoint relationship

[chris330 0]

Hi,

When I move or run when playing a soldier or civilian I notice that the motion feels very jerky and vague. I was wondering if this was due to the default animation for soldier units or if it is due to a poor frame rate.

I have a reasonable machine with 2Gig of RAM a 2GHz processor and a nice graphics card. I have completely decked all visual settings to the point where the game is virtually indistinguishable from Operation Flashpoint. I would hazard a guess then that it isn't the frame rate but I'd like to be backed up on that one if anyone knows better.

I also get this jerkiness at all times even when running through open fields with no other units visible.

Is it possible the jerkiness is caused by the player viewpoint being moved along by the default animations for ground troops? If this is the case can one create one's own animations to make this whole affair more smoother?

Thanks.

[4 IN 1 0]

Hi,

When I move or run when playing a soldier or civilian I notice that the motion feels very jerky and vague. I was wondering if this was due to the default animation for soldier units or if it is due to a poor frame rate.

I have a reasonable machine with 2Gig of RAM a 2GHz processor and a nice graphics card. I have completely decked all visual settings to the point where the game is virtually indistinguishable from Operation Flashpoint. I would hazard a guess then that it isn't the frame rate but I'd like to be backed up on that one if anyone knows better.

I also get this jerkiness at all times even when running through open fields with no other units visible.

Is it possible the jerkiness is caused by the player viewpoint being moved along by the default animations for ground troops? If this is the case can one create one's own animations to make this whole affair more smoother?

Thanks.

cant quite understand the question

do you mean the mouse crosshair being drag through the screen like on a an elastic band or the up and down motion created by viewpoint which was fixed on model and following every movement the animation made?

[chris330 0]

or the up and down motion created by viewpoint which was fixed on model and following every movement the animation made?

This bit, thanks.

[.kju 3240]

try PROPER_Anims_Fast_Forward_Transition

[chris330 0]

Hi Q, long time no see! Looks like an interesting MOD. Lots of info there I'm going to have to digest it later on. It doesn't look quite in depth enough though for what I'm after.

I really want to make a much smoother motion which is perhaps not so realistic but much more satisfying. More along the lines of what we saw in Deus Ex. Moving around in that game was beautiful, as were the animations.

I'm really planning to do something big but privately. I'm wondering to be honest if it's worth me just getting a copy of Torque and using my own engine. I don't have the cash right now though and an affinity to Bohemia's work means I'd like to see if this can be done in ArmA.

So can anyone answer the question directly? Does the jerky feel result from the fixed viewpoint being moved by the animations or is it a frame-rate issue?

[.kju 3240]

Bugs in anim configs.

[Johnnie_Walker 0]

I was looking for the right place to ask this, as I see it is kinda related to this issue I will ask it here. I hope im not off topic...

As we have seen in the developer's blog, there is an entry for future arma patch plans ( http://www.bistudio.com/develop....en.html ).

There is a part I find very interesting:

Quote[/b] ]Community Configuration Project

As part of this patch, we would like to formalize community oriented approach towards fixing and improving some of the aspects of the  game configuration files. This already happened in some of the previous patches but this time we would like to go further in this approach and allow the community to contribute with more fixes and tweaks on the configuration side of the game. For this, we plan to setup a dedicated category on the wiki page where community config gurus will be able to propose changes and fixes. We will then review it and what we feel is safe and good will be integrated directly into the patch. Generally, we don't want this to turn into some form of massive attempt to heavily modify the game but we hope to see a few simple config fixes contributed by the community in the final patch

As I haven't been able to find this new category in the wiki. I was wondering if config guru's have been asked about this already.

I ask this here as It wouldn't make much sense to start working on your own mod to fix anim bugs, if there is already someone working on it for this comunity project.

[chris330 0]

That's great! Thanks Q & johnnie. I have to ask though if I were to make my own anims from scratch would I be able to circumnavigate this problem?

It's something I want to do anyway, regardless of whether or not the default ones are fixed

[.kju 3240]

Have fun spending your next 12+ months on that chriss330

johnnie_walkerz I believe BI had full attention on GC.

Probably we see progress on that again soon.

[malick 0]

johnnie_walkerz I believe BI had full attention on GC.

Probably we see progress on that again soon.

No kidding ? That would be awesome

Regarding anims, I believe such a project might consume your time, including private life and gaming time. On the other hand, from an experience point of view, it could be very instructive.

In my opinion, doing such hard modding without a professional motion capture equipment isn't even worth the thought. Some people may say I'm wrong, but from my experience, I spent more time tweaking the damn game than actually playing it.

Good luck, anyway

Malick

[chris330 0]

Wow sounds hard!! Are all modern game animations performed by motion capturing equipment used on people?

[guerilla -MCY- 0]

those broken uberrealistic (wearing 100 pounds, even as tankdriver with a mp5) animations are a very big issue for a lota people. All of my buddies stoped playing arma because of it and as we already have seen the arma2 vid's with the same animations and bugs, it seems the problem is gonna find his way into arma2.

if you would repair this, you would be a genius, at least for the rather fast paced players which like a responsive animation but as mentioned, i think too, that only BIS could change this fact but i guess they like it as it is, as they never mentioned anything about this issue, even doh so much ppl compainted about it since the first day.

In my opinion you need to start from the scratch without headtracking, gunmovement, sometimes less is more. you can rent the http://www.motioncapture.cz/ good luck  

[Yoshama 0]

if you stop playing arma because of a 2 second part of the game, that dosn't even effect game play,    I've seen better reasons to stop playing a game.

not to say that i like the anims, i would like better. i never thought of it as a game quitting reason.

[guerilla -MCY- 0]

well if you're into ctf / dm and you're confronted each 2 seconds with it, you would see it in another perspective

[chris330 0]

Hi guys,

[CAVE]guerilla

I was thinking of doing it as a personal project. Personally I prefer less realistic animations if it means smoother gameplay. I loved the anims in Deus Ex. Sitting in a dark corner watching guards patrol with those idealistic but beautiful animations was great. I'm sure they didn't use motion capture stuff.

I find the current animations issue renders the game almost unplayable. The jerkiness and vagueness is horribly apparent when in scope mode too. It seems even just rotating the character along his z-axis (changing his heading) using the mouse produces almost unmanageable increments in heading which make accurate shooting very hard. This even happens when pointing straight at the ground so it isn't a frame rate issue.

I think Bohemia have made a great platform for modding especially with the gift of the setvector command. Reading through Ian Millington's Game Physics book (I'll have to buy another copy after I threw my old one away in bad temper during a domestic) shows that with the setvector command anything is possible. Towed vehicles, articulated lorries, user made flight sim engine etc.. are all possible.

The only thing I can see which would absolutely scupper all of this though are frame rate issues with the ArmA engine. They are terrible.

I realise it's a huge undertaking but I've been pottering in and out of researching stuff like this for a while and picking forum members brains over various things. I'm still in no financial position to act on any of these ideas really but I could get started with the anims side of things. I've also been researching AI programming and have been covering basic concepts like finite state machines and the like. I wonder if some of the Laplace transforms and control principles I learned during university and in my short-lived career as an electrical engineer could be used to create better AI steering of vehicles and/or rotation based reactions of ground troops to things like threats and noises. Anyway...

The credit crunch in the UK has returned me abruptly to valueing simple pleasures in life and being grateful for the chance to even just have access to a computer and the internet. I've realised that buying too much consumer goods and garbage simply detracts from true fulfilling long-term effort based goals in life. I've starting learning Kung-Fu also aswell as training to be a very long distance runner. Between computer game research & programming and my physical pursuits I have enough to keep me occupied for life in a very economical and financially and environmentally responsible manner. Short-term binge fixes in life just aren't worth the monetary and moral and self-confidence price tag.

Don't expect anything soon or anything particularly realistic but I will be chipping away behind the scenes. The efforts being in the direction of playability more than absolute realism