Flying

#1 Chris,

This is not trivial. There are several other threads, and a couple of resources devoted to this topic. Try a search.

#2 I'm sorry, but I've been searching for hours, the closest I've gotten is a swimming resource, but it didn't do what I wanted exactly. Please give me a link if you know of one

#3 Did you see this one yet?

www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=7079

#4 "Now all i need to do is modify the simple flight to not move up or down when you look those directions , but to only move in whatever direction you are looking when you press forward."

Thats the part I don't know how to fix

#5 I was going to use that code as i needed a flying player. But he rides a variety of objects, flying carpets, dragons other creatures. So adding code to make my player fly would not work for my case.

What i am doing is just mounting him on flying vechicles, modifying the code so he can still animate and trigger weapons and also modifying some vechicle code so it can act like a flying carpet. press left it goes left... etc

#6 My players will be able to fly without vehicles, but also there will be vehicles and I'm trying to make it so that the player flight isn't dependant on using vehicles...

I'll continue to try, I'm pretty close, but its very very difficult to get it so that it doesn't have a 2d vector... I'm not even sure where I need to look in order to make it 3d...

#7 You need Air Control, correct?

#8 Thank you for all your help, I think I finally solved it... It was a complete oversight on my part, and it seems so simple now that I look at it.

zRot.getColumn(0,&moveVec);
      moveVec *= move->x;
...
      // Flying
      zRot.getColumn(2,&tv);
     moveVec += tv * move->z;
     // End Flying

Turns out, both of these isn't what I want.

The first one is the thing that tells the engine the player wants to move forward, right? Well, zRot only tells the X and Y planes, but not the Z. (if you think about it, since the Z axis points up and down, then it wouldn't be in its range to see up and down, just left and right) The second one just says that when you press move up or move down, then it moves you up, or down. (I binded them to my page up and down keys, and it works that way)

The solution is to instead get the head.x rotation, and use THAT for moving. The problem, however, is the X axis only returns up and down movement, and not left and right... so when you move, you do get up and down movement, but in the actual game, you only move on an axis.

The solution for THAT is what I'm figuring out now. I'll post as soon as I figure it out.

Hopefully this topic is filling in the holes of player flying.

#9 Finally, after hours of trying to figure it out. I hope this helps anyone looking for flying players!!

delta.head = mHead;
      delta.headVec -= mHead;
   }
[b]   MatrixF zRot,xRot,superRot;[/b]
   zRot.set(EulerF(0, 0, mRot.z));
[b]   xRot.set(EulerF(mHead.x, 0, 0));
   superRot.mul(zRot, xRot);[/b]

   // Desired move direction & speed
   VectorF moveVec;
   F32 moveSpeed;
   if (mState == MoveState && mDamageState == Enabled)
   {
      zRot.getColumn(0,&moveVec);
	  moveVec *= move->x;
      VectorF tv;
[b]      superRot.getColumn(1,&tv);
      moveVec += tv * move->y;

	  // Flying -- Zshazz
	  zRot.getColumn(2,&tv);
	  moveVec += tv * move->z;
	  // End Flying[/b]

There you go!

Goodluck to everyone.

#10 Im glad you got it to work, ill refer people to this thread if i see this mentioned again.

#11 Good job. Thanks for posting your solution.

#12 You're welcome, I just hope that I help at least one other person with their coding ^_^

#13 Chris - I've been working on the exact same thing when I finally came upon this forum by accident! I implemented your new flying code, but my avatar still runs around along the terrain. Am I missing something that is not mentioned here?

#14 I'm sorry, there is a little bit that I didn't quite add here... Sometime soon I'm gonna make a resource for it, but it'll take far too long for it to appear. I'll work for about 30 minutes to make a little mini resource and post it right here to help you.

#15 First, Open Player.h and add this:

class Player: public ShapeBase
{
...
   S32 mMountPending;               ///< mMountPending suppresses tickDelay countdown so players will sit until
                                    ///< their mount, or another animation, comes through (or 13 seconds elapses).

[B]   // Flying -- Zshazz
   bool mIsFlying;
   // End Flying[/B]

   /// Main player state
   enum ActionState {
      NullState,
...

Now, open Player.cc

Player::Player()

Player::Player()
{
...
   dMemset( mSplashEmitter, 0, sizeof( mSplashEmitter ) );

[B]   // Flying -- Zshazz

   mIsFlying = true;

   // End Flying[/B]

   mImpactSound = 0;
...
}

Player::updateMove()

void Player::updateMove(const Move* move)
{
   delta.move = *move;
   
...
      delta.headVec -= mHead;
   }

[B]   // Flying -- Zshazz
   MatrixF zRot,xRot,superRot;
   zRot.set(EulerF(0, 0, mRot.z));
   xRot.set(EulerF(mHead.x, 0, 0));
   if (mIsFlying)
	   superRot.mul(zRot, xRot);
   else
	   superRot = zRot;

   // End Flying[/B]

   // Desired move direction & speed
   VectorF moveVec;
   F32 moveSpeed;
   if (mState == MoveState && mDamageState == Enabled)
   {
      zRot.getColumn(0,&moveVec);
      moveVec *= move->x;
      VectorF tv;
[B]      superRot.getColumn(1,&tv); // One Line for flight[/B]
      moveVec += tv * move->y;

         if (move->y > 0)
         {
...
   // Acceleration due to gravity

[B]   // Flying -- Zshazz
   VectorF acc(0,0,mGravity * mGravityMod * TickSec);
   if (mIsFlying)
      acc.set(0,0,0);
   // End Flying[/B]

   // Determine ground contact normal. Only look for contacts if
   // we can move.
...
      acc += runAcc;

      // If we are running on the ground, then we're not jumping
      if (mDataBlock->isJumpAction(mActionAnimation.action))
         mActionAnimation.action = PlayerData::NullAnimation;
   }
   else
      mContactTimer++;

[B]   // Flying -- Zshazz

   if (mIsFlying)
   {
      F32 impulse = mDatablock->runForce / mMass; // The impulse that is going to be applied

	  // Get the move vector
      VectorF pv = moveVec;
      F32 pvl = pv.len();

      if (pvl)
         pv *= moveSpeed / pvl;

	  // Initialize flyAcc
      VectorF flyAcc = pv - ( mVelocity + acc);

	  //Apply the impulse to vector
	  flyAcc *= impulse;
//      flyAcc.x *= impulse;
//      flyAcc.y *= impulse;
//      flyAcc.z *= impulse;

	  // Get ready to limit the acceleration
      F32 flySpeed = flyAcc.len();
      F32 maxAcc = impulse * TickSec;

	  // Limit the acceleration
      if (flySpeed > maxAcc)
         flyAcc *= maxAcc / flySpeed;

	  // Apply the flying acceleration to the total acceleration.
      acc += flyAcc;
   }

   // End Flying [/B]


   if (move->trigger[2] && canJump()) 
   {
...
}

Edit: Removed variRunforce, should work now!

#16 Player::packUpdate()

U32 Player::packUpdate(NetConnection *con, U32 mask, BitStream *stream)
{
   U32 retMask = Parent::packUpdate(con, mask, stream);

   if (stream->writeFlag((mask & ImpactMask) && !(mask & InitialUpdateMask)))
      stream->writeInt(mImpactSound, PlayerData::ImpactBits);

[B]   // Flying -- Zshazz
   stream->writeFlag(mIsFlying);
   // End of Flying[/B]

   if (stream->writeFlag(mask & ActionMask &&
         mActionAnimation.action != PlayerData::NullAnimation &&
...
}

Player::unpackUpdate()

void Player::unpackUpdate(NetConnection *con, BitStream *stream)
{
   Parent::unpackUpdate(con,stream);
   
   if (stream->readFlag()) 
      mImpactSound = stream->readInt(PlayerData::ImpactBits);

[B]   // Flying -- Zshazz
   mIsFlying = stream->readFlag();
   // End Flying[/B]

   // Server specified action animation
...

}

You can implement ways in order to turn on and off flying by modifying the mIsFlying variable... if its false, then the player will stop flying, if its true, he stays flying. Later when I make the bigger resource, I'll have more complete information (like, how to make it so the player tilts back and forward) but for now, this will get your player flying.

I hope this helps you out!!! I worked hard on figuring out how to make it works, and I just hope it'll make your life easier ^_^

#17 Chris - thanks for replying to my post! Indeed, this will be an enormous help to me, but I can't seem to get it to work. My avatar won't move - he's stuck! Also, could you tell me what variRunForce is? I've tried various arbitrary constants, but nothing seems to work so I'm guessing there something more to it that I'm missing...

#18 Oooooops! Sorry, replace variRunForce with mDataBlock->runForce


Sorry about that, I implemented another bit of other coding into it and forgot that part... tell me if theres any more weird stuff.

#19 Hooray! It works beautifully - thank you so much for your help Chris! This will be a great resource!

#20 Thank you very much! I was able to get my player flying in about 10 minutes following your examples!

I still don't understand what packUpdate/UnPackUpdate do. I'm guessing this is a way you can turn on/off flying in game, but I'm still pretty new to this, so I'm not sure how they hook in.

Again thanks a mil.

SpaceCowboy