Questions about creating gigantic creatures/bosses
by Kyrah Abattoir · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 12/21/2011 (10:09 am) · 5 replies
Sooo we all played turok and it's huge dinosaurs, painkiller and it's huge bosses and games like shadow of the colossus.
So my question is, what woulkd be the best general approach for creating a really large actor in torque and get it to interact properly with the environment.
I saw some pretty crappy implementation of dinosaurs before, where they where simply giant player like actors:
-turn on a dime with no animations.
-huge collision box.
-Rigid look.
-very difficult to maneuver in general.
For the turning on a dime issue, it's fairly easy to solve with good rotation animations.
The collision box is somewhat problematic because if the actor's collision box only factor the legs, then the body will start poking into the world geometry.
The stiffness is a problem too, on a creature like a dinosaur we want to see it turn it's neck before it's body and be able to attack without moving it's entire body.
So anyone has good examples on how to tackle this kind of problems in torque?
PS: the AI is an entirely separate issue, that's beyond the scope of this thread.
So my question is, what woulkd be the best general approach for creating a really large actor in torque and get it to interact properly with the environment.
I saw some pretty crappy implementation of dinosaurs before, where they where simply giant player like actors:
-turn on a dime with no animations.
-huge collision box.
-Rigid look.
-very difficult to maneuver in general.
For the turning on a dime issue, it's fairly easy to solve with good rotation animations.
The collision box is somewhat problematic because if the actor's collision box only factor the legs, then the body will start poking into the world geometry.
The stiffness is a problem too, on a creature like a dinosaur we want to see it turn it's neck before it's body and be able to attack without moving it's entire body.
So anyone has good examples on how to tackle this kind of problems in torque?
PS: the AI is an entirely separate issue, that's beyond the scope of this thread.
About the author
3D artist, programmer, game designer, jack of all trades, master of none.
#2
I don't think it's solely an art/design issue, lets take the example of a game designer willing to create painkiller-like bosses or large dinosaurs, like in Turok, actors in torque do collisions with the environment using a simple bounding box system (unless I missed something), which is fine for human sized creatures, but when you have a hulking monster with legs as big as phone cabins, the bounding box starts to get really large, making the actor difficult to move around.
So what sort of tricks could be used to make a giant actor, and allow players to walk between it's legs to evade from it?
Basically how to get some kind of "finer" physics going on?
12/22/2011 (6:08 am)
Thank you for replying :)I don't think it's solely an art/design issue, lets take the example of a game designer willing to create painkiller-like bosses or large dinosaurs, like in Turok, actors in torque do collisions with the environment using a simple bounding box system (unless I missed something), which is fine for human sized creatures, but when you have a hulking monster with legs as big as phone cabins, the bounding box starts to get really large, making the actor difficult to move around.
So what sort of tricks could be used to make a giant actor, and allow players to walk between it's legs to evade from it?
Basically how to get some kind of "finer" physics going on?
#3
One thing I had tried was attached a shape to a mount point. The shape had collision on it. However the shape collided with other shapes mounted on the same object and the structure would not move. I think for something like that to work it would have to be aware of its own objects and exclude those objects from the collision sets of possible items to collide with.
Maybe there have been better resources since then as that was 3 years ago.
12/25/2011 (4:50 am)
This is something I looked into a while back for giant robots (mechs). I was using TGE at the time and it would require multiple collision boxes. There may be some resources on this already. One thing I had tried was attached a shape to a mount point. The shape had collision on it. However the shape collided with other shapes mounted on the same object and the structure would not move. I think for something like that to work it would have to be aware of its own objects and exclude those objects from the collision sets of possible items to collide with.
Maybe there have been better resources since then as that was 3 years ago.
#4
12/26/2011 (2:21 am)
Frank - I managed to solve the colliding-with-mounts issue in TGE. Not sure if the same problem still exists in T3D. The problem is, mounted objects won't collide with external objects, so you can't use them as extended collision boxes. StaticShape objects don't check for collisions, and Items don't support mounting out of the box (it's a reasonably simple modification though). It might be possible to create some new shape class (or implement in an existing one like Item) that will check for collisions and pass them on to its mount object via applyImpulse or similar.
#5
Does it also update the collision mesh after transformation? If it does
then it could be a quick hack for complex shapes like walking robots or large creatures as Kyrah is looking for.
My other approach would be to learn how the physics system works and create a jointed system. That would be ideal because if you designed it right you could use constraints to do relationships between joints. Then you could knock down the creatures or cause them to flinch.
12/26/2011 (4:20 am)
@dB,Does it also update the collision mesh after transformation? If it does
then it could be a quick hack for complex shapes like walking robots or large creatures as Kyrah is looking for.
My other approach would be to learn how the physics system works and create a jointed system. That would be ideal because if you designed it right you could use constraints to do relationships between joints. Then you could knock down the creatures or cause them to flinch.
Torque 3D Owner Bloodknight
Bloodknight Studios
Of course games are part of the fantasy subset so you can take certain liberties, create non realistic critters and just give them 'plausible' animations. I do agree though that some games tinker with this too much and end up a little to far from realistic into the unplausible. That said, reality would suck, T-Rex vs Man for example would generally be bad for the T-Rex.
As for other parts of the question, environment; much of it is either flexible or fragile, particularly when pushed by a few tons of muscle mass, it would depend entirely on the environment, again movie makers take liberties with such things, like dinosaurs running in straight lines, whereas in all likelyhood they would run swerving paths. Ever seen any footage of an elephant charge? they are seen to sidestep even relatively small bushes rather than run through the middle of them.