[SUGGESTION] Skeletal Animation

I know this isn't the first thread about implementing bones in DarkPlaces, but I'm reasonably sure it's the first time someone's posted about it on the Xonotic forums.

As most of you know, there is absolutely no animation blending in Xonotic, which ends up meaning that player models can't look up or down, or jump while running, or shoot while moving. I know skeletal animation/blended vertex animation is a difficult goal, but it's one of the things that really kept Nexuiz from looking professional. I'm sure the Warsow devs would be happy to explain the animation-blending code they used if someone asked, it can't be that hard.

Honestly, I think a strong animation and physics system are the two things this engine needs most to hold its own against the Source engine or Unreal. The graphics already easily surpass Source, but the lack of realism in movement often cancels that out. I've seen the physics demos on Youtube, and they certainly look promising. With skeletons implemented, bones could easily be tranlsated into phys-boxes and connected end-to-end for a basic ragdoll effect.

Here's the short version: Xonotic needs a skeletal animation system. A functional physics engine would be even better. The ultimate accomplishment would be the implementation of ragdolls.

+1

Ragdolls. wow.

I'm not much on the animating side but that would be really cool.

As most of you know, there is absolutely no animation blending in Xonotic, which ends up meaning that player models can't look up or down

Have you even seen anything of Xonotic? PLAYER MODELS CAN LOOK IN A DIRECTION!!!

As most of you know, there is absolutely no animation blending in Xonotic, which ends up meaning that player models can't look up or down

Have you even seen anything of Xonotic? PLAYER MODELS CAN LOOK IN A DIRECTION!!!

Their guns can look up and down. The body itself does not though, which makes it look stupid.

Here's the short version: Xonotic needs a skeletal animation system. A functional physics engine would be even better. The ultimate accomplishment would be the implementation of ragdolls.

Why dont you go ahead and make a skeletal animation system?

PS: The ODE Physics engine is already incuded.

ODE, that's what I was thinking of! Thanks, I saw a video of that and couldn't remember its name.

Please don't say "Well if you want one so bad, why don't you go make one?". If I had the technical skill to program an animation engine from scratch, I wouldn't be posting here asking for one, and I certainly wouldn't expect it to be implemented by a one-man-team.

The best way to go about this may be to seek outside help. Obviously, we can't pay someone to work on an open source project, but there may be an employee from the Warsow or Tremulous dev team with some spare time and knowledge who could work with the devs. Warsow models used to be just like Xonotic models back in v0.2, no animations while jumping and such.

A system for that already exists, but it currently is not used because it requires networking players through CSQC, and we currently have a testing branch for that and it has quite poor performance.

So for the sake of good FPS, it currently looks like we can't do that at this time. The issue is that QuakeC-implemented player movement prediction is much slower than engine-implemented one, but engine-implemented one cannot be used if QuakeC is supposed to modify model properties (e.g. the skeleton).

ODE eh, how 'bout Bullets? Hm, though this is a good idea but... would you like to see bodies flying away like a squid when being shot? Ahaha, that would be fun to see.

A system for that already exists, but it currently is not used because it requires networking players through CSQC, and we currently have a testing branch for that and it has quite poor performance.

So for the sake of good FPS, it currently looks like we can't do that at this time. The issue is that QuakeC-implemented player movement prediction is much slower than engine-implemented one, but engine-implemented one cannot be used if QuakeC is supposed to modify model properties (e.g. the skeleton).

Thanks for clearing that up... very interesting point in general regarding the dark-places engine.
Any particular reason why the skel. animation has to be done with QuakeC though? If that is the main problem, couldn't it be done in the main engine and just "exposed" to QuakeC?

How would I go about switching to the QuakeC movement engine? I'd like to see how much of a slowdown it causes, because I'm personally running at 230fps average, and could afford to trim a good deal of that off.

A system for that already exists, but it currently is not used because it requires networking players through CSQC, and we currently have a testing branch for that and it has quite poor performance.

So for the sake of good FPS, it currently looks like we can't do that at this time. The issue is that QuakeC-implemented player movement prediction is much slower than engine-implemented one, but engine-implemented one cannot be used if QuakeC is supposed to modify model properties (e.g. the skeleton).

I'm not very up to date with the current darkplaces code, and I'm aware it has always been very tricky for this stuff, but I think you do some game stuff client side now. In wsw I do all the player animations client side, just with the entity angles, entity speed and some checks made in the client itsef (has ground, water, etc). You could try that.

Cool to see someone from the Warsow dev-team here

hey jal, you should stop by the Irc channel (irc.quakenet.net, #xonotic) and talk to some of the devs there. It's not actuve all the time, so you may have to hang out there for a bit until a conversation starts.

They don't need my help for implementing this. What I said in that message is all the useful I could be to them.