[SUGGESTION] Hoverboards etc

I always thought that regular walking characters look horribly bad when applied to a game like Xonotic where you spend most of the time traveling at an insane speed and bunny hopping all the time... besides the fact that the characters slide along the floor most of the time in Xonotic due to current technical limitations...
So why not make it a feature (always the best way to deal with bugs... since quake times ) and switch to characters on a hoverboard or hoverskates like done in Quake3:
http://quakegamers.ic.cz/wallpapery/imag...24x768.jpg
http://www.freakygaming.com/gallery/acti...or_die.jpg

That looked actually pretty nice and it might also give Xonotic (at least visually) a bit of a novelty to current generation gamers, who I feel are turned off by the "old school" feel of Xonotic.

Besides that, I guess it is probably relatively easy to animate, as you don't have to make a complex walk-cycle...hmm well maybe... as a nice curvy skate move will probably also take some time to do.

So what do you guys think about it? I might even make such models myself, but I would not like to take all the effort if everyone hates the outcome anyways and it isn't included in Xonotic (given it meets the other quality requirements).

I think that it's an interesting idea and it would make gameplay quite interesting, but I couldn't see myself using it much. Bunnyhopping is incredibly useful as it allows players to change direction with ease and makes players really agile (even more so when it's combined with the laser) and I don't think many people would use a hoverboard/hoverskates. Quake 3 isn't as fast as Xonotic remember, so I think this feature is kind of redundant.

That said, it would be cool if you could alternate between the hoverboard/walking in game and if there were specially designed maps for this feature (wide open arenas with lots of slopes would be best).

Ahh sorry, maybe I didn't make that clear... I didn't mean any actual gameplay changes, just as a visual representation of the current movement-style (which would stay completely unchanged).

Because even though we call it "bunny-hopping", technically it is something more like floating most of the time. And even all those movement option like strafe turning and so on feel more like you are steering a hoverboard or such than running... e.g. the current way is a flawed analogy of translating the actual gameplay style to a visual representation that makes sense.

So why not think of is as hoverboarding? e.g. as soon as you push down and hold space to start "bunny-hopping" your character runs a short distance and then jumps on the hoverboard (or to simplify the animation, speeds up with the hoverboard e.g. switching from a standing with two foot floating frontally to a 1 foot speeding sideways way of moving) and the times you hit the ground when "bunny-hopping" are actually represented by using one foot or such to touch the ground to speed up further.

Logically that is an "visual-metaphor" that makes much more sense and is actually surprisingly close to the movement style called "bunny-hopping" I think.
And it might even change the way the n00bs pick up the game-play more quickly as it makes "visual" sense and isn't just an old quake exploit made from a bug into a feature :p

Edit: an additional idea that comes from this kind of thinking: in the long run one could also think about a additional feature to "bunny-hopping" gameplay for example to press crouch after longer bunny hopping to use the build up speed to run down slopes etc as on a skateboard (those longboard downhillskaterboarder come into mind). This might be a nifty modification to the more than a decade old concept of bunny-hopping usefull for additional tickjumps and such on maps with usable slopes... But I am really not proposing anything like that right now.

The skating/sliding animation for Slash and Anarkii were only for the walk cicle - when they jumped, Slash made one of the most ridiculous jumping around, while Anarkii always did a full 360 spin. Both were visually unappealing.

well... obviously those quake3 examples are not exactly what I mean... I just posted those pictures to show that it isn't a completly new concept and that you can make some good looking FPS animations like that (but doing different jumping animations... which is easy enough... maybe like with a snowboard ).

I think some kind of boost animations (think Armored Core, or picture a wingly from Legend of Dragoon) or something that makes the players look like they're skating on something (energy skates anyone?) might be a good idea if we're looking to make the movements in the game appear more believable. Currently seeing somebody bunnyhop in this game looks pretty friggin' ridiculous on the visual side of things.

The skating/sliding animation for Slash and Anarkii were only for the walk cicle - when they jumped, Slash made one of the most ridiculous jumping around, while Anarkii always did a full 360 spin. Both were visually unappealing.

Hmm, wierd. I don't remember their animations being too ridiculous, then again I could be thinking about the Dreamcast version which had many improvements and content additions that the PC version never got.

* chooksta remembers some training map , which looked like a skate park , and chooky and -z- doing acid drops of some huge ramp. F..K YER!

make it a mod , maybe for cts race (some maps , keep rest as planned)

would be a fun and cool section to game i think , but possibly limited , no handplants lol!

still a 900 spin would be easy hehehe

kick , push , kick , coast !

anyway , if ya make the stuff and its all done , then submit it , maybe?

t


:^

it would probably be better to fix the animation system so that the movement system can be better represented visually (and fixes ARE in the works)

Seriously? Someone is working on representing 200 km/h bipedal movement?
Hoverboards seem not that bad, after all.

I think some sort of energy skates or something like that would be the best way to represent movement such as this. Just take a look at Shadow from Sonic Adventure 2 in this video and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about. NOTE: Shadow's shoes, they give off energy that allows him to skate at speeds similar to what Xonotic has you moving at, this energy effect only happens when he starts to move fast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF9838_cw0U

Hmm, yes that would probably be more easy to do as it would require just an additional animation that gets activated at a certain speed (or when starting to bunny hop or such)... but I don't think it would fit well to the general jumping type of move as found with bunny-hopping (and changing that will probably not go well with the long time players ).

Maybe a energized version of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-6WfPqB8...re=related
?
Not sure if that would work well either. In theory it is pretty close to real-life bunny-hopping though

Maybe a energized version of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-6WfPqB8...re=related
?
Not sure if that would work well either. In theory it is pretty close to real-life bunny-hopping though

I LOVE that idea. Jumping stilts will look appealing and won't alienate the long time players like hoverboards/hoverskates might. You might be able to do tricks in them too.

Hmm, yes that would probably be more easy to do as it would require just an additional animation that gets activated at a certain speed (or when starting to bunny hop or such)... but I don't think it would fit well to the general jumping type of move as found with bunny-hopping (and changing that will probably not go well with the long time players ).

Maybe a energized version of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-6WfPqB8...re=related
?
Not sure if that would work well either. In theory it is pretty close to real-life bunny-hopping though

Energized version of that would be a pretty cool idea as well, I bet you could actually bunnyhop using those in real life. A mix between the energy skates seen on Shadow from the Sonic games and an energy version of the powerstrider would probably work well in game, especially if they manage to come up with a way to have it so that the models jump off of just one foot (switching between them each jump) when the movement keys are pressed. Sounds a bit tricky to do though.

How would you deal with character height though.

Good question, though my idea mostly involved adding a skating effect, not actually making the character stand higher above the ground.

Not that I agree or disagree with any of this, but there are much more pressing things that need to be done for animation in the code before it's worth putting in the time to work on new actual animations. CSQC models certainly opens a lot of doors but as far as I know all coders that would be able to work on it are busy with other projects, are busy with real life stuff, or simply have no interest in this.

But anyway, if you are a coder interested in working on making animations look better, please contact the current animator (ie: me). Believe me there are many things that could be done to make animations look MUCH better even with the current ones. Most of it has to do with blending between animation cycles and things like that, I'm not even talking about messing around with bones yet, just things like remember frame number when going from one animation to another in the same run cycle (ie: from forwardright to straferight, it should start straferight where forwardright ended instead going back to 1st frame and get horrible blending between the 2).

@Nifrek
Are these somehow connceted to Xonotic? If not maybe one should ask them to contribute:
http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4348
http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4386

@Nifrek
Are these somehow connceted to Xonotic? If not maybe one should ask them to contribute:
http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4348
http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4386

I don't think those are connected to Xonotic, and the thing is we already have CSQC, but it's very new and probably different to what is discussed in the threads you posted. In any case, it is a too late for now, anything like this is not possible for next release (hint: 0.6 release is coming soon, it is too late to add any new "big" feature that could cause bugs, as they are already in the bug-hunting&fixing phase). But I've discussed with some devs and after 0.6 is released, I'm now quite sure there is going to be some work put into animation system and such. I'm pretty happy and motivated about that, so, it's all good

Ahh that sounds good... I am willing to donate some left over Steam games gift codes (Half-life 2 with EPs for example) I have as a bounty for the implementation of a proper animation blending system in Xonotic

Yo, any updates on this?

Poll showed a strong majority against this, so my motivation is low regarding this... in other words it's dead.

Edit: besides the technical limitations, which also make this unrealistic. Bounty for animation blending (and GPU animation offloading I guess) still holds. Maybe we should start a kickstarter for it?

That's a shame. But, if you look add up the maybe's and yes's, you get 9 votes! Hey?

I think that some people were put off by the hoverboard idea in particular. I believe that most players will agree that current bunny-hopping animations are pretty poor.

maybe we should start a kickstarter for it?

Yeah! Why not start by asking people (in a new poll) if they're happy with the current animations instead and then discuss the alternatives? Chances are the majority will vote against the current animations which would count as a kickstarter!

UT3 like hoverboards? I wouldn't mind, but IMO there are a bit more important things to do. But if you want to make it, why not? If it plays well, even though I'm not in an actual team, I'm sure it will get merged (esp. since there was a thread for feedback about vehicles, so hoverboard might make stuff interesting)

Money doesn't solve all problems. I don't think you'll convince our devs to work more on this with money. They are hobbyists. If Xonotic starts looking like a programming job, then it's not a hobby anymore, but rather an extension to their day at work.

On the other hand, if you want to bring in programmers from the outside with money, they won't be familiar with the engine's code. Making blending possible is not a simple one-shot task that requires no prior knowledge of how the engine works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hYTCMQHlSU

Like this? (Never played UT3 because I was waiting for the Linux version to buy ).

IMHO that is more like a vehicle from the handling point of view. I was rather thinking of taking the actual playermovement "bunny-hopping" metapher to the next level and make it actually look cool

Furthermore, kind of like other games have implemented the Parkur idea by jumping off walls and such, Xonotic could take some ideas from speed sports like skate-boarding or snow-bording and add those to the current gameplay.

But as I said... currently I am not planning to make anything like that, and since I am also not a coder I can not change the technical limitations which would make any new system probably look nearly as bad as the old one.