Advance_testing A207.2

[EPR89]

I rather like the look of that roll. I think it's just getting used to it being different like that.

I'm not sure about the bounce though. His feet just sort of tap the ground and start going back up suddenly, it's a little jarring in slow motion.

I agree. The dive roll feels much more dynamic, but the animation is still the one for a roll from a crouched position.
Personally, I am not too sure about a backwards dive roll. I don't think this can be done without essentially just slamming into the ground in real life.

[akazi]

I rather like the look of that roll. I think it's just getting used to it being different like that.

I'm not sure about the bounce though. His feet just sort of tap the ground and start going back up suddenly, it's a little jarring in slow motion.

I agree. The dive roll feels much more dynamic, but the animation is still the one for a roll from a crouched position.
Personally, I am not too sure about a backwards dive roll. I don't think this can be done without essentially just slamming into the ground in real life.

Yeah you can't really do a dive backwards somersault without hurting yourself.

[Ace8280]

The rag dolls in this version are definitely better, especially in slow motion. The new tail collisions are also awesome, makes them look a lot better during rag dolls. I think the new ear stuff is my favorite. The way they move is sweet, and the collisions add a lot. The one thing I'm unsure about it the larger sight range, doesn't seem too noticeable to me. But overall awesome new update.

[David]

That is more or less as intended -- before when characters rolled they went down much faster than gravity, which is not really possible. I might tweak it to more of a middle ground though.

[Korban3]

I'll maintain that I really like the new front roll. I'll have to look closer at the back roll, but maybe something that's less of a standard roll and something that's more of a distance builder from an enemy in a fight.

Kind of like in ye olde Mortal Kombat, where the player can rise after falling by rolling away from their opponent. It's not meant to move around the environment, but rather to build distance from an enemy and takes the backwards motion and vulnerability of the spine, neck and skull into account. I would imagine that the character would almost corkscrew, eliminating their neck and upper back from the roll.

mfw wishing there were good examples of what my brain is trying to try

[EPR89]

There are essentially two ways to roll backwards, similar to the ways you can do a front roll:

• Gymnastics roll: This roll is perfectly straight. It is relatively smooth and keeps our head out of the equation by pressing up with the hands. If you do this more explosively and straighten our hips you can actual press yourself into a handstand.
  
  Back roll tutorial starts at 2:50. Sorry that it's German video, but this one simply had the best angles and executions.
  The main point is that the backroll always starts from a squat position because you have to make sure to roll over your back in order to ultimately get your head away from the ground.
• Judo/Parkour style: This is a shoulder roll. It runs not along but across the back. This way you also take the spine out of the equation. The head is protected not by using an arm press, but by moving in a way that prevents it from contacting the ground.
  Here is a nice video showing how these rolls flow.
  

All back rolls begin by lowering your position. You essentially sit down into the roll. Even if you come from a more dynamic start, the first step is to lower yourself. Here's a video showing falling drills and rolls that shows this very clearly.

And here's one with a bit of a sparring drill.


Shoulder rolls are already the style used in Overgrowth, which is good. Gymnastics rolls are designed to be aesthetic. Judo rolls have developed in a self-defence context. I think when it comes to the back roll it could be a bit more noticeable that the the roll runs across the back and that the head is ideally not touching the ground, though.
Getting up from a backwards shoulder roll can be a bit awkward, but there is a way to incorporate the press up action of the gymnastics roll.


That's all I have.

[Endoperez]

Nice!

I tried looking for parkour backwards landing techniques, but didn't find anything.

[Korban3]

That judo video was kind of exactly what I had in mind.

[epicprivate]

Bugs?:

• When the player/npc go ragdoll the game drops a lot of frames.
  The breathing animations look like their only working on the rabbits.(maybe only the player)
  The New crouch animation works well for all models, except the wolf the left arm shrinks a little.
  Sometimes depending on how high the elevation of the slope is, your character will float above the ground when you roll up or down the slope.
  Dogs and Wolfs lower ankles touch the ground when facing down a slope.
  When slicing someones throat the sound of the models blood gushing out their neck seems to prioritize above all other sounds. (the ragdoll sound of someone colliding with the floor wont play when you slice someones neck)
  When you have weapon in your hand while sneak it looks like you go back into the old sneaking animation instead of the new one.

Pros:

• Enemies or npcs in general feel more alive, especially when you knock someone out, you can see them breathing if it wasn't a fatal strike.
  Stealth seems to be more fleshed out, but it seems to easy...
  The new animations are looking great, its just gonna take me awhile to adjust to the new sneaking animation, because I'm so use to the old one.
  Cats make great stalkers

Cons:

• The jump height of the other animals has been reduced for awhile now, but I can't help but feel it takes away from the gameplay when the other races can't jump very far. Don't get me wrong the Rabbits should jump the farthest and the highest, but at the same time the other animal races should be able to jump somewhat far. After all they are animals.
  Rats look to short, and Dogs look to big. In the case of character scale.(the player models are fine)

just my two cents, this is my first alpha report so feedback would be appreciated...

[Saedz]

just my two cents, this is my first alpha report so feedback would be appreciated...

*Soldier mode* Great job private! many of these lazy asses can't even see a difference between toilet paper and a toothbrush. Good to have someone who shows people how it is done!

[rodeje25]

just my two cents, this is my first alpha report so feedback would be appreciated...

Great job private!

I was thinking for a moment your were calling him an private alpha reporter

[Chaquator]

I was reading this paper, and I was wondering if you update intensive light-related things like that cube map stuff less often than each frame or tick for performance. Is that the case?

[SleepyMcGee]

A few issues I noticed that I didn't see mentioned above:

The hip swaying from the new IK is a little extreme when walking slowly up steep slopes. This is especially apparent with the dog and cat modals but looks strange with all.

Also the right arm is unnaturally tucked against the body in idle; this is accentuated when holding a knife.

Other then that I dig the new sneak animation, and the IK is pretty sweet apart form the above problem. I do think the arms are a little loosy goosy when walking and sneak walking, but that's just an opinion.

Thanks for the update!

[watergun127]

It seems to me that the new sneak animation would be better suited to cats, not everything. Maybe have the normal sneak anim back for rabbits etc?

[Endoperez]

A video of that would help look into it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwnQvj ... ZLcWc/view

Finally remembered I can get this working at work (when I'm not working). In hindsight, that sentence didn't work out so well...

Aaaany way, on slow-mo that is hard to read. I think what might be throwing people off is very, very minor, probably it's just that people were so used to the old roll and this new one looks different.

1) The body's center of gravity stays the same for quite long. The legs go up, the body bends down, but the hips don't go down until later. It's as if he jumped up in the beginning, as if to start a somersault, instead of rolling down. In the real world the person would anticipate the roll during the previous step, but you obviously can't do that in OG. Still, the downwards movement would have started earlier if that were possible, so I think the small delay in the beginning makes the character feel somewhat weightless.

Or I could be imagining things, obvs, since I've seen all of two instances of this roll in slow-mo!

2) The limbs move in a straight line from run to the rolling pose. Animation interpolation like this can cause problems like that.