procedural animation, 3D acoustics, and more

[resin]

So far delving through the blogs, and looking up the lagura 2 youtube movie, I found a lot of interesting things about 3D acoustics (nice article/demo) and procedural animations. I realize that I'm really uneducated on the subject. Are these new features? Are they coming in Overgrowth? Do other games already use these? It looks like it could be really cool.

as for the more, this a John Lee head tracking with nintendo wii remote video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

man would I like this integrated into my headphones and synced up to Davids acoustic program as well as the visual part in a game like Overgrowth!

[Ozymandias]

as for the more, this a John Lee head tracking with nintendo wii remote video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

man would I like this integrated into my headphones and synced up to Davids acoustic program as well as the visual part in a game like Overgrowth!

TrackIR is similar?

[resin]

yeah just like that, but with the acoustics integrated as well, so if you were standing next to a crackling fire or other noise source and turned your head from side to side the sound would pan as well. I would love to see something like that supported in a game like overgrowth.

[Ozymandias]

That's probably what happens anyways. I noticed that sort of thing in my games before I even got surround sound.

I don't think the implementation of those "reflective" sounds has anything to do with a motion tracker... it's relative to the view in the game world, which would be changed using the motion tracker...

[Madd the Sane]

David did do a sound paper here. He did use the Phoenix engine to show off some stuff.

[resin]

Yes, that is the one I was referring to. I've been looking around at some of the you-tube videos he has posted as well.
phoenix rigid body physics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alpqPtOG8Zk
skeletal animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOcuKSO-PBM
this procedural animation demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSHRgM3oPPc

as well as this one which I thought was pretty cool, though I don't think is his:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1P_B65XW4I

I'm sort of wondering how new and/or unique all these features are to the phoenix engine or where we might have seen similar things in other games. Is this how the crowds in assasins creed worked? never actually played it. After seeing that procedural spider I couldn't help but thinking about how cool a rat using its tail to balance itself proceduraly could be. The skeleton animation made me want to see the skeleton of an evolved rabbit-man. I know it might be extra work but I think it would be worth it.

[Ozymandias]

Ooooohhhh

Aaahhhhh

Procedural animation was one of the thing had had me jumping with glee when I first saw it many moons ago in the Wolfire Blog (it was a stick figure running around, but still, nice)

Nowadays a few games have it... Grand Theft Auto Eye Vee has Euphoria... Spore has... whatever it is they have... and I think that Star Wars game has some sort of procedural stuff (it might be Euphoria again).

EDIT: I just looked again, and yes it's Euphoria... The Phoenix engine is going to have its very own procedural animation though =P

[David]

Euphoria is very different from what we are doing. As far as I can tell, there are two things that Euphoria can do. First, it makes falling people flail randomly and latch onto things with their magnetic hands. Second, it allows characters to be pushed and flail randomly to maintain balance. However, it has no effect on animation in general, and appears to be basically an on/off switch.

The animation in Overgrowth is more about combining the techniques of classical hand animation with modern technology to maintain the responsive controls of Lugaru 1, while adding movement that is more fluid and physically believable.

[resin]

Interesting.
@ David, your explanation of the difference only makes me more confused.
Not being critical, just trying to figure out what to expect.

It would be pretty awesome to be able to rabbit/wall kick up a building collapsing down. All those overgrown different angled unstable slabs of concrete in the concept art look completely unstable and ready to start shifting and sliding with one well placed kick. How cool would it be to wipe out a whole mess of wolves with one perfectly placed kick that brings the whole place down. Whether its euphoria or the rigid body physics demo you have on youtube I think this type of thing is quite possible now.

[Ozymandias]

Now that you mention it, David, I completely mixed up the two concepts (Euphoria and what you're working on) and...

@ David, your explanation of the difference only makes me more confused.
Not being critical, just trying to figure out what to expect.

Basically what he's saying is that... Euphoria.. you have standard animation where they go around with their feet and such clipping through a staircase when they go up or down them (when they use the running forward animation, seen in many games). But, at certain times the AI or whatever tells it to kick in the Euphoria engine and actual procedural stuff takes place, I.E. someone dives out of the way of something (or does the magnetic hands thing, which was kinda odd to see in those tech demos). Then when it's done it goes back to being ragdoll/canned animation

Phoenix engine will be... more like Spore I suppose... in a sense. In the case where a running forward animation up a flight of steps would simply show the feet clipping through, the person actually climbs the flight of stairs, lifting their knees etc. In the demonstration video you can see as Turner runs up and down the hill his feet are planted on the ground, not above or below it.

As for the collapsing building, I don't know if that would have to do with the procedural animation unless you mean Turner had to duck his head under some hanging rubble as he's running through the collapsing structure...?

(correct me if I'm wrong, anywhere in this post.)

[resin]

okay, thanks ozymandias, checking a bunch of the links from the wiki helped give me a better feel for the difference as well. As for the collapsing building thing I was looking at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpBUiZfnEu4
and comparing it to this one from the phoenix engine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alpqPtOG8Zk
Then I was imagining a goal, say the top of a cliff, that you got to by climbing an unstable ruin that collapses if your not careful, at which point you need to start jumping like crazy just to survive.

[Zantalos]

Spore has just procedurally generated animations. I don't believe there are any physics involved with them so I don't think they would be like Overgrowth at all. Spore's animations are very simple and their focus is simply to be able to animate anything, not just bipeds. In the past tech demos for Spore, at one point they looked really physics heavy but now after playing with the creature creator for a bit I think they really dumbed it down to the point where it doesn't look fancy at all.

I don't really like euphoria because it screws up the game play too much. While in Lugaru 2 the animations don't compromise the movement at all, in Grand Theft Auto 4 Euphoria really messes with your character's movement. It's difficult to turn really fast, or to back up, it makes the controls feel a lot more stiff and unresponsive. It looks really cool when you jump out of a moving vehicle or when you crash your motorcycle and go tumbling across the ground though. I think David's animations can also simulate animated rag doll bodies really well from what I've heard, but more importantly the movement's flexibility and control is not compromised at all.

[resin]

Yeah, Lugaru was incredibly responsive even on my old clunker of a PC. It was probably the single thing I liked best about the game. They made speed and response the most important thing and did not sacrifice it for anything else.

[Glabbit]

Yeah, Lugaru was incredibly responsive even on my old clunker of a PC. It was probably the single thing I liked best about the game. They made speed and response the most important thing and did not sacrifice it for anything else.

All hail wolfire, the one and only developers' group (lol?) where they (he, maybe) really know how games should work:
With fun and gameplay, and eyecandy is just for the shallow.

[Count Roland]

let's not forget there will be eye candy. they're marketing to everyone and I hope it's successful.