Disembodied Arms, Part Deux

Welcome to another week of Torque 3D 1.2 goodness! Last week I showcased the rather large changes we have made to the player in Torque 3D 1.2. You can catch it here, but ultimately the goal was to put more power in the hands of artists to deliver more engaging experiences. This week I’ll dive further into the player work and discuss some of the smaller, yet still important, enhancements we’ve made.

1st Person/3rd Person animations

Last week I mentioned that the first person system has been constructed to allow weapon states to drive animations on the 3rd person character. That way we can have a player reload in 1st person and everyone else playing will see that character reload as well. However, we’ve made that system work both ways so 3rd person player states can drive animations in 1st person. This allows us to have 1st person swimming animations, prone etc. They really do work in concert with each other quite well.

Sprinting

What FPS would be complete without sprinting? We added the player movement state but decided to do things a little differently to get it to work with our new 1st person/3rd person animation system. We added 4 generic triggers to help the weapons handle how they transition from whatever state they are in into sprinting. We’re definitely interested to see how you guys in the community take advantage of this to handle your own custom triggered events.

Lock Out Player Poses

When adding the sprint state to things we felt that certain weapons should be prohibited from sprinting due to their size. Therefore we added the ability to lock out certain poses based on the type of weapon you are carrying. This prevents you from sprinting with the deployable turret but could also prevent you from going into any state you wanted based on the type of item you were carrying.

Weapon Gameplay Enhancements

Being that we were making a FPS tutorial it was really important that players were accurate with their firing. Turns out there were some issues with how we were handling adjusting where projectiles where created (the weapon muzzle) vs where you wanted them to be (center with the player eye). Turns out we were always shooting low and to the right (hold your jokes). I’m happy to say we know can fire accurately at the crosshairs in both 1st person and 3rd person should we so desire.

Another feature actually came up during our playtest sessions. It became pretty apparent that our players could not tell they were being hit or really from what direction. This lead to confused spinning in circles or dropping dead before the player knew they were in trouble. Therefore we added a damage indication system that flashes on screen showing the user that they were hit and from which direction.

Instead of sprinkling this with various screenshots I decided I wanted to end this with some brief footage of how we are using the new player features to our advantage to enhance the first person experience. These may not be completely reflective of the final state of the animations but I’m proud of what the team has been able to accomplish. Enjoy!

Torque 3D 1.2 Development Blogs:

• Introduction
• Chinatown
• Turrets, Proximity Mines and Teleporters oh my!
• Disembodied Arms
• Disembodied Arms, Part Deux
• Tutorial Breakdown - Coming Soon!