Going prone

[Hirmanator]

I have to say I have been on several mods (CloneWars, JKG) that wanted to implement a prone feature for snipers and such. Of course the obstacle is finding a coder who could do it. So if anyone has any interest I have animations for such a small project.

[eezstreet]

This is never going to happen, mostly because bounding boxes do not physically allow for it without rotation (which is impossible without immense reverse engineering -- and it's no small task either)

[Astral Serpent]

This is never going to happen, mostly because bounding boxes do not physically allow for it without rotation (which is impossible without immense reverse engineering -- and it's no small task either)

 

I wouldn't jump to saying something like that, I believe scooper has figured out a way to do it (via brushes(?)).

[eezstreet]

I wouldn't jump to saying something like that, I believe scooper has figured out a way to do it (via brushes(?)).

You also need to have a brushmodel of the player in the map, which is less than ideal in most circumstances

[Astral Serpent]

You also need to have a brushmodel of the player in the map, which is less than ideal in most circumstances

I respect you very much and you are a greater coder than I, but truly great people understand that there's no such things as limitations

I'M TOTALLY NOT COMING UP WITH RANDOM THINGS TO AVOID THE ARGUMENT

[eezstreet]

I respect you very much and you are a greater coder than I, but truly great people understand that there's no such things as limitations

I'M TOTALLY NOT COMING UP WITH RANDOM THINGS TO AVOID THE ARGUMENT

fack you and your uh...idk

[Scooper]

This is never going to happen, mostly because bounding boxes do not physically allow for it without rotation (which is impossible without immense reverse engineering -- and it's no small task either)

 

I already made this. Just a quick test to prove to Xycaleth that it was easier than the bmodel stuff. =p It should work for players too.

[eezstreet]

OH NO YOU DINT

[Scooper]

Well I didn't complete it, it was just to prove the concept. It's missing client side version to fix predictions and there was slight glitchyness on the corners because of some wrong settings. But both of those cases should be easy to fix. So it's possible to do it, I've done it partially. It's not been completed because I don't have a good use for it yet. (Except for makermod objects of course, but will take a bit of restructuring so I don't want to do it yet.)

 

tl;dr

OH YES I DID.

[eezstreet]

make prone and then i'll believe you

[Scooper]

I didn't know I had a reputation for being a liar. =/ Anyways, I guess I could give it a go if you must have the evidence.

 

Hopefully it works the same for player bounding box. There is a capsule collision method that I can't really remember where/how is used. If it's used for player and is very different from normal bounding boxes it could cause an issue for the prone feature. But what I've been telling you about is rotatable bounding boxes in general.

[eezstreet]

I'm just kidding, I believe that you can do prone. Just seeing if you would actually make it so I could take a look and see what method(s) you used

[Scooper]

Considering how easy it is to actually enable rotatable bounding boxes I have no issue with telling you the process I used. I'm convinced you'd be able to do it yourself if you researched it a little. But if this is all you wanted then instead of making the prone feature I'll tell you on IRC how it's done =p Less work.

[eezstreet]

I know only very little about brushmodels and how they work, let alone rotating them

[Scooper]

But we're talking about bounding boxes, not brush models.

[Hirmanator]

I love this nerd banter.

[eezstreet]

But you said that bounding boxes for players were brush models, did you not?

 

Offspring: nerd banter = MLP thread

[Scooper]

Yes, but I posted that post before I explained it on IRC.

 

In terms of bounding boxes, normally it would be correct to assume that they would not be rotatable. But JKA's collision system uses the brush model system to perform bounding box collisions as well. It does this by using a 6 sides brush model that reshapes to fit whatever bounding box configuration the colliding object has. And it purposely disables more expensive operations such as rotations for this type of collision model.

 

So eezstreets assumption in the beginning that this wouldn't be easily possible was the safest assumption, and would normally have been correct. Unless you have looked into the collision system, and discovered the above-mentioned method that it actually uses.

 

So for those interested in this topic the conclusion is that rotating bounding boxes in JKA is possible because they function as limited brush models. And it's possible to alter the engine code in a way to enable bounding boxes to perform these rotation checks.

[eezstreet]

You mentioned that rotation options would be expensive. How expensive we talking here? What about clientside prediction?

[Scooper]

I have no number for how expensive, but it's more expensive than skipping them, which is what I said. This collision system is from the q3 engine, so in the older days it was probably a bigger issue than it is now. But the bounding box is supposed to be used by objects that do not require any greater precision, so correct method chosen to keep things as cheap and effective as possible. But JKA obviously supports more sophisticated collisions, as shown by the brush model system. The issue is that we haven't really been given great ways of accessing better collision methods if we need them.

 

The engine patch that will allow for bounding boxes to rotate will need to be applied on both server and client for predictions to be correct. I have not attempted anything further than the server side, so the current results I have seen have had incorrect client predictions.

 

Might be that the initial limitations for JKA were too outdated as well. This goes for pretty much everything, triangle limit etc. Though I have no proof or facts to base this on, it's just speculation.

[eezstreet]

Right. If you ever get anything interesting (like prone...which I've been harped on since god knows how long to add) let me know.

[Futuza]

/necros the thread @@eezstreet and @@Scooper

 

So now that we have the source, can we do this?  Was this ever finished?

[Scooper]

We could do it before, now that the source is released it would be even easier. But someones still needs to actually do it. Which won't be me, sorry =p

[Circa]

This would be sick!    B)

[eezstreet]

right, well the animations are in JKG but honestly it feels like prone might break the flow of gameplay, honestly. There's been some disagreement as to how fast the pace of the game should be. I've always upheld the belief that the game should be fast-paced and require a lot of skill. There's arguments to make the game more realistic though.