Chris Paulson

I haven't done it yet but I believe you do this:- Create body/physic shapes to match bones. ie. cylinders for arms legs etc sphere for head. Create joints between physic bodies to imitate joints of real body. At rag doll time match all joint positions to current animation and let them fall. As they fall match all joint rotation with rotations to the bones in the skeleton of the body.

Indeed - you can have no LW command issued in a thread while another LW is occurring in the main thread. You handle it this way:- mainLoop:- { gameLogic(with non LW commands) mutex(LW) { updateworld networkstuff renderworld } render none LW stuff flip } thread:- loop:- { non LW commands mutex(LW) { LW network commands - which cannot block or wait } sleep }

LW is not thread safe so you need mutex's around sections of LW commands.

Have you managed to get SDL and leadwerks to render to the same window? If so I'd like to see example code (sorry to hijack the thread). Threading with mutexs around LW commands would be best way to handle networking using LW commands. The boost stuff is good for threads, I've got example code if you need it, although not with network stuff.

I would stay away from neural nets, they are for academics not real world games. Check out: - http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/RVO2/ http://digestingduck.blogspot.com/2010/10/rvo-sample-pattern.html Also:- http://aigamedev.com/insider/discussion/motion-planning-thoughts/ and http://aigamedev.com/open/articles/simulating-crowd-flow-dynamics/ but you'll have to register to see these, but if you're doing a game with real game play you should already be registered...

It's still ongoing and it's getting closer. I've redone my navmesh code to get rid of opensteer and use the new RVO/steering in recast as it handles crowds better. My character can walk around and place it's feet on the terrain with 80% success. I just need to handle extreme slopes and stairs better. The blending of idle/walk/runs are now fairly smooth with minimal foot sliding. There's still plenty of work to be done and it all comes down to how much time I can find. I crashed my rally car this weekend so I need to spend time on repairing that

I base my animation speed on the distance travelled by the entity so as to prevent foot sliding. Gives a better effect than "guessing" frame frig factors.

Couple of vids you might like (both using recast): - My link and http://digestingduck.blogspot.com/2010/08/some-more-movement-progress.html

How are you doing this, by setting the matrix? I'd be interested in seeing the code for this.

SetEntityMatrix: - Perhaps, if you could maths to work it out but the matrix is in global space is it not? Also the Vec16 structure is undocumented.

There's a get but no set missing in the API. There should be: - SetQuat( TVec4, global/local )

For me I find one limiting factors is the amount of artwork available especially decent animated characters/models available with a workable amount of animations. I search the internet for decent stuff but I only ever find models that have about 10 animations which is about 90 short of what you really need.

Thanks... but.... where is the code?

Very useful - thanks.

This is an untested idea which is complicated but might work. 1) Place camera high (some height depending on grid resolution needed) in sky pointing at ground. Place camera in orthogonal view mode? 2) Render scene to texture/buffer 3) Process depth buffer - this giving you a height map grid (not sure how this is done - this is the tricky bit) 4) Set rain emitters to only fall distance from camera height to height in height map grid

A real game! Well done, nice to see real game play. Keep up the good work.

Nice. Tell us more... How is the transparent GUI done? How are the buildings layout stored? As a grid?

Forgot to point out, unless you're a programmer doing anything with inverse IK is going to be out of your reach, but you don't need it if your just using standard LE animation.

Hi, I'm still working away on this sort of stuff in the background. I've not posted anything about it because I've not made lots of progress until recently. I'm hoping if I succeed to put a video together on this in about a months time and I'll release all my code. There should be some nice blended animation and foot placement stuff in it. I've done the blend trees I just need to incorporate it into my overall game system then do the IK foot placement. I've got a blend system that will blend and play:- idle, walk/run, walk left/right, crouch walk/run, crouch left/right all at the same time depending on speed/angle/crouch factor.

The animation system/blend tree system in UDK is very advanced. It would take a lot of effort (which I'm currently trying to do) to replicate something similar in leadwerks. When I say a lot of effort I mean 1000's of lines of C++ code not just some noddy lua scripts!

Yes 1 is light I did try other settings but I found it difficult to get any kind on decent balance. I kind of thought 1 meant 1 kg so that's really light. I did try 800 (still really light) and up the other values but that didn't help either.

Hi, I thought I'd have a little play with doing a vehicle based on the monster truck lua stuff. The suspension appears to behave like a March hare on a pogo stick after dropping a few disco biscuits. Any idea what good addtire and mass settings are? I tried lots and lots of settings but couldn't improve the situation. Everyone else seems to use: - local springconstant=25.0 local springdamper=115.0 mass = 1.0 but this doesn't give the quality I'd expect.

Read my blog.... It's complicated to sort out and I haven't quite managed it yet. This problem is common to most games, search out youtube for examples of floating characters in AAA games.

The dividing into cycles is simple compared the usual stuff. Have a look a aigamedev web site etc. They use complicated maths such as point clouds and interpolation, my project is much simpler. Also read rune's thesis.

I would use a method similar to how terrain is done but instead of it being 2d make it 3d. ie make you level made up out of a 3d cube grid/mesh (like a Rubik cube) and take a piece away when it's mined, like removing a block from a Rubiks cube. Its then down to how you make the removed space appear, you could place different shaped rough stone/mud to fill the edges.