The 3rd person platformer thread.

[Thareh]

Oh Hai! ^^

I'd like some ideas on how YOU would do certain things when it comes to a 3rd person platformer game. (Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, Conker just to mention a few platformers)

 

First of all, Would YOU use an LE controller?

Right now I'm thinkin' I'd rather create my own movement & collision stuff because an LE controller seems to be made for FPS games primarily.

I don't know how the LE controller is done though, can something similar be done using LE commands?

 

How would YOU create the sliding?

In every 3rd person platformer game, you should be able to slide on your bottom down hills and such very smoothly, Thus I'm thinking in the lines of replacing the "controller" with an invisible ball when the ground beneath the character is angled over a certain angle, and then just linepick the ground beneath the ball and place the charactermodel there.

And then letting the ball roll until it stops with a rather high friction, and then replace the ball with the "controller" again.

 

Now I want YOUR thoughts on how things can be done! (Not just Sliding and Controlling)

Throw in some crazy ideas please!

[Naughty Alien]

..I will for sure use LE controller..of course some additional coding around it is necessary to get out what you really want, but personally i think LE controller is exactly what you really need ... having said that, some additional math is necessary to create nice and smooth sliding, by controlling controller speed, but thats really, all you need and i see no complexity issues at all to make that working very very nice..bottom line is that, its easier to create additional code to control sliding of existing controller, by just controlling actually its speed, then entire controller system of your own..

[Mumbles]

Even for an FPS, I only use the controller because the UpVector has been taken out. Back in DBP and newton days (I feel old writing that) I had no issues attaching an UpVector to a vertically aligned capsule primitive (also missing, although I suppose you could just model one, serialise it and load it as a convex hull). Apparently they were taken out because they just didn't work - at all...

 

Personally, being self-sadistic I would have loved UpVectors to be in, and mess around for hours, maybe even days trying to make it work. Of course, with the Leadwerks controller still available for when I would have eventually admitted defeat.

 

 

As for sliding down a hill, would a box with low friction work? I can see a sphere accelerating to such speeds that it might feel unnatural.

[Josh]

The problem with using a physics body and forcing it upright is those forces have undesired effects. You start to understand them once you get into it. It's very very hard to get a controller to not slide down slopes, because the torque to right the body will have other effects. The solution I implemented treats the body as an upright shape with no capacity for rotation.