Custom Hit-boxes

[Einlander]

As of the latest beta build is there any way to create custom hit-boxes? I would like to have FAR LESS hit-boxes than I have bones in my character. Some of the things I need custom hitboxes are for finer control over damage areas on a character. I need to make them named so I know what part I'm hitting.

[nick.ace]

Does the beta have a hitbox option for the player (I haven't really been following the updates recently)?

 

Anyway, one easy (but kind of time-consuming) way you can do this (I do this for my traffic system) is to do something like this:

--Set self.entity pick mode
self.entity:SetPickMode(0)

--For each bone that you want
box=Model:Box()
--scaling, positioning, rotation
box:SetParent(FindChild(bone1))

--Then, for picking each child
self.entity:SetPickMode(Entity.BoxPick)

 

Then, on each pick, you'll get the hitbox (or I guess the parent, so the bone). Now, you can do what you want with it.

 

Also, it looks like this might be an undocumented command:

Entity::SetPickBox()

 

It seems like you can use it to replace all the scaling and rotation stuff, but idk.

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/blog/1/entry-1363-say-goodbye-to-hitboxes/

[Einlander]

I understand the coding, but it's kind of tedious to set the hit-boxes of many characters. Maybe one day Josh can add a hitbox option similar to the physics where I can add hitbox_head and parent it in my 3d editor

[Josh]

I understand the coding, but it's kind of tedious to set the hit-boxes of many characters. Maybe one day Josh can add a hitbox option similar to the physics where I can add hitbox_head and parent it in my 3d editor

Wait, you want to manually create hitboxes yourself, but manually creating them yourself is too tedious???

[YouGroove]

I agree with Eilander :

We need lot less hitboxes than the character have bones.We don't need a hitbox per finger bone , also we don't need hit boxes per hair or face bones , or hitboxes on bones controlling some clothing parts.

Some tool in the model editor to choose HitBoxes and visualize the bones will be needed in the future , specially because majority of games uses characters.

Perhaps in LE4 some day

[Josh]

I agree with Eilander :

We need lot less hitboxes than the character have bones.

Why?

[YouGroove]

Because it is more computing need to detect hitboxes and because we just need few essential hitboxes.

I just want to be able to detect if firing hits a hand or some arm, i don't need hand fingers hitboxes.

And it keeps things visually and also debugging in the game more clear and more simple.

 

Why not when detecting bones on some imported model , let LE3 auto generate Hit Boxes for each bones and have some options like:

- delete all hit boxes

- delete selected hit box

- create a new Hitbox for a selected bone

- adjust hit box offset, scale and rotation

This way anyone would have full control on the character hitboxes creation.

[Josh]

Because it is more computing need to detect hitboxes and because we just need few essential hitboxes.

I just want to be able to detect if firing hits a hand or some arm, i don't need hand fingers hitboxes.

And it keeps things visually and also debugging in the game more clear and more simple.

 

Why not when detecting bones on some imported model , let LE3 auto generate Hit Boxes for each bones and have some options like:

- delete all hit boxes

- delete selected hit box

- create a new Hitbox for a selected bone

- adjust hit box offset, scale and rotation

This way anyone would have full control on the character hitboxes creation.

Why waste time and make things more complicated trying to optimize something that isn't a bottleneck? Is this really what we should be focusing on?

[Einlander]

Wait, you want to manually create hitboxes yourself, but manually creating them yourself is too tedious???

 

What I meant was generating a custom hitbox for each character in code is tedious, since you don't have immediate visual feedback of the edits.

 

 

Why?

 

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=blogentry&attach_id=6826

In this image for example, some of the boxes are simply too big. The head is far to large, the upper arms are to wide, and the same with the hands. I don't want someone playing my game and shooting around the character and still hit it.

 

As for wanting less hitboxes than bones, in that same image, you have a box for the wrist, I would have made that part of the forearm. The shoulder box would be part of the torso, the neck part of the head. Heaven forbid I should have eyes attached to bones, or the mouth attached to bones for animations (think of blenders advanced riggify tool). The boxes can get far to numerous quicky.

[Einlander]

Why waste time and make things more complicated trying to optimize something that isn't a bottleneck? Is this really what we should be focusing on?

 

Because sometimes one size doesn't fit all. And when it doesn't I should be able to fix it. Since we no longer can see an entities imported hierarchy things have become complicated if you want to do creative things to it.

[YouGroove]

The only problem i see is for medieval precise FPS melee combat and FPS high zooming weapons,

Seeing you should not hit the character and have in game the character hit by your weapon and players will quickly

see the problem and think the game has bad collisions

 

A big engine like Unreal 4 generates collision capsules per bones, but allow you to tweak and change them because they are never generated perfectly. Auto generation without ability to tweak is good only games that don't need precision like Dota or top down view games.

 

For my LE3 sci fi game i will place manually HitBoxes to have character collision good and simple , so i think we can already place HitBoxes manually and in a better way then using some auto generated ones.

LE3 should perhaps concentrate efforts in other areas after all.

[Josh]

A capsule shape would be good for eliminating those outlying corners. I like that fact ours is completely automated because it eliminates complexity and saves time. I don't want this to be something the end user even has to think about.

[YouGroove]

I agree , but let's keep people have the choice to not use auto generated hitboxes.

This way we can still manually add cube or capsule or our own custom model hitboxes and attach them to bones manually and adjust them as they are models we just added as child of a bone.

Why custom :

because of special cases : Ghost character monster where you need collision on torso and not on the floating clothing using bones also, or character parts that could not be hit like robot energy visual limbs using bones and many other custom uses etc ...

 

But i understand the need in LE3 to simplfy the task for all new comers to game making and keeping character import as much simple as possible, for them automated collision is a must have.

 

A capsule shape would be good for eliminating those outlying corners

It's always valuable and good to look how it is done elsewhere,

[Einlander]

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have the automated system, I think it's good. I can auto import a bunch of characters like zombies and have it done and not worry about it. But for important Game characters, or specific game types (ie, FPS,Sniper Elite, or fighting games) where a hitboxes are the bible that the game is built on, the programer, designer should be able to make them custom.

 

Some images showing models where there are less hitboxes then bones:

http://s302.photobucket.com/user/yaznee/media/tank1.jpg.html

[Einlander]

The pickbox commands are all undocumented. I have never used them. If I remember correctly there use to be an option in the model viewer to create the hitboxes but they were removed. Send a message to Josh, he may be able to tell you what commands to use in c++.

[mehran]

each character in code is tedious