[gameprogrammer] Re: CCRPG[actions]


Jake Briggs <jacob_briggs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: What happens with things like 
walking, and incorporating these atomic actions? If the character is running, 
then you activate the "bend hip" action, so that the players leg is pointed 
straight out perpendicular to his direction of travel? Will the character fall 
over, or will the character stop dead in its tracks and perform said hip 
bending action?
I suppose you could make running a set of actions that the character already 
has, and you could combine them on the fly.... I think it would be really cool 
if you were running towards an enemy, and you did the "kick" action (which 
would be some combination of the atomic "bend" hip to 90 degrees action, "bend" 
knee to 0 degrees) and the enemys damage 
will be calculated from the momentum etc.... Oh man, and if you missed, the 
character would fall flat on their face! Or maybe do the splits :)

Even just moving one leg top certain positions would required moving the other 
leg to compensate, otherwise a stationary person would fall over....

these are some of the problems that i have thought about and i can partly 
answer them by discussing how actions are learnt.
 
 take the running kick....
 why would a character perform that move if he/she has never seen another 
person perform the move? it's not a normal move and it requires some practice 
to get it right anyway. if the person practices the move then they will ususlly 
start with a smaller jump/kick combination. I can just see all the martial 
artists out there screeming and saying "so how does my character learn how to 
do a jump kick?" well if we wanted to learn how to do something like that, we 
would usually first go and get trained!!!! an untrained person who tries to 
perform a martial arts move is more likely to hurt themselves rather than their 
opponent, don't you agree?
 the other option to training would be to build up your own moves to the point 
where you could combine two moves to form a move that is a jump kick. this 
method requires a lot more time oon the characters, and players, part, but 
would mean that the player now has a huge array of different moves to choose 
from because they have gone through and "trained themselves" up to that point.
 
 as i said, the editor would allow players to 'combine' different moves as 
well. i'll give a simple example.
 everyone knows how to swing their arm to punch someone, maybe not effectively 
but they can do it. everybody also knows how to twist their body from side to 
side. with the combine option, a player could click the two actions 'swing' and 
'twist', click the combine button and the computer could come up with a move 
that would create a harder swing (more momentum). the actions would start and 
finish at the same time and the computer could figure out where the fist is in 
relation to things, how fast the fist is going and therefore the damage that 
the punch would cause.
 considering the running jump kick, the kick action is actually performed 
towards the end of the jump action, so this would probably be considered a 
sequence. run-jump-kick the jump-kick section would be a combined move.
 in the editor, the character would have the option of when the actions start 
and finish in relation to the other action.
 so if the jump goes 1-2-3-4 in time then we could start the kick at perhaps 2 
and finish it at 3 (remeber that we would like an option to land to avoid those 
nasty splits) ;)
 how does that sound? of course when first starting a player may forget about 
the landing and you would have people falling flat on their face etc.
 training is a different story. teachers of fighting (or of any other skill for 
that matter) will have moves that they can teach the characters. remeber that 
training takes time, time is money, and that each character will have their own 
rate at wwhich they learn/develop skills/actions.
 
 ok now down to the atomic moves that were discussed. i'm about to make a 
comment that might provoke some controversy. Nowhere in human movement does a 
person move one part of the body in isolation to all other parts of the body. 
even moving a finger in aparent isolation requires us to use the balancing 
muscles and different combinations of muscles to 1. keep the other fingers at 
the same place and also 2. to kepp the wrist from moving to compensate for the 
movement.
 the idea is that different movements work in sync with each other to keep a 
balance. this is the bodies natural function and i hope i can incorporate that 
into the editor to make it more simple for the characters to create their own 
moves.
 ok, i'm goin to have to stop there, got some work to do. i'll try and continue 
tomorrow.


                
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