Character Previs

Here's a little demo of a character running around a primitive environment. Movement is controlled via mouse by clicking in the direction you want to go.

www.noahbordner.com/marine.html

 

Nice work, character looks good! 8)

 

Really well done! He moves very smooth and fluid. I hope to see more of your upcoming game!

Cya

Frank

 

Awesome motion. Nice shiny metal on the boots!

 

Wonderful. Can't wait to see where this is headed.

 

Awesome. I like the character model, and the controls too. Keep it up!

 

nice tight! (any details on the gameplay?? ; )

 

Great animation. Only thing I can think to improve it is make sure he doesn't "walk against" the walls.

 

Hi,

I really like this and foundthe only weird thing happening when I was moving further away from the light ... the character starts to "flash" with the ( I'm guessing ) realtime shadow. otherwise the walk cycle is cool

I agree with this but only if he doesn't "stop dead" or have that kind of "bounce back" animation when he hits a wall ... that can be really annoying when theres a heap of fast action going on.

Keep up the good work,

JW.

 

Thanks guys. The inspiration for this project is the fond memories I have playing old co-op shootemups like smash TV or gauntlet. Imagine 4 networked players running around together, blasting aliens with a variety of weapons and that's what I'm shooting for. As progress happens I'll be sure to post what I can, but sadly I have to spend time animating for other people and not just monkeying around with my own projects.

 

I imagine... and it simply rocks! I ll be glad to be the first buying customer

Keep up the great work, man!

Cheers

Frank

 

Wow wow wow, even though it's only 2 animations and a few test shapes for an environment, I think this looks incredible. I love the control scheme already and the little character oozes personality. What did you use to model him btw?

 

He was built entirely in maya.

And actually, although its hard subtle, he's actually using 4 animation. There are short little transition anims between the idle and run to preserve the bounce in his stride that crossfading alone would not.

 

That's really cool

 

Very nice... can't wait to see where this goes!

 

I like it!
How many polys it has?

 

Keep it going, i want to see more

.ORG

 

Hmmm, that's odd... is it possible your results for that poly count are being multiplied due to multiple render calls (there are two lights in the scene, one of which is casting shadows)? Those numbers are like 4x what they are in maya.

It may also be related to the fact that while the character is a single chain of bones, he's actually made up of 3 seperate materials - his visor and gun are seperate. The reason for this was that (A) the visor needed to be a reflective material, and the armor has a specular map, and none of the built in shaders would have allowed me to map the reflection AND specular in a single material and (B) I plan to have multiple weapons that are interchangeable in his hand, so having them ALL be part of the same texture was unrealistic.

 

I betcha there's a shader expert around here somewhere that could manage a reflective map and a specular map combined, and I'm not sure why it would be difficult to have one texture have all the weapons. Just keep a whole bottom row open or something. Especially since the model will be relatively small on the screen most of the time, right?

Btw, I love it.

 

Yikes, awesome work. Really. The character has so much subtle personality, and his movement matches his look to a tee.

I love it. Thanks for sharing.

-Jeremy

 

Very nice work man, and checked out your site. Although old your reel still rocks Can't imagine how good you must be now.

take care,

~t

 

Update: I've added some aiming/shooting controls and visuals for those who are interested. Sadly, its a bit of a download this time because I'm using the right mouse button to ready your weapon and aim, which unfortunately is not an option in the web player. Here's a link to a universal binary standalone...

www.noahbordner.com/ShootingDemo.zip

Basically same as last time except you can click and hold RMB to ready your weapon and move his aim, and then click/hold LMB to fire. There's nothing to shoot just yet... but its still fun watching the spent shells bounce around I also added a dynamic look-at feature so your little dude follows your cursor with his head a bit. In multiplayer it really makes them look alive, as you see people turn their head before walking in a direction.

 

That is awesome! Nice work.

 

Nice - the character is really polished - very pro.

What kind of anims did you have to create in Maya - Walk start and walk stop?

Hope you can share a bit of the code for controlling the characters head movement - that is super cool

 

Cool, really cool.

Edit: I have now seen the upper body swivel and shooting. Awesome.

 

Great work! Probably some of the best (or probably the best) animations that I've seen on Unity. I'm also planing to do a game that has some resemblances to yours.

When I enter in fullscreen mode, the right button works for me, in fullscreen the right click dialog does not appear.

Regards,
Afonso

 

Really, really nice. I just love it.

If I may suggest one thing, then when you're aiming to the sides, it looks like the character is just swiveling around on his spine - which is quite unnatural.

You might want to look into also turning the legs and hips a bit (hard to explain - if you try to turn your upper body 90deg to the side while maintaining your foot position, you can see what I mean).

Depending on your gameplay (of which I know nothing), a few suggestions:

* If I'm looking in a certain direction with the mouse, maybe smoothly scrolling the screen in that direction (so the camera moves towards being centered on a point between the cursor and my character). That could make attacks from behind quite lethal, as the player won't see them coming, give extended fire direction in your forward dir. It might also look cooler in multiplayer as you will have people turning their heads more to see what's going on down some hallway.

* If the player is aiming / shooting, you might want to consider turning the character around - I can just see it being very annoying if I shoot straight ahead and my enemy runs to the side and outside my field-of-fire.

But why am I writing this? You obviously know what you're doing...

 

Hmm, I can't seem to get disable context menu to work. I'm not terribly familiar with editing the html file unity generates outside of adjusting height/width settings... I put this line...

<param name="disableContextMenu" value="true" />

In the two most likely looking places and neither one of them seemed to work.

 

Superb Can't wait to see more
Boxy

 

Well, doing that is only half the story. The line above defines the necessary parameter for the object tag which is only for Windows IE users. You must similarly add it to the embed tag (with slightly different syntax) for plug-in users (everyone but Windows IE). See the docs for more info:

Customizing the Unity Web Player's Behavior

The code example on that page of the docs shows exactly how to disable the context menu in specific. Let me know if you have any questions as I'm the author of that very page.

 

Awesome work again. It is very satisfying to open up with that gun.

Looking good!

-Jeremy

 

Just FYI - you cant shoot if you use any of the Apple mighty mice. Also on a MBP using the trackpad the controls are tough.

 

Yeah, I was thinking an alternative method of aiming should be included for those who don't have access to a normal mouse, such as holding the space bar or something.

As for a track pad, I'm afraid everything is hard to play with one of those .

 

As before the animation is wonderful and I see a lot of potential for this project, but is there any reason you are using these controls, or are they just quickies for this example?

I guess you are going for a "move or shoot" model instead of "move and shoot" so maybe using keys for movement doesn't make sense but I found the current controls a bit hard to "get" immediately, and switching movement/aiming to wasd/spacebar might help with that.

I could see this move or shoot model working really well with popping in and out of cover like in the arcade time crisis games.

 

I am conciously choosing to have shooting and moving be mutually exclusive. While you won't necessarily be sticking yourself to cover quite like in gears of war, its the same idea of deliberately controlling the look and pace of the game by restricting the player in some way. I think games like gears of war and resident evil, while offputting to some due to their less than realistic movement, provide a different experience because they limit you. Resident evil is much more cinematic and scary because you can't see behind you and you can't run around like rambo blasting and moving at the same time.

I think it will all be a little clearer when I've got some enemies in there trying to harass you, as I'm planning to have a strong interplay with the way the player moves and how the AI behaves. I want the game to be a balancing act between attacking and positioning. And I also want to foster the co-operative feel of watching each others back as you're ambushed by baddies - this is being primarily designed as a 2-4 player co-op experience, and if each of you could run in any direction while simultaneously filling the screen with ammo it would be very hard to make the game challenging.

That said, it might end up just feeling stiff and awkward! It's too early to tell, but I'm gonna stick with my gut instinct and see where it takes me for now. I'm aware of the risks though, and you're not the first to question the control scheme.

 

For what it's worth I like the control scheme as-is. ;-)

In a funny way, it feels more "realistic" and final to plant yourself down before opening up with a gun that big. You would have to plan a lot more tactically when it takes a second to prepare to fire.

Just my humble opinion.

-Jeremy

 

Yeah I dig it as intended too. It feels more fun IMO and offers better pacing than just constant firing (good pacing is something many games lack)

 

I'm not telling you to make it like kill monty where you "run around like rambo blasting and moving at the same time" (though I enjoy games like that), and I understand how and why the move or shoot model should work well (especially now that I hear you are focusing on co-op). I just thought it was a bit too much action for one hand and might feel more familiar from the start if the moving and stoping to fire were on the left hand. (are you planning on doing coop on the same screen/keyboard, and making one person move with keys?)

Once again great work.

 

Really love the way this is going.

I like the stop and go idea, but the animation for when he plants his feet is sort of over the top and feels wrong because... why do you raise your gun way up in the air before aiming. He should just bring it up to his shoulder while he plants himself.

Also, I'm not sure about the control scheme.

I don't think making the left button move AND shoot (only after pressing right) feels a bit clunky rather than fun. Why not use right mouse to move and left to fire. The first left click plants you and then subsequent clicks fire. The right-mouse button unplants you and moves you.

Can't wait to see more.

 

Aaron, that's exactly what I love about it haha! It's exaggerated animation, yes, but such that it really 'speaks without saying anything'. Personality without hitting you over the head with it is what makes good animation IMO.

I say let's see what comes of it, as obviously Mr. Animator has skills in this dept.

 

I'm an animator myself, btw.

I'm all for exaggeration and the rest of the animation on this character is sublime. As suggested, with animation exaggeration often makes it feel MORE natural. (Love that story where Walt Disney kept telling an animator to make his sequence more "realistic" and he meant to add more exaggerated squash and stretch and anticipation.)

Exaggeration does not mean unnatural, however, and that's how the movement feels to me.

The stopping to plant himself and the gun animation are distracting not just because it is over the top but because no one would do that, ever, in any situation. It feels "wrong." Normally you swing the butt of the gun into position while trying to keep the barrel level to the ground and hopefully aimed towards the target.

 

Hmm, clearly you see the nuance inherit to animation (i didn't mean to suggest otherwise, if i did). Though I still disagree.

I don't think it's even possible to be "wrong" as you suggest, because the deliberate little movement is what "this" guy does... in some other universe where realism is higher priority it might be odd, but here in this one, the guy really gets into it and does his little thing, starts shooting and is like YAAAHHHH! and the shells go flying....

It's as much a defining theme of a game as any font or color choice or whatever...

Is it Halo real? No. Does it want to be? No, I dont' think so, and for that I think it totally works... plus I find it just fun to do and see, which is what matters in the end no?

To avoid the "real != fun" discussion, clearly it reflects Mr. Animator's feeling. I couldn't say what he has exists because he couldn't do something different or more real, I see it as a deliberate choice for style and I commend the art direction.

So strongly I believe in this, my company ByDesign Games is founded on such priorities. As raised in another recent discussion, give me an interesting style over realism any day!

Else, if this rebuttal doesn't work it for ya, let's agree to disagree!

 

It's just a critique and it's somewhat a subjective matter, so no more discussion needed. I don't think we even disagree in principal but detail only.

 

@Yoggy: Concerning the control scheme - I went ahead and added the option to aim by holding the space bar for those who find the 100% mouse control to be awkward (and for those with single button mice or mighty mice). And the way I intend to do co-op play is multiple players connected via network. I already have the functionality you've seen in these isolated demos working in a 4-player networked environment.

Regarding the over the top aiming animation... I'll tone it down if I hear enough complaints. So far I've found more people who like it than don't, but if its distracting to enough people then it's worth revisiting.

To most people, a walk cycle might look 'determined', but to one viewer out of 10 it looks 'constipated.' That's a walk cycle worth revisiting .

 

Let me just join the chorus -- gorgeous animation, and I love multiplayer coop games (a sadly neglected category).

I also love games that encourage use of *cover*, let characters press against walls, and reward stealth ;-)

 

I'm still loving this and can't wait to meet 7 other of my fellow Unity community members and start shooting.

This is going to be great.

Can you all imagine this with like 4 "landscapes/terrains" to play in?

Wow.

Anytime you want me to add this to WMG and do a little news piece, let me know.

 

This is great. Despite the character looking Warhammer40k-esque it reminds me of the classic game Syndicate. Probably because of the view and controls. I could see you creating something really cool with this. Keep it up!