Player drivable striders... (request, not a release)

[Death.Trap]

Well, I'm kinda suprised I havn't seen any post about this since the full sdk was released. I'm pretty sure it would be mainly a coding job since the model already exist. Thus the reason I chose this forum. Anyways, I'm just wondering if anyone is working on something to this effect, or plans on it.

 

[hasan]

sounds like a cool idea ..

 

[Mercior]

Sounds like it would be a big challenge for the mappers, and I'm not sure how easy this would be to go about coding - a strider is not a "vehicle", it is not driven by wheels, so you would have to hack together a fake vehicle that just animated the striders legs when you move it around. I don't think it would work out to be the most practical idea

 

[matt-daly]

haven't looked through the sdk much.

but i do believe the striders used heavy AI coding to calculate where they put each of their legs everytime they made a step. depending on the surface and what was below them. that could cause a problem with coding them to be drivable because we (as the driver) wouldn't be able to see where we were standing or what on an it'd be damn hard to balance them an keep them upright. rather hard to code i imagine i'm sure some experienced coders could get something together for it at some point

 

[Demaratus]

No, it's not hard. They use reverse kinimatics, all that's necessary is deciding where the foot goes, and the rest is done automatically. Not much more complicated than regular player walking.

However, I've heard that Valve is going to release this in TF2. Don't know how correct that rumor is, though.

 

[FictiousWill]

Sounds like it would be a big challenge for the mappers, and I'm not sure how easy this would be to go about coding - a strider is not a "vehicle", it is not driven by wheels, so you would have to hack together a fake vehicle that just animated the striders legs when you move it around. I don't think it would work out to be the most practical idea

Inverse kinematics are used for all hl2 npcs

edit: Demaratus got there first

 

[Demaratus]

NB: Gabe says in an interview that they made a drivable strider for fun around the office. If what he says is true (why wouldn't it be) than this is more than doable, and has in fact already been done (but we don't have access to it yet!).

 

[Mercior]

While I could beleive IK is used to control certain animation sequences, I can't beleive that striders are treated with normal world physics as they move around. Such movement is extremely hard to code - infact there are several large coding projects out there that try to tackle this problem (usually for robotics) but none of them are completely working, and I doubt you could get the code running alongside Hl2 in realtime.

Having a quick look through the striders code I can't see anything to suggest they are capable of moving/balancing themselves.

 

[Barking_Mad]

nope i dont think balance comes into it, or me driving into one with the jeep flat out would have some effect

 

[Iced_Eagle]

*cough* Inverted Kinematics (IK) is in a skeleton so that in an animation, so that the foot or whatever correctly adheres to the surface

VALVe uses Kinematic Animated Bone Followers which means that the game first figures out where the foot will go, and then the knee and the rest of the leg will correctly adjust it self... It has set constraints so nothing funky will happen either.

Not sure on the CPU usage of that though... Not too much I would think.

 

[TyrantII]

This is a really really good idea for a mini-mod

imagine a DM or team DM with 10 striders running around a large destroyed city, or open area ala highway 17! Mapping would have to adhere to some different guidlines, but it wouldn't be hard at all, and in most cases maps would easily contain less detail, as inside rooms ect arn't needed. just some props to run over, buildings that can be blown up/gutted, and rubble piles to run over.

even with the two options for fire, it wouldn't be bad. Later updates could include resistance game versions, who try to take out a team of striders before their tickets reach zero.

hard part would be aiming and driving at the same time, but then again it might be possible to have a gunner/driver combo.

somebody should look into this, could be a really neat mod that might not take much to do.

 

[Death.Trap]

This is a really really good idea for a mini-mod

imagine a DM or team DM with 10 striders running around a large destroyed city, or open area ala highway 17! Mapping would have to adhere to some different guidlines, but it wouldn't be hard at all, and in most cases maps would easily contain less detail, as inside rooms ect arn't needed. just some props to run over, buildings that can be blown up/gutted, and rubble piles to run over.

even with the two options for fire, it wouldn't be bad. Later updates could include resistance game versions, who try to take out a team of striders before their tickets reach zero.

hard part would be aiming and driving at the same time, but then again it might be possible to have a gunner/driver combo.

somebody should look into this, could be a really neat mod that might not take much to do.

If I could do more than hello world with C++ I would try it myself. But yeah, this is what I had in mind. Would be awesome, yes? The driving part I think would be handled by the wsad keys, aming the gun would be done with the mouse. That's the best way to go about it I think.

 

[Impute]

dont forget its croutching

 

[SuperflyCol]

I've started work on a strider mod. you can have a look at a first beta here .

You can't actually drive the strider, as I it doesn't fit in with the design
of the mod, but you can tell it what to shoot with it's big cannon.

Bear in mind this is a really early iteration (only been working on it a few days), but give it a go and let me know what you think.

oh and if anyone has any ideas how to add an AI strider to a multiplayer game, I'd appreciate the help. cheers

 

[Kozak]

another one

Here is another one: http://www.thequartz.com/StriderMod released by techn0r and quarts on hl2coding.com.