This thread was created to solve how do the LimbPaths and AtomGroups on actors and possibly crabs work.

Now what I know:

LimbPaths - The define how do the legs move for each action like Walking, Crouching, Standing, Jumping and a few more, they are defined in the AHuman part of the actor's code.


AtomGroup - A chain of offsets that define the feet's and the hand's collision points with the ground.


IdleOffset - Found on the arm code of any actor after the part where we define the hand. What does this originate from and where is the most logical place to put it? And yeah, what is it exactly for again?


HolsterOffset - No idea on this one, but I think it has something to do with the arms position somewhere when its not firing or aiming the gun. Please explain briefly where this originates from and what exactly does it do?


Contracted- and ExtendedOffsets - They are found on the leg and are probably associated with the new crouching thing. Tell us how do they act and where do they originate from?

Ok thats awesome, but where do they originate and how do they work anyways?
I mean for now if you go look at it you will not understand it at first glance, atleast I didnt.

Now if someone smart around here could come here and give us a nice, brief tutorial on either or boths of those 2 things, he would do a good favor for the whole community and help every modder out there to make all the awesome stuff such as huge characters and alike.

-Alteisen

Holster effect is like where the gun appears, when you switch a gun, and where your support arm goes to when reloading. ( slight realism )

how would you code a walk path/any path?, at the minute I don't understand them.

I don't see how one X and Y value would move the leg, because the sprite already defines how it moves, and I want to make my next mod professional.

Well, look at the WalkLimbPath. It begins with a StartOffset. This determines where the foot goes from its initial position, which is considered at that moment as (0,0). So setting the StartOffset to (2,4) will send the foot forward two and up four.

After that point, that starting offset is considered as the center-point for the next set of offsets: the LimbPath segments. You'll see below the StartOffset that there's a bunch of AddSegments, each with an X and Y value. These segments determine where the feet go based off of the StartOffset. As you walk, these segments get cycled through at the speed set in NormalTravelSpeed.

That make sense? I'm still messing with it, but I think thats how it works.

sorry for necro digging, but I am now making my own crab and i'm having troubles with walk path.

Darlos' explanation above was helpful in making me understand some of the numbers I see, but I still need some help to understand this part: how come for a leg animation with 5 frames, there are 8 definitions for foot location?

My theory is that it's because the foot movement loops back and forth. A foot defined by 5 sprites- ABCDE will loop like this

ABCDEDCB

note the extra DCB at the end, it's BCD sprites played backwards.


I am not sure about this though, if anyone knows, please give me some heads up.

My earlier explanation is from ages ago. For one thing, positive Y values send things down, not up.

But anyway, the leg animation has nothing to do with where the feet go. The leg only changes its current frame of animation as the foot moves towards or away from the body. Assuming you set the leg frames up correctly, the closer the foot is to the body, the more contracted the leg looks, based off of the sprites available. Same thing with arms, too, as hands get close to the body.

As for the limb paths, those just determine where the feet go, not how the legs animate. The legs animating is more of a side effect, should the limb paths send the feet closer or further from the body.

But yeah, my previous explanation still stands for the most part, I think. For a set of limb paths, you set the initial starting point to wherever you like. To get a feel for this, mess with the starting point for the Standing path. If you set the Y value to be more negative (sending the feet up), you'll notice the actor crouches down more when they're standing and not moving. In a set of paths that involves movement, this is the point at which the feet would start at when beginning the animation.

As for the individual "segments" in a limb path, I believe what I said earlier is the case: it just moves the feet from the previous point to the next point. So its just a back-and-forth series of points that repeats itself over and over. Still, in messing with it myself, some of the workings of this system seem enigmatic. There might be more to it I don't know about.