You know how when you activate your jetpack, the actor's legs kinda ragdoll around a bit? Does anybody know of a way to make that happen even without the jetpack being activated?

I'm working on an actor (with legs) that's following my own custom method of flying, but their legs are always locked straight downward in a "standing" position which looks really dumb, especially since I want them to fly in a horizontal position at times. I tried making them prone in midair which works fine while they're flying, but once you try to land, they don't ever try to right themselves or catch themselves with their legs and just hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, which is hardly desirable.

What do you think I could do about this?

You could try giving the leg's rotational value the same as the torso.

Doesn't work. They rotate on their center-point, rather than their joint location. Furthermore, the legs rotate but the feet don't go with it. So the legs rotate but the feet remain in place, sitting there all disembodied.

Attachments also have a "RotTarget" variable, though I tried setting it and it doesn't seem to do anything.

What about rotating the torso?

That might end up like the legs though. If that doesn't work then you might have to do something with the prone way.

Well yeah I've been rotating the torso already. The torso rotates fine, and I don't care about the head or arms because they need to angle themselves based on the current view angle anyway. The thing is the legs still point downward even if the body isn't straight up, so my guy just looks doubled over while he's flying through the air. Unless he's either prone (in which case he ragdolls to the ground if you try to land) or the jetpack is active (in which case the jetpack is active, which I don't want to happen)

Well, and if you define the ini jetpack as null so you can make her legs move while pressing up and make a lua defined jetpack for the actual jetpacking?

No wait, that's stupid. Well, maybe you can think something out of that idea. I hope.

You could set the movement state as jump while the actor is in the air. Do a check for whether the actor is touching the ground and if not set MovementState to 7.

How do I change an AHuman's movement state? Last time I checked, you couldn't really change enumerators like that.

self:GetController().SetState = 7

I think.

No, that only sets the actor's controller's ControlState, which is something I've already been doing, and there's only so much you can do with it. The best I can do is either set the ControlState to either BODY_JUMP or BODY_CROUCH. But here's the problems:

BODY_JUMP: The problems are twofold. If the actor HAS an actual jetpack that actually has flight time, then setting this to True also activates the jetpack. This is a problem because I want my actor to be able to glide without thrust, and it'd be kinda silly for gliding to be limited by available jetpack power. On the other hand, if the actor doesn't have a jetpack or the jetpack has no flight time, setting this to True does nothing, and the legs don't go limp.

BODY_CROUCH: As I said before, this actually looks pretty darn good when the actor is flying. Problem is they flop to the ground without catching themselves with their legs if you try to land with them. Perhaps its manageable for the player but it looks so retarded.

So now I'm thinking there's only one conceivable solution. This would be making the jetpack do nothing, but giving it a HUGE amount of flight time to the point where it'd never actually wear out, and then limiting the actor's flying ability manually. The only drawback to this is that whenever your flying or gliding, that stupid jetpack power meter will appear and replace your weapon ammo counter. It's a small price to pay though, I suppose.

Wait, Darlos, does that mean that what I said was somewhat useful?

What about having an Altitude check so that you can have the BODY_CROUCH going while gliding through the air and then once you're close enough to the ground you can press the crouch button to go in to BODY_JUMP and have your legs in an upright position so you can land properly. If you're too high in the air then you could have a restriction to landing until you're low enough to the ground or you could make it so you lose your glide or maybe even dive down.

That way the jump and leg orientation problems don't exist and you have a perfect glide without holding anything. You can make it an automatic procedure when you're low enough it makes you land for you or you can have the consequence of taking damage if you don't do anything about it or fail to do so and hit the ground.

No can do. Once you prone in midair, you're a ragdoll till you hit the ground, BODY_JUMP or not.

Dem's da breaks.