FreeGameDev

I created this topic in response to the newly introduced swatter/hammer by hiker (BTW, great job hiker ) ( http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Ite ... mmer.3F.29 ), so we could concentrate the brainstorming on this particular weapon here and keep the rest in the other topic.

I tried to make a model of a hammer made of wood, but I will try to make an inflatable one instead as hiker suggested.



Some topics of debate:
- what about manual triggering of the hammer?
- what about being able to swat the karts that are in front of you or behind you? Personally when I tried the weapon, it was quite hard to get to the side of another kart and just being behind one while not being able to swat it was quite frustrating... A reference would be Mario Kart, where being invincible lets you push away any other kart as long as you touch it. I would prefer this behavior I think.
- there is a need for good "splatch" and "ouch" sounds
- what should be used, glove, inflatable hammer, swatter?

- what should be used, glove, inflatable hammer, swatter?

While I don't have a string opinion, I would prefer a swatter at the end of a robot-like arm; I can imagine in my head the arm moving around with the swatter

Haha I can also imagine that, but it would require some careful animation...hmm maybe just turning the arm and playing the animation would be enough

I made a try with an inflatable hammer highly inspired by the image hiker gave in his explanation:


Maybe I will try to make such a robotic arm but I have no idea whether I would be able to do something correct or not ^^

WIP for the robotic arm...

I love both (my preference is still on the robotic arm however )
and I don't think it would be too difficult to animate, we already have support for skeletal animation

Still work in progress, I worked on the mesh, rigged it and made an animation.
Now I have to add a texture to it...

Some screenshots:

Funny tests !

The inflatable hammer will need to be placed some way it does not stop players from seeing the road.
I agree with Auria for the robotic arm, I would even say a mechanical arm as those which pop out of fake gift boxes in cartoons.

I love your work in progress arm

Now textured



Source downloadable here:
- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20292682/swatte ... -arm.blend
- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20292682/swatte ... ic-arm.xcf

Auria {l Wrote}:I love your work in progress arm

I love it, too - I only hope that it won't be too 'expensive' performance-wise.

I have some refactoring todo, but will then try to support an animated model, and also swatting people ahead of you and to the back.

Cheers,
Joerg

Why not make the swatter squish players whom are in collision distance from the kart? You kind of demonstrated a little of how it could work with the picture of Tux and the red dude. I don't think it should work as a shield, unless it will brings a speed bonus with it (same abilities as the star in Mario Kart) and more likely be used for last place. I don't like the idea of a player being in 1st place, and being immune to stuff.

I agree the player should get some speed boost, to maximize the chances that it could swat someone
What about adding some propeller to the back of the robotic arm?

Work in progress:



Now I need to control the animation so that it doesn't play in a loop...

It would be cool to have some transition when items appear, just having a linear scaling + some sound would be cool already

Turtle {l Wrote}:Why not make the swatter squish players whom are in collision distance from the kart? You kind of demonstrated a little of how it could work with the picture of Tux and the red dude. I don't think it should work as a shield, unless it will brings a speed bonus with it (same abilities as the star in Mario Kart) and more likely be used for last place. I don't like the idea of a player being in 1st place, and being immune to stuff.

I think a speed boost would be confusing for this weapon, and also make it too powerful if it can both swat players, defend against bowling balls and cakes, plus give a speed boost. In that case, we would probably need a whole new weapon, which could act like the Mario Kart weapon like you described. But I am not sure how much MK stuff we should copy.

Well, to me the swatter gets more interest if we effectively have a speed boost coming with it, and it could be justified with the propeller...
Actually I think I would let the swatter:
- smash other players
- give a speed boost
- not protect from the items (that could come from other bonuses)

My opinion ^^

BTW, hiker, I'm trying to get something out of this in code, so it would be nice if we weren't two working on it at the same time

Funto {l Wrote}:BTW, hiker, I'm trying to get something out of this in code, so it would be nice if we weren't two working on it at the same time

Sorry, but as I have written a few days ago:

I have some refactoring todo, but will then try to support an animated model, and also swatting people ahead of you and to the back.

And I am about to commit this soon. On the other hand, it shouldn't affect you too much - most of the swatter specific code is now in its own object (which is a plugin' for the attachment object). So hopefully all you have to do is move your code from attachment to the new swatter object (and perhaps add some more callbacks).

Sorry for this, but the attachment object is seriously too full.

But then I assume that I shouldn't do any changes to the functionality of the swatter, right? So I'll leave this (including not adding the animated model etc) till you are done. Let me know if I should do something.

Cheers,
Joerg

Funto {l Wrote}:Well, to me the swatter gets more interest if we effectively have a speed boost coming with it, and it could be justified with the propeller...

I like the propeller idea Besides accelerating the karts, it could blow items away

Actually I think I would let the swatter:
- smash other players
- give a speed boost
- not protect from the items (that could come from other bonuses)

I don't like the speed boost idea, doesn't really sound logical to go with a swatter. What about we have swatter in different colours? E.g. one could only swat karts, one only items, and (a more rarer one) could swat karts and items? And/or we could vary the duration and number of uses for each swatter. Not sure if this is a good idea admittedly

Cheers,
Joerg

I was thinking of the propeller as a part of the robotic arm, but it would effectively probably be better to have it as a separate item

About the different colors/abilities for the swatter, as I said on IRC, in Crash Team Racing, some special items, called "wumpas" (looking like apples) are spread on the track (just like the nitros), and collecting 10 of them make all your items more powerful (TNT becomes Nitro, missiles and bombs are more powerful, etc).

We could think of something similar with STK, where the "powered" version of the swatter could smash karts and items, while the "basic" version could only smash karts.

This could also help in making the tracks more interesting, but demands some work both on the track editing part, on the track exporter, on the game design part (how can we split existing items in "basic" and "powered"?) and on the C++ coding part.

Any opinions?

About the swatter: right now, I got it to work, and the current behavior is:
- no more restrictions on the angle
- manual triggering, but automatic aiming
- once the swatter is set, we can swat as much as we want, during a limited amount of time
- it can squash several karts an once, in the area around the center of the swatter (although the situations is unlikely I think)

Because of the refactoring hiker did, I will have to reimplement it, and I think I will put this in a separate branch, so that people could playtest without breaking the original behavior.

Feedback welcomed

Here is a little example (video will start at the interesting part) of a punch in a kart game I found today. I'm confident STK's one will be better that this one, which I found... disappointing.
Will test your wip as soon as I can (I currently have a really low connection ^^), looks real fun !
EDIT : where can we get it to try it btw ? Did I miss something ?

Kinsu {l Wrote}:EDIT : where can we get it to try it btw ? Did I miss something ?

You have to check it out from a separate SVN branch: .../main/branches/swatter

Cheers,
Joerg

That's it, thank you.

Hi Funto,

I tried the swatter a bit. Nice job, it's quite fun I had a few cases where it got stuck and wouldn't swat, but i can't tell how to reproduce unfortunately

Funto {l Wrote}:Actually I think I would let the swatter:
- smash other players
- give a speed boost
- not protect from the items (that could come from other bonuses)

My opinion ^^

Agreed. If you are going to have a shield, this should not be given to players in 1st or 2nd place. I honestly don't like idea of a shield in-game for this reason. At least in Mario, all you do is is carry 1 turtle shell or banana peel to sightly (you can be hit from the sides while doing a sharp turn) protect you from missile shells. Once you lose that shell or banana you are doomed. This swatter idea sounds like something that sticks around for a while to protect you. I like Furio's idea because at least you are not immune to being hit by a bowling ball or cupcake. Please don't add a shield in-game unless it is going to be excluded from things 1st & 2nd place can get.

I have an idea, for a demo derby car version of the star effect on Mario Kart! So just give the Swatter/Hammer item the ability to just smash players. While the Demo Derby Car could make you faster + push away (like if they took the banana peel from Mario Kart = slide and do 180) karts you bump into + temporarily protect you from items. However, this as mentioned previously should not be given to 1st or 2nd place. This like the star could finally give players who are in last place and playing with several karts (7+) a chance to recover, since zippers will not help you if you get hit afterwards..

Here are some pictures for those who never seen a demolition derby car:

Turtle,

indeed for the first player we will make the swatter very unlikely to be obtained

And regarding the demolition derby; 3-strikes battle mode is a bit similar