Mounted Movement System - What is it?

[Jheuloh.4109]

If there's any knowledgeable software devs floating around The Oasis,  I beseech your wisdom regarding mounts. I acknowledge this is an exceedingly arcane question.

 

Something that has fascinated me is the turning circles that the mounts have, togethee with the automated turn-in-place system to keep the mount from being unwieldy when it needs to change direction while idle.

 

I've been attempting to recreate it in Unreal Engine 4 by modifying the built in Character movement but I'm at a loss for what terms to research or how to explain what I'm after to people. I've tried beseeching people for help within Unreal Engine communities with little luck as I've found it a massive struggle to properly explain myself to interested parties.

 

It feels like there's some standard software engineering concepts that are eluding me. Guild Wars 2 is hardly the only game with that kind of vehicle-ish movement system for mounts, but it does seem the most refined of the lot.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Jheuloh.4109

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

You could watch (or read) the Guild Chats on Mount design/implementation; maybe that would give some clues.  🤷‍♂️

Good luck. 

[Jheuloh.4109]

Oh I didn't even know there was anything from ArenaNet about it, let alone the existence of Guild Chats. I'll have to check it out!

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

You'll find the transcripts in the Wiki; the videos on Twitch/YouTube.

[Arnox.5128]

I'm not sure why you're having so much trouble understanding it. The game gets the direction of the camera and reorients the mount in the same direction as the camera with the speed of the turn limited and a little animation fanciness applied to make the turning look fluid. Of course, a check is also applied where a movement key has to be pressed before the mount reorients to the camera.

Not to say it looks bad. It's amazing work. It's just, I don't see it as too complicated to understand unless I'm much mistaken.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Arnox.5128

[Jheuloh.4109]

Understanding it is the easy part, recreating is trickier than I expected - but that might be because on my first attempt I was trying to modify existing movement classes to do that, rather than just start from scratch with those assumptions in mind. So I might have made it a lot harder for myself that way.

 

EDIT: To illustrate, I got it partially working on the forward movement, like so: 

But left/right? Well...
 

 

Edited November 5, 2021 by Jheuloh.4109

[Arnox.5128]

1 hour ago, Jheuloh.4109 said:

But left/right? Well...

 

 

I think what's going on in that second part is that when you're pressing left/right instead of forward, the actual pawn is shifting direction more quickly than the model that is turning, so it looks funky. There needs to be a turn speed limiter for the pawn too when using the strafe left/right movement keys. Or at least, more of a limit

Edited November 5, 2021 by Arnox.5128

[DaFishBob.6518]

23 hours ago, Jheuloh.4109 said:

Understanding it is the easy part, recreating is trickier than I expected - but that might be because on my first attempt I was trying to modify existing movement classes to do that, rather than just start from scratch with those assumptions in mind. So I might have made it a lot harder for myself that way.

 

EDIT: To illustrate, I got it partially working on the forward movement, like so: 

But left/right? Well...
 

 

That second video makes me think of an arrow just constantly spinning around while moving in the direction it perceives as "forward." If you had an overhead view, the figure would be moving in a spiral fashion around a generalized vector.