Comments - CodeHatchling

We probably would be still making the engine if we did that. :)

Many, many, MANY thanks for posting FOR us, ripping the video from YouTube and uploading the executable FOR us. O: We are flattered. My hat's off to you.

Many, many thanks bro. :D You're our first founder club member. Congrats! <:

We have lots in development that will be coming out soon. :)

Check out our newest video to see the improved physics. :)

Also, yes, that is planned. We want to have "prone" in the game, and since our system is modeless it will consider being a ragdoll on the ground as being in prone. Then, the normal controls while in prone would apply.

(Continued...) The specific problem you are mentioning, I think, relates to acceleration leaning in some cases. This is a bug I've recently fixed, but when you command your legs to accelerate you forwards, they'll lag behind you quite a bit. This was an easy fix that I overlooked.
Otherwise, sometimes what happens is when a steep slope is suddenly encountered, the legs get pressed back via a collision. So it's almost like he is tripping over the slope. It takes a bit for the legs to force themselves under the player's center of mass after this happens. I've created two fixes for this to minimize the effect, and other possible fixes are planned for testing.

I've tried the Overgrowth movement and I am impressed by the extreme degree of polish he has put into it. A lot of interesting tech has been used there, especially IK. I always admired games which had perfect foot planting with no skating or sliding. It has a solid design and I couldn't find any problems with it.
Nonetheless, while I draw inspirations from Overgrowth I am taking a different approach more akin to physics sandbox games. Eventually, I hope to not use animations at all and have everything bone in his body driven by physics - but for now, I'm using a simplified approach which doesn't "snap" in and out of ragdoll.

Thanks for the very thoughtful comment. :> I'm happy to see people are interested in how it works.

There are a lot of factors involved in the movement code, indeed.

I think it might be worth mentioning that "up" is never referenced once in the movement code, nor was the direction of gravity, and the purpose of this was to not give special treatment to ground surfaces. This way any given surface could potentially be used as a floor.
It is easy to walk on flat surfaces as opposed to vertical ones because gravity is counteracting the upwards thrust our legs exert each time we step. If you try to walk up a wall, the force you'd need to apply against the wall to gain sufficient traction would also push you away from it - unless something was pushing you and the wall together. Perhaps a strong wind, an explosion, the wall is rapidly accelerating towards you, you were thrown into the wall, etc.
This approach opens up a lot of opportunities that most movement frameworks leave unhandled. The moment our algorithm detects a surface - even if that surface belongs to a peice of flying debris, or a wrecked vehicle rolling towards you end-for-end - you'll be able propell yourself off of it. Like a ninja.

1) We're on it! Fixing it as we speak.

2) With unlimited HP, yes, that's the idea. :D

It says SF! O:

Yes, this is something I've been wanting to put in for a while. I'm revamping the movement code to be more true to life, and part of this means being more true to human limitations. Specifically, I'm trying to get the feet to play the main role in establishing balance, instead of having the character's body float up as though it were held up by strings. In this case, when being knocked down, the feet couldn't move fast enough under the body's center of gravity and thus the character would fall over until he came to a slow enough stop.

Another thing I'm considering soon is to include a pain reaction or a temporary loss of consciousness upon a serious impact or injury. This would weaken the muscles and cause your character to become a ragdoll momentarily, and then gradually regain control; this should be an improvement over the usual snapping in-and-out of ragdoll you've probably seen in other games.

I've been doing a lot of research and experimenting to emulate biped locomotion, so do forgive us if it takes time to release updates as I perfect this technology. But I believe you will appreciate the results in the end.

Yeah, we realize that Notch wasn't the first to think of a cube-style builder. "Infiniminer" came before Minecraft and is referenced by Notch as the source of his inspiration. Unfortunately, the majority of attention is focused on Minecraft even though it wasn't the first and might not necessarily be the best either. We figured however that referencing Minecraft would give most people the best idea of what to expect. We don't mean to be unfair to the original inventors as they deserve much more recognition than they have been getting.

Also, multiresolution cubes definitely seems like something worth researching. Our system currently uses Octrees (like Sauerbraten) so implementing this might not be so much of a stretch. We have tons of improvements planned, and expect them to produce the AAA results we're hoping for even if we don't end up using a multi-res system. But that definitely could pack some serious extra punch. :)

Thanks for sharing this with us, this is good to know.