Walker Units and Hovering Units Thread - Star Wars Frontlines - The Galactic Civil War mod for Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts

Hi there, I've never really posted on ModDB before, so sorry if I do something wrong here. I just wanted to ask if it's actually feasible to have walkers like an AT-ST or even AT-AT in the game? The animation seems like it could be hard but even then how do you make the movements fit the animations you've made?

Also with hovering vehicles, like an IFTX, is that possible as well? I'm only asking these things because I've never seen walkers or hovertanks in any Company of Heroes mods.

I guess I should leave some sort of suggestion, because this forum seems to have been for it. Don't know if it's possible, but some melee units like Jedi or Sith would be pretty awesome.

Look forward to the mod, good luck!

You point out some pretty interesting things !

I'll try to answer the best I can. As you said, we can't predict how walkers and hovertanks will behave, because nobody tried to make some before. Nevertheless, I have some good reasons to think that they will work.

About walkers, it's sure it will be very difficult to achieve. But if you think a minute about it, animating tanks tracks are not that easy, so nothing is impossible Walkers can have a simple "walking" animation that will trigger when they move. However, and as you said, this anim has to be synced with the movement speed, otherwise it will seem like the wakler is "slipping" on the ground. This means no "acceleration" and "deceleration" time like the other wheeled vehicles, and many tests to find the matching move speed/anim speed. More difficult will be the "turning" animations, because it needs the walker to stop so it can turn, leading to gameplay problems, especially with agile machines like AT-ST.

Hovertanks seem a lot easier in fact. If you ever played Dawn of War II, which has been made by Relic, and is using the same (upgraded) engine as CoH, you would notice that "hovering" vehicles are just normal vehicles with an animation made so they fly over the ground and bounce from side to side. So nothing special here, I don't even think they've got a particular anim for moving. From a gameplay point of view however, things that you'd normally expect from hovering tanks won't be possible, for example going sideways and changing altitude...

So to give you a short answer : yes it's possible, but it will bring a few gameplay limitations. The most interesting part is probably the AT-AT, not for the complexity of its animations, but more for its scale ! I'm pretty sure CoH engine will be able to run it without crashing, but it will need camera changes and special map design as it will not be able to go in narrow passages

Melee units are still a great question. It would be possible to animate them, but melee interactions are a core feature that seems very hard to mod...