Animation state machine in default T3D game code?

[saindd]

What are the main scripts that handle character animation in the default T3D game code? I'm planning to replace the default soldier with custom rig and animations made by me, but i find it hard to locate exactly where the game controls which, when and how the animations are played. The same applied for the first-person weapon models.

[buckmaster]

It's not in scripts, sadly. Here are the definitions of each movement animation the engine knows about, and here is where it gets chosen. Weapon animation logic is somewhere in the ShapeBaseImage class.

[saindd]

Oh, gee. I thought that kind of logic was decoupled from the engine.

Any reason for that kind of code to be in the engine and not in scripts? Performance?

[JeffR]

It's definitely going to perform better when doing the vector math to figure out the most correct animation to play if it's in the engine. But the list itself could and probably should be in script so-as to not be hardcoded.

buckmaster actually had an old TGE resource that did that, here:

http://www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/18141

Which you can try to port up to T3D if you want for the short-term.

Going forward though, I think that one way or another, the animation list itself will be decoupled and un-hardcoded.

[buckmaster]

I could have sworn I ported it to T3D at some point, but that part of the engine hasn't changed a ton so the changes shouldn't be that difficult. The reason for it being in C++ is simply that Torque was the engine for Tribes, and this was all they needed. This is why Torque has a reputation for being FPS-focused.

I'm finding it hard to muster the can-be-bothered to do a sensible rewrite/breakdown/refactor of the Player class given that Jeff's ECS is on the horizon, and set to sweep away these kinds of issues.

[chriscalef]

Three cheers for the ECS rewrite! Hip hip hooray! etc