well, it works-ish. but I started testing jumps, you know, jumping and catching a ledge. well it doesn't work right. in fact so not right that it might as well not work at all. darn and just when it looked like it was working and I was about to go on to general hanging.

the problem seems to happen when any movement keys are held during the collision, at that point it doesn't respond to touching the edge object and just falls. However, if it hits the ladder object it works fine, but that has a movement bug of it's own, slight rubber-banding at the top and instead of smoothly walking once it gets off the ladder it hops until you release the forward button.

the problem being is actually happening because the movement was triggered DURING a state when it was touching the climbable objects.

so I got those bugs to mull over. this is turning into small problems I didn't expect.

Edit: fixed the hopping, there is hope yet!

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over all I was able to fix all the core issues, there are now some minor issues to be smoothed out. one major issue is still present but it may go away if I lessen the climb grip (which I can do now.)

major issue is the player is not passing from one hang ledge to the next cornered hang ledge.

small issues are;
1: a bit of rubber-banding at the top of the ladders (I've fixed it earlier so it is possible to be fixed)
2: FullStop (which is a motion that is engaged when a player object collides with a hang ledge and stops all motion with 200/-200 speed intensity in all directions) is not allowing me to tell it to activate ONLY ONCE So I'm having to deactivate it on movement-key-presses as well (this actually may be the reason that the player is not transferring from one ledge to another at corners). so I have to find a better way to disengage it.

very small micro issues; there is a glitch I can fix with ease that allows a player to jump at the ladder and spin around and thus engage climbing but so long as they hold the spin and forward motion it wont be canceled so they can realistically fly upwards at an angle. sounds like a big issue, but it's very very easy to fix, just tell it to disengage the player's turn motions if touching the ladder and those keys are pressed.

and after I smooth all that out I can look forwards to smoothing out the general hang, which may be easy or hard, I'm honestly not sure yet.

if you'll notice, stairs are not on the list of things to do, no, they are not auto-handled, but typically require a character object and a stair climb animation to make it work right. everything else can be done as a mere motion and synced to the animation later.

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rubber-banding bug and spin-fly when touching ladder and holding forwards and left or right fixed. Fullstop is still a problem, it just means the corner cant be overlapping, there needs to be a transfer point, no 90 degree corner straddling/strafing. I may fix it later if it really becomes a necessary feature.

on to monkey bars!

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Bars? what the fuck were you thinking?! you didn't do free-climb yet!

well, I did now. free-climb is much like spiderball, except the object is upright and does not need to be a rigid body because the angle of the wall is copied by the material object whose orientation the player copies on touch. it works with the same perfection as the ladder. so it's cool.

Now onto the bars, which I've already set-up.

Notes; none of these climbing situations currently allows for a wall jump. I will have to make the wall jump motion and program it in to the bends later (wont be hard, right now the jump key is disabled on the ladder and free climb regions, it disconnects the player from hang regions making the player fall (same as pressing the down arrow while hanging).

I'm debating whether or not the down/back arrow should disconnect from bars, I'm thinking NO. the back arrow should climb backwards, and the S button should allow you to aim attacks downwards, the jump button will be the only actual disengage from bar hanging (other than attempting to move off the bars).

for the ladder and other climbing regions I decided against the action button engaging, instead this game should have smooth transitions to and from climb regions. it is an ACTION adventure anyways.

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Bars are functional, right now however you have to hold the jump button to stay on them, and they will not play nice (co-exist) with other things (At least I don't think so, will try).

yeah if the player is on a ladder and collides with the bars you only get ladder functionality, same with free climb sections. hang ledges will never need to coexist with bars so them not coexisting nicely is of no consequence. but I will need to debug it so the ladder and free climb sections will allow the player to transfer to and from bars in that event.

after that, the next bit of fun is... (checks list) wall jumps, pole climbing, rope climbing and swinging, then for a change of pace; swimming, finalizing mud and sand, then collectables.

once everything is working, I have to go back and limit things to only work after collecting certain items. then game save points and menus and user interface stuff. after that we're goo to do the video and put that shite on patreon.

I may do 'destructibles' at some unscheduled point just for fun.

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two tests were started today, I decided to skip ahead because while I am at work I don't have enough time to hunker down into anything larger. I decided to work out the pole climbing and and rope climbing and swinging.

it's going to work, but doesn't work perfectly yet.

the rope: I pinned a softbody rope to the cieling and made the player [always and trackto rope] then by holding the forwards key the player got hooked and swung on it. it was kind of a cheat because the player can't always be pointing at it except when touching it, and it wont work well for something like a grappling hook. it also has some pinching problems on the rope after impact, but that can be fixed by making internal edges to keep it from pinching. the player could also climb half way up where by the angle became wrong and it disconnected and fell.

the pole: I have a plan, it's not the plan I first envisioned (because that was a lame standard wall/ladder climb scheme with a floor spawned beneath the player) and is not the second plan, but I might have to use the second plan anyways. its the third plan where I force the player to aim it's own y Axis at the pole thus making a simple climb motion enough to pin it to the pole, at which point moving left or right will be a spin because the player will always point at it. but it doesn't work yet. namely because I need to study the new syntax a bit.

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due to the physical nature of a pole being round, I had several choices here;

make the pole out of 8 freeclimb strips arranged in a circle with overlapping edges (and make the object switch from one freeclimb face to another, thus copying it's angle).

or

perfect the spiderball thing by disabling sideways movement while walking forwards. So I did that. with the anti spin script and the anti slide script engaged the object bounces up and down off the surface lightly, which is nothing more than a visual issue caused by the conflicting physics.

on the other hand the free climb thing might work as well, both will work to hold the object onto say 'a rope' or 'a pole', I might go with the freeclimb thing because it doesn't require switching to or from a rigidbody (want to keep that to a minimum), and the freeclimb option doesn't bump around or fight gravity for the very same reason (it's not a rigidbody object) which would be better for a rope. however I would have to think about that really carefully because a rope would need 8 free climb strips per bending region.

the other option is to do as I suspect they did in the LOZ the windwaker, animate the rope rather than make it a softbody.

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or for a pole I can forget all that hard work and just say fuck it with a trackto actuator and don't set it to track to the object in 3D space (so it only tracks on X and Y) as I have now done.

so the pole works perfectly now.

this trick cannot be used for a rope though, so we'll see what I have to do.

Originally I tried to get the vector that represented the direction between the player and the pole and use that in alignAxisToVect() setting the player's Y axis (forwards) to point towards the object, that didn't work as planned for some reasons it worked on X and Y, but the Z was messed up, I fixed the z by setting it to the player's own Z, that worked initially, but any attempt to climb the ladder and.. it'd point the player 45 degrees skyward and upside-down mind you.

I may have just been using it wrong. I'm pretty sure the Z vector float was the problem. It would be handy for the Rope system if I did manage to get it working. But meh we'll leave it for later.

really wish I could play wind waker right now it would help to see their ropes in action again to get some ideas.

oh well, I can go back and patch this stuff together so what I have will work interchangeably. Or I can test out wall jumps and build that into everything too.

just from what I have working now, the gameplay is already 10 times better than I've seen in 3D previously, especially from nintendo series.

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Determined to do the rope because the pole works. I must remember there are two modes for a rope;

1: climb
2: swing

during climb it functions exactly like a pole but should have a jiggle function from the players hands/legs impact and lower. this is simple enough to do.

but then the hard part comes with swinging there are three main issues that I haven't wrapped my head around yet:

1: how to start the swing motion.

2: when swinging how to get the player to jump forwards without being hindered by the rope

3: when turning, how to animate the swing locally without actually turning the rope.

now for some suspected answers (rough draft):

1 & 3: make static panels which create the swing by pushing in an animated fashion thus the rope isn't actually animated, it's the rig around it (however that might conflict with the player) a possible way to fix the player conflict is to parent the player to the rope, but that might create problems, not sure.

2: one thought is to have the player facing out and held to the rope by it's back and offset the character model to the other side of the rope (this might work in theory, but only for jumping in one direction). seeing as the swing force will be 2 animations forwards and backwards that could be fixed by making two swing states, forwards as described and backwards during the backwards swing animation.

oh well I'm sure it will work one way or another, the rope is proving to be the bitch though; it wont work right as a softbody, it wont work in the way that people say to make a blender ragdoll, because that doesn't work in 249. but I have another plan, it just takes a lot more work to setup.

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the answer is, NO, none of that.

I found that some of my tricks wont be workin this time. as I stated earlier it'd probably be better with spiderball physics, but... I think I'll save that as a last resort because a physics heavy object on a physics heavy object sounds like the kinda of thing that wears out computer parts. besides I'll need to position the object on one side of the rope on the fly.

to be honest I can do the physics easily with a simple track to object, forward motion to keep from falling and parent switch to this object doing that. It's getting the rope to follow these movements that's the bitch. Oh yeah, I mean I could make a multi part/link rope/chain that would be relatively easy as fuck. but making a single object bend like a rope seems quite possibly impossible using what blender249 supplies.

I worked it out to a point where the player could swing on a swinging pole but while doing so the player would refuse to collide with anything else, mostly because I parented it to the pole. but still the same problem is there anytime I do rope swinging without using physics only. for example if I made the rope swing an animation, that too would send the player through objects.

well, at least I can;t say it's not a good brain teaser.

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I worked it out in my head in a simple way and realized that must be how they did it in the wind waker because I seem to remember that when you collided with a rope it was like the rope pulled towards you not vice versa.

the idea is relatively simple, as stated above, let the player parent to something aimed at the rope's main swing point (top apex) on contact with the rope, have the parent object pull towards the top apex at just enough to defy gravity.

from where it depends on what you are using;

if it's a rope in the scene but not player controlled;

have the rope object aim at the player. (this gives the appearance that it pulled towards the player and that it is following the player's swing. The rope object may be a non-collision object, which solves the jumping through the rope problem!)

If it's a player spawned rope like a grapple hook or indiana jones' whip:

Do the opposite have the whip,grapple rope be controlled by the object pointing at the top apex and merely play a forwards whip-latch animation where if any point on the rope touches the swing point then it starts the player parenting to the object pointed at the apex and starts that object's forwards motion to defy gravity. then you're swinging.

If it's something like samus aran's Grappling beam:

same thing as the whip or grappling hook, but instead of a whip swing animation, it just extends the grappling beam end till it's max length and if it touches the swing point then engage swing.

this same thing will work for something like the hookshot too, but instead of swinging it's just a direct line pull to the swing point then disconnect.

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gonna have to put in some extra controls, right now the player is hovering up and down as it swings, sometimes it is off the rope and other times it's almost near the top of the rope, I tried stabilizing it with counter motions, but that just disabled the swing.

it looks like I'll need to make 2 ghost actor panels, one above and one below the player while on the rope to act as guides, if the player touches the bottom one it would create additional upwards motion to keep the player above it, where as if the player touches the top one it would create additional downwards motion to keep the player contained in the spot that it should be. these panels will raise and lower with the player while climbing or descending/falling from the rope and will disappear if the player is not touching the rope. as of now that seems the only option.

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Shit Happens.

came back to loads of demands and threats. the last day in hong kong I felt a strong drive to work on the projects, I lost it before I got back and have just been aimlessly web browsing and feeling pissed off at the crap going on in the world.

after each major break point from work (exit entry trips) I reevaluate what I should focus my efforts on. bottom line of it all is I need money so I guess the action/adventure title is my main goal. I do want to go back and finish making the chat though, or make a chat server. then again there's always flash backgrounds for yom.

however I am in no mood to sit down and do any actual meaty work, and all that stuff take loads of patience and concentration. I'll get back into it at some point, I know more or less what I have to do for each.

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Mai hed iz brok frum t00 mach statistical wark.

I worked on the MMO;

I made a calculatory system to find the values of Power's Activation time, Recharge time and stamina use to make it fair. making it fair and workable was the conflict part but eventually I got it.

Nao ai got a calc document listing out various things that could be added to a power all nice and segmented out into '1 points worth'

Where each power in tier 0 can 'buy' things upto a value of 10 points. Gunna (spelled wrong on purpose for kicks as always) have to redo the damage because I added in effects into their calculation and that is wrong to do, effects are separate.

once the sheet is filled out I can begin designing powers for power sets... Again... because honestly last time I was rushed and didn't feel satisfied with the results.

but nao, it's done, or at least the system is.

now if only I could find out which box in the hidden door in the ceiling of the navigator's room has mango icecream before anyone else figures out that there is such a hidden door, that'd be just swell.

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Damn, you still doing updates on this? I can't wait until you actually finish.