Locomotion System at GDC 2009!
The Game Developers Conference 2009 is near and I am proud to announce that my session proposal has been approved! I will be doing a 60-minute lecture in the Programming track on the subject of:
Dynamic Walking with Semi-Procedural Animation
(Follow the link to see the session description on the GDC website.)
I am honored to be presenting my work in the company of the great minds of the game industry at such an early point in my career. This is the second time I am going to GDC and I am truly looking forward to it.
Updated Interactive Demo
Now, since I'm updating the blog anyway, I have thrown in the latest version of the uneven terrain demo that I have used as a testing bed for the Locomotion System. New in this version is a coyote, as well as lots of visualization options that you can play around with to get an idea of the inner workings of the system. This is the same version that was used for the Video Demo 2 of the Locomotion System in the previous post.
Instructions for the demo
| Command | Keyboard | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Walking-direction | arrow keys | analog stick 1 |
| Walking-speed | shift | - |
| Facing-direction | W, A, S, D | analog stick 2 |
| Jump | space | button A |
| Time slow down / speed up | numpad - / + | - |
You can control the characters with either the keyboard or with a game pad. With a game pad, such as an XBox 360 controller, the direction and speed can be controlled precisely with ease, while independently controlling facing direction with the secondary stick.
In this demo the terrain can be dynamically controlled with the sliders at the top. You can create stairs, slopes, and various combinations. The terrain will reflect the changes once the character has walked a little distance to the left or right. Enable manual mode to control the character yourself, as described above. This demo uses four animations for walking (forward, backwards, and sideways) and also four for running.
In other news
Besides having my session at GDC accepted, a few other notable things have happened recently:
- I have moved from Aarhus to Copenhagen (both are cities in Denmark; Copenhagen is the capital) together with my girlfriend.
- I have started working at Unity Technologies, a company making an extremely cool game engine and authoring tool called Unity.
- I am still working on finishing my Master thesis about the locomotion system ... it will hopefully be done soon!
That's it for now. I hope to see you at GDC!