No actual rolling or bowling. I did consider rolling as that was my goal for today, to implement a dodge action. I explored many ways to do this and the best way was root motion. It works differently than normal animation because it moves the character based on the motion itself, instead of having values influence the character and playing an animation over it. Anyway before that I found a very clean and impressive third person project in Unreal Market place. It had nearly everything I wanted for my character. It moved so smoothly, it turned in the direction you were facing. It jumped and fell naturally. I considered using that character instead of what I had worked it. I could probably integrate my own functions into it if I tried, but after a lot of thought I went back to my original character. It might not be as flexible but at least it’s my own and I know how everything works and I understand how to manipulate it in my own way. It served as an inspiration at least for what else I could add to the character.
It even climbed up stuff. But if I include that then it would create a whole another list of things for me to add, I need to keep this small and manageable. There were no decent free rolling/dodging animations I could find so I had to buy a set off the marketplace. It was worth the price though. I got nice animations and found a decent tutorial that taught me how to implement it so there’s also a clear hierarchy if actions. I made the dodge and sprint input the same, so that if tapped you dodge, but when held down you will continue to sprint. Sekiro does the same thing, and I don’t want to add more controls when there doesn’t have to be.
There was a lot of back and forth today, and I’ve learned a lot. Nothing is a waste of time if you use it to your advantage. Next up is adding the swing, perhaps I can look to Spider-Man for inspiration.
GoldenGratus Games 