Some ideas for smoother movement.

[Ott]

Let's face it: Source's movement is clunky. While players are the most agile refridgerator boxes in any game that I've seen, they're a long ways away from being organic. In a game about chaining stunts together, the "mobile cardboard box" system is especially obvious. I have no idea how much you can change under source's limitations, but you should try to get a few of these in when you overhaul.

1. Smaller, more descreet collision box: Source's player bounds are way too big. Try reducing the size, or better yet, change it to a cylinder instead of a rectangular prism.
2. Automatic movement transitions: Make it so that when you run into a wall, instead of just stopping, you start to run up it. After a few feet, you would fall back down unless you did a wall flip. Let people queue upcoming stunts while current ones are underway. Try to make mantling visibly grab edges, Contagion style.
3. Movement assist: brush entity that dives are attracted to. Slides can just use traces since it's 2d.
4. Get rid of awkward moves: If I slide into a wall, I should stand up quickly so I can wall flip, instead of just turning to the side and slowing down.

[Black_Stormy]

With the collision box, are you talking about the player hitbox? Because they are already pretty fitted to the player models - is there a different one that is used for world collisions?

The transitions between animations are handled by delta blends right? I have no idea about animation programming but I get the feeling it's super hard since a lot of games simply don't bother. And by now the animations have been redone like three times, most recently only a few months ago. Maybe someone has a grip on animations and feels like having a play with them? I know D is particularly good at making weapon animations - he did all the recent MP5K ones.

I think mantling is purely a matter of lining it up properly and I agree - the mantling animations need love. There's plenty of reference for this kinda stuff. Also you can climb a ledge when you're a good player character length underneath it. I think that snap radius needs to be shrunk a little. It's good to have a big radius so it's not impossible to grab the ledge but at the moment it seems a bit much.

Not sure about the movement assist brush, mappers can just put in clip brushes and design the environments with divey wivey in mind. I know you've already suggested this and I'm not totally against it - I like the idea of having more utility brushes specific to DA but there is already a solution for this problem that takes no effort to implement. I want to see more new features added and since Vino is the only active programmer right now I want to avoid loading him up with suggestions that can be otherwise solved by us.

I have been having problems with not being able to cancel slides since they were changed to be affected by slopes. I'm not sure if it's actually an issue or if I just don't know how to cancel out of slides. It mostly happens on da_cocaine on that big ramp in the main outside area. I slide into the wall at the bottom and can't get up until all the momentum is gone. I agree, if a slide hits a wall it should cancel out.

I would also like to backflip or backwards dive off ladders when I hit the stunt button while climbing. Also how do we all feel about sliding up and down stairs?

[Vino]

That is a lot of good stuff though.

[Ott]

World collisions are shaped like a refrigerator box. 16x16x72.

[Dementei]

The cylinder collision box would probably make a lot of difference, no idea how to modify that tho.