Character & unit movement

Prototype context

This project has not been announced, at least not yet. I worked from its concepts and overall vision, but developed the feature, gameplay-mechanic and system prototypes independently.

It was a top-down game with many different vehicles and terraforming.

Procedural animation and autonomous movement

The video includes an example of inverse-kinematics procedural animation, used for cranes and excavators.

It also shows a short part of the process of prototyping and balancing a self-driving system. The system calculates how to reach a route from its current position — including reversing out of a parked position when needed — then approaches the requested destination pose. A target includes direction, not only proximity to a point.

Procedural crane animation and autonomous vehicle movement · Silent loop.

Self-driving vehicle movement prototype · Silent loop.

Physics-driven navigation

Some mechanics that used navigation and self-driving still moved through physics. These experiments also produced occasional goofy emergent failure moments — useful cases for testing how the system behaved outside its ideal path.

Physics-driven movement and emergent failures · Silent loop.

Terraforming-aware navigation

Terraforming is included here because navigation around changing terrain was a more complicated task than digging itself. The navmesh updated intelligently only where needed, split into chunks so it could calculate quickly and spread across several frames before being applied to the movement system. This kept navigation current as the scene changed without noticeable lag.

Terraforming and navigation prototype · Silent loop.