Character movement looks like gliding

Nikujaga

EDIT : I think the solution to my question can be found by solving one of the following two :

how can I make a character move only when its walking animation changes frame ?
how can I make a character move along a path without sliding (continuous movement) but teleporting (discrete movement) and everytime it teleports, update its animation frame ?

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Hi everyone, new to Godot and to programming here ! :) :s

I am trying to copy AGS's Tumbleweed template with Godot and I feel like Godot's character movement (which is here done under Navigation2D method get_simple_path()) is making my AnimatedSprite "slide" on the floor, wich I really dislike. Does any of you have an idea of how to deal with that problem ? Have a look at this video to see what I mean (forget about the lagging, capture software is responsible of it), and a look at this one to see what I am trying to achieve.

I tried adapting my character's speed and the AnimatedSprite Sprite Speed and even thought of using an AnimationPlayer but the fundamental problem is I think the fact that the character's node is moving at a continuous pace whereas I have read that AGS makes the character move only when the sprite changes. Is it true ? If yes, how could I make the character's movement "discrete"/"non continuous"/"segmented" ?

Nikujaga

Ok so I found out that in AGS a character have the following properties :

MovementSpeed : which sets by how many pixels the character should move (this amount of pixels needs to be specific to the sprite itself in order to avoid a gliding effect),
and when "MovementLinkedToAnimation" == True this movement is not indexed on real time directly nor on frames but on changes of sprites ( "each time the loop's sprite changes, advance X pixels"),
which means it is indexed on "AnimationDelay", which seems to set how many frames a sprite should last before changing to the following one in the loop.

So far I have found 3+1 properties that impact character movement in Godot :

Speed : which is used in order to set by how many pixels the object moves per frame
Animation Speed (FPS) : which sets how many sprites are played per second
Speed Scale : which multiplies Animation Speed

The 4th parameter is line 13 of my code :

`# How much distance can the player cover in one frame

        var distance_per_frame = speed * delta

        # This loop moves the player along the path until he has run out of movement
                        # or the path ends
        while distance_per_frame > 0 and path.size() > 0:
                var distance_to_next_point = position.distance_to(path[0])
                if distance_per_frame <= distance_to_next_point:
                        # If the player cannot cover distance_to_next_point distance in
                                        # one frame then its position is incremented by 
                                        # distance_per_frame in the path direction
                        direction = position.direction_to(path[0])
                        position += direction * distance_per_frame
                else:
                        # The player gets to the next point
                        position = path[0]
                        path.remove(0)
                # Update the distance to walk
                distance_per_frame -= distance_to_next_point
                if path.empty() == true:
                        direction = Vector2.ZERO`

I tried the following :

Godot.Speed = AGS.MovementSpeed = 4
Godot.AnimationSpeed = AGS.AnimationDelay = 4
Godot.SpeedScale = 1

But it doesn't work, and I think it is because Godot.AnimationSpeed calculates how many sprites should be played per second, whereas AGS.AnimationDelay counts how many frames should a sprite last before changing.

So obviously these two can't be equal... I am very bad at math, do you have an idea of how these two parameters could be related ?

jeremy

maybe this will help

and for the animation is it not beter to make a walk an idle animation en start the walk animation when the player is moving ( you can controle the animation speed )

hope this will help

Sparrow

Looks to me like the animation frame rate is slightly too high and the speed is slightly too slow these together are making creating a slight slide effect. I wouldn't have noticed it unless you posted it though. You may have stared too long at this.

Nikujaga

@jeremy , unfortunately I didn't find anything of use because I essentially already have implemented that type of movement.

@Sparrow , there's always that risk yeah but look at this video, the character glides ; my capture software is not good so it renders the video laggy, therefore it almost seem like there is no gliding, but there is trust me. There are two reasons why gliding exists : 1/ is what you said, an animation framerate - character speed ratio not balanced, 2/ is the nature of movement itself, which in my code is "continuous" (the character position is incremented each time a process runs, resulting in constant move), whereas a "discrete" movement would not make it happen (character position update is not anymore indexed on process rate but on the animation framerate : resulting in the character teleporting to its new position each time the animation frame changes)

So I think the solution to my question can be found by solving one of the following two :

how can I make a character move only when its walking animation changes frame ?
how can I make a character move along a path without sliding (continuous movement) but teleporting (discrete movement) and everytime it teleports, update its animation frame ?

dave-the-dev

If you don't want sliding, you need to tie your character's move distance to a variable that acts like a surveyor's wheel. The wheel is just a variable that contains a radian between PI and -PI. As your character moves every frame it measures distance traveled and "spins" the wheel variable as if the wheel were spinning along the ground with the character. You tie the progress of the animation to the angle of the wheel. For example, every time the wheel goes around it plays a full walk cycle. To make the movement seem more discrete place a Curve2D function between the wheel variable and the animation progress. That way you can have absolute control over the animation progress as the wheel turns. Move Distance -> Radian Wheel Var -> Curve2D -> Animation Progress.

Edit: I made a youtube video about using Curve2Ds that may help to understand how you could use them to control the animation: