Bodies
Learning paths through this topic
Pay out a worker's wood or stone exactly when the tool hits, at any work speed
If a villager gets his wood when the swing starts, the number rises before anything happens on screen. If he gets it at the end, it feels late. And when a speed bonus or a lag spike shortens a swing, hits go missing or are counted twice. This entry says where to pay out and how to count hits when time jumps.
Make soldiers climb a ladder or siege tower with hands and feet that hold the rungs
Climbing units that play a looping clip slide up the ladder at the wrong speed and grab the air between rungs, and when a crowd pushes up and down the ladder, the loop makes them walk on the spot. This entry ties every hand and foot to a rung, and works the same up, down, fast, slow or standing still.
Show a building's construction as a few pictures that blend, finished only at the very end
A house that grows through four drawn stages jumps at every threshold, and a house that looks finished at 99 percent makes players think it is done when it is not. This entry shows how to blend neighbouring stages for a smooth growth, and how to keep the finished look for the moment the last bit of work is done.
Swing a crane, tower or siege arm to an angle and brake to stop exactly on it
A heavy arm that starts and stops instantly looks weightless, and one that eases in with a simple smoothing curve either overshoots or crawls for ages at the end. This entry makes the arm accelerate, cruise and brake so that it stops on the target, whatever the distance.
Move a creature's legs by stepping when a foot gets too far, never lifting both
A spider, robot or animal walking over uneven ground cannot use a fixed walking loop, since the speed and the ground change all the time. Here is a rule where each foot stays put until it is too far from where it should be, then steps, and the others wait their turn so the body never loses support.
A crouching player stands up under a low ceiling and gets stuck in it
Ducking changes how tall a player's body is, and standing up needs room. If the body grows without asking, players end up inside the ceiling, and the server and the picture disagree about the height. Here is a height rule both sides can run the same way, including the moment the ceiling arrives from above.
Give every character their own idle breathing so a crowd does not move as one
Twenty villagers who all sway in perfect unison look like a glitch. Randomising at the start does not help when the game is saved and loaded or played online, since everybody must see the same thing. Here is how to give each character a stable personal rhythm without storing anything.
Make a crowd turn towards a shout or an explosion in a wave, near ones first
When something happens in a town square and every villager turns in the same frame, it looks like a switch was flipped. Real people react at different moments depending on how far away they are, how busy they are and how alert. This entry gives each person a reaction time that makes a visible wave, and leaves out those too far to notice.
Players standing on the same spot shake or fly apart when their bodies overlap
When teammates stack up in a doorway or all rush the same pickup, their bodies overlap. Pushing them out at full strength makes everybody vibrate, and two characters exactly on top of each other have no direction to go in. Here is a soft push that settles and a tie rule that all screens share.
Let a destroyed building shake and sink, while its ground is open to units at once
A building that vanishes in one frame looks cheap, and one that sinks slowly while units still cannot walk through it makes paths go the long way round a ghost. This entry gives the motion curve of a collapse, with a shake that dies out, and says when the ground and the building must stop being the same thing.
Let a door open for arrivals, stay open for a whole queue, and close after the last
A door that opens and closes for every single person makes a busy barracks look like a nervous machine, and a door that closes on someone standing in the doorway cuts them in half. This entry gives a door with a delay before closing and a rule about who may pass and when, so queues flow and nobody is caught.
Make a dying soldier fall the way the blow came from, with a few different falls
If every defeated unit plays the same fall, a battlefield looks like copies of one actor. If the fall is chosen at random, a man hit from the front falls forwards onto his attacker. This entry decides which fall fits which blow, how to get variety that still repeats exactly in a replay, and when a hit is big enough to throw someone.