Swimming Pack

Sarah

Administrator
Staff member
We've started on our next ability add-on which will be the swimming pack. The goal of this add-on so far encompasses these abilities:
  • Surface swimming
  • Underwater swimming
  • Diving from any height
  • Entering/Exiting the water transitions
  • Drowning
We've also discussed adding weapon abilities, such as a harpoon and all of the animations that go along with that.

If anyone has any feedback on what you would expect in a swimming add-on that's not listed here please let us know!
 
Awesome!! been waiting all summer for swimming. ^^
I suppose shooting while in the water is possible, right? Just want to make sure.
Cheers!
Nice - glad to hear that! Yes shooting in the water will be included.
 
Very excited to see weapons added to swimming. I would love an option to restrict what weapons can be used while swimming as oppose to normal traversal eg. an RPG might be ok for when walking around, but not realistic while swimming, while a pistol on other hand can be easily wielded in both cases. Another useful mechanic would be auto unequipping/holstering weapons when moving while swimming, and re-equipping/unholstering when not moving in the water to allow for aiming and shooting.
 
Hmm, I just remembered that Battlefield has the ability to have your pistol out while you're half submerged in the water. It only worked with pistols, and you had to have a perk enabled for that to be 'active'. As soon as you started swimming fast (freestyle vs breaststroke) you'd de-equip the pistol and you'd basically be armless until you slowed down and then clicked to bring out your pistol again. So having some sort of mechanism like that might be handy, because I doubt any character would be able to operate something like a AK-12 while submerged.

Then again there were underwater guns, both ARs and pistols...
 
Hi All, for WIP discussion of this pack and progress updates, there is now a discord channel for more interactive discussion. Thanks
 
Hello all. Just wanted to pop in and show full support for this ability. As I am transitioning my projects from Invector 3P controllers and what not and I actually made a complete Water Interface Manager with full Swimming and Diving and total breath control, etc.. for the Invector controllers. Having said that everything listed so far in the threads here for the swimming pack seems to have hit the nail on the head!

One thing that I'm not sure of though is while player is in the ability (obviously swimming), will need the ability to transition from the ability/water to a boat, etc.. **Boating is another ability pack that should be added/created and it pretty much goes hand-in-hand with the swimming pack.

Looking forward to the beta and/or release of the pack as diving and swimming are a major part of my current game/project and I really don't want to re-invent the wheel again for UCC.

To Sarah and the team, if you need testor, hit me up. always avail to help out and support.
 
Awesome work Dank and the Team!!

This will certainly serve as solid foundation to continue to build on and will just continue to grow with the controller as it grows.

I would like to offer my "two-cents" and suggestions if you don't mind.
  1. Camera needs to stop at top of the water if the player is not underwater.
  2. Camera should not go above water if the players head is underwater, with exception.
  3. Transition from above-water to underwater and visa-versa should almost be instant.
  4. There is too much of a pause or delay when you transition from above water to underwater.
  5. There does not seem to be an adjustment for the camera when you swim from under to above, as the camera stays underwater while the players head is above and in some cases visa-versa.
  6. Diving needs obstacle checks to allow or dis-allow dive. If dive is not allowed either due to obstacle below where player would land from dive, player slipped during jump into water, etc.., then player would just jump and land in water normally.
  7. Diving seems to only be from a per-determined height.
    1. Detecting a min distance from land to water and higher would be awesome so if the player jumps from lands-edge, cliff-edge, etc.. and there is water under where he would land and there are no obstacles based on dive height, dive force and min depth for dive, the player will auto-dive into the water from lands-edge/cliff edge, etc. At first I thought this the case but further testing in your demo scene from the land on the other side of the underwater tunnel indicates that diving is only from that predetermined height only.
  8. Swimming in general without weapon equipped seems a little off. When a weapon is equipped you force into "speedchange" which is good. but when you un-equip it goes back to the awkward swimming and it looks like there is "lag". Needs to be a little more fluid.
  9. While underwater and you stop moving you shouldn't immediately start to surface. If anything you will sink before surfacing especially w/out movement.
  10. With weapon equipped and you exit the water, weapon is not usable anymore.
  11. With weapon equipped and you exit the water and go back to dive in, the dive is a head-first dive. From small dive heights, might look good, but from higher heights looks and feels too cheesy, at least to me.
  12. With weapon equipped and you initiate a climb, weapon stays equipped and the player climbs the edge with no hands.
  13. When swimming to the waters-edge approaching land, there is a pause to get out of the water (underwater or above) when you reach the land/edge. This needs to be much more fluid. Certainly if the surface under the player is not walk-able it makes a little bit of sense, but if the surface under the player is walk-able, the player should start to walk that surface while still in the water and continue to traverse until completely out of the water. This might just be the timing on the animator(haven't looked at it yet), but from first use/glance, seems a little weird.
  14. Options to allow and/or force inputs to swim under and surface would be nice too (see video).
  15. Option for treading water while under would be nice to add (hold a key to force player into upright position and look around while underwater - see video).

Just to be clear. I am not "criticizing" anything here. Just offering my input and feedback as I was not able to join any of the discord sessions you had. I think what you have done here is awesome and look forward to seeing it expand! Most likely, a few of the items above can be reconfigured from what the add-on provides right now.
 
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Thank you for the feedback! We'll be going through this for the next update. A few of those are design decisions, are configurable, or are bugs (like number 12).
 
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