openmw.org

Is there a concept, that base of the collision shape/capsule help with "pushing" up the "small" bumps/stairs? Essentially creates it's own small ramp?

I am not sure. Creatures and NPC nif files use box shapes though. There are some very unusually shaped ones (slaughterfish), traditional capsule shapes could not represent them properly.

Not to mention the complexity. We'd have to calculate the point of intersection between a hemisphere and the terrain. I've worked with capsule colliders in Unity. There is no better solution for a character collider, IMO. It's just extremely difficult to do from scratch.

I was thinking if you push against this point, the capsule will go up. The curvature of the hemisphere and force/speed applied controls the height of step passable.... if that the method used.

Yeah, it's really a great solution but I don't know how to do it from the ground up. If somebody else wanted to rewrite movement from to use capsules that would be fine with me, but I simply don't have the know-how nor the time to use anything but boxes. Besides, I don't think Morrowind uses capsules so I'm convinced movement can be made to work without them.

Also, I think even capsules might struggle with some collision geometry. The steps in Favel Ancestral Tomb are really extreme.

I will also chime in on this one, the "Favel Ancestral Tomb" steps are taller than I think you could make a reasonable capsule end radius.

EDIT:
If you expand the radius too much, the NPC/creature will just become too wide. Really it needs the exact xyz box size coordinates specified in the NIF file, this is to play nice with animation and other things. Also there is a box position and rotation that helps place the box in the right spot (openmw is already handling these for NPCs/creatures).

I have looked at the base_anim.nif in nifskope, which is for the 3rd person/NPCs. The box is 29.28, 28.44, 66.5 so... something like this could be rigged up to work for npcs...possibly. The base_anim.1st.nif is much smaller though, so I don't think this will work there. Some creatures like the ash zombie have a weird long rectangle like shape, probably wouldn't work right there either.

I think we should just stick with box shapes.

Yeah looks like morrowind just instantly places you up the step.

It would be great to see in OpenMW parkour-like acrobatics with wall climbing (like in Assassin's Creed, Mirror's Edge, Overgrowth, Prince of Persia).

Overgrowth - Acrobatics skill over 9000
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLeb-NWOrsQ

My brain hurts just trying to think about what it would take to make that happen.