Let's expand a little bit upon this. I don't need the grinding stuff for a Tony Hawk or Skating Game in general but for a Sonic fanfic-game. The basics are the same, however, you also have rail loopings and stuff like that. Check this video to get a better idea of what I would like to do (especially watch closely to the rail looping at 1:12):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHB0y9r-haYSorry for the bad quality - I didn't produce this video, just found it on Youtube.
those are definately paths, you can only do them on specific rails.
Oh, and about the question of placing paths to mark grinding possiblities: Tony Hawk definitly doesn't do that. Why? Two reasons:
A) Sometimes you may grind upon surfaces you really shouldn't be able to perform a grind/slide on
This would definitly not have happened if the programmers had placed paths on every grind-able object.
play T.H.A.W. on ps2, there are places you can grind that are flat objects with an edge texture on them, that means, some programmer had to place something there telling it to be grindable, or it would have been a wall-ride instead. also, do you really think T.H. games are going to make everything simulation like where there are some things that you shouldnt be able to grind on? your encouraged to grind on ropes in that game, you cant do that in real life, where in tony hawk they encourage it on every edge, realistic or not.
B) After all, you can create your own level (at least in THPS 2-4, don't know about the others), and the level may include rails to grind on. And you don't place paths there, definitly
again, bad arguement, as the pieces can very well have grindable portions marked in them (internally in the engine)
Greets,
Alan
PS: Still can't figure out how in the world an automatic grind-possibility-detection-code could look like. Detecting the first spot to start the grind at is not that big of a problem, but as soon as the grind has started, how would you determine the coordinates for the next c_move command? You can't just say "Move ahead and check whether the rail is still beneath your feet, if not, move back" ^^'
Well... you basically COULD do that, at least when using a vector to "simulate" the player's position. But you can't just move that thing "up ahead", because you never know where this "ahead" really is! It could be forward and upwards, it could be forward and downwards or even forward and a step to the left/right when grinding in a curve. And last but not least, every rail ends at some point - we need to keep that in mind when creating the code...
you do traces, why would you have to move the character to check? you do traces from several different angles, if the angle is too big or another edge cant be found close enough then the grind is done, if there is a nearby edge that fits in some specific parameters, move to that point.
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