One of the most frequent complaints we get from new players regarding the graphics is the quality of robot animations. This has posed a big problem for a long time as creating a more complex animation system would require a lot of time, resources and client processing power we don't have. We finally came up with a workable solution for the issue and will gradually be rolling out new walk animations for the smaller robots, starting with the very first bot players encounter: the Arkhe.

Once we're done with the small robots we'll be looking at the big ones of course, which will need to be rolled out in a single, big patch - but that's still some time away.

And how does it compare? Let's have a look:

Comments for this post

1 Triglav

AWESOME!

2 Aranol CARTER

+1 very good work

3 Sid from mining

Holy crap, this is really cool!

4 Snowman

can you apply this patch to my grandma? She's always walked a bit funny!

5 Line

When?

6 Taom

excellent)

7 DEV Zoom

This will be in today's patch.

8 TRANTOR

LOL. :D

9 Shaedys

That does look a lot better.

10 Lucius Marcellus

Huge improvement, nicely done.

11 Inda

But the new problem is, the Arkhe jumping in the speedways.

12 Ezri Dax

look more like an animal than a robot on high speed, make me think of a dog. still better than old one for sure. good job

13 Syrissa

its is a nice improvement. BUT: i think this looks too much like running animal. the way is the right way but it should look a bit more like a maschines movment and not like a "biological" movement. i personaly think you overdid it a bit.

14 DEV Zoom

Syrissa: it would be an interesting discussion how it would be possible to move a 4-legged machine at high speeds, without making it similar to any animal we know. Mother nature has shown us how, who are we to deny billions of years of evolution :)

15 Armpit

This is fantastic. I love the way the motion appears to change from a walk to a trot to a gallop. Wonderful :)

16 Iam Abanana

how come these vids always look better then what i see on my machine?

17 Obi Wan Kenobi

ROFL! omg that looks awesome! <3 devs

18 Egil

Can't wait to see how my precious cameleon will move it's hips. :D

19 DEV BoyC

To clear things up, we're only upgrading the Arkhe today, and the rest will follow in various patches in the coming weeks.

20 Klit Oriswood

WOW I really like it - sooo much better

21 Syrissa

@zoom: ofc it is better than before no questions ask. i dont want to downgrade your hard work on this. just in my opinion a robot should not walk to much like a animal. specialy when we talk about mechs. some movement and swinging of the parts is ok. but the fun stops when the mechs moves exactly like a running human. i would not like it when the movement looks too much human like. a tank also moves at 80-100kmh through the terrain without legs... =) dont like too much human adaption like transformers. its a mech. i prefer the mechwarrior like movements. but ofc its a personal preference and just my oppinion.

22 urahara

Impressive :)

23 Jasdemi

oh my god, so cute! like a little doggy! <3

24 Veakrion

very impressive! great job!! congratulations!

25 Zex Maxwell

The reasons why we use animal movement for stiff robots is because we are more use to seeing them. If you take mechwarrior 3 (youtube: Mechwarrior 3: Opening cinematic) if you notice, the mechs look like they move around like large raptors with their step then sway. now if we animated them like robots, they will have more of a jerky unnatural look that is not appealing to the average person, because they can pick out that unnatural look. It sounds like a "derp," but even an average person will pick out unnatural light or movement because that's how we are exposed to it though all our lives. Do you ever notice that you can pick out a person with a limp on a crowded street? Don't forget, most of the robots designs are based off of animal legs and since we are dealing with an highly evolved robot race, they would build themselves after the creatures on the planet. Arkhe: a crab like animal speed or size, Sequer: turtle like animal for is shell and cargo space, Kain: dear or heard like animal legs for speed or distributive weight.

26 Veakrion

@zex maxwell: hmm interesting what u said... i went trough for some videos, and find this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdDoQqNTEEM&feature=related nice war, the most iportant thing, they haven't got expolsion demage at betas :DDD - but the robot movments very interesting - i think

27 Serpens

Excellent work Dev's. I shall be re-upping all 7 of my accounts today. ;)

28 Arga

@Syrissa
Its also important to remember that these robots were not built by humans, I believe the lore is that they occured through natural selection. Smooth graceful movement is more energy effcient, which is what allows the cheetah to reach such high speeds. Machines are all about effcieny, so in charge of their own evolution, would naturally design movements that where most energy effcient.
Of course they are programmed by humans, and as Zex points out, they are trying to appeal to the human eye too.

tl;dr - Evolution is the reason they COULD run like animals, human limitations on design is why they DO.

29 Kyrios

Love the new animation, good stuff. :-)

30 KKing

everything is coming along real nice . great new animations and patches ..good job devs and thank you for your hard work

31 Baal

A well animated step in the right direction ;D

32 Tomo Meiji

So freaking cute!

Good job devs! Looking forward to the assaults getting done! :D

33 Gremrod

WOW, now that new animation really makes the old one look like crap...... Nice JOB!

34 Marlona Sky

Amazing job guys!

35 Warhawk

Less like a spider,more like a lion.i like...

36 Joph

Great job.

37 Splatterbug

Modern robots designs are modeled heavily after animal movements. Google it. Locomotion isn't to complicated in this regard. To do it different, ambulate them in another manner: Anti-gravity pads? Hovercraft? Unfortunately, these would also make poor weapons and all terrain platforms.. more limited slopes, and weapon recoil would have varying effects on them. Additionally, they would be more susceptible to damage.

38 Twiz

Excellent, now make a real awsome Ictus animation, that fit a real Dark Assasin.

39 Ezri Dax

Watching this video made me like bleh it's a lil puppy that's weird. After trying it in game finaly it's pretty cool animation, so nice job devs. Can't wait to see other remade anim =)

40 Alexadar

Notice how many comments this blogpost gathered

41 Gasoline

I always enjoyed how the smaller robots legs scrabbled on the dust and since they are robots, archieving speeds not comfortable for humans would be pretty easy and normal. However, I know how some of you wanted the animation to slow down a notch so I am happy for this update!

42 FreddyZ

Really good job. Must have been nearly perfect with the head not moving that much at high speed.. imho..
I can now sense the wilderness of the beast..

43 Zex Maxwell

@Veakrion I'm sure it would. But I say give 3D animation a shot, its not to hard to learn. once you know the program, study movement. I guarantee you, you will see how easy it looks to make a robot walk, at the same time see how uncomfortable it looks.