In this chapter we will explain how to replicate animations over the networking using Bolt. There are many ways to do this, even many ways inside Bolt, we are going to look at the default way of replicating mecanim parameter state over the network. This chapter will be rather short, as there is not that much to write about mecanim replication, but it's such an important topic that it deserves its own chapter.
The first thing we are going to do is to create a Bolt Mecanim Asset, right click on the tutorial/Scripts/Player folder and select Create/Bolt/Mecanim to create a new asset, name it TutorialPlayerMecanim.
If you select our TutorialPlayerMecanim asset, you will see two options.
- Mecanim Controller is the mecanim controller we want to replicate.
- Replicate Layer Weights lets us replicate mecanim layer weights; this is a simple on/off toggle.
Find the mecanim controller for our player mesh, it's located in bolt_tutorial/art/models/sgtBolt and called sgtBolt4Merged, drag it into the Mecanim Controller slot on our TutorialPlayerMecanim asset.
As soon as you drop the mecanim controller in the correct slot you will see that Bolt detects all of the mecanim properties on the controller.
We also need to hook up our sgtBolt4Merged mecanim controller to our prefab; on our TutorialPlayer prefab in tutorial/Prefabs expand it and find the sgtBolt4Merged-ModelOnly child to it. Make sure to add the sgtBolt4Merged mecanim controller to its Animator component.
Find our TutorialPlayerState asset, located in tutorial/Scripts/Player and select it. Now drag the TutorialPlayerMecanim asset into the Mecanim Asset slot on the TutorialPlayerState asset.
We are almost done, it's time to compile Bolt again, go to Assets/Bolt Engine/Compile Assets and let Bolt do it's thing. Now open up the TutorialPlayerController.cs script.
We are going to add a new method called AnimatePlayer, its pretty much standard mecanim code where we set a MoveZ parameter to -1 or +1 depending on if we are moving forward/backward and the same with MoveX for left/right.
void AnimatePlayer(TutorialPlayerCommand cmd) {
// FWD <> BWD movement
if (cmd.input.forward ^ cmd.input.backward) {
state.mecanim.MoveZ = cmd.input.forward ? 1 : -1;
}
else {
state.mecanim.MoveZ = 0;
}
// LEFT <> RIGHT movement
if (cmd.input.left ^ cmd.input.right) {
state.mecanim.MoveX = cmd.input.right ? 1 : -1;
}
else {
state.mecanim.MoveX = 0;
}
// JUMP
if (_motor.jumpStartedThisFrame) {
state.mecanim.Jump();
}
}Inside of the ExecuteCommand function we are going to call our new AnimatePlayer function, we are going to access a very specific property on our command called isFirstExecution. If this is true that means that this is the first time this command is being executed.
public override void ExecuteCommand(BoltCommand c, bool resetState) {
TutorialPlayerCommand cmd = (TutorialPlayerCommand)c;
if (resetState) {
// we got a correction from the server, reset (this only runs on the client)
_motor.SetState(cmd.state);
}
else {
// apply movement (this runs on both server and client)
cmd.state = _motor.Move(cmd.input);
if (cmd.isFirstExecution) {
AnimatePlayer(cmd);
}
}
}If this is the first time this command executes, we want to apply our animations. You can start the game and run around with our character now, you can choose to just Play As Server or also connect clients if you want.
We are going to tweak a couple of things before we are done. If you tested the game you will see that our characters animations are super snappy, and it doesn't look that good. We are also getting an error in the unity console.
Parameter 'Hash -785725318' is controlled by a curve.
Select our TutorialPlayerMecanim asset. On the MoveZ and MoveX properties add a damping of 0.05. The warning above comes from the fact that we have an animation curve setup inside mecanim as a parameter, and Bolt is trying to replicate that. Disable the 'Feets' property by clicking on the little light on the left side.
Now you should be able to play, the animations will transition smoother no more warnings!