Taival Mechanics #1: Zipline Launcher

Hi all!

Have you ever been stuck on a steep mountain, with no way down other than tumbling down uncontrollably? Players in Taival may find themselves in such predicaments, but thankfully, they can use the Zipline Launcher:

Simply by aiming and flicking a switch, the Zipline Launcher will sling down an anchor. As the anchor flies through the air, it pulls a zipline from the gun. Once it bonks into something, it securely anchors, forming a sturdy zipline. Each player can carry their own Zipline Launcher, just like any weapon or item in their own inventory.

All ziplines can be used by all players. For example, if your friend happens to end up in the very situation at the beginning of this post, you can simply fling a zipline up there for them to use. If you instead have multiple friends stuck on multiple steep mountains, it won't be as easy, as you can have a single zipline active at once.

Now, ziplines can't be traversed upwards, only downwards to ensure a safe means of travel (although we're exploring the possibility of allowing this for a different stronger Zipline Launcher without breaking the game - no promises on that).

Smoothly in seconds (unless it's a really long zipline), players will reach their destination unharmed.

Thanks for tuning in, and huge thank you for being a patron! As a little bonus, you'll find some behind-the-scenes technical words on the mechanic below.

• Taival team

Developer notes (nerdy stuff)

The line of the zipline itself is an extruded spline mesh with just three points. When the projectile is flying, the spline forms a straight line from the tip of the weapon to the base of the projectile (which happens to also be the pylon in the final zipline), until it reaches it's target. Now, the target isn't actually selected when the projectile hits something, instead it is selected via raycasting when player shoots to ensure that the target position is a valid position (we don't want ziplines ending up in the bottom of the ocean), and the projectile gets moved there linearly.

Once the projectile is at the end of its pre-defined movement, the pylons are spawned, and the middle one of the three points of the spline is moved downwards gradually to emulate the physics of the line getting bent downwards by its own weight. Bezier curves ensure a smoother curve on the final line, making it look real nice and fancy.

The movement itself via the zipline was the easiest part. The player has an additional state in its state machine, in which it plays the grabbing animation when entering the state, moves by the spline positions when running the state for a time which is calculated from the length of the spline, and simply falls down when reaching the end of the spline.