Reinventing ALS Animations My Way

"Reinventing ALS Animations My Way"
Author: William "Chayse" Thenhaus
Date: 5/16/2025

     When starting work on animations, I browsed through Fab and began searching for an animation pack that I could make use of and implement into this project. During my search, I stumbled upon ALS (Advanced Locomotion System), an example project created for Unreal. I added it to my library and opened up the project. It had many features that piqued my interest and things that I believed would be appealing to users, such as omnidirectional movement, a mantle mechanic, and ragdolling. I was excited that I had found the answer to all my animation needs.
     Unfortunately, when I took a look at the animation blueprint, I was taken aback. It was much more complicated than the simple animations that I had used previously (I guess I should have expected the ADVANCED locomotion system to be ADVANCED). Even with all of its complexities, I think that the end users will greatly benefit from the attention to detail and immersion that the ALS provides. Also, the inclusion of ragdoll physics on the player and maybe even the NPCs can lead to some hilarious moments that the player can enjoy.

     I toyed around with it for a while and decided to just use the animations themselves and apply them to the character using my own custom Animation blueprint that aligns closer to what I already know and understand. I managed to create a blend space for both the standing movements and the crouched movements, and set up the animation blueprint to use them. I couldn't get the jump animation from the ALS to look correct, so I opted to use the Mannequin Asset Pack's jump animation connected to the player.
     I knew that I would need to add a "Pickup" animation for my character. I had tested the concept before using the Mannequin Asset Pack's Manny and found it to be relatively simple. Though when I went to create the new one using the ALS character's skeleton, I was alarmed to find that there was no Control Rig to use. So I ended up having to create my own from scratch. It was a bit tedious, but in the end, I got the animation created, though the custom Control Rig was nowhere as easy to use as the Manny Control Rig. I believe that with the addition of this custom animation and the inclusion of other custom animations will result in seamless gameplay that looks smooth and looks good to the player.