This is a curiosity that has bothered me for a while that has become more relevant to me recently is how did HOTD2 handle damage? Were they able to swap models on the fly or how did this work? Or are these just model animations? It definitely seems like there are a set number of ways that you can damage a zombie, but I'm not sure how they achieve this effect. Does anyone here have any insight? Kind of a novice with this kind of thing so sorry if the answer is obvious.
I'm not sure exactly how HotD2 handles them, but I will say that during those days, keyframe interpolation was still king. Quake 3 is what really ushered in the modern era of bone-rigged animation, prior to that everyone was still chasing Quake II's MD2 format which stores multiple redundant instances of a model in various keyframe poses using linear interpolation to animate between frames. So, with that in mind, the line between "model swap" and "model animation" really blurs. Judging from the way the zombies break apart in the same exact way no matter how you hit them, I'm willing to bet HotD uses something similar. Which is all to say, the damage is model swaps, but because the animation system likely is built upon the concept of interpolating between model swaps in the first place, it's no big deal.
That actually makes a lot of sense! Time to research model formats from before I ever was playing 3D games! Thankeeee!
