Confused about rope technology

[Milkeno]

From a screenshot like this where it wraps around like this you would assume that ropes in GOOH are just cylindrical meshes that are shaded smooth.

But checking here it looks like its using a weirdly clipping 2D rope-type like the ones in half-life 2 mixed with square meshes and light bulbs.

Any experts on rope technology willing to answer how these ropes were made?

 

[reina3]

I'm no expert, but my guess is that they appear cylindrical because they're technically a sprite that always face the player.
Like Twisted Metal 2, where this clown head will -always- look at your camera. It may also be called a "billboarding" sprite.

The "rope technology" appears even in Half-Life 1, for the tripmine & gauss gun lasers. I can guess that they're technically 2D planes with some sort of math to maintain their 3D appearance based on the camera's angle, but not the term. Hopefully that helps abit

 

[Milkeno]

The "rope technology" appears even in Half-Life 1, for the tripmine & gauss gun lasers. I can guess that they're technically 2D planes with some sort of math to maintain their 3D appearance based on the camera's angle, but not the term. Hopefully that helps abit

I found a Blender tool for billboarding that locks an object to one axis, so it always faces you vertically while still moving naturally around it—just like in GOOH.

Also flying around the map you can find these ropes:

it's hard to tell just from a image but these are triangular meshes, these ones were pretty easy to remake:

Here's the texture I used for both but these are just quick recreations and you can probably have better luck if you ripped them yourself: