Animation Game Piece Intake [AARD-1973]

[ryanzhangofficial]

Task

Create a simple intake animation for gamepieces. Should be a simple sliding animation that moves the gamepiece from its original position to the position it will be held in till its ejected. 

Jira Ticket

Symptom

On intake, the gamepiece immediately snaps to the ejectable.

Solution

Lerp from the starting gamepiece position to the held position. Allow user to also configure the animation duration (to kind of simulate different intake motor speeds).

Verification

• Gamepieces move from starting position to ejector at configured animation duration

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Before merging, ensure the following criteria are met:

• All acceptance criteria outlined in the ticket are met.
• Necessary test cases have been added and updated.
• A feature toggle or safe disable path has been added (if applicable).
• User-facing polish:
  • Ask: "Is this ready-looking?"
• Cross-linking between Jira and GitHub:
  • PR links to the relevant Jira issue.
  • Jira ticket has a comment referencing this PR.

[ryanzhangofficial]

Jolt is really confusing me. There seems to be only one face of the game piece where the intake animation works smoothly. Every other face of the cube results in the outward motion where the game piece rotates until the "correct" face is facing towards the ejector and moves back towards it.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/10532253-b3a8-44d6-91ba-991aeee6037c

[ryanzhangofficial]

Made logic fixes which involved some janky matrix operations (thanks Hunter!). The animation isn't perfect (see attached video), but the game piece now goes directly to the ejector rather than some weird movement. After discussion, we think the rotation part is something that just can't be fixed in the code.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a56fd38d-c2c3-4327-808b-e96d8740b70b

[azaleacolburn]

lgtm

[azaleacolburn]

This was such a funny predicate body.

[ariesninjadev]

Little concerned that the lerp results in a squished/compressed game piece.

Is it possible the animation can use gradual acceleration and an instant stop to make it look a little more realistic?

[rutmanz]

the rotation is a little funky but if not easily fixible, lgtm

[ryanzhangofficial]

Little concerned that the lerp results in a squished/compressed game piece.

Is it possible the animation can use gradual acceleration and an instant stop to make it look a little more realistic?

The pieces appear to be squished/compressed because of the ejector position, so only half of the piece is underneath the field. The ideal solution for this ticket was for a "smooth sliding" animation, but I see what you mean by the gradual acceleration.

[ariesninjadev]

The pieces appear to be squished/compressed because of the ejector position, so only half of the piece is underneath the field.

Ah got it. This is fine then

The ideal solution for this ticket was for a "smooth sliding" animation, but I see what you mean by the gradual acceleration.

Well what you've got is obviously smooth in transit, but not at start/stop. I advised the gradual acceleration to fix the start part, but I think it's too unrealistic for it to gradually decelerate, which is why I advised the snap stop (part has hit the end of the intake/feed-forward).

[ryanzhangofficial]

Well what you've got is obviously smooth in transit, but not at start/stop. I advised the gradual acceleration to fix the start part, but I think it's too unrealistic for it to gradually decelerate, which is why I advised the snap stop (part has hit the end of the intake/feed-forward).

Ah, got it. Thanks for the suggestion. I changed the position lerping to increase as a cubic, and snap at the end.

[ariesninjadev]

lgtm

[AlexD717]

Whenever I pick up a game piece the robot starts to move backwards (I never pressed move back (s) in this video)

Screen.Recording.2025-07-22.at.10.02.29.AM.mov

If this is something that only happens on my device and isn't easy to fix, I think that it would be fine if you were to add an option in settings to enable/disable game piece animation, that way only people who it works for use it.

[ryanzhangofficial]

Whenever I pick up a game piece the robot starts to move backwards (I never pressed move back (s) in this video)

Screen.Recording.2025-07-22.at.10.02.29.AM.mov
If this is something that only happens on my device and isn't easy to fix, I think that it would be fine if you were to add an option in settings to enable/disable game piece animation, that way only people who it works for use it.

Interesting, I was able to reproduce this error on my computer as well. The fix was using a quadratic for the alpha in lerpVectors rather than a cubic. The gradual acceleration is more subtle, but I think it serves its purpose.

[AlexD717]

lgtm

[PepperLola]

Looks good