Can blender game engine detect if a character is falling and play an animation?

Question

so I have a character in bge and I want to play an animation of him falling when he falls. I've tried using a collision sensor and enabling invert, but whenever the character jumps, it plays that animation, instead of the jump animation. I also have an always sensor connected to the idle animation, and the game engine just plays that instead of the fall animation. Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

Edit: Is it possible to detect the velocity of the character and play the fall animation when greater than a certain value?

Answer 1

KX_GameObject.worldLinearVelocity

On a Physics object the Z-axis of the coordinates would be negative.

As static objects do to move (via Physics engine) this attribute will remain (0,0,0). This will be the case on physics types Static, Occluder, Sensor, Navigation Mesh, Character. This is a bit strange as this types (except Static) have not really much to do with physics (it is more a purpose type). Changes in location (which is basically a teleportation), can only be tracked by recording the previous position and comparing it to the current one.

Here is an example:

import bge

PROPERTY_LAST_POSITION = "last.position"

gameObject = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
currentPosition = gameObject.worldPosition
lastPosition = gameObject.get(PROPERTY_LAST_POSITION, currentPosition)
gameObject[PROPERTY_LAST_POSITION] = currentPosition.copy()
positionDifference = currentPosition - lastPosition

isFalling = (positionDifference.z < 0)

controller = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
for actuator in controller.actuators:
    if isFalling:
        controller.activate(actuator)
    else:
        controller.deactivate(actuator)