Maybe, if it can be done in a way so it doesn't hinder the usual ankle movement.

That could work, it's a bit difficul'yt to think about. I'll get back onto it later.


^

what I'm thinking is that the ankle would react as it normally would, and so would the feet while they are extended/contracted, but when held/relaxed, they would bend and mold with the environment.

I was thinking more along the lines of a joint in the feet simulating all toes. This way, people can help keep balance and move more realistically, while those who don't want to actively use them won't have to.

The issue with this is that rigid body physics (what's in use right now), is really super easy and most of the time that gets wasted by the processor is probably wasted on figuring out how static collision meshes interact. In other words, it doesn't require any sort of fancy hardware or math to make it happen.

Soft body physics is still perfectly doable, but it's a fair bit more complicated, there are less good, pre-existing, re-usable implementations of it, and it would definitely break physics compatibility in a significant way. That could be dealt with by making it an optional feature, but I've never heard good things about trying to make two separate physics engines work together to make something coherent. And modifying the existing physics engine, which is utterly about rigid-body mechanics into also doing soft-body mechanics...

In short, this suggestion is not easy to implement. It's also a pretty minor effect, compared to a lot of things that are probably easier to implement and would be more generally usable. I wouldn't mind seeing it, but I feel like we'd see a lot of other nice features first before this gets put on the table.

Practically, perhaps supporting joint additions in modding would be more useful, all in all.

no need for overcomplication, split bodypart and add axis

a new mechanic like that would be awesome, but why not just add a long joint about 1/3 away from the the front end of the toes?

Supported

Thank you guys for all the replies. I can slowly see this idea coming to fruition. I'll talk to the modding community about possibly adding a new joint where the toes would be, and maybe in future updates we'll see it in the game.

What happens to the textures now?
Texture mapping has to be changed

Not necessarily, as this option will most likely be toggleable and like the other mods itll just go with what's there. Plus, it's just kind of adding a gap between the two parts of the foot, so the mapping of feet textures will most probably not change.