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Open Book


Springheel

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Basically the animation would happen over top of the text. The text would disappear as the animation began and appear as it finished. Since the animation is very fast (1 sec long) the eye won't really notice the change.

 

NH, didn't Sledge say something about this at one point?

 

Actually, I realized as I was typing that above that I wasn't assuming we would have the Thief's hand visible turning the page. That would increase the complexity a little bit and probably add a half second or so, but might be more reasonable, especially if he is supposed to be holding the book up in front of him. Thoughts?

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Actually, I realized as I was typing that above that I wasn't assuming we would have the Thief's hand visible turning the page. That would increase the complexity a little bit and probably add a half second or so, but might be more reasonable, especially if he is supposed to be holding the book up in front of him. Thoughts?

Then we should also see the hands holding the book. At least when the book is in full view.

Gerhard

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IN fact, we'd have to go the whole way and have an animation of the player lifting the book, opening it etc, it would get very complicated, let's just stick with the page turning for now I think, a more complex animation can always be done later.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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I think the only reason we would need to have page turning is if we decided to incorporate body awareness for the campaign. From hovering around on the forums I've noticed that a lot of people truly enjoyed it in other games too, but felt that Thief needed to really work on it.

 

So, if we do get body awareness into the campaign...we could definately go the whole nine yards with picking up the book and such.

 

I think it's fine for now that we stick with keeping it simple and going for the classic Thief style presentation. In many ways it should help us build a stronger foundation by not being overly complicated in the beginning.

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I wouldn't go as far as a hand picking up the book...we don't have hands picking up anything else.

 

But my thought was that we would use something like the PDA animation that already exists, and there you do see the hands briefly as it is raised to your eyes.

 

If the world doesn't show around the book, like the original games, then this isn't an issue. But if we decide we want to go with the 'live reading' feature discussed here -- http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=325 -- we might need hands on the side. I'll have to see.

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So, if  we do get body awareness into the campaign...we could definately go the whole nine yards with picking up the book and such.

 

My major problem with "body awareness" is, that it's plain stupdi from a real world point of view. At least in many cases. Seeing hands when walking around? Why? When I go I never see my hands and I'm not aware of them. Even running I barely are aware of them, so why would I have a constant reminder that I have hands to use? I know that I have hands and so does the character in the game.

 

Pickupanimations are ok, but they tend to slow down an action and look most of the time simply ridiculous. The lockpicking was not so bad in T3 because the hands were in a quite limited position (hence the suck in) and looked more or less ok. But having a pickup animations means that either the character has to be in a proper position or the animation will look wrong. Either because the hands will have to be extended in order to reach the object properly, they will have to be bended in an unrealistic way, or they look realistic but will touch air instead.

If we want realistic moving handanimations, then the player has to be in a position where it makes sense. This means, he has either to be sucked in (which I hate) or he has to move in the proper position himself (which could become frustrating).

 

The major problem with body awareness is IMO that you never will have the amount of control over a computer character as you have over your body. Simply because the only things to control the character is the mouse and the keyboard. And this is exactly the reason why you either have to force the model into an animation or the player has to learn complex control mechanisms.

A good example is the slight delay when the palyer is looking in another direction then the body is aligned of. The delay is not realistic, simply because in RL you never have this issue. You can move your head independently of your body (to some extent :) ). So looking in one direction and going in another is never an issue with a real body, but it is with a computer controled character because usually you can either control the body or the head but not both. And these are similar problems for all other body parts to. I can control my hand while simoutlanously moving my head and also my feet in totally different directions. I can even read while walking and I do this all the time when I'm on the street.

 

So to me body awareness is something that is much overhyped and expresses more a lack of phantasy than anything else. I have no problem seeing no body and still knowing that it's ME that is running around in the castle steeling things.

 

I think it's fine for now that we stick with keeping it simple and going for the classic Thief style presentation.  In many ways it should help us build a stronger foundation by not being overly complicated in the beginning.

 

Yes. That's also my opinion.

Gerhard

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Ok, I have imported the book into the GUI editor, and I'm working on it, but I have a problem. I have a feeling it has something to do with the transparent alpha-mask...it's as though the transparency is smaller than the book...I can't get the whole book on the screen at the same time, even though the image is big enough.

 

I'll check and see if I've done the alpha mask properly....

 

edit: Hmmm, it isn't the alpha mask, since the 'hole' is a straight rectangle. Here are some shots to help explain:

 

temp1.jpg

 

temp2.jpg

 

The whole book is there, but you can only see part of it at a time. It only shows through a black window that's too small to see the whole thing at once. Anyone know why?

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The book looks great. One thing my eye noticed, though, was that it was maybe a little too perfect around the edges. If some randomness can be thrown in, I think the book would look a little more realistic and used. For example, have some page edges slightly skewed. Some with wear. More jagged edges for the page corners running down the width of the book, etc.

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Actually, I've already planned to do three versions of the book. This version, an older, ragged-edges version, and one with illuminated borders.

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Actually, I've already planned to do three versions of the book. This version, an older, ragged-edges version, and one with illuminated borders.

That's the easier solution. :)

 

While you are at it, you can already do the same for paper. Some paper parchment, a scroll, some crumpled paper, and so on.

Gerhard

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Ok, I've figured out what my problem with the GUI editor is...I just don't know how to fix it. The problem is that the size of the desktop is 640x480, so anything larger than that won't show up all at once. But I can't seem to change the size of the desktop in the transformer window.

 

I found out how to turn the grid on...apparently that's the limit of useable space.

 

 

 

temp3.jpg

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Something is missing in the tutorial I'm following then, because they say to set the image size to 1024x512. That's what I did, but then it will only display 640x480 of it at a time.

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Something is missing in the tutorial I'm following then, because they say to set the image size to 1024x512. That's what I did, but then it will only display 640x480 of it at a time.

OK. I posteds a question on D3world now (It's not hacked today B) ) and I hope that I can get a better understanding about this.

Gerhard

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I've already done that in the tutorial thread...I don't know if we need the double-post.

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I have, I just haven't heard back about a solution yet.

 

edit: Actually, your question is a little more general, so it's fine.

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[quote name='Springheel' date='Dec 13 2004, 04:35 PM']I have, I just haven't heard back about a solution yet.

edit: Actually, your question is a little more general, so it's fine.[/quote]
I haven't read your thread yet, but if you are asking just like a general GUI question then you might not get an answer.

Gerhard

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It's a fairly specific question. Here's the thread that includes the tutorial I was following.

 

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=3241

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Just an update:

 

I've got the GUI editor working once again. For a few days after my upgrade I couldn't use it, and didn't know why. Then I found out that putting Anti-aliasing on in D3 does a number on the editors for some reason.

 

Anyway, I'm back working on the book, but I'm continuing to have one annoying problem. The page curls in the left and right corners have a transparent background, but when I set the alpha map for the tga file, it always comes out with a thin, light-coloured border around it, which looks like crap. I haven't yet found a way to get rid of this border.

 

My next attempt is going to be trying to save an alpha map that overlaps the original image by a couple pixels and see if that will help.

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Haven't been able to solve this problem yet. I've posted on D3W, but maybe someone here knows a secret. Here's the problem:

 

pagecurl.jpg

 

How do you create a transparency without getting that border around the image?

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Ok, I got no help on that issue, but I managed to find a clunky way to get around it. So for the time being I'm back on track. Here is our readable book image from inside the GUI editor:

 

openbook2.jpg

 

Now comes the difficult part...the actual scripting. :)

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For you, probably. :)

 

I'll go as far as I can on my own and then hit you up for some help.

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