Noisemaker Arrow As Movable

[Ishtvan]

The noisemaker arrow is ready to be coded. Because it will bounce off walls and not stick in, it has to be a moveable entity. To make it work as a moveable, I need an arrow model with a collision model, like BlackThief made for the chairs. If we don't have a model for the noisemaker already, would it be possible for someone to whip up a collision model (either .cm or embedded in the model if possible) for the broadhead arrow?

 

We haven't needed it up 'till now, since the broadhead has been either a projectile that has its collision model defined mathematically, or it's been a frobable item that doesn't need to collide with the world. We do need it now though if we want the Noisemaker to drop to the floor after it hits a wall, bounce off walls, etc.

[Darkness_Falls]

:bump:

 

Would be nice to have this model so we can test the noisemaker sound effects, too.

[Ishtvan]

I think Gleeful was also wondering how to add collision models for idMovables as well. So far BlackThief is the only person I know who has accomplished it so far (well, probably Odd but he's offline right now). @BlackThief: Would it be possible to write a quick tutorial on how to put in a collision model for an idMovable?

[BlackThief]

no prob, the easiest way is to draw a box around your model in lightwave and give this box a material called:

"textures/common/collision" - triangulate the box and now you simply have to write a def file for it:

 

for example:

entityDef darkmod_dining_chair2 {
"inherit"					"moveable_base_fixed"
"model"						"models/props/furniture/chair/dchair2.lwo"
"density"										"0.005"
"friction"					"0.2"
"bouncyness"				"0.2"
"networksync"				"1"

}

 

here's your broadhead, hope it works:

http://www.people.freenet.de/darkmod/broadhead_collision.lwo

[Ishtvan]

Nice, and thanks for the broadhead! I'll let you know how it goes when tested. Btw, maybe we could move this post to the documentation forum?

 

Btw, whoops, I was advising people wrong, I said textures/common/clip. To be fair though, that is what Brian @ Id told me. I guess textures/common/collision is the correct onel.

 

Also this reminds me, for our moveables, you can also specify "mass" instead of density, so if you have some idea how much it should weigh, just put in "mass" instead of trying to guess the volume and density. I have to look into what unit the D3 masses are in though. I think it might be kg, but I'm not sure. At some point we should go thru and standardize all the masses of our moveables and AI so that physics behaves like you would expect it. Right now our AI weigh about as much as a feather.

[Ishtvan]

@BT: The arrow with collisionmodel works great, except the origin should be at the tip of the arrow to be consistent with our other arrow, otherwise we run into problems with it sticking in too far, etc. Would it be possible to change that?

[BlackThief]

no prob:

http://www.people.freenet.de/darkmod/broad..._collision2.lwo

 

(btw is the rotation right? was just wondering, because the tip faces up)

[Ishtvan]

As long as the rotation is the same as the previous model you sent in this thread, it's fine. I think Domarius rotated its axis in the projectile code to compensate for the tip being up in the model.

[Darkness_Falls]

Sweet! I love how the noisemaker arrows bounces off walls and objects. Good job! I had one peculiar instance that was actually kinda cool. I was standing near a wall, facing it. I then barely pulled back on the bow to launch a noisemaker in to the wall and after the noisemaker bounced off the wall, it landed on its tip and was spinning on its tip (like a top), completely vertical, sliding across the floor for a foot or two! Heh, it was awesome to see. A bit unrealistic, but cool anyways. Not sure if it'd be a bug. It eventually lost spinning momentum and then fell over on its side and stopped.

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, I mentioned that in the other thread, sometimes it spins like a top. I didn't intend for it to do that. I'm not giving it any angular momentum, D3 physics is doing that all by itself after it starts with some linear momentum, bounces off the wall and hits the floor and hits so that it starts spinning for some reason. Increasing the contact friction would stop it from spinning, but that would also stop it from bouncing very far, because when it bounces it's in contact with the wall.

 

Actually, there is one fix I have yet to try: I think you can specify angular friction for an object, and I think it defaults to zero. I could bump that up a little so it would experience drag when spinning, and hopefully not spin up to the speed where it can spin like a top.

[Springheel]

Just to reiterate what's been said...definitely needs less reverb. It also goes on for quite a long time. Nice sound effect otherwise. I like that the AI respond when hit by one, though we should make sure in the model it doesn't have a pointy tip.

 

Don't know what has or hasn't been added, but I noticed it didn't frob, though I could pick it up.

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, I assumed it would have a rounded tip of some sort when putting in the damage value. That's also why it bounces off of everything and doesn't stick. Do we have a model for the noisemaker and gas arrow? I know Odd had some highpoly ones, but not sure if they ever got lowpoly for use ingame.

 

None of the arrows frobhilight, someone still has to put in that hilight thing in the material file. Don't know how to do that myself.

[Springheel]

Odd did high poly models of all the other arrows, but not the noisemaker. I'm not sure we ever even came up with finalized concept art for it--DF had something a while back, but I think that was for a different ball-bearing concept.

[Darkness_Falls]

Just to reiterate what's been said...definitely needs less reverb.

Yeah... I'll try and fix this tomorrow some time and post a revised sound in my sound thread.

 

DF had something a while back, but I think that was for a different ball-bearing concept

No, mine was more of a 'create a whirring noise in flight from its barrell structure.' The last pic in this post adopted GIMG's drill appearance to achieve this. I don't like the ball bearings thought, personally.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=11843

but we can figure out something. And my concepts inaccurately show an arrow tip. I forgot (or didn't know) they were going to need to bounce around when I made them.

[Darkness_Falls]

Update: Still working on the revised sound. Is taking longer than I thought it would. Won't be done today. It's not urgent anyways since a sound is already avail for testing purposes. I'll try to finish within the next few days.

[Ishtvan]

Btw, people have complained that the sound goes on too long. It's 30 seconds right now. How long should it go on? 20 seconds, 15 seconds? Keep in mind that with the planned AI and soundprop system, AI several rooms away won't know where it's coming from at first, and will get a better fix on it as they move towards it, as long as it's playing the sound. To work well as a distraction it has to play for some amount of time so the AI can home in on it.

[Springheel]

I think 15 seconds might be enough. Ideally, the thief wouldn't WANT the guards to actually find the arrow, just draw them away in that direction.

[sparhawk]

This is simply a decision that should be done on actual gameplay testings. Why do we need to tweak this right now? Any assumption that you make is most likely wrong until you test it in real game experience. You can set it to whatever you like for now and we should see what value it should get when we can start playing a map.

[Ishtvan]

I know, I just figured since the majority of people thought it was too long, I'd find out a value that might be better.

[Domarius]

Try for 15 for now I guess.

 

In T2 they never found the arrow, made it more useful, you could be certain they'd just be searching and not running around in alert.

 

Goodness knows how many times I almost gave up looking for it entirely because it's so slippery and dark and thin. Most people actually believed it dissapeared after you fired it That's how hard it is to find in T2. I like this.

[New Horizon]

Try for 15 for now I guess.

 

In T2 they never found the arrow, made it more useful, you could be certain they'd just be searching and not running around in alert.

 

Goodness knows how many times I almost gave up looking for it entirely because it's so slippery and dark and thin. Most people actually believed it dissapeared after you fired it That's how hard it is to find in T2. I like this.

 

I was going to suggest firing up T2 and just trying it to see how long it lasted.