Visible Player Hands Mod

[snatcher]

3 hours ago, jivo said:

Here's a version with animations for the lantern and the compass.

The addition of the compass and the lantern is visually and technically perfect, therefore congratulations once again and thanks for sharing you amazing work with us.

The original scope was to show the hands when the player was crouched and no other weapon was selected. It all felt very natural. The next logical step would have been to show one hand when the player is crouched and a weapon is selected. The hand hides when the weapon is in use. In order to keep things simple I wouldn't mind if leaning left or right isn't taken into account when holding a weapon.

Now we have a compass and a lantern independently of whether the player is crouched or not and when it comes to usability I am starting to get a little disoriented. Of course I don't know what your whole plan is and I am simply assessing what I feel with what we have so far.

[snatcher]

56 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

Hm, your latest version triggers the Windows 10 defender which claims it is a dangerous Trojan...

The executable is new and it is perfectly normal (and desirable) that alarms sound off.

I personally trust jivo.

[snatcher]

4 hours ago, jivo said:

Here's a version with animations for the lantern and the compass. Can anyone test it a bit, try to break the animations, give feedback, etc., before I update the moddb page?

Both items suffer from the same issue than this other initiative: Player Lamp (beta). When too close to walls the items disappear (it is more evident with the Lantern than with the Compass).

My understanding is that the only known solution is to integrate the item into the animation itself.

[snatcher]

I think these two new items don't work, at least in their current form

Lantern

Considering that I still can "hang it in my hip" (toggle lantern key) having the lantern raised is cool but a disadvantage. The only way this would work is by forcing the visual lantern in all situations:

Use lantern item when lantern is off:

1. Unsheathe weapon
2. Raise visual lantern and turn it on

Use lantern item or sheathe weapon when lantern is on:

1. Lower visual lantern and turn it off
2. Sheathe weapon

Compass

Two compasses on screen is an overkill. Having a static inventory icon would make the game more challenging and perhaps more immersive but I don't think there will be ever any consensus

[snatcher]

I don't want to discourage you @jivo eh! I fully support this mod I am providing the best feedback I can. You have something beautiful and powerful here.

[jivo]

7 hours ago, wesp5 said:

Hm, your latest version triggers the Windows 10 defender which claims it is a dangerous Trojan...

The original executable also causes that warning for me on a fresh game install.

Either way, I'll make a public github repo. That way, people can check what was changed and compile the exe themselves if they want.

[STRUNK]

I did'n get any warnings on win10 22h2. It works. Also the light and compass. Only thing is the needle is stationary so isn't really usefull.
Just tested it for a minute but I certainly like the idea and, althought it's still work in progress, it looks "natural". It could be a great addition. Thanx for developing jivo : )

 

[jivo]

5 hours ago, snatcher said:

I don't want to discourage you @jivo eh! I fully support this mod I am providing the best feedback I can. You have something beautiful and powerful here.

It's not discouraging at all, I appreciate you taking the time to provide feedback . I'm trying to understand some of your points better.

There's a priority order to what is shown on screen. From highest to lowest:

1) Weapon animations. If a "true" weapon is selected (like the blackjack, sword or bow), none of the animations that the mod adds are played. This applies if the player is standing or crouched. For example, if the player is holding the lantern while unarmed and then chooses the sword, the lantern will be put away and the sword gets unsheathed. With the sword out, leaning or having an item selected does not show the respective animations, just the original sword animations.

2) Item animations. If no "true" weapon is selected, meaning the current weapon is "unarmed", and the lantern or the compass are selected, it will show an animation holding the item. This applies if the player is standing or crouched, because it doesn't make much sense to me that the player would only hold the item while crouched.

3) Other animations (both hands in front, leaning, listening-at-door). These animations are played when the player is crouched and has no "true" weapon or item selected. The only exception is the listening-at-door animation which also plays when the player is standing, since I think it looks cool, but it still gets overridden by a weapon or item.

This is the system that makes the most sense to me.

7 hours ago, snatcher said:

In order to keep things simple I wouldn't mind if leaning left or right isn't taken into account when holding a weapon.

That's the current behavior, as I indicated above, unless something isn't working properly.

 

6 hours ago, snatcher said:

Both items suffer from the same issue than this other initiative: Player Lamp (beta). When too close to walls the items disappear (it is more evident with the Lantern than with the Compass).

My understanding is that the only known solution is to integrate the item into the animation itself.

I saw that this is an issue in that post, but I can't make the items part of the mesh because It wouldn't be possible to switch between them, as far as I'm aware. I don't know if this issue is unavoidable and it's not a high priority fix at the moment.

 

5 hours ago, snatcher said:

Lantern

Considering that I still can "hang it in my hip" (toggle lantern key) having the lantern raised is cool but a disadvantage. The only way this would work is by forcing the visual lantern in all situations:

Use lantern item when lantern is off:

1. Unsheathe weapon
2. Raise visual lantern and turn it on

Use lantern item or sheathe weapon when lantern is on:

1. Lower visual lantern and turn it off
2. Sheathe weapon

Can you clarify what you mean by disadvantage? The lantern is only shown if it is the currently selected item and a "true" weapon isn't selected (and same for the compass). Otherwise it still hangs in the hip regardless of being on or off and you can use the toggle lantern key like before.

[jivo]

23 minutes ago, STRUNK said:

Only thing is the needle is stationary so isn't really usefull.

Thanks for the feedback! Currently trying to make the needle spin

[snatcher]

20 minutes ago, jivo said:

3) Other animations (both hands in front, leaning, listening-at-door). These animations are played when the player is crouched and has no "true" weapon or item selected. The only exception is the listening-at-door animation which also plays when the player is standing, since I think it looks cool, but it still gets overridden by a weapon or item.

I noticed the standing listening-at-door animation! Very good addition. And also that hands don't shake that much now. Well done!

24 minutes ago, jivo said:

That's the current behavior, as I indicated above, unless something isn't working properly.

No, that sentence alone is out of context. Here is the full paragraph:

8 hours ago, snatcher said:

The original scope was to show the hands when the player was crouched and no other weapon was selected. It all felt very natural. The next logical step would have been to show one hand when the player is crouched and a weapon is selected. The hand hides when the weapon is in use. In order to keep things simple I wouldn't mind if leaning left or right isn't taken into account when holding a weapon.

And this is what I meant:

See, the value of this mod for me (so far) is that I can organically tell if I am crouched or not. I guess I got used to the lightgem indicators but your mod made me realize this alternative feels a thousand times more natural. And I love it. I would like to see some day the whole "crouched" idea fully realized.

Of course this isn't easy but perhaps you can find a way to have an extra layer on top of everything considering your hands don't need to interact with any weapon.

46 minutes ago, jivo said:

Can you clarify what you mean by disadvantage? The lantern is only shown if it is the currently selected item and a "true" weapon isn't selected [...]. Otherwise it still hangs in the hip regardless of being on or off and you can use the toggle lantern key like before.

Why would I select the lantern icon and obscure a third of my screen when I can simply press the "Toggle Lantern" hotkey and have the full view? Seeing the lantern is cool, yeah, but... is it any practical? What direction you think players will eventually take?

[chakkman]

On 12/11/2024 at 2:06 AM, datiswous said:

Here you go: video-on-google-drive

I frankly don't see the point. Nobody holds his hands like that in the real world. More of a gimmick than something useful, like in Thief 4.

Not meant to be a demotivator of any kind. Just my honest opinion.

Edited December 13, 2024 by chakkman

[jivo]

35 minutes ago, snatcher said:

See, the value of this mod for me (so far) is that I can organically tell if I am crouched or not. I guess I got used to the lightgem indicators but your mod made me realize this alternative feels a thousand times more natural. And I love it. I would like to see some day the whole "crouched" idea fully realized.

Of course this isn't easy but perhaps you can find a way to have an extra layer on top of everything considering your hands don't need to interact with any weapon.

Ah, I see. Thank you for clarifying. This would be awesome to have but I don't know how to do it, since each weapon uses it's own md5mesh and I don't want to mess with those. Perhaps two meshes can be shown at the same time?

40 minutes ago, snatcher said:

Why would I select the lantern icon and obscure a third of my screen when I can simply press the "Toggle Lantern" hotkey and have the full view? Seeing the lantern is cool, yeah, but... is it any practical? What direction you think players will eventually take?

I agree it's not really practical, I just thought it looked cool. I do intend to add a settings option to enable/disable the animations you don't want, as soon as I figure out how to do that

[datiswous]

I don't really understand why you would have the hands like that in view when you crouch, but not when standing up.

Maybe it's a balance stance.

[jivo]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

I don't really understand why you would have the hands like that in view when you crouch, but not when standing up.

Maybe it's a balance stance.

That's how I imagine it. And I have the same opinion as @snatcher that it's a good visual indicator of being crouched. But that's down to personal preference of course, not everyone agrees on that.

Edited December 14, 2024 by jivo

[MirceaKitsune]

I wouldn't go for something as overly complicated as trying to make the weapon and item hands interact, especially right now. For now it seems best to just show the empty / item hands (if enabled) if no weapon is selected or the existing weapon POV otherwise. Maybe later this can be further improved, right now I think it's good enough without, the priority is having this finished for all items in a way that's clean and customizable.

[jivo]

First two items completed. The compass needle spins!
Link to video: Lantern & Compass Finished

Edited December 14, 2024 by jivo

[MirceaKitsune]

35 minutes ago, jivo said:

First two items completed. The compass needle spins!
Link to video: Lantern & Compass Finished

It gets more amazing by the day. Just making sure: Are the lantern and compass attached as separate entities, with items having the ability to define the attached entity its offset and the hand animations to use? I'm presuming they aren't all a single md5 mesh: The attachment approach would be needed to support custom items, as nearly no FM author will change the hands to add each custom item to the mesh.

[jivo]

9 minutes ago, MirceaKitsune said:

It gets more amazing by the day. Just making sure: Are the lantern and compass attached as separate entities, with items having the ability to define the attached entity its offset and the hand animations to use? I'm presuming they aren't all a single md5 mesh: The attachment approach would be needed to support custom items, as nearly no FM author will change the hands to add each custom item to the mesh.

Yes, they're attachments. In fact, there's a problem currently where the items can clip through walls due to being implemented this way, and I've been told the only way to avoid this is by using md5meshes. But like you say, it's not very practical to do it that way.

[MirceaKitsune]

Cheers. I'm sure some way to add a custom Z-order or fix it another way can be found later, attachments are definitely the right choice. The bow does it too from what I remember when editing weapons: There's only one bow md5mesh, each arrow is attached to a special bone when selecting or firing that arrow. I'm strongly in favor of doing the same for the sword and blackjack to make them more customizable, but that's a different story for later.

[jivo]

Can someone help me out with an issue I'm having?

I added a cvar to tell when the lantern is toggled on or off but I'm trying to get rid of it because I think there's a way to tell purely through scripting.

The tdm_playertools.script has an object called tdm_playertools_lantern which has a member entity called lanternLight. In that script, lanternLight is set to null if the lantern is off and not null otherwise. I want to access lanternLight from my unarmed script but I can't seem to figure out how.

I've included the playetools script and tried to access the member entity by using "playertools_lantern.lanternLight" but it's always null, so I guess this is the wrong way to do it.

[MirceaKitsune]

I don't know the internal definitions well enough to answer with certainty, but based on general knowledge: If you can access the light entity attached to the player by the lantern item, you should be able to check if it's on or off. Try the getLightLevel script function, the documentation suggests its value should be 0 when off and greater otherwise.

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=TDM_Script_Reference#idLight

If that doesn't work you could set a custom key on the player entity, I did that for a couple of mods; It's a cleaner solution to using a temporary cvar, but less ideal than reading the light entity directly if you can do that. Try $player1.setKey to register it and $player1.getBoolKey to read the value.

[jivo]

1 hour ago, MirceaKitsune said:

If you can access the light entity attached to the player by the lantern item, you should be able to check if it's on or off. Try the getLightLevel script function, the documentation suggests its value should be 0 when off and greater otherwise.

Can't find the entity for some reason .

The code below compares the current icon to see if it's equal to the one that is used when the lantern is on, and it works. However, it's dependent on the spawnarg key being "inv_icon_on", which is what is used in the default tdm_playertools_lantern.def file, so not an ideal solution. Is this something that FMs usually modify?

if ($player1.getCurInvIcon() == $player1.getCurInvItemEntity().getKey("inv_icon_on")) {
	sys.println("ON");
} else {
	sys.println("OFF");
}

EDIT:
Nevermind, I figured out how to access the "lanternLight" entity. Works great.

Edited December 15, 2024 by jivo

[snatcher]

On 12/14/2024 at 5:51 AM, jivo said:

Yes, they're attachments. In fact, there's a problem currently where the items can clip through walls due to being implemented this way, and I've been told the only way to avoid this is by using md5meshes. [...]

An alternative is to have an extra animation that raises (ie rifle) or lowers (ie pistol) or pulls the item back closer to the body (ie lantern) when in proximity to a wall.

[wesp5]

I finally got around to test this and while I agree that this is a great way to show that you are crouching, it would only work if the other hand with a weapon is visible too, as I am pretty much holding the blackjack all the time so I would never see the hands.

Also I don't see any advantage for the visible compass and light. Sure, they look fine, but who is ever going to use them that way?

[MirceaKitsune]

1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

Also I don't see any advantage for the visible compass and light. Sure, they look fine, but who is ever going to use them that way?

I am! The advantage is they look good and this adds more realism and immersion, which I presume is the main goal.