Simple animals

[Springheel]

Looking great!

 

I figured you wanted a flying raven Springheel. Easy either way, both ways could be easy too.

 

I have yet to see an animated (nonscripted) bird that looks believable in a game. They always wind up 'hovering', where their movement is obviously not connected to their wingbeats. And birds don't turn ninety degrees like other AI, etc.

 

A scripted, 'take off and fly way up and disappear' animation might work; but it would be a matter of weighing the effort vs the benefit.

[jdude]

If you need texture pics for a cat I can get a couple high res pictures of my 2 cats. One is a bengal, looks like this:

http://www.catteries.org.uk/images/Bengal.jpg

The other is a short-hair and looks like this:

http://www.amazinggracecatz.com/sitebuilde...chausies040.jpg

just pm me if you need them.

[Crispy]

How's the rat coming along? Does he have any animations yet?

 

I'd like to make a start on ambient AI sometime soon-ish. Though there's plenty to do in the meantime of course. He doesn't need to be completely finished art-wise, just as long as some basic functionality is there; a scurry animation, maybe a rudimentary ragdoll (it doesn't yet need to be a stable ragdoll, not for my purposes).

[Baddcog]

Nah, I did the teapot today. Maybe I'll start riggin hm tommorow.

 

riggin and anims should be quick, it's the af, even a simple one that'll take time.

 

If you want him to move for sounds might be a week or 3.

---------

Probably would't hurt to havew some squeaks and footsteps ready though.

[Crispy]

OK. Take your time. I probably won't get to it within the next couple of weeks (at least) anyway.

[Ishtvan]

riggin and anims should be quick, it's the af, even a simple one that'll take time.

IMO no one will care if a small dead rat is stiff as a board, it doesn't really need a jointed AF. We could either use a death model with no ragdoll and rigid body physics, or use a very simple ragdoll that just consists of one body. Giant rats would probably need a ragdoll though, otherwise it would look weird with all of them but a small part hanging over a ledge and still stiff as a board.

[Baddcog]

I wanna shake em around by the tails though

 

What do we have to do for no ragdoll or rigid physics? We can set tht upfor now, worry about af later.

[Ishtvan]

Look at the lost soul from D3 as an example of an AI with no ragdoll. I think you just have to set "model_death". Not sure how you set up the rigid body physics for the corpse. Maybe they're the same rigid body physics as the living AI. Or you could set up a single-body AF, and look at atdm:ai_elemental_fire for an example of that.

[Baddcog]

Spent all day yesterday rigging and animating the rat.

 

Had some problems, spent at least an hour today trying to solve. Completely puzzled and frustrated.

 

A couple verts in front of neck are getting stretched out in front of rat. They are attached to neck but neck is in stationary position (right now only testing with blank anim frame-rat just standing there). Short of re-rigging I'm lost.

[Baddcog]

Just saw my last post. Damn, wish I would read it first...

 

The rat is up on SVN. It has a few anims, idle and walk. probably need redone, fussing with IK and probably should just ace the IK and do it manually. Good practice anyway.

 

He's got an Af so you can blow him up and grab him by the head or tail and swing him around.

 

I had been putting it off because I thought each joint had to have a body and was trying to make a simple AF. was pretty puzzled on how I was gonna make decent anims for the legs with one bone each.

 

After working on the spider AF I realized I could put alot of joints into one contraint body. He's got 3 which is probably more than he needs, but you can flop him around which is cool.

 

He's still wip but can at least be put in maps to trol.

 

I don't think he will ever have IK to climb stairs... just too small. way better than T2 rat though.

[angua]

Texture is missing, so he's black, but I really like the model. I think I will call him blacky.

I've changed the def so that he rather runs away instead of going into combat state.

 

Edit: oh, and that idle anim with him going on his hind legs is really sweet!

[Baddcog]

Alright , got the tex and material up. changed his path, I didnt't think about it when I put all his files in simple_animals, now they are contained in sub-folder /ratz

 

Finalized his af so you can't twist his head off.

 

Might revert to my old anims, I think they were better anyway, well, the one on his hind legs is better. I'd like to have them randomly cycle thru a few idles. So he'll sniff about for awhile, maybe walk some, get up on hind legs.

 

Anyone know how to set this up? Can you choose a frequency of randomosity? Would be better if he didn't get on hind legs too much.

 

Need to do a scamper anim also.

 

@angua, what did you change to make him run? I looked but couldn't really tell in the def, also in game he walked (towards player), now he just does the idle on hind legs. I do want him to run but I think that still needs work (at least walk away until I get a scamper anim).

[Springheel]

Might revert to my old anims, I think they were better anyway, well, the one on his hind legs is better. I'd like to have them randomly cycle thru a few idles. So he'll sniff about for awhile, maybe walk some, get up on hind legs.

 

Greebo posted how to do this, but it's on the [offline] wiki.

[Baddcog]

Ah, the offline Wiki

 

Actually, I think I'm gonna just redo them all now that I've had a little more practice. Currently he's a little buggered in the neck. I guess I shrank his head some at one point. Somehow that messed with the mesh and his neck sticks out in front of him some.

 

I fixed the vertex weights but now his head is a little far out front, got a long neck. anyways, he's still workable for maps, just needs some final tweaks and I gotta finish up the local map.

[greebo]

Greebo posted how to do this, but it's on the [offline] wiki.

Look at the tdm_ai_base.def. You can override the idle_animations and idle_animations_torso spawnargs in the rat's def:

// Animations affecting all channels (only applicable when AI is not walking, Itch will refer to both Torso_Itch and Legs_Itch here.)
"idle_animations"					"Itch,SniffArm,Cough"

// Animations only playing on the torso channel. Applicable anytime. (E.g. Itch will refer to AnimState: Torso_Itch)
"idle_animations_torso"				"Itch,SniffArm,Cough"
"idle_animations_interval"			"25" // in seconds +/- 20%

 

Unless you have experience in setting up the animation scripts already, you probably need help when getting the rat animation scripts running. Let me know when you have a set of idle animations ready for testing. We probably need a new scriptobject for the rat, deriving from ai_darkmod_base, and we need to define the rat-specific animation scripts there.

[Baddcog]

Yeah, me and scripting are like spaghetti and peanut butter.

 

In other words, no I don't have any experience setting up the anim scripts. Just looked at the Belcher script, I might be able to hack something but would probably be best just to have someone who knows do it if they have time.

 

Probably all we really need for behavior is cycling thru 2-3 idle anims so there's variety with a bias towards 2 more than the third. What I mean is 2 idle anims where the rat is on all fours snooping, sniffing that get played more often. Then one where he gets up on rear legs and sniffs the air playing infrequently, it's noticable behavior so I think it's best to keep it at a minimum, then when the player sees it it'll be cool instead of "why do the rats always stand up?"

 

Right now there is an af_pose, a walk anim, and 2 idles. one idle stands, one stays on ground so they are easy to tell apart.

rat_idle1.md5anim, rat_idle2.md5anim

 

Also for behavior, would probably be good to have some kindof of minimum distance to player when alert. Whether he walks away or scampers could be based on how close player is or just random. I still need to make a good scamper.

That way authors wouldn't have to make them trol. I did this in 3 mages tomb, it was basic and could've been better, but there was an AiObjectWatch link to the trol points, when the player got near one the rats would run to other points. Nobody noticed but I thought it was fairly natural behavior. Sometime a rat on a regular patrol is just weird, and I'm not sure how our patrols are set-up yet. Can we do the random trol?

That could be weird in Dromed too as it caused ai's to 'scrape' walls.

 

In fact all the anims will be redone, but I will keep the same names, so he is ready.

 

While on the subject of scripts, the lantern bot is pretty much ready to go also. Not sure what kindof scripting he'd need, but he does need a 'death' to turn off the anims and smoke puffs. I guess that could be scripted.

 

Also, I don't think we need specific torso/leg anims for either of these ai. They have both channels but fairly basic behavior, not like they are gonna sneeze or something.

[greebo]

I designed the AI code to support different types of Minds, so I guess it might be necessary to write a new RatMind class which models a very simplistic behaviour (idle or fleeing).

 

I will try to get it working with the existing classes first, though, as I don't want to specialise the code too early in development. If I branch off now, I might have to fix bugs in both Mind classes (the regular one and the Rat's).

 

Did you prepare the model definition already? I need to take a look at this guy first I reckon - I haven't even seen him in action yet.

[Baddcog]

Yeah, the model, anims, def and af are all set-up. The anims are rough and I had to reweight some verts, but that shouldn't matter to scripts eh? as long as new anims use the same names.

 

I wouldn't suggest going to far out of the way for the rat. I think the main thing that matters is that he flees rather than attacks and I'm sure your ai mindset already does that eh?

[greebo]

Yeah, the model, anims, def and af are all set-up. The anims are rough and I had to reweight some verts, but that shouldn't matter to scripts eh? as long as new anims use the same names.

Yes, that's enough - the code doesn't care about whether the actual animation changes over time.

 

I wouldn't suggest going to far out of the way for the rat. I think the main thing that matters is that he flees rather than attacks and I'm sure your ai mindset already does that eh?

Yes, fleeing is already done. We probably need to define a new AAS type for the rat and maybe check whether the current code is handling it correctly. I already have a "crazy chicken flee mode" as last resort for the regular AI working, maybe this is believable enough for the rat.

[Baddcog]

Now i gotta model a chicken just to see what happens

[Springheel]

We'll probably want some kind of generic "small animal" behaviour, for rats, cats, or whatever other animals we come up with.

 

I'm looking forward to test this out, but I have to ask...why rat"z"?

[Baddcog]

I dunno no!

[Springheel]

All he did was stand up on two legs and then back down repeatedly, but he still looks considerably better than the TDS rat.

 

Btw, I got a bunch of console warnings about things being assigned to multiple joints.

[Baddcog]

Yeah, I think I got the console warning fixed. I was missing one of these in the def -

 

you can see the other idle anim byt setting that to idle1 in the def. I think greebo's gonna work on making him flee the player.

He's got a walk anim too but it's rough. I've already redone the 2 idle anims and they are better.

 

Working on the walk anim, it's tough. Trying to find a chart of a dogleg walk cycle. I know someones gotta have one, just haven't found it yet.

[angua]

@angua, what did you change to make him run? I looked but couldn't really tell in the def, also in game he walked (towards player), now he just does the idle on hind legs. I do want him to run but I think that still needs work (at least walk away until I get a scamper anim).

The ai script switches between idle, walk and run based on what the ai should do, but since there is no run animation, the rat is stuck on idle. So what is needed is a run animation in addition to the walk animation. (although we could use the walk both for walk and run until the new anim is in place.)