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Characters switched to new skeleton


Springheel

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I've reworked the citywatch to be used with the new skeleton. There are still a few tweaks to do (like lower the pauldrons) and I haven't done the shadowmesh yet, but he's basically ready to be added to the game.

 

How should we handle these switches? I could just replace the current entity names with this new model, though that has the potential to mess up maps (for example, if you were using a sitting citywatch, and the new skeleton doesn't have a sit down animation yet).

 

I could add the new citywatch under a different name, like citywatch_new, or something, and then switch names when the animations have caught up (of course, that would mess up anyone using the new names).

 

Any preferences? I lean towards the first option, personally.

 

(old citywatch on the left, new on the right)

post-9-1242950541_thumb.jpg

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I like the first option more, otherwise we end up with duplicated entities and a big mess.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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(old citywatch on the left, new on the right)

 

The right one doesn't seem to have a shadow, is that the new Vampire Citywatch? :D

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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and I haven't done the shadowmesh yet
:)

 

Ok, I'll go ahead and replace, and if there are any specific problems, people can petition Noisycricket for a placeholder animaiton.

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All of the combat animations.

 

Domarius has uploaded several already (I know they're working because the citywatch attacked me already). The draw/sheath animations, plus the following, are already being used:

 

anim combat_idle_sword models/md5/chars/guards/proguard/combat_sword_idle.md5anim

 

anim melee_attack_RL models/md5/chars/guards/proguard/combat_sword_attack_left.md5anim

{

frame 15 melee_hold

frame 16 melee_attack_start melee_weapon slash_rl

frame 19 sound snd_swing

frame 27 melee_attack_stop melee_weapon

}

anim melee_attack_LR models/md5/chars/guards/proguard/combat_sword_attack_right.md5anim

{

frame 15 melee_hold

frame 16 melee_attack_start melee_weapon slash_lr

frame 19 sound snd_swing

frame 25 melee_attack_stop melee_weapon

}

 

anim melee_parry_RL models/md5/chars/guards/proguard/combat_sword_parry_left.md5anim

{

frame 6 melee_hold

frame 5 melee_parry_start melee_weapon left

frame 7 melee_parry_stop melee_weapon

}

}

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I know several combat anims are there, I'm referring to the ones that aren't there yet:

 

Attacks: overhead, thrust

Parries: All of them

 

And yes I'm serious, we want to test combat on the new skeleton as soon as possible so that if any bugs turn up, we have plenty of time to fix them. We can't really test combat with them until they have at least all of the parries. The attacks are slightly lower priority (we can do some tests with an incomplete set), but we want to give them all the attacks eventually, too.

 

@Noisycricket, you might want to check where Domarius is with these particular animations, so that you guys don't accidentally do the same work.

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Great! If you can, please try to match the combat animations on the old skeleton as closely as possible. Those animations went through a lot of feedback and revisions based on gameplay considerations. There's a lot of crucial factors like the total number of frames, frame at which they stop the back-swing and swing forward, frames it takes them to bring the parry across their body, frames it takes them to recover, exact position and angle of the sword, etc.

 

The only exception is the thrust parry on the old skeleton. That one still doesn't look quite right aesthetically, so if you can improve on it, go for it.

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@Springheel: I think it makes sense to let the citywatch inherit its model definition from the proguard, or vice versa. Right now, we have to add a new md5anim file to each character separately, which can be simplified by letting all of them inherit a shared modeldef (for characters sharing the animation set). The actual mesh can be overridden of course.

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There will be animations like idle_adjusting_belt that will have to be different for each character.

This shouldn't be a problem, you can override these if the inherited anim is not fitting. At least that's the theory how I imagine the "inherit" stuff to work on modelDefs.

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@Springheel: I think it makes sense to let the citywatch inherit its model definition from the proguard, or vice versa. Right now, we have to add a new md5anim file to each character separately, which can be simplified by letting all of them inherit a shared modeldef (for characters sharing the animation set). The actual mesh can be overridden of course.

 

Yes, that's what I had in mind. But remember there's that issue where the characters all show up as a proguard in the editor if I do that, which will confuse mappers (and makes skin choosing difficult). Are we okay with that?

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Yes, that's what I had in mind. But remember there's that issue where the characters all show up as a proguard in the editor if I do that, which will confuse mappers (and makes skin choosing difficult). Are we okay with that?

Hm, seems like we need to get this feature into DarkRadiant then. But I agree that it will throw mappers a bit out of the loop - I'm not sure. I'll think about it.

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Did you ever manage to get that "inherit" command to work for you, Springheel? I tried to set up a replacement model block tdm_ai_citywatch which inherits the tdm_ai_proguard declaration - this works, but as soon as I override the "mesh" declaration, the citywatch cannot move forward anymore, he's just moonwalking on the same spot.

 

model tdm_ai_citywatch
{
inherit		 tdm_ai_proguard
mesh			models/md5/chars/guards/citywatch/tdm_ai_citywatch.md5mesh
}

 

Btw, I could fix the DarkRadiant side of things, the code already supported the "inherit" keyword, the issue was that "inherit" always used the mesh of the inherited model. This is fixed in the next release.

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Great! If you can, please try to match the combat animations on the old skeleton as closely as possible. Those animations went through a lot of feedback and revisions based on gameplay considerations. There's a lot of crucial factors like the total number of frames, frame at which they stop the back-swing and swing forward, frames it takes them to bring the parry across their body, frames it takes them to recover, exact position and angle of the sword, etc.

 

The only exception is the thrust parry on the old skeleton. That one still doesn't look quite right aesthetically, so if you can improve on it, go for it.

 

Are the previous animations your refering to those from the model_src/citywatch_mb folder? I can't open the .fbx files, i hope those aren't them. They look like placeholder animations, the parry_overhead for example simply has its IK arm moved up and its body moved just slightly.

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I don't know about the model source folder, but they are the old citywatch animation files as defined here:

	anim melee_attack_RL		   models/md5/chars/guards/citywatch/combat_attack_left.md5anim 
{
	frame 15	melee_hold
	frame 16	melee_attack_start melee_weapon slash_rl		
	frame 19	sound snd_swing
	frame 27	melee_attack_stop melee_weapon
}
anim melee_attack_LR		   models/md5/chars/guards/citywatch/combat_attack_right.md5anim 
{
	frame 15	melee_hold
	frame 16	melee_attack_start melee_weapon slash_lr
	frame 19	sound snd_swing
	frame 25	melee_attack_stop melee_weapon
	// old melee system:
	// frame 15	melee melee_sword_rswing_base
}
anim melee_attack_Over		  models/md5/chars/guards/citywatch/combat_attack_overhead.md5anim 
{
	frame 15	melee_hold
	frame 16	melee_attack_start melee_weapon overhead
	frame 19	sound snd_swing
	frame 25	melee_attack_stop melee_weapon
}
anim melee_attack_Thrust models/md5/chars/guards/citywatch/combat_attack_thrust.md5anim
{
	frame 15	melee_hold
	frame 21	melee_attack_start melee_weapon thrust
	frame 22	sound snd_swing
	frame 25	melee_attack_stop melee_weapon		
}
anim melee_parry_RL models/md5/chars/guards/citywatch/combat_parry_left.md5anim
{
	frame 6	melee_hold
	frame 5	melee_parry_start melee_weapon left
	frame 7	melee_parry_stop melee_weapon
}
anim melee_parry_LR models/md5/chars/guards/citywatch/combat_parry_right.md5anim
{
	frame 6	melee_hold
	frame 5	melee_parry_start melee_weapon right
	frame 7	melee_parry_stop melee_weapon
}
anim melee_parry_Over models/md5/chars/guards/citywatch/combat_parry_overhead.md5anim
{
	frame 6	melee_hold
	frame 5	melee_parry_start melee_weapon overhead
	frame 7	melee_parry_stop melee_weapon
}
anim melee_parry_Thrust models/md5/chars/guards/citywatch/combat_parry_thrust.md5anim
{
	frame 6	melee_hold
	frame 5	melee_parry_start melee_weapon thrust
	frame 7	melee_parry_stop melee_weapon
}

 

Is there any way another animator could convert the fbx files into somethig you could view, or view the md5 versions?

 

If you want to tweak them so that they look aesthetically better that's fine. I'm just saying the basic mechanics should stay the same. For the parries: How long it takes to put up the sword, the exact position the sword ends up at, how long it takes to recover back to the idle position.

 

For the attacks, all that stuff is important as well as the exact path and angle of the sword during the swing forward portion. The mechanics of their arm moving the sword could definitely be improved aesthetically, but the sword position/angle should stay in the same place as the old animations whenever possible.

 

There is already a problem in that one of the left/right attacks holds the sword as a different angle than the Builder holds the hammer in that attack, causing it to miss crouched players. I'm not sure if this is an inconsistency between old and new animations, or just how the hammer and sword are modeled, but I'd like to avoid more stuff like this because it just creates more work on stuff that's already been done once.

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I added parry_high and parry_thrust with the same timing as Dom's parry_right and left. I've been trying different ways to get those md5anim's into Maya all day with no luck. Since your using the word "exact" a lot for the attack anim's, sounds like i'd better leave those to Domarius.

 

However, as of right now, I see the following .mb files in the proguard_mb folder:

 

attack: left, right, overhead, thrust

parry: high, left right, thrust

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Okay, maybe those are Dom's WIP versions? I don't know. They haven't made it ingame yet.

 

Thanks for doing the parries, I'd say those are more important right now anyway. It's not so bad if you can fight them and they don't have all the attacks, but if they can't parry all of your attacks, you can't really gameplay test it.

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I'd create .md5anim files for you to test with, but i can't get setup to properly convert yet.

 

The positions of the sword in the parry anims i made are only guesses, just so you know. I'd be happy to get them closer when I see the previous versions.

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Okay they're all in, the tdm_ai_guard_proguard.def file is updated with the combat info for each anim... however when I try to test it in game with testModel tdm_ai_guard_proguard, I get "Can't load tdm_ai_guard_proguard.ase"

 

I committed my changes anyway... I vaguely remember this error, I think it's something simple...

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