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Archer grabbing bow from off their back


Ishtvan

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Question: Is the bow AI going to need his own walking and searching animations too?

 

We'll have to just try it and see. Since the bow is held in the left hand it could quite easily clip into things that another weapon might not.

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Considering we don't want to do code changes. Is there any reason we don't want to have the animation for aiming and firing also include drawing and notching another arrow? ...and what about for the combat_draw_bow as well since it goes into the combat_bow_idle stance?

 

bed time, night...

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I think, if anything, the animation should *start* with drawing an arrow, and end with firing. We don't want the archer to automatically draw a new arrow every time do we?

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According to Ishtvan, there is no code for separately drawing arrows. Currently I have a combat_draw_bow animation that goes into the combat_bow_idle, but does not draw an arrow. Therefore when the A.I. shoots at you, he technically hasn't even drawn an arrow yet. But i was initially going by your descriptions on the animation status sheet, forgetting what Ishtvan said about the previous way not accounting for any bow draw, which he said looked ok. But, since i assume there is some time between shots, we might have time to simple add in a reloading animation into the firing animation. Im going to upload my current combat_bow_aim_fire_reload animation right now so you and Ishtvan can evaluate it for timing between shots. It is unfinished, I had planned to add in a little bit of animation for notching the arrow similar to notching style seen in the youtube videos i had shown, also other things. After the fire, the bow hand is almost completely un-animated, its just doing its own thing.

 

As far as whether an arrow draw should come first or last when its literally in the same animation as the fire, i think it should come first. Imagine the player running perpendicular to the archer running out, then back behind cover, repeatedly. By the time the archer loaded his arrow the player might be hidden again. Also, an archer searching for an unknown dark entity ( the player) in a dark passage, alone, with no arrow notched for quick self-defence seems unrealistic.

 

As you will see, the combat_bow_idle has the AI's hand on the bow string, ready to pull. However, the combat_draw_bow doesn't draw an arrow, just the bow. So i could animate in a arrow draw there too, then everything would be in sync visually.

 

What exactly is the time between shots currently?

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I don't know what the time is currently set to. I never set up the archers myself, I think either ascottk or greebo or angua was the last to look at it. We can assume that it might vary with the skill of the AI (drunk milita archer vs. professional mercenary archer), so the fastest it could be is whatever is humanly possible.

 

As for the arrow aspect, I seem to recall that our old archers just had their bows in their hand, no string modeled, no arrow modeled, then would go thru the motion of drawing back their bow and firing (which launches an arrow at you), wait a while, do it again. I'm not sure how much detail the animation has to go into in terms of taking the arrow from the quiver and nocking it before they fire each time. How did Thief handle that?

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Not sure about T1 and 2, T3 handles it horribly. It maintains aim at the player and reloads arrows, yet warps back into a previous idle state for a second just before firing. Yuck.

 

Hopefully greebo or angua can add input then. For now i'll upload the existing combat_draw_bow.ma (which doesn't draw an arrow) and combat_bow_holster as well and we'll go from there i guess. Im also going to try and convert them to md5anim's.

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T1/T2 AI don't draw arrows from their back neither.

 

I will adjust the code to whatever animations you're uploading. (As I wrote above), I'd like to see the complete motion split up into separate anims, so that the code can do the timing (ideal solution), but if we just want to get the job done as quickly as possible, I'll go with one single anim (quick solution). I wouldn't care too much about the arrow not being visibly drawn for the quick solution, this is something we can do in the ideal one.

 

Short story: your current approach is fine for now, I guess (the combat_draw_bow + combat_bow_holster).

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Oh sorry, I wasn't sure who's direction to take, but i thought Ishtvan was doing all the combat code and you didn't bother responding to him up there. Let me know how it looks and what we need. I could also add on an arrow reach during the combat_bow_draw and holster.

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I'm getting an "unexpected internal error message" using exportmodels command. Someone else is going to have to convert them, grrrr.

 

Figured it out, and uploaded the md5anim files and also updated the proguard.def file with the 4 bow anim lines, im not sure if that was needed.

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Go to any map (e.g. test/walk or test/idleanims)

 

Pull down the console:

testmodel tdm_ai_proguard

testanim YOUR_ANIM_NAME

 

The testmodel will cycle the anim then, but make sure the anim is declared on the modelDef like this:

 

anim idle models/md5/chars/guards/proguard/idle.md5anim

 

See tdm_ai_guard_proguard.def, lines 76ff.

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Im getting an error loading the idle anims test map after inserting my converted anims and changing the def, but im not sure its related. I hope the md5 converted ok this time... ugh. Just in case they don't its probably a good idea to tell you i forgot to load the Maya files into Maya 7 and re-save before i uploaded them...

 

I'm working on the draw bow animation right now, i forgot I hadn't accounted for the newer bow_idle.

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Have you integrated the new bow animations yet? If so, if there a combat map with bow A.I. so i can see them in action?

No, these things take quite a bit of time and I've been working on the failed KO code up until now. Haven't had much time for any AI coding the past few weeks. Maybe tomorrow, let's hope.

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I updated the bow_holster animation. The attachment frame (to back) is 20 now.

 

For the bow_holster its frame 15 when he grabs it.

 

EDIT: Also, should i put it on my to-do list to do the bow animations the way you asked? If you think you or someone will eventually get to it, I'd like to do them. Actually, its so easy to cut the animations, i'll just make them unless you interject.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finally, Noisycricket, your anims are used by the archer. You can start tweaking the anims, if you have time.

 

Go to test/archer and use this:

 

notarget

spawn atdm:ai_guard_archer_01

 

Then hit him with the blackjack, which makes him angry - then you can see that the right hand position in combat_idle_bow animation is slightly off.

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I actually modeled a bow with no string for use by the AI, so that the animation wouldn't have to be perfectly placed (and it wouldn't be so obvious they aren't drawing the bow). Is it possible to swap the stringless bow when it gets attached to the hand?

 

(the animation looks excellent, btw)

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Thanks, but there is some serious data compression going on, both my drunk_idle and bow animations look sort of stunted in the game. For the drunk idle, its actually not a bad thing, but i think i'll be making the bow anims a little more pronounced.

 

I spawned the archer in the test/idle_animations map (that group of A.I. is very territorial apparently :D ) and made some noises on the ground with the blackjack around him. He went into his alert state, then back to his relaxed state normally, except the bow remained in his hand. Not sure if that is intented or not, because all the animations that played were did not cause any bow clipping, but perhaps that was just a coincidence.

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  • 2 months later...

I just finished separating the bow animations into their proper segments. The reload still occurs within the fire animation, which i think is a good thing since there is going to be a plenty of time for it between shots. I'll be uploading them soon.

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