187 replies to this topic

[Rabain]

As this progresses will there be some kind of guide for modders with regard to weapons slot animations.

Something along the lines of a table:

Animation You Want   --   Creature to Use  --  Weapon to Equip.
  Tricha			--   Goblin		--   Sword.  (just an example).

So by equipping a Sword on a Goblin you will get a Tricha in game.

Or does this now work some other way?

I ask because I'd rather see the animations availabe separately, instead of a 300+ mb download, when the modder might only want 1 animation. At least by following the outlined guide/table there would be less chance of modders messing up each others work if animations are installed multiple times by different mods.

Edited by Rabain, 07 November 2007 - 08:39 PM.

[Cuv]

Yes, that is essentially the plan. I doubt the Tricha will be on the Goblin slot... but yeah, that is the general idea.

I suppose that I had better start working on animation slot assignments to best incorporate everything wanted or needed. I agree... a 300-600mb download just to get the one animation you need is overkill. That is why I uploaded all the PST animation conversions seperately.

I will probably go ahead and upload groups next... grouped one slot at a time. Make an installer for each slotted animation that moves the others around appropriately and also equips the necessary item. I will most likely keep much of what Galactygon has already done.. alot of those slot assignments are logical.

Cuv

[Cuv]

Here is what I have come up with so far:

MWAV
	- Axe 		~ Wailing Virgin
	- Club 		~ MGHO Ghost
	- Dagger		~ MSH1 Ghost
	- Fail 		~ MSH2 Ghost
	- Halberd   	~ SM1B PST Shadow
	- Mace 		~ SM2B PST Greater Shadow
	- Quarterstaff 	~ SM3B PST True Shadow
	- Warhammer 	~ ? 
				- Sword					 ~ ?

To use the death animation, all the files need the exact same cycle and frames in the DE and DEE or the game will crash.



I've created a single death animation for all of them from the MSH1 ghost death animation trimmed down. It looks pretty darn good. Will try adding in the PST shadows to this slot... and that still leaves one or two slots here for something else that can use the same death animation.



I took another look, and all the following can certainly be combined into single slots using this same death animation method:

Wights... All 3 (Barrow Wight will need his own dedicated slot to use weapons)
Salamanders (2)
Orcs... all 3 basic types (Shaman will need his own slot... or combined with Seer
Goblins (4)

That just freed up 11 slots right there when it is finished.

Also figure to combine the IWD zombies... the two are virtually identical. I can add 3 PST zombies to the same slot, they are similar enough. Give them a generic death animation. Anyways... still brainstorming and coming up with plans. Just getting the Wailing Virgin sorted out greatly helps my RTW quest portion.

Cuv

[Chevalier]

What about the WoRmHole's beta-animations? Can anything be done with what he left us? I really want to someday be moving though a dungeon and come across a Gelatinous Cube!

[Rabain]

I will probably go ahead and upload groups next... grouped one slot at a time.

This makes much sense to me! If a modder was making a mod with ghosts...they'd get a lot of ghosts in one package. Orcs with Orcs etc...makes a lot of sense.

Just a question...if you are re-arranging existing game animations and assigning PST/IWD animations to those slots doesn't that mean all in game creatures would need to be modified at install too so that we don't see oddness with creature animations being swapped across the game world?

[Sir BillyBob]

I guess this goes to the issue of creating a "standard" (Linux users please close your ears )

Anyone who makes a mod using any animations outside of the "default" game should use this single source of creature animations. Anyone not using it (doing their own thing) needs to either state this in their readme or be forced to play ToEE and PoR endlessly (can't think of anything worse).

Seriously any time we make such a core game change that can affect many mods, your points need to be considered. There are definitely going to be players out there that see this, install it, and then complain on every game board about crappy mods. (heaven forbid the user be wrong).

[Kwiat_W]

Creating a script to basically do what the troll script does... with some extras. The script will cast a spell that changes Annah into an invisible rat... which then plays the dying animation sequence via a VVC... which then plays the dead animation. I am not sure how many VVC's and spells I will need... probably 8 of them each for each facing direction, then let the script check for directional facing and play the appropriate animation sequence. LOL.. it is making my head hurt... but it seems possible. Not sure yet how well it will play over the invis creature though.

Someone pop in and tell me right away if this is impossible to get aligned.. so I dont do too much work ...hehe. Might need more brainstorming.

Cuv

You need only one SPL and one VVC with Avenger's "cow on a rope" trick for each creature. And why do you need the rat? Wouldn't it be better to cast the spell and destroy the creature in the same script round? Although I'm not sure if you can use the cow trick with the animation played on a point and not on a target.

[Chevalier]

I love that you are working on making this all work!!!! A community standard for animations would be the BEST!

To make it work for the community, love or hate them, someone needs to make it work with TDD, SoS, TS-BP, CtB, BP, RoT, DSotSC, NTotSC, and SoBH. If not then it will cause lots of problems with Pre-Cuv's animations scheme Mods and Cuv's animations scheme mods. Unless you can create a patch that you can run after installation to fix conflicts.

[Cuv]

I love that you are working on making this all work!!!! A community standard for animations would be the BEST!

To make it work for the community, love or hate them, someone needs to make it work with TDD, SoS, TS-BP, CtB, BP, RoT, DSotSC, NTotSC, and SoBH. If not then it will cause lots of problems with Pre-Cuv's animations scheme Mods and Cuv's animations scheme mods. Unless you can create a patch that you can run after installation to fix conflicts.

I'll come back to the other questions.. but yeah Chev. All the other mods that currently port animations will need to be patched. WeiDU supports this and the patch can be run at the very end of all mod installs. There might still be some problems when the actual time comes to create such a patch.. but for the most part it should work and get ALL of them working together.

I have no plans any more to mess with the BGI animation slots... people who run BGT or TuTu would just hate me forever. Let's see how this progresses and what happens.

[Chevalier]

When the time comes I will volunteer to play test to see if there are any bugs.

[Cuv]

What about the WoRmHole's beta-animations? Can anything be done with what he left us? I really want to someday be moving though a dungeon and come across a Gelatinous Cube!

I will see what can be done. I already have plans to use the Ebelith giant spider animation... the others could be found homes also. Did Worm finish that Gelatinous Cube? If so, I will find it a home.

You need only one SPL and one VVC with Avenger's "cow on a rope" trick for each creature. And why do you need the rat? Wouldn't it be better to cast the spell and destroy the creature in the same script round? Although I'm not sure if you can use the cow trick with the animation played on a point and not on a target.

I will check that out. The reason you need a rat or other invisible creature is so that you can play the appropriate facing for the animations.. otherwise the body will always fall the same way and lay the same. If I am gonna try this, I want it to be fluid with the game. A rat.. still responds to script checks and his directional facing can be determined to play the appropriate animation. My early tests were promising... but it involves alot of scripting and many VVC's.

[Chronis]

Amazing Cuv, that combination of ghosts looks great and the death animation conveniently implodes giving you the added bonus of solving the vanishing body problem (for this set at least). Fantastic work

[Cuv]

Amazing Cuv, that combination of ghosts looks great and the death animation conveniently implodes giving you the added bonus of solving the vanishing body problem (for this set at least). Fantastic work

Thank you Chronis

Here is a screenshot of all Seven in the single slot. I still have room here for two more animations... anyone have any ideas? Might as well pack it full.



Will work on the installer for this after I get them all sorted... and have the installer do the moves of the existing creatures.

[Chevalier]

I had another thought about animations that don't need a death Animation, what about Mordenkainen's Sword and Hammer of Tyr could they be move to a better slot? At most they should just leave a sword or hammer on the ground (pickupable or not).

[Chronis]

I still have room here for two more animations... anyone have any ideas? Might as well pack it full.

The necromancer thing from NWN might go ok here.
http://forums.blackw...p?showtopic=981

I was just reading the tutorial on how to move NWN animations over to BGII. It looks more time consuming then the
torment -> BGII conversion process, but not terribly so.

If you run out of good torment animations to assign I would consider reserving the spaces for yet to be converted NWN animations.
I am sure all the NWN animations will get converted some day and there is nothing wrong with assigning a space to a cool animation that we know
can be imported.

In term of more weapon animation slots I wonder about the potential of shields, two handed swords, bows, and crossbows.

Edit: typos

Edited by Chronis, 08 November 2007 - 11:57 PM.

[Cuv]

Disregard help request.... not yet. (edit)

I've run into a problem and need debugging help. Anyone with animation knowledge willing to give me a hand with this?

Here is the problem:

MGHO - Club slot
MSH1 - Dagger slot
MSH2 - Flail slot

All three crash the game when attacked by someone outside the party... or attack someone outside the party... and occasionally when in the party (Ctrl+Q).

Nothing appears wrong with the other four animations in this slot.

Wailing Virgin works fine... and dies fine
PST Shadow works, attacks and dies
PST Greater Shadow works, attacks and dies
PST True Shadow works, attacks and dies

The see very little difference between the animations that work and dont work properly. The ones I made work ( ) , the IWD ones do not. So... it must have something to do with the frames in the cycles... or perhaps the IWD compression... Or maybe even the bam header. Will tinker with it. The problem only occurs when they attack or get attacked.

Edited: Nevermind... I just used Galactygon's versions from Bestial Animations... and at least the first one tested doesnt crash the game. The frame counts are different in his than the stock IWD versions.. so MGHO works fine in the Club slot afterall.

Edited by Cuv, 09 November 2007 - 02:17 AM.

[Cuv]

Hurray! They all work now. I also added two others to the slot for a total of 9:

MWAV
- Axe ~ Wailing Virgin
- Club ~ MGHO Ghost
- Dagger ~ MSH1 Ghost
- Fail ~ MSH2 Ghost
- Halberd ~ SM1B Shadow
- Mace ~ SM2B Greater Shadow
- Quarterstaff ~ SM3B True Shadow
- Warhammer ~ NWN Night Hag
- Sword ~ NWN Amel

This slot supports the sword slot... so I used it. The only conflict is MWAVSDE, but that is the death animation for Amel... it isnt played anyway, so no big deal.



Now to work on the three moves to free up those ghost slots.

[Cuv]

Its really hard to see any of those... so here is another pic with contrast and brightness adjusted so they can be seen better

[Kwiat_W]

You need only one SPL and one VVC with Avenger's "cow on a rope" trick for each creature. And why do you need the rat? Wouldn't it be better to cast the spell and destroy the creature in the same script round? Although I'm not sure if you can use the cow trick with the animation played on a point and not on a target.

I will check that out. The reason you need a rat or other invisible creature is so that you can play the appropriate facing for the animations.. otherwise the body will always fall the same way and lay the same. If I am gonna try this, I want it to be fluid with the game. A rat.. still responds to script checks and his directional facing can be determined to play the appropriate animation. My early tests were promising... but it involves alot of scripting and many VVC's.

I've just tested it and animations with setting "Play On Place Cast" are still being played after death of a creature and they keep appropriate facing.
Here's a proof...




On the first screenshot creature casts a spell and on the second one it's already dead but the spell animation is still being played. Single bam, single vvc, no rat, less scripting and corpses can be shown for hours.

[Cuv]

On the first screenshot creature casts a spell and on the second one it's already dead but the spell animation is still being played. Single bam, single vvc, no rat, less scripting and corpses can be shown for hours.

Hey, that could work alright. Thank you. Can you attach the two files you are using... or link me to Avenger's instruction?