Animators: read this! And a complaint against CA.

[Duke John]

There is a bug in the importer/exporter that will cause your units to not form up correctly when you have exported the march loop animation.

I am animating for NTW2 and I am using the LID_03 March loop.cas file to animate the infantry. I had completely edited the set only to discover while testing a square formation that units are not forming up correctly.

This is what should happen:

A group formation has been edited to make 4 units form square. 3 units reach their destination all right while a fourth is partly not formed up right:

Not quite right, but acceptable as a few seconds later the 4th unit reforms and a perfect square is formed.

Now the only change I make is importing LID_03 March loop.cas and exporting it again without any edits. Then I pack the animations and restart the game. The unit now fails to reach their destination and an unit on its own remain a mess. On top of this units also do not form up correctly when drawing them out in a line or just moving them.


It probably is already known by all animators, but to be safe; turning animations cannot be touched as it causes the soldiers to get into a loop of constantly turning.

Perhaps Vercingetorix will make a fix for this. But the bottomline is that CA should have had the decency to release their model/animation exporter if they advertise their game as moddeable. They haven't released even a single tool, besides the battle editor that was locked for the public in previous versions.

And I would strongly advise anyone who has big plans for modding M2:TW to wait till CA has released a model/animation exporter.

CA,

If any of you are reading this I would ask you to release the model/animation exporter you used for R:TW. We are wasting alot of time trying to figure things out and are still facing problems with animation and models. Problems that would not exist if we had an official tool.

If you no longer have this, then I would ask you to keep this request in mind for M2:TW. The modding community has given TW loads of free advertisements in the form of dozens of modification reviews and we would love to do that for M2:TW but we do need the very basis of creating mods and that is a model/animation exporter.


Cheers,
Duke John

[Lord Adherbal]

can't add much other then: I agree

if it wasn't for Vercingetorix we'd still be stuck with skin mods. So much for that "if RTW had a middlename, it would be moddable".

[wlesmana]

Most animators are already clamoring about this ever since the flipping bug days. Other bugs are death animation corpse placement and the 45 degrees turn animations.

[SigniferOne]

Duke John, yes this problem is well known. From what I have found, the script does not properly work on the Walk loops, Run loops, and animation that go to and from walk/run loops (e.g. idle to walk). So we're just waiting for Verc to fix that.

The flipping bug has already been fixed, looks great.

[Vercingetorix]

The animations have always had problems from day one... It's something I need to fix, but I haven't gotten around to it. I don't think there's much point in continuing to beat CA over the head about modding this game. Yes, CA failed to deliver the level of moddability that we had hoped for, but by now I think they know we were all disappointed. No need to continue to spite CA at every chance we can; we should try to build a relationship that promotes understanding between CA and us. We need to get CA on our side

[wlesmana]

Vercingetorix> while we're on the subject, in case no one has reported this bug: there is a bug with 0.79 exporter where exporting the death animation of an elephant will start off with the wrong vertical height of the scene root, thus they will start dying and stay dead floating in the air. This bug does not appear in 0.69, although in 0.69, the final resting spot of the corpse is slightly to the left of the death animation (a scene root problem too I guess). I can provide the exported files of both if that could be of help.

Thanks!

[fallen851]

The animations have always had problems from day one... It's something I need to fix, but I haven't gotten around to it. I don't think there's much point in continuing to beat CA over the head about modding this game. Yes, CA failed to deliver the level of moddability that we had hoped for, but by now I think they know we were all disappointed. No need to continue to spite CA at every chance we can; we should try to build a relationship that promotes understanding between CA and us. We need to get CA on our side

It is pretty sad that we have to "promote understanding" between CA and us. CA should have been on "our side" from the beginning, in fact, there shouldn't have ever been another side, we paid for this game. This isn't a relationship between two people, this game is buisness for them.

Thus the only thing we can do is not buy MTW-II, that will "promote understanding" that when CA disappoints, it doesn't get money, because if we didn't pay for their games based on their disappointments, they would change the way they support them, or fail as a buisness.

[Vercingetorix]

Sure, that is certainly an option. After all, it worked so well for the BI boycott... Don't get me wrong, CA depends on us the buyers of the game. However, they do not depend on us the modders of the game.

[Duke John]

Boycots are not going to work and I will buy MTW2 no matter the modding support. But I do not like it how CA acts as if they have given support to the R:TW modding community and plan to do likewise with M2:TW. If the big bosses do not approve releasing inhouse tools than dare to say so upfront instead of making empty promises.

[fallen851]

Boycots are not going to work and I will buy MTW2 no matter the modding support.

This attitude is exactly the problem.

Oh well, go out and buy MTW2. Just don't complain you weren't warned and file complaints about it similar to the ones seen in this thread. You will be part of the problem then, and will only have yourself to blame.

And forget trying to establish a "relationship" with CA.

[wlesmana]

I won't be boycotting M2:TW either. But I sure as hell won't even try to mod it until CA released proper tools. The problem I had with RTW is not their lack of support but their CLAIM about how moddable RTW is. They can ignore modders all they want, as long as they never made claims it's easy to mod and waste modders' time by working on it then keep finding hardcoded walls. They never even released a list of hardcoded things.

I do understand that support for modders is an option to CA, not an obligation. We paid for the game to play it, not to modify it. I'm sure if you license their engine they'd be more than willing to modify it to your liking. But I'm also sure that would cost a hefty sum. So the only thing I'm asking of CA is to either release proper modding tools if they made claims how moddable M2TW is, or just don't say it's highly moddable.

So when M2:TW hits, I'll be buying it as a player, not a modder.

[Lord Winter]

This attitude is exactly the problem.

Oh well, go out and buy MTW2. Just don't complain you weren't warned and file complaints about it similar to the ones seen in this thread. You will be part of the problem then, and will only have yourself to blame.

And forget trying to establish a "relationship" with CA.

A boycott only works if you have numbers on our side. We are the minority not the majority.

[player1]

In comparasion, Firaxis released their own 3DMax (6 and 7) export tool to format that unit models in Civilization IV use.

And SDK is on the way...

[fallen851]

A boycott only works if you have numbers on our side. We are the minority not the majority.

Stand up for what you believe is right, even if you are standing alone.

[Stuie]

In comparasion, Firaxis released their own 3DMax (6 and 7) export tool to format that unit models in Civilization IV use.

And SDK is on the way...

Having gone off to play Civ 4 for a few months and now returning to the RTW community, the stark difference between the developer/community relations for the two games is glaring. Firaxis has been most accomodating to modders requests, helped in part by some of the best Civ 3 modders actually getting jobs in-house at Firaxis (alexman and Trip from apolyton for instance), thus ensuring that Civ 4 was that much more moddable from the ground up.

It is just plain laughable that RTW's middle name was once said to be "moddable". Yes, there's a lot that can be done with the game, but the constraints left in place are too limiting. Given the track record, I'm expecting more of the same for MTW2. What a shame.

[Geoffrey S]

The problem with RTW in particular is two-fold: on the one hand it has a number of glaring errors (siege bug, confused AI), on the other hand CA don't make it possible for modders to improve the situation in any significant fashion.

I agree with those who want CA either to make their next game moddable, or not claim it is such at all. False promises have no point at all.

[Bwian]

Additionally, Relic released a SDK for Dawn of War, allowing model export from Max. Same with Battlefield 2. In fact, for that title they relesed a full editing package. It can be done.

The sad truth, however, is that modders only buy a few games. If you look at how many regular contributors there are on modding sites, and compare that to the number of units that get sold in total for any moddable game, the impact of mod makers on sales is negligable.

Where modders DO help a game company, is in the longevity of their product. It maintains interest in a title after the casual gamers have 'beaten' it, and gives the makers time to get a sequel together. Definitely of value these days, since the bulk of big-sellers nowadays are 'franchise' games, rather than new titles. Big money investment follows a proven success.

The flipside, however, is that all us modders keeping people playing old games may mean that people won't be out buying a new game so soon!

There are pro's and cons to game makers supporting modders, but at the end of the day, I can't see CA releasing a comprehensive modding toolkit. It's not going to increase sales, and it won't make Sega happy.

If they DO make one.....we need:

1) Plugins for Max import/export for mesh and animation
2) A reliable animation packer/unpacker
3) The ability to make NEW skeletons not just alter old ones.

Key element would be reliability. Vercingetorix has done a lot of work to give us tools, but he is working without complete knowledge and that never helps!

[Cesare diBorja]

I think the idea is to make the game completely moddable. Or else it is just a bad fix for an otherwise addicted community. It is Just-Over-Broke(job) thinking that has gotten every part of our society nowhere the last 100 years. If you are going to sell a moddable game, make it truly moddable. I am tired of 'lemons'. Complete support with tools especially when you are setting $60 market prices, I have bought two games with expansions. $120+50, ok, I have a bike for the same amount and the company values my patronage with free service for three years. I am at want for nothing for this vehicle and get all I need to repair. Hope you get the analogy.

Lost in thought and reading about the Luddites

diBorgia