Animations

[KnightErrant]

@Bwian
Don't know what the issue is with the weapon bone;
I don't ever do anything with weapon/shield bones in
the meshconverter or the animation utilities. I just put
them in .ms3d with zero offsets and read them back out
on the back conversion with the meshconverter. For the
animation utilities they just sort of occupy space but don't
ever get any data associated with them. I'll have to have a look
when I get back from vacation.

@All
Tried GOM's experiment: Here's the flying dwarves.



For some reason they are flailing a lot when they should just be walking
on air. Finally found a good use for convertcastotxt and converttxttocas.
Converted the walk anim to ASCII and just modified the bone_pelvis y values
and then converted back to binary .cas format and rebuilt the packs.

Anyway, long story short. The captain stayed on the ground and the
moment the lines met the dwarves descended and started fighting. Not
definative because of the captain issue but it appears the game is 2D
in collision detection; not 3D. Haven't tried the same thing against
a city wall but maybe tomorrow.

Will try to post a version 1.1 of the animationutilities before I take off.
User's Guide and Tutorial is done, just need to make some neat graphics of
the dwarves and tailed armored_sergeants for cover art and the gee whiz
factor.

[KnightErrant]

Ok, posted the latest version of the animationutilities here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=105527

Bug reports are ok, but let me know what you think of the
all-pervasive dragon theme in the User's Guide and the about
box of the Python script.

[zxiang1983]

haha, that means we can make a superman, lol? Wish they could attack ground targets.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hi KE

@All
Tried GOM's experiment: Here's the flying dwarves.

For some reason they are flailing a lot when they should just be walking
on air. Finally found a good use for convertcastotxt and converttxttocas.
Converted the walk anim to ASCII and just modified the bone_pelvis y values
and then converted back to binary .cas format and rebuilt the packs.

Could this be a clash with the bounding spheres, does it look anything like the infamous spider archers ? I banged the side of the animation utilities and gave it a stern talking to but the convert text to cas option stubbornly remains grayed out.

Anyway, long story short. The captain stayed on the ground and the moment the lines met the dwarves descended and started fighting. Not definative because of the captain issue but it appears the game is 2D in collision detection; not 3D. Haven't tried the same thing against
a city wall but maybe tomorrow.

Another way to tell is if they zig and zag while passing over a friendly unit, ie if the collision system is finding a path through a ground unit even though the other unit is above it.

Will try to post a version 1.1 of the animationutilities before I take off. User's Guide and Tutorial is done, just need to make some neat graphics of the dwarves and tailed armored_sergeants for cover art and the gee whiz factor.

As always, will look forward to your documentation.

Thoughts on 2d flying units - having the units as 2d takes care of one problem - what to do about mid air collisions and fighting, not realistic for two dragons to meet in mid air and immediately go to ground to fight. There is only one fight sequence available. Disadvantages, can not fly over an unfriendly unit, can not fly over city walls. Advantages - faster than normal mounts, useful on flanks or rear.

Suggestions - have all flying anims at a standard height, bit higher than an elephant so that air to ground and air to air combat will look realistic. Don't have the flying units land, just hover in 'idle', other wise when the mount goes into default it will land and wait while the riders duke it out, and then take off again, will also take care of any collision issues with large wings?

Just a few rambling thoughts.

Edit - @@@@KE - downloaded your latest utilities package but I got the following error when I tried to convert text to cas -



Edit2 - got it working, wouldn't convert text made by an earlier version

Just repeated the flying leap running experiment and yes the collision system is definitely 2d, flying creatures can't overfly enemy units, the collisions happen at ground level. Interesting what happens to the anims though, may play around with the bounding sphere and see what happens.

Cheers

GrumpyOldMan

[Bwian]

This pretty much mirrors what the situation was with RTW in terms of collision. The units there were 2D, and had no awareness of how high up they were. They reacted to walls in the same was as ground troops, and could only walk through open gates.

Combat animations were triggered when the units ran into each other, and whichever animation routines were normal for the unit would being.

I am not sure how M2TW would react if you fired arrows at a model translated up that way .... but if it uses the bounding sphere for that, then it may not actually be possible to hit the airborne unit at all... I suspect the bounding sphere has not gone 'up' with the model! Whilst the game may be able to cope with hills .... I think only the terrain is used to modify the height of the unit.

[zxiang1983]

Is it possible now to bring wagon fort to life? Is there any hardcode limit to prevent people doing so?

I think using this wagon fort may be relatively a little easier:


Let the crossbowmen push this wagon as a ram. When using this wagon in battle, first let crossbwmen step on to it--this must be the most difficult part.
After that, they can use the normal crossbowmen animation.

About the stepping_onto_wagon animation, maybe we can use the climbing ladders animation? Also we need a stepping_off_wagon animation.

[Bwian]

I don't hink mounting and dismounting would be possible. They are outside the scope of the game mechanics when it comes to anything other than siege equipment.

You could make the unit move as a 'mount' with a crew on board. The elephant, for example, could probably be replaced by the cart mesh, and the descr_skeleton entries replaced with animations from the cart to make it roll if movement were needed. The 'crew' would be the elephant riders.

The crew would have a nasty tendancy to shoot through the wood of the wall... which is a bit naughty but unavoidable... and the AI behaviour of the unit would be a little 'bizarre' but there is no reason something couldn't be done.

[zxiang1983]

Thank you, Bwian!

So I suppose it would be better to make the wagon fort unmovable? because otherwise we need additional units to push it, which would be difficult to implement. And some thing more is that when in battle, we need to roll the wagon by 90 degrees to let its side face the enemy, which would be difficult as well.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hi Zxiang

Thank you, Bwian!

So I suppose it would be better to make the wagon fort unmovable? because otherwise we need additional units to push it, which would be difficult to implement. And some thing more is that when in battle, we need to roll the wagon by 90 degrees to let its side face the enemy, which would be difficult as well.

No it wouldn't be feasible to have this sort of setup but I do remember that somebody here or at twcenter had got the warwagons in game using another siege engines skeletons.

Edit:- Have a look at http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=82549 now we have the mesh converters and more information on skeletons and anims we may be able to come up with a more stable fix.

Because I'm interested in eastern European warfare, I've been looking at a horse drawn warwagon as an elephant. Still early days yet.

Cheers

GrumpyOldMan