Dragons

[DrakeTheDragon]

Hmm, interesting. Well, I for one achieved quite satisfactory results with using OBSE's "velocity" related functions for making me fly. Granted, there's a significant barrier due to physics not working on a character while still on ground, but once put into air, either through jumping or scripted positioning, the motions achievable through the velocity manipulation functions are pretty reality-like. My gliding flight approach is completely based of off them... although I had to remove atmospheric and aeronautic calculations from the core, as the Havok engine doesn't work realistically enough for a science-based gliding flight approach it turned out.

 

It's weird you can apply an upward velocity of 1000 miles / sec to your character and nothing will happen while still on ground, but if you jump and do it then, "hello, orbit, here I come"! And with velocity (an all-directional force) every kind of motion is achievable easily. Ballistic curves, jumps, downward dives, gaining speed by diving and using it for gliding upwards again after some time, hell, even loopings were possible that way. It was just physics and math, my element, after all.

 

But one of the very useful advances of using the velocity manipulations is that collision and stuff is already taken care of for me. Not using "SetPos" makes clipping with the environment as unlikely as it is while walking around.

 

Too bad work on this concept completely stopped like a decade ago. The flight I was able to show off in some videos so far was actually really enjoyable and life-like to me.

[Pellape]

Sound so cool. Jumping? I did test some levitation spells but I only move in Z, up and down. The one provided in Morroblivion did work nice first time I tried it but suddenly it only accepted me to move up and down, not forward or backward.

 

Levitation was very useful in Daggerfall really as the dungeons really required you to levitate but you could also climb up the walls 90 degrees and you did had a special skill called Climbing. If the hole was in the middle of the ceiling, only way to reach it was to levitate.

 

I should try the levitate spell again, jump and then cast it to see if that may solve anything?

Edited May 31, 2022 by Pellape

[RomanR]

To DrakeTheDragon:

In fact I was never that ambitious, I just want to enjoy my view from above or to reach some ledge in a cave which normally take minutes of walking through half of it. Havoc is also one of the oldest physical engine not spending much resources, but also quite inacurate. I remember playing Painkiller, where iron barrels often flew like some gummi balls. And Oblivion is also totally unprepared to flight. Seeing collisions planes roughly edited or even missing (because normally you couldn't reach them) gives hint that developers didn't took flying into the account. Besides my script for flying is already 926 lines long, so it's close to max length limit and the most complex math used is parametric equation of circle.

 

To Pellape:

I'm not sure if it helps, it seems the xy axis is problematic, not z.

[Pellape]

Well it might be so. The game is not made for flight and the main reason is the cities. In Morrowind and Daggerfall, we did had open cities. Bethesda had to skip it as they did realise open cities would not work for Oblivion. As we all know, some got very upset over this and made open cities and they night work fine today. I do not know as i never tested them as that might conflict with other stuff, even if many modder's did make 2 versions of their mods, one for the original and one for open cities. I will not make any versions adapted to open cities for sure as that was not meant for this game nor Skyrim.

 

Just look at my house. i did divided it into 7 cells already, which i did not need to when I see it today, as it is so optimised now and have a very high performance but that was not the case when I started with it. Maybe i could remake it now to a single cell even? No way, I will keep it as it is.

 

I do agree with you that flying is nice but not vital. i can live without it really. We have TCL. TCL + TM makes my game to crash when I take screenies. I sometimes survive it, but mostly I do not.

 

Morrowind? I guess we can even add the interiors to Vivec today, without any impact on the performance, making it completely open if we want too. Or any interior really, making each city into a one single proper cell, both interiors and exteriors. ;) Skyrim has a couple of houses that works that way but with a texture replacer, you will loose the performance immediately- They do look good but add 30 books inside a book shelf in such an open home and you will die the LAG death.

[RomanR]

Velocity commands ... I will surely test them, when I will have more free time. Thanks for a tip, Drake. But enough of this. I would like to ask - what's like to be a dragon? What's the dragon's mindset? Maybe we get some interesting answers while we have the living one present here.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, I'm not the dragon, I only created some. And my dragons aren't exactly absolute canon compared to others' dragons either. But given enough free time I could easily talk about "my" dragons without an end. Or let them talk, to be more precise.

[RomanR]

Yes, of course that you're not real and only presenting as one. Still, do you have some plans for finishing or at least updating your dragon race? Is the lack of free time really only one problem? I suggest that at least updating to V52 Robert's bodies and some more used female ones (TFF didn't get past 0.5 beta) would be nice. If not, well, I think that I must live with it.

[DrakeTheDragon]

The plans intentions are still there. (Whenever I told of my "plans" in the past, never anything came of it later.) I just wasn't able to get to it again so far in those past 10 years.

 

My "current" (if you can call it that) version of dragon models already was created from Robert's V5, I think. But I remember running into some discrepancies between my models and certain modded clothing/armor models in the past, so I'm not 100% sure which exact iteration of his models I last used for mine. But I also already started over with the female body meshes made from Robert's Female in fact. I know it's not HGEC, but it's a model base far easier to work with in regards to texture mapping, stretching, distortions and stuff, even as my original start TFF.

 

Sadly though the current (or latest?) state of my models didn't yet make it into a really releasable state either. Still so much to do and absolutely no time away from work for doing it.

 

 

And just for reference, compared to the current/latest remade from scratch versions of all my dragon models and textures the ones publicly available through my releases are to be considered mere worthless junk at this point.

[RomanR]

Maybe, but I still like them - the models fit nicely into my conservative look of Oblivion and I quite like their half-animal design, even in this unfinished form. And I'm happy to report that your tip really helped me much. As I had some free time on Saturday and implemented these commands, my dragon flies as was indented regarding collisions at last, so thanks again.

 

Well, that's about all I wanted to ask or be courious of, so I think I leave this thread to Pellape again. Goodbye Drake. Besides where that mischievous Pellape ran off anyway?

[Pellape]

I am still around, reading your conversation. :) I do not have anything to add to it, except this of course. :D

 

I am making books, so I am not bored... ;)