Playable Fallout Mech

[jesterskull25]

 

 

No, havn't had a chance to even fire up the geck, NV or blender this week. RL is keeping me jumping.

 

 

Dont let TitenFallout Jump Out Without us........

 

(I don't really mean that, I just saw the joke on a boring day, Shoot me.)

[Skyviper086]

For a new look see if you can use the armors from the shogo industries mod... they look like Gundams already.

 

http://static-3.nexusmods.com/15/mods/130/images/50829-2-1373112577.jpg

[jesterskull25]

I suggested this already, but we need shogo approval I think, I tried contacting him, no responce.

 

But I found this in his images, he might have been doing his own plans.....

 

http://static-1.nexusmods.com/15/images/130/1176798-1379171665.jpg....not really

[jesterskull25]

Oh lord....the invasion has begun...

http://static-3.nexusmods.com/15/images/130/1176798-1380141716.jpg

[devinpatterson]

Oh lord....the invasion has begun...

Huh....interesting.

 

I'll see if I can contact him.

 

I think this evening I'm going to start working (time permitting) a hand weapon (gauntlet), a arm canon (see pic below), a rail type weapon, a shoulder mounted weapon and a melee weapon.

 

The hand weapon is fairly self explanatory, energy weapon that fires from the hand.

 

This pics demonstrates a arm canon based on Primantis's Mantis zero suit;

 

Pic;

 

 

http://static-3.nexusmods.com/15/mods/120/images/7038-1-1245311445.jpg

 

 

 

A rail type weapon would have half of the weapon supported/running along the forearm (attached slightly above it), but extending another half again as long past the elbow. The melee weapon I see as a using a modified plasma caster prong (2 pronged, flattened), to "pop out" past the hand and also will be glowing with plasma energy.

Pic;

 

 

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110209020630/fallout/images/b/be/PlasmaCaster.png

 

 

 

The shoulder mounted weapon will be a missle/rocket weapon and/or a shoulder mounted machine gun, since that's what we have the animations for.

 

I anticipate the tedious part will be lining up the projectile and sighting nodes with teh dummy models. The plasma blade will be the only weapon that is equipped in the standard way and will not have a dummy model. Instead it will "appear" when equipped via a hotkey. I'm hoping with the right sound effect it might pull off a credible illusiion of it being something akin to being spring loaded. It won't be a persistent weapon (unless we want it to be), but will rather "retract" as soon as another weapon is equipped.

 

The chest canon and eye lasers will probably be in a future version, not too interested in working on them now. But essentially they will probably have no animation but rather used a projectile node and fireWeapon. We might just end up with one or the other (laser sight or chest canon) unless we can figure out how to enable and disable the nodes separately (we want only one in the model when the function is called, the eyes or the chest, not both).

 

So if we're going to set up a larger weapon system that other mech models might take advantage of we need a system/framework for the various weapons to fit in with their own advantages and disadvantages. The first I'd suggest is that physical ammo weapons (shells, rocket, missles) have a built in, limited ammo capacity, but energy weapons don't necessarily. So I'd suggest either making them weaker or using a script similar to teh recharging pistol (you only get so many shots then it takes some time to replenish ammo).

[jesterskull25]

Putting auto turrets on the side is kinda a good design choice tactic wise, design design wise might just hide it under something like a sphere and shierk it and put it around the head, it would be like certain gundam models.

[devinpatterson]

Putting auto turrets on the side is kinda a good design choice tactic wise, design design wise might just hide it under something like a sphere and shierk it and put it around the head, it would be like certain gundam models.

I really don't see *fully functioning* auto turrets any time in the near future. If you want them as non animated, "window dressing", sure no problem, I can plop a few on the model.

 

For functioning turrets it would require some new attack KFs (at least attack KFs and preferably others as well, even idles, to reinforce the illusion). We'd also end up having to use a custom skeleton and animations, which is no bueno. So hat's not going to happen any time soon.....even if I knew how to do it.

 

An alternative that might work would be to attach a projectile node to a model of the turret and fire it via script (fireWeapon), just like the the eye laser or chest weapon. The turret itself would have no animation (read movement, aiming) unless I got incredibly lucky and found a bone (that I could associate the vertex group with) that would move in some manner at least close to the movement of a turret. But we'd still have to juggle the associated projectile nodes if we have the eye and chest weapons.....which is a mess. They couldn't be used with an equipped weapon as the fireWeapon function would default to the weapon and we can't redo the animations to make the projectile node jump around from point to point (turret to eye for instance). And even if we could, we'd end up having to use a custom skeleton and animations, which is, once again, no bueno.

 

We might try some strange hybrid weapons like a laser visor, turret weapon, chestplate weapon etc that can be equipped, fired and unequipped on a single hotkey press (we don't want any "drawing" animations even though the weapons won't have a proper model, rather the dummy models will be persistent). And while that would be a hack to allow us to equip a projectile node where we want, I don't know if any attack animations & grips will be low visibility enough not to be noticed (don't want your hand sticking out like your holding a pistol everytime the laser visor fires).

 

So long story short, I suspect the process above will be too convoluted and we'll end up with just one projectile node (laser visor OR chest weapon OR turret) that *could* be applied to a single non animated turret, at the loss of the laser vision.

 

Upon reflection though, I think the chest weapon might be able to use the attack animation of the shoulder mounted weapons (rocket, missile and shoulder mounted machine gun) if I can find a non nondescript grip to swap out.

 

We'll just have to see how things develop, this is somewhat uncharted territory and I'm sure plans will change as we begin experimenting.

 

There is the (incredibly slim) possibility of a hack/cheat, but is a real hail mary pass;

 

1. Pinning a functioning turret to the mech via script like I did with squawky (the raven video on post 112) would create collision problems if it's very close or right on the armor. Not to mention a few turrets is no small drain on the PCs resources. So that's not likely to happen soon (if ever).

 

Or

 

2. The FONV game engine *may* (I believe it probably does) recognize two special nodes called ActorParent and EntryPoint. These are used for mounts in Oblivion. They could pin a model (the player) to another model (the mount), but no one has cracked their code (with teh possible exception of Invalidfate) for fallout to use them in a traditional way......much less for the convoluted from we'd need (the player being the mount, and the turret the rider).

 

The caveat is, this is all limited by my personal knowledge of the subject.

[devinpatterson]

Also on the mech "to do" list we should probably list all perks that would affect the mechs DT, movement and other stats so that we can remove them from the player on entering the mech (ie equipping the armor, they will be restored upon unequipping the armor). We dont' want those personal physical perks of the player to influence the mech's behavior. *But* it's possible that certain perks that are more like training\skills may translate into piloting the mech.

 

An example of some perks that should be removed would be things like rapid reload, toughness, quick draw etc. But some perks could arguably be skill based and have no physical component, like finesse, ninja or laser commander. I suspect we'll have some very differing viewpoints on how each of us see perks in regard to skill/training vs physical.

[irswat]

id love to do some scripting :-)

[MarchUntoTorment]

In that case, irswat, you'd probably be best off setting up a script to remove/add the perks and such. And maybe draft a few scripts for ideas for how existing perks could affect the machine.