devinpatterson Posted January 11, 2015 Author Share Posted January 11, 2015 Number 1 sounds like the most practical, as long as the useless rendering could be avoided. I tend to think so as well (being the most organized/practical) for the mechs in general. I'll do some research but I do believe he game engine stil renders it all, then changes the visibility so they don't show in game. But for the human mech we'll probably just use armor addons. is there any way to disable an objects renderer? I have little to no experience with GECK scripting, so bare with me :wink: though I have some programming experience. Well with the disable function references are not rendered, but that is on a object ID, not a piece or part of a model. In nifskope method #1 (niVis controllers) our pieces/parts are going to be separate nodes and we don't have any real access to them via script. I think oblivion does have something (nifse) that can do something like that, but no love for fallout. However since we're using the human skeleton/actor we have more options (and don't have to worrry too much about it) and we can use mixes of weapon meshes rigged as armor along with meshe-less weapons in combination, for equipping various pieces of equipment (whether weapons or damaged body parts) as easy as equipping a hat. Options that wouldn't be possible (or at least without a lot of extra work) on a non human models. So for example say we want dismembered hand, it's as easy as equipping a invisible gauntlet with a robot meatcap at the end (so it shows the fragments). If option 2 or 3 is the way to go, would it be possible to have every part as a separate nif file, rigged. Then just equip those parts to the mech skeleton. Yeah we can rig armor addons (with and without mesheless weapons) and take them on and off by script (as in the above paragraph), which would work best with option #3 (you wouldn't really need it for option 1& 2 but it doesn't preclude it with any of the options, and they can be used in combination). Those armor addons can be as little as a pinky finger or as much as a whole suite/outfit/armor. They can certainly be divided up into separate parts like (foot, calf, quad, forearm, upper arm, torso, part of torso, head, weapons etc etc.) and of course they will still be rigged. We have pretty limited options if using the body slots to manage what bumps what (since only one items can be in the same body slot). But that doesn't mean we can't mange them via script...it's just a lot of tedious bookeeping in script, if we go that way (and we'll have to if we want to be able to micromanage the model). Anyway the upshot is that we're not in bad shape for our mech, the humanoid mech. But when we start making non humanoid mechs (quadruped, scorpion tank etc) we're going to be forced back into one of those three options because they don't have the luxury of equipping items like a human actor does. If we just want to get out this mech as a priority, then we can rely on the typical traditional method of armor addon's supplemented by some meshless weapons for armaments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devinpatterson Posted January 11, 2015 Author Share Posted January 11, 2015 OK gotta run, but I'll try to check back in this evening when I get home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
irswat Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 As far as I can discern using GetActorValue we will be limited to Torso, head, right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg, so no need to break it down to small. I don't think the engine is capable of returning right pinky, left big toe, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devinpatterson Posted January 12, 2015 Author Share Posted January 12, 2015 As far as I can discern using GetActorValue we will be limited to Torso, head, right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg, so no need to break it down to small. I don't think the engine is capable of returning right pinky, left big toe, etc. Sorry, what is this in ref to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imu333 Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Just to be 110% sure, the mech should look like the regular enclave armor, or the "deformed" one seen on first post? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devinpatterson Posted January 12, 2015 Author Share Posted January 12, 2015 Just to be 110% sure, the mech should look like the regular enclave armor, or the "deformed" one seen on first post? Oh your not constrained by either look. I just whipped that one up quickly so we had a working model to test out some stuff on. Feel free to put you own artistic spin on it. Ideally we are looking for something that; 1. has the look of a mech, with heavy industrial or military styling to emphasize it's role and 2. is as far from any of the existing models in the game as is practically possible (while still retaining a human skeleton) in order to enhance the immersive experience of a vehicle instead of armor. Plus we'll probably have more than one, so feel free to try out different variations and wander down different artistic avenues. I think for the large mechs, we may add the ground shake SFX (when it's moving) if it's not too annoying. Might be a nice little touch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imu333 Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Oh neat, I though you were going to use the enclave :tongue: I'll start on the concept tomorrow! Make something worthy of putting in my portfolio :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devinpatterson Posted January 12, 2015 Author Share Posted January 12, 2015 :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
irswat Posted January 13, 2015 Share Posted January 13, 2015 (edited) As far as I can discern using GetActorValue we will be limited to Torso, head, right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg, so no need to break it down to small. I don't think the engine is capable of returning right pinky, left big toe, etc.Well I'm not 100% certain but I think as far as a damage module script, I will only be able to detect collisions with head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg, so adding any other pieces many actually be counter productive. correction None -1 Torso 0 Head 1 1 Head 2 2 Left Arm 1 3 Left Arm 2 4 Right Arm 1 5 Right Arm 2 6 Left Leg 1 7 Left Leg 2 8 Left Leg 3 9 Right Leg 1 10 Right Leg 2 11 Right Leg 3 12 Brain 13 Hand or Weapon 14 Hehe this is from my own post some time ago. That's how rusty I am. DevP, suppose we have a shoulder mounted missile upgrade, is it possible to rig the upgrade to the shoulder in the same way that you 'rigged' the crow to the dudes head in the one video? This is possible by script alone? Any chance I can take a look at that script whenever you have time? Edited January 13, 2015 by irswat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devinpatterson Posted January 13, 2015 Author Share Posted January 13, 2015 As far as I can discern using GetActorValue we will be limited to Torso, head, right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg, so no need to break it down to small. I don't think the engine is capable of returning right pinky, left big toe, etc.Well I'm not 100% certain but I think as far as a damage module script, I will only be able to detect collisions with head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg, so adding any other pieces many actually be counter productive. Yep, but it's *not* counterproductive to rig parts in a more granular method. For instance, even though the right arm received damage it doesn't have to look the same each time. For example, maybe dismemberment is the hand, or the forearm and hand, or the whole arm. Maybe it's just a large gaping hole in the forearm with an electrical effect. Lots of variations, for 100% limb damage. We just throw a bit of a random factor into the mix and we get more realistic damage effects. Smash the same two cars into a wall at the same speed and each may deform differently just based on angle, differences in build quality and pure chance. Our random factor is the game's equivalent of that. Something else we can do is to swap in and out limbs that are rigged differently. Suppose we want an arm to be non functional, not even the crippled animation, just completely dead, no violation of it's own at all. Well we can rig that models meshes to another vertex group like spine1 or something and it's just gonna hang pretty much straight down. It's no longer connected to the bones in the arm.....it's dead, dead. Anyway a lot of stuff we can do to really F up our mech in battle as it heroically continues the good fight. Maybe if peeps like it we can feed some of these tricks back into creatures. It might be fun to see a SM behemoth loose a arm and come at you in a frenzy. And certainly it should be a viable possibility for all bots to loose certain limbs but continue to function.....in a less optimum way of course :wink: And it doesn't have to be done in a particular encounter. I don't see why there can't be some bots missing a limb, they lost two centuries ago, but continuing to putter along to the present day. Adds a bit of color to the same old vanilla bots. A protecrtron with a damaged (or no) dome, a hole in it's torso or a missing arm, etc, has character, and would be a more memorable encounter :smile: Plus their "brain" in on their back (for protectrons and some other models) so they can get by with some missing parts. Anyway, I digress.... For weapons it's just as important. Some may be rigged to the forearm or hand, some to the upper arm, shoulder etc. Sword like spikes along the back of the upper arm, missle launcher on the forearm, etc etc. Mechs sort of have that bristling with weapons, thing going on. So if a specific part of the arm is determined to be destroyed via our getRandomPercent, we'd like the weapon attached to that bone and further "downstream" to be affected as well. In other words blowing off the hand cannon may leave a weapon on teh upper arm unaffected, for example, but blowing off the whole arm means unequipping all the weapons on that arm, and changing their models (to reflect the damage as would be appropriate). So they need to be modular/granular for fine control of these type of manipulations. DevP, suppose we have a shoulder mounted missile upgrade, is it possible to rig the upgrade to the shoulder in the same way that you 'rigged' the crow to the dudes head in the one video? You definitely don't want to do that. The rigged model of a rocket luancher is virtually 0 work for the game engine (maybe a fraction of a precent or 1 percent for the cpu's usage in a typical game scene, with a model of modest polys). But the script is very cpu intensive, trying to simulate the game engine with moveTos, aligning angles via trigonometric functions etc each frame really takes a toll. In addition it's not "tight" so changes in elevation or movement can trip up the script for a few frames or more. We only want to use it if we have too. Ie non biped mech (read non human skeleton) models for the player to pilot. This is possible by script alone? Any chance I can take a look at that script whenever you have time? Yes only by script, I used Illyisms's rideable creatures script as a base. I'll see if I can't locate it for you. I had a crash, but I'm hopeful it's on the hard drive somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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