Question for any weapon animators out there.

[mindboggles]

I'm looking to give a completely custom creature (well Claptrap actually) the ability to use all playable weapons. Normally for creatures the weapons are imbedded and it's just a case of a short animation sequence and calling a few text keys, but I've been looking at _male animations for equip etc. and notice that there is a whole bunch of hanger on controllers, yet when I look at some like the super mutants and the Zeta aliens their animations are pretty minimal. I'm wondering if most of them in the _male animations are there solely for the player and I can forget about them for Claptrap?

[Fallout2AM]

Everyone should use the animgroups in the folder of their skeletons, so _male is only for human actors. However you can convert them.

[mindboggles]

For each animgroup ( one handed pistols the worst offender) there's a bunch of controllers which seem to be very specific (weapon specific) and I'm wondering when I make my own sets of weapon animgroups that I can ignore most of them hoping that they are for the players benefit only. Many of them for the 1hp animgroup are references to Euclid's C-finder and That gun, etc. and are mainly visibility and texture controllers.

 

Actually I suppose I should ask the question for anyone who's used a MZ alien as a companion if they can use a variety of different weapons? Might help me narrow in on it since their animgroup files have precious little / no reference to these controllers.

[Fallout2AM]

I don't know how it works for creatures, since I always looked at actor's skeleton mainly. But for humans actors, both prefixes, suffixes and headers are hardcoded, I found them all loaded in memory. You should stick with the existing ones and couldn't add new ones, so everything you can do is a replacer. I managed to make a custom localized per gender idle animation, but it was just a lucky smart exception, I couldn't think to any other exceptions like this. When you use a file name which is not contemplated, it will be taken in consideration based by its header, it will replace the "real" animation file with the same header if its file name is more on top (alphabetical order), vice-versa it won't be considered if it's on bottom. If the file misses, or the header is invalid, a valid one will be checked inside some specific subfolders (i.e. \female)

 

However I understood you are working with a creature, so you shouldn't have problems in this, you can do whatever you want since the skeleton can be localized in whatever path you want. The visibility controllers are often used because the same animation handles different weapons.

[mindboggles]

Creatures are the same, they use the same prefixes, file names, etc. but are usually less complicated than humans and only have a one or two weapons. If I do end up needing those extra controllers I can always copy and paste them in later.

 

If you want more idles you can always create them as special idles and introduce them under gameplay along with conditions, I'd need to look at the Deathclaw more but IIRC it does something like that and can switch from the mtidle to the special idles.

[Fallout2AM]

 

If you want more idles you can always create them as special idles and introduce them under gameplay along with conditions, I'd need to look at the Deathclaw more but IIRC it does something like that and can switch from the mtidle to the special idles.

 

I already do that, but it's not the same than mtidle. If you work with animations you know what I mean.