Advanced Modding Help Required: Aircraft

[ZeroCore]

Yes, as the title says, I'm trying to figure out how to make an aircraft that can be flown by the player. At this point I don't care if it's like a helicopter (such as a Vertibird) or like an airplane (such as the Boomer's B29 Superfortress).

 

One more thing:

 

This may throw yet another monkey wrench into me ever hoping to get this done, but I do NOT want to use Fallout Script Extender for any part of this.

 

In short, here's the objective:

 

A flying, player-controlled airplane made as a mod for Fallout New Vegas WITHOUT the use of Fallout Script Extender (FOSE).

 

 

 

 

Also, I don't know if this will work, but I did have an idea of how to possibly get this to fly:

I was thinking that I could have a "cube" of water made of six square place-able water panels which stay in the same spot as the player inside the aircraft (and the player kept from drowning via the rebreather script from the rebreather item). This would enable the swim animations allowing the player to move about in all directions through the map; the water of course being scripted to move with the player and maintain a cube shape. The vertibird mesh would go over this and cover the player. The player could "land" the vertibird via a button inside this water cube which would move the cube and the vertibird back to a dummy holding cell and deactivate the flight-enabling scripts.

 

Just an idea, but the whole "moving water around" thing gets me worried that some script in Fallout New Vegas' code will throw everything off.

 

In addition, I'm trying to find out if there are any other ways to enable the 'swim' animations without the use of water in order to get the player to be able to fly. If anyone could offer some advice on anything that would help me through this very complex mod, I'd be more than happy to hear it.

 

 

 

In addition, if I can get this mod to work, I'll be making a youtube video tutorial on how to make an aircraft mod for Fallout New Vegas and possibly Fallout 3 in case anyone who dreams of flying in the world of Fallout wants to do the same, and I will give credit in the video to anyone who helped me on this endeavor.

Edited January 11, 2011 by ZeroCore

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Try looking at how the Presidential Metro works in Broken Steel. It is basically an armor that gets equipped on the player, then you get moved along the tracks.

[ZeroCore]

Try looking at how the Presidential Metro works in Broken Steel. It is basically an armor that gets equipped on the player, then you get moved along the tracks.

 

I get the feeling though that the metro object was built with an armor node in it, and if I tried to go ahead and just stick a vertibird mesh into an armor that I'll wind up with a malfunction.

 

Hmmm.... Now that I think about it though, I could just stick that sort of thing onto any old armor mesh and then make a script that places a vertibird over it.

 

Then again, the motions for the train are probably a hard animation, not a variable one; in other words, unlike the vertibird animations, the train ones are probably built into the train mesh and not an actual AI package which can be manipulated.

 

And that brings up another problem; getting the animations to coincide with the player's position and angle, and I doubt it's going to be as simple as a 'getangle' command. Even if I did start including things like cosines and tangent, and sine commands, I doubt that I'd be able to get it to play a variety of animations of that sort. On top of that, I think the flight paths for the vertibirds are, just like the metro, hard animations that are built into the mesh, not AI-package animations or skeleton-manipulation animations like you find on NPCs.

 

Interesting thought, but I have my doubts.

 

At this point, I think that trying to find a way to manipulate the swimming animations might be a better alternative.

 

 

 

And yes I just found something out about the Broken Steel DLC train: the train movement animation IS in fact a scripted animation. Yes, their is a train car armor, like you said, but the animation is hard-coded into the game as a camera view animation, and not an actual series of movements.

Edited January 11, 2011 by ZeroCore

[LtRhapthorn]

Using NVSE would make this project about a million times more accesable for modders to work on, as all (correct me if I'm wrong) vehicle mods at the moment rely on NVSE.

[simplywayne90]

Hmm, Well I'm no modder, as most forum frequenters know.

 

But as they also know I do tend to find "buried treasures" to help folks like yourself.

 

So I'll post a few things you may want to investigate as research for your idea.

 

Hoverchair

 

From Fallout 3 Just letting you know.

Animated Train Test -- Modder Resource This one seemed very promising, as the player was able to move around as the train moved, however the project is dead and finding out more about it requires a bit of work and persistance but I'd recommend looking into it.

Flyable Vertibird (Interesting Mod) -- Contact Author

 

Random threads and things for you to look into and glean a few things from, like the airships and models, as well as the idea for the Firefly ship Serenity.

Steampunk Mods, Airships Etc.

Halo Mod Resources

Halo Game Vehicals -- Modders Resource

How To Become A Modder Another thread of mine that may link to something helpful

 

My thread where I posted over 120 different modders resources and models that may be very helpful to you, or completely useless.

 

Models And Resources Thread

[TotallyNotToastyFresh]

Without NVSE? Heh. Good luck :biggrin:

 

Not sure why you wouldn't want to use NVSE though.

[ZeroCore]

Using NVSE would make this project about a million times more accesable for modders to work on, as all (correct me if I'm wrong) vehicle mods at the moment rely on NVSE.

 

I really don't care if all of the ones out there currently use NVSE. There should be some way to do without it.

 

Hmm, Well I'm no modder, as most forum frequenters know.

 

But as they also know I do tend to find "buried treasures" to help folks like yourself.

 

So I'll post a few things you may want to investigate as research for your idea.

 

Hoverchair

 

From Fallout 3 Just letting you know.

Animated Train Test -- Modder Resource This one seemed very promising, as the player was able to move around as the train moved, however the project is dead and finding out more about it requires a bit of work and persistance but I'd recommend looking into it.

Flyable Vertibird (Interesting Mod) -- Contact Author

 

Random threads and things for you to look into and glean a few things from, like the airships and models, as well as the idea for the Firefly ship Serenity.

Steampunk Mods, Airships Etc.

Halo Mod Resources

Halo Game Vehicals -- Modders Resource

How To Become A Modder Another thread of mine that may link to something helpful

 

My thread where I posted over 120 different modders resources and models that may be very helpful to you, or completely useless.

 

Models And Resources Thread

 

Thanks for the links, but I get the feeling all of these require NVSE to some extent. I could have a look through their scripts though to see exactly what each requires NVSE for though, and I can use that info to see what could be done towards making a flying vehicle without NVSE functions.

 

 

Without NVSE? Heh. Good luck :biggrin:

 

Not sure why you wouldn't want to use NVSE though.

 

I can feel sarcasm there, you know. >_>

 

And I don't want to use NVSE because I want people to be able to have, and make, a mod that will work with just the base NV.ESP file and doesn't require some sort of temperamental complex script add-on which screws up your system half the time and interrupts and conflicts with game clients like Windows LIVE and Steam. In short; FOSE= BAD and NVSE= BAD in my opinion. They're both too complex for their own good. Don't get me wrong, I like advancement a lot, especially software advancement, but I detest so-called "improvements" which become counter-productive and non-user friendly.

Edited January 11, 2011 by ZeroCore