Dragon City Mod

[ihateregisteringeverywhere]

*Elaborate - 1 ~ (on / upon sth) to explain or describe something in a more detailed way: [v] "He said he was resigning but did not elaborate on his reasons." * [vn] "She went on to elaborate her argument."

 

In laymen terms: I understood buggerall from that line o'yours ole pal ole mate, it would be roit out nice if you could explain it, savvy?

[QQuix]

Are you sure that if we make the airboat a mount that it will retain it's full colision detection?

I’ve been trying to fly things for a couple of weeks and probably didn’t try all the alternatives.

What I figured so far is that are two ways of doing it: either the subject moves by itself (player, creatures) or the script moves it (inanimate objects).

 

In the first case, the script provides an invisible virtual road and the creature walks on it, keeping all the collision the game engine provides. If the player is riding it, you can maneuver it as a horse (W,A,S,D keys and some additional keys for up/down).

 

In the second scenario, the script moves it somehow and the engine will just do it, even if the target location is inside a solid wall.

 

I wouldn't know, I never actualy tried to jump on a horse to see if I could walk on its back. Also if you indeed do make it a mount, then it won't be able to hold things like doors and suchlike.

Any other object on deck (hopefully not many) could be moved to the right position as the ship moves around; I am not sure if it will look good. They may look kinda ‘shaky’ when the ship-creature is hitting a solid object. An alternative would be to move them to some hidden cell when the player mounts it ship and put them back in place when the player dismounts.

I also had this strange idea, how's about having the steering wheel work as a mount, the rest would be static that would move and face the same way the "mount" would. The static could be removed and recreated after the player stops steering. You know, it WOULD be strange if the whole ship had a horseshoe icon when you aim at it.

 

Can be done, but collision would work only for the wheel and player. Meaning: if you go head on thru a wall, most of the ship will be inside the wall by the time the wheel/player collide with the wall (assuming the wheel is way back on the ship)

 

Another possibility that just occurred to me is to make an invisible, box-shaped creature surrounding the ship. The creature would walk/run on the virtual road and the script would keep the ship inside its boundaries. Not sure if it would look good. Not sure how the engine would react, in a frame by frame basis, to a ship inside a creature. Maybe it would be shaky.

 

Yet another one. A completely different approach: make the ship an activator and it would be the virtual road. The player would walk/run on it. The script would keep the ship under the player as the player turns/runs/walk/stop/etc.

 

Lots of possibilities.

We would have to try some/all of the alternatives to see if any turns out good enough. If you guys are willing to build and adjust the necessary objects along the tests, I will do the scripts.

 

PS: Some screenshots to illustrate how the virtual road works (a visible vanilla Iron Gate and an invisible road Triforce built)

 

[tyreil829]

how did you come up with that?

 

Jack Sparrow

[QQuix]

Trial and error! (and lots of frustration with many dead ends)

[ihateregisteringeverywhere]

Another idea I had was to remove the airship model while steering it almost completely except for the parts you could see from such a viewpoint, which could be a part of the "mount" and dissalowing third person view. This would work flawlessly, if the steering wheel was placed in some sort of a cabin at the front of the ship.

 

Anyway, each and every model in oblivion is composed out of two parts. The visible mesh and the invisible hit box which's used for colision detection. I think that creating a mesh of the steering wheel with a hit box a tad-bit smaller than the ship mesh shouldn't be a problem. As far as the shakyness goes this should be limited only by the speed at which the engine/script can move the static. In case that this movement is smooth then there shouldn't be a problem.

 

As far as the objects go you should simply use existing objects for testing. A large stone block for the "ship" and a smaller one for the "mount". Should be enough to see how the things work for now. I'm realy putting my everything into making that model, yet it's not forthcomming in the speediest of manners, so you'll just have to wait. I'll give you the untextured version for testing purposes once I'm done with the modeling. (And once I figure out how nifscope works ;D)

[Triforce1]

QQuix, I'll build whatever you need to make this work. That is, except for the ship. That is ihateregisteringeverywhere's domain.

 

EDIT: NifSkope is quite easy. That is, for static objects. Creatures, armor, and anything that moves are a little tougher to impossible. I have also done a little work with rideable creatures, but only a Daedroth. :P If you guys decide to go the static route, I'll be happy to make it work in NifSkope. And what if we made only the wheel the mount, but made its collision the size of the ship?

[ihateregisteringeverywhere]

And what if we made only the wheel the mount, but made its collision the size of the ship?

That's what I've said ;D.

 

EDIT> Recontemplating what QQuix said - making the ship an activator instead of a static and putting the steering wheel on deck sounds like a flawless idea. The ship could work as a virtual pathway on which the Steering wheel "mount" could "walk". That's perfect.

[QQuix]

Right now, I am trying to make an NPC follow the player in the air. It will take about a week.

Later I will try to put some miniature doors and barrels on the horse and see how it goes.

 

Anyway, each and every model in oblivion is composed out of two parts. The visible mesh and the invisible hit box which's used for colision detection. I think that creating a mesh of the steering wheel with a hit box a tad-bit smaller than the ship mesh shouldn't be a problem.

And what if we made only the wheel the mount, but made its collision the size of the ship?

EDIT> Recontemplating what QQuix said - making the ship an activator instead of a static and putting the steering wheel on deck sounds like a flawless idea. The ship could work as a virtual pathway on which the Steering wheel "mount" could "walk". That's perfect.

This sounds promising. May well be the solution.

 

As far as the shakyness goes this should be limited only by the speed at which the engine/script can move the static. In case that this movement is smooth then there shouldn't be a problem.

All I said about shaking is related to how the engine reacts to things. Sometimes the engine does not like where I place the object and moves it before the next frame. Then the script moves it back, etc. Visual result: shaking.

If the engine does not mess with the object, it usually looks good.

 

(I think I failed to mention that I know absolutely nothing about meshes, textures, nifs and the like)

[Triforce1]

Meshes, textures, nifs and the like are all things I know fairly well. Not the best, but well enough. All I can picture right now, however, is a horse with a door on the side of it. You should name the linked interior "Horse Guts".

 

EDIT: Better yet, make a copy of Sheogorath and place him in there!

[QQuix]

EDIT> Recontemplating what QQuix said - making the ship an activator instead of a static and putting the steering wheel on deck sounds like a flawless idea. The ship could work as a virtual pathway on which the Steering wheel "mount" could "walk". That's perfect.

Thinking about it, maybe there is a flaw: I guess the engine will try to place the bottom on the wheel-mount collision box on top of the ship-activator collision box.

Would it?