The only thing that concerns me is the scripts that make the plants light up. Alone they aren't anything to worry about. But once we get several dozen in a single cell.....even having them grouped like I have it may be an issue. I have a trick up my sleeve that I've been thinking about trying out though, and I think this is the perfect opportunity. So as soon as I have some time to completely load up a cell with these things, I'll let you all know how it goes.

The foot steps are great. Maybe it could be a bit larger?

Anyway, I am working on texturing the island..... I will probably have to remap the whole thing to get rid of the seams (or at least most of them) so this might be a while. :snoring:

That's not a problem. Do you want an actual skill or a global fake skill variable (for example, the Alchemy skill, or a "Commune with mean plants" skill added by this mod)?


I have an idea that'd make that extremely simple to do. I'll get code together tonight. How many plants, what do they do, and what pattern?


Posted code for that the other day in the CS forum, I can rework it for that purpose.


Does it have to be companion-friendly, and where to?


I have a thought to pull that off (basically use SetPos and lerping between the old and new position). I'll have to test that out.


I can script that, but there may be some collision issues. Funny things occasionally happen with animated or scripted objects and their collision. Just to be safe, you should probably add an invisible collision hull outside of the actual mesh, and simplify it somewhat, but set it to use Tris for collision.



Yup.


And GetDistance is a slow, slow function. You can always make it skip frames (The script) to speed things up a bit. A nice way to make it fast and distribute the work is to, at the start of the script, do something like this bit:

if ( skipCount == 0 )   set skipCount to Random, 10endifif ( hasSkipped < skipCount )   set hasSkipped To hasSkipped + 1...

I learned that making a farm with scripted plants (roughly 200 of them). If you use a preset number of frames to skip, then the least common multiple of those numbers will be the slowest frame of your life. If you randomize it, it's distributed much better. You can also randomize it in a range based on size (small plants, which have a narrower reaction radius, process ever 5-10 frames, big ones every 10-20, etc).
But I wanna see what you've got in mind, if it's a fix for GetDistance.

Edit: Ooh, and I just came up with an idea for plant lighting that might look cool. I'll see if I can get it filmed and up tomorrow. -.0

I would love to see this done with the snow in solethiem and a 12 hour timer on the foot step delete. OK, may not be very effecient but it makes me wonder how long the feetprint could persists without undo stress on the engine.

@peachykeen:



Would be cool to have a mod related skill, which is low at beginning and rises if you do the right interactions with the environment!!!




I'd say 8 plants, so you have at least one tonal octave and should be able to play simple melodies.



Cool!!



No, doesn't need to be companion friendly. I just want the player to be teleported within the same cell. Not much more than a door would do, but just on contact. I'll make a visual portal and as soon as player steps through, it should teleport him/ her to some place.



Nice, will make gameplay in jungle much more realistic!!!


.

I now collision of animated things is very tricky. I tried to make something like an animated jet, with the player standingin, surrounded by invisible collision. Collision worked fine on the vertical axis, but as jet started, it went right through the player and player stood still in place. I suppose script would have to be very similar to a riding script, but I'm just guessing!!!


@Team: Thinking about all the performance issues that may occur, I want to suggest to split the environment up into a few seperate interior cells. Advantage of that is also that different modders can have their own cell to design without conflicting with each other during worldbuilding. We could structure those single cells like giving each one a different theme, for example "The Garden", "The Canyon", "The Wise Tree" and so on. And all cells will get connected by portals.

What do you think?!


TheDaywalker :rock:

One of the reasons i'm in this is that I wanted to work on a project where I don't need to think how things are done so I'm just a mindless modeller without a will of his own Whatever you other people decide will be good enough for me.

Good news!!! Made new body for banshee and it works flawless with slightly modified cliffracer's armature and animation. Will overwork the body now and then go into texturing.

Question: Where and how is the player supposed to sit on this beast. Will we have to make a saddle, with fake legs again? Can we take a ressource? Will player sit just upright, or is it possible to make him sit in another position, maybe freezed jump idle or swimming idle? Could need some advice on this, please!!!

http://img691.imageshack.us/i/newcliffy.jpg/


TheDaywalker :rock:

Awesome work man.

When I'm done with the textures for niflipping could I send the files your way so you can put them into the .NIF animated nicely for Fliggerty? He requested that they should be pulsing for a few seconds and he would time it so at the dimmest pulse he would disable the mesh as his script works.

Sure you can send them to me, I'll see what I can do!!! But banshee has priority at the moment, can't wait to have it flying around ingame!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Sent you PM with files and description. I think it's some really easy edits that are needed that I'm just to stupid to know haha.

And yeah, it's going to be AWESOME!

EDIT: Sent files to Fliggerty!

I've taken my baby into ZBrush now and paint textures directly onto the model. My PC is at limit, but I won't give up so fast, lol!!! Final postproduction will be made in photoshop then. What you think of the overall design. Colors can be easily adjusted in Ps lateron!!!

http://img63.imageshack.us/i/newbeast.jpg/


TheDaywalker :rock:

I have code to do that, as a matter of fact. I was playing with a STALKER-like level system one time, and wrote up a script to handle it.
Basically you take the marshmallow blue boxes (the collision boxes) and place them around a "level", usually along with some rocks or trees that are hard to get through so it's more believable, then you leave one area along the edge open, and place a special scripted box there. When the player collides with it, it triggers a messagebox asking if they'd like to progress to the next area. If they click yes, teleport, if no, turn them around and place them a little ways back. If anyone has played STALKER, it's exactly like that, and works beautifully. It can be used outdoors, but I think in this mod it would work even better.

Sounds good to me!!! So you still have the feeling like you're moving through one connected area, although it are singele interiors. I'd say let's do it that way then!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Not using GetDistance, I always avoid that where possible. Each set of plants is tied to an invisible ground mesh that checks for GetStandingPC and GetStandingActor. This way do we not only make less of an impact to FPS, but any NPC can make them light up as well.

I do often use skipped frames, but when many scripts are using it there is no guarantee that all scripts won't run on the same frame which will cause stuttering. I'm going to try and set this up with a global control variable that will cycle each frame between a set of values. Each set of lights will be assigned to a value, and their script will only run during the frame assigned by that value. We'll see how well it works without causing too much delay in the response of the lights.

This may be a faster alternative to getDistance. Just remember to square the number you are comparing it against.

float xdiffloat ydiffloat zdifset xdif to ( player->getPos x ) - ( getPos x )set ydif to ( player->getPos y ) - ( getPos y )set zdif to ( player->getPos z ) - ( getPos z )float distSquaredset distSquared to (xdif*xdif) + (ydif*ydif) + (zdif*zdif)

(Of course, it may not be any faster, as the overhead of the vm may exceed the overhead of calling sqrt)

Damn, stupid cliffracer animation doesn't work with my mesh at all!!! A closer look revealed dozens of ugly mesh deforms. The original cliffracer mesh had numberless vertex groups, which were exactly tweaked to match the given armature. My mesh as it is new has no such vertex groups, so mesh cannot be animated in a clean way. I'd have to make whole armature plus animation from scratch now!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

I think the cell idea might be a good one however I am still not keen on the idea of having so many people work on the world building. Even if things are separated by cells if somebody does something completely different then another person it will be noticeable and will not work right. My suggestion would be to have 1 or 2 people doing the world building as we progress with the modeling, texturing, and so on. We can get things done faster this way, and the world will be more likely to have a certain feel of continuity. Having to many people working on different areas is going to end up in a mess, I will not allow people to get away with crappy work or something that is completely different from all of the others. If you think I am critical now just wait until the world building begins.

Sorry but this has been something I been wanting to do for a while, I want this to turn out as close to how I envision it in my mind as possible. I will not settle for anything sub-par. :poke:

Hmm, ok quality is an important thing, but somebody of us will have to start worldbuilding soon. You want to do it yourself or should I just start or how shall we make it???


TheDaywalker :rock:

this is looking friggin awesome!

Well we don't really have the assets to start building yet, I am still working on mapping and texturing the main island model, we don't have any trees which are the main part of the environment really, and we need more foliage. Maybe in a couple of weeks we will have enough to start building. Anyway, I personally don't want to do any world building unless I have to, I haven't used the CS in years short of having a look at things to get an idea of how things will look in its surrounding environment and other very simple tasks. Trying to work with the CS for me might be rather slow going. :S I was thinking maybe we could try to recruit somebody who is skilled with the CS and with world building in general. I can find some reference art and images for a potential world builder which should help designing a bit easier.

I much rather focus on texturing and modeling really. :S

Can't you just rig the mesh from scratch onto the cliffracer skeleton?

With a higher poly model you should redo the rigging anyway to get smoother mesh movements, instead of copying the armature.

@AOF: I could do worldbuilding, you may replace textures if needed though!!!

@Dirnae: The animation of the creature is dependeand on the armature. If I do a new rigging, animation is lost!!! Only thing to make my mesh match the cliffracer armature would be creating new vertex groups and weightpaint the whole mesh by hand and that is a kinda work that really really svcks, trust me on that!!!

I have consulted blender gods of my local blender forum, maybe some animation freak can help!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Sorry I messed up my words there (I always get skinning and rigging messed up >_<), I meant why don't you reskin/weight paint it on to the cliffracer armature.
You should weight paint the meshes again to get smoother mesh movements, instead of copying the weights over.

Is weightpainting really that hard in Blender?
In max, meshes can be skinned easily using envelopes, isn't there anything similar in Blender?

Nif-fileformat doesn't support envelopes!!! I recently tried to weight the wings for example, because when animation started model was stretched. I added some weight and stretchings disappeared, but as negativ effect wing didn't move right anymore. I have no clue what else to try than making all new from scratch!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Oh, well envelopes are supported in max, so I've never had trouble skinning, and never knew they weren't supported in Blender.

Good luck getting help! It'd be a shame if you couldn't get the banshee working, or had to spend ages animating.
Maybe you could get someone with max working on the Pandora mod to skin it for you, if they have time.