OJP: New Animations Project

[Marker0077]

I recently got SoftImage|XSI specifically so I could start adding new animations for the new weapon type I'm working on (player animations not weapon), RA wants some new blocking animations & I was also thinking that we should bring back some of the old Quake taunts back into the game (flipping the bird or woteva). Now people can make these animations unaccessable via the game code if they choose not to have those things optional.

 

Anyways, I was thinking there should be a "OJP: New Animations" release. Now this would be for developers only obviously & everytime we add new animations, we put out a new version. The reason why we would do it this way was so each mod could use each others new animations. We should also make it so that which animations version they are using is noted in the mod docs somewhere.

 

From what I hear, Wudan & another developer are working on some sort of animations merging tool which would be useful but whether it is available or not, I do plan on doing whatever it is necessarry to make new animations available to all OJP supporters.

 

I just wanted to get everyones thoughts, comments, suggestions, etc; etc. regarding this. Let me know what you think people.

[razorace]

"Flipping the bird" should not be put in the game. It's not Star Warsy, and it's unsportmanlike. Putting it in would only cause problems.

 

Secondly, due to the nature of the code, additional animations would have to be packaged with the code distros or they wouldn't work in game at all.

[Marker0077]

Originally posted by razorace

"Flipping the bird" should not be put in the game. It's not Star Warsy, and it's unsportmanlike. Putting it in would only cause problems.

LMFAO. Flipping off was in Quake & everyone loved it, I never heard a complaint about it 1 time - literally. I'll make sure there is a "clean-cut" version though, I'll just take those animation numbers & swap the animations with the Da Vinci pose or something.

 

Besides, I'd like to get past the whole "if it isn't Star Wars then it doesn't belong here" thing because there are a variety of games that would never have been created if everyone stayed in theme. This taunt adds alot of fun factor to the game, if I saw someone flipping me off in the game (especially if I didn't expect it), I would laugh my ass off.

Originally posted by razorace

Secondly, due to the nature of the code, additional animations would have to be packaged with the code distros or they wouldn't work in game at all.

Right, that's why this release would be for developers only. Developers would need to take the animations.gla & add it into their mod for it to work.

 

I plan on making AJK have 2 different types of play (or 2 different versions) with the firearm weapons, real guns & SW guns. The big difference between them aside from sounds & looks would be real guns cause bleeding, so you would need to bandage yourself in order to stop the bleeing. Laser fire is self-cauterizing & would be unneccessary.

[razorace]

Originally posted by Marker0077

LMFAO. Flipping off was in Quake & everyone loved it, I never heard a complaint about it 1 time - literally. I'll make sure there is a "clean-cut" version though, I'll just take those animation numbers & swap the animations with the Da Vinci pose or something.

 

Besides, I'd like to get past the whole "if it isn't Star Wars then it doesn't belong here" thing because there are a variety of games that would never have been created if everyone stayed in theme. This taunt adds alot of fun factor to the game, if I saw someone flipping me off in the game (especially if I didn't expect it), I would laugh my ass off.Right, that's why this release would be for developers only. Developers would need to take the animations.gla & add it into their mod for it to work.

 

Q2 also had an older audience and a different focus. I suppose that the animation could be useful for non-Star Wars mods, but it's nothing that I would put into Star Wars mod.

 

There's enough problems with people taking the game too seriously as is. Imagine adding the ability to flip people off to that.

 

In addition, it's totally not Star Warsy and goes against Lucas's vision of a kid friendly Star Wars. However, if you invented a Star Wars equivilent, I'd be ok with that.

[Marker0077]

Originally posted by razorace

Q2 also had an older audience and a different focus. I suppose that the animation could be useful for non-Star Wars mods, but it's nothing that I would put into Star Wars mod.

I don't think it should depend on SW or not. It should be solely up to the client whether or not those types of animations should be displayed. Perhaps a client side CVar.

 

Matter fact, I will be replacing all mature taunts with clean cut taunts in the clean cut version, this way it doesn't look lame to others if people use them (which the da vinci pose would).

Originally posted by razorace

There's enough problems with people taking the game too seriously as is. Imagine adding the ability to flip people off to that.

I would laugh so hard.

 

The only thing people really take seriously is chat attacking & people who prematurely attack while someone is bowing, that's it. There are certain areas that should be gone over with the public as far as player ettiquete/sportsmanship goes & I do intend on covering these areas in CM.

Originally posted by razorace

In addition, it's totally not Star Warsy and goes against Lucas's vision of a kid friendly Star Wars. However, if you invented a Star Wars equivilent, I'd be ok with that.

The people that play JK are in the 14 to 26 yr old range. Very (& I do mean very) few are out of this age range. That's old enough to handle being flipped off or at least old enough to make the decision on whether or not those types of animations should or should not be permitted to be displayed to them.

 

Again, I will make a clean cut version but ideally the best way is to just have these animations in the Mature pack, this way clients can decide for themselves what they do & do not want to see & hear. The only problem I see with doing it this way is when the .gla is added to the mod pack in the custom folder, it will be used, not the .gla that's in the Mature pack which will be located in the "base" folder.

 

I suppose I could create a animations file for the base folder, it's not like its removing anything out of "base", it's really just adding onto it. Then any mods that want to use these animations will use this animations file (which goes in "base") & then whomever wants to use the Mature pack can & the Mature animations will be fully functional or mods could just use the Mature release of the animations & code a client side CVar that enables/disables the Mature animations.

 

Ideally the best way would be to have the Mature animations included in all the mods .pk3 file & have something included in the Mature pack that enables the Mature animations in the mod.

[razorace]

You can only really have one .gla for the humanoid. Any more and you're going to cause a nightmare when it comes to servers and for coders.

 

Just stick with one file, handling which animations are playable will have to be done in the code anyway.

[Marker0077]

Originally posted by razorace

You can only really have one .gla for the humanoid. Any more and you're going to cause a nightmare when it comes to servers and for coders.

Why would it? As long as everyone is using the same animations .gla, it should be fine. All the animation numbers for everyone would be the same because it's based on the same file.

 

In other words, lets say I add 2 Mature animations which is #'s 20001 through 20030. Then I add the OJP Enhanced animations (for blocking & whatnot) & they are numbers 20031 through 20090, then I add animations for MB which takes up 20091 through 20130....

 

All 3 mods use the same animations file (not same copy, just same file), if any one of them needs a certain animation it's there; Or if there is a taunt in MB (which is clean cut) & an OJP user wants to use it (or their hilt .sab file calls for it), it has access to it in OJP etc; etc.

 

I don't see why you would think there would be any problems. There will of course be extensive testing on this but I highly doubt there will be any problems.

Originally posted by razorace

Just stick with one file, handling which animations are playable will have to be done in the code anyway.

Not entirely true. You can choose custom animations via the .sab files.

 

Besides, server-side only mods can add new commands to play these new animations. If they do not exist for the client, then nothing will be played; Just like with the .sab file.

[razorace]

Uh, you have to change code to add additional animations entries to the animation.cfg, if you don't, you're probably going to have all sorts of problems.

 

However, simply, adding new frames to the .gla shouldn't require code changes.

[Marker0077]

We'll need to update the animations cfg files when we add more animations to the .gla, now I haven't tested this yet but I'm pretty sure that will be enough for animations work in conjunction with .sab files, so the same concept should apply to server-side only mods being used in conjunction with the CM client animations mod.

 

As far as this goes for custom mods, again, I think mods like OJP & MB should use the mature pack version of the mod & just disable the mature animations by default via a CVar or have something in the mature pack enable those animations.

 

It really is up to each coder how they want to handle it with their mod. I think the community will feel that allowing them to make up their own minds is the best decision.

[razorace]

You couldn't have a server side only mod with new animations. It just wouldn't work since you'd need to have the new animation.cfg and .gla.

[Marker0077]

Originally posted by razorace

You couldn't have a server side only mod with new animations. It just wouldn't work since you'd need to have the new animation.cfg and .gla.

I said "the same concept should apply to server-side only mods being used in conjunction with the CM client animations mod". It wouldn't be the server-side mod alone, it would also be the CM animations mod which I'm sure C1 would love to participate in.

[razorace]

Who is C1?

 

Anyway, it would defeat the purpose of a server side mod to do something like that since it wouldn't be server side only anymore.

[Marker0077]

Originally posted by razorace

Who is C1?

Chosen One.

Originally posted by razorace

Anyway, it would defeat the purpose of a server side mod to do something like that since it wouldn't be server side only anymore.

Well the CM animations pack wouldn't come with JAR, it would be a totally seperate pack & I'm sure there are other coders who'd want to jump on this opportunity as well. If a person doesn't have the CM animations pack then they would see nothing & if they do, they would get the new animations.

 

You also have to realize, I haven't done any testing with this yet so keep in mind most of this stuff is still "on the drawing board". If I find out that the server is going to automatically download the animations file (which is pretty likely) then I might just toss the idea altogether.

 

The same concept applies to the new vehicles & whatnot, if the server is using them then you *have* to download them - I hate that, but it has to go in base otherwise only the 1 mod can use it which is a waste.

 

All of the downloading all depends on whether or not the server & client has their downloads on but still, I don't want those types of things to be downloadable. Yes, I realize disabling downloading via the server will remedy that problem but I don't *ever* want them to be downloadable.

[razorace]

I'm pretty sure that different animation .glas would trigger the pure filter.

[Wudan]

You're making something simple be very complex.

 

1. To make new animations you have to be clever.

2. To get them in-game you have to be even more clever.

3. To utilize them in a mod to make them 'worth the download' you must be both creative and uber-clever.

 

Screw talk about 'flip-off' this, and 'crotch-grab' that - those aren't really 'enhanced' or 'basic' OJP - stand-alone mods can touch that if they want to - true enhancements would be 'filling out' the gaps in the current animations - better weapon-ready stances, better firing animations, etc.

[Marker0077]

First off, I CALL DIBS ON THE ANIMATIONS PACK :-o

 

RA said I had to actually post, so there it is man.

Originally posted by Wudan

You're making something simple be very complex.

Not really. I know what I want to do I'm just not sure how I'm going to go about doing it yet. Once I look into Softimage, I'll go from there.

Originally posted by Wudan

1. To make new animations you have to be clever.

2. To get them in-game you have to be even more clever.

3. To utilize them in a mod to make them 'worth the download' you must be both creative and uber-clever.

Considering how everything else works & how this *should* work, I highly doubt it's going to be rocket scientry to make happen. Most people do a half fast job or just don't think things through, so personally I think what you are considering to be cleverness is just common sense. At least for me anyways.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm a freakin genius but I've been into gaming development for 10 years, the past 2 have been real serious. I'm not really worried about making this happen, the only thing I'm worried about is finding the time.

Originally posted by Wudan

Screw talk about 'flip-off' this, and 'crotch-grab' that - those aren't really 'enhanced' or 'basic' OJP - stand-alone mods can touch that if they want to - true enhancements would be 'filling out' the gaps in the current animations - better weapon-ready stances, better firing animations, etc.

What's wrong with doing them all? The old sk00lers (such as myself) would enjoy bringing the old taunts back & I intend to do so, along with a variety of other animations as well. If you don't enjoy the animations, then don't use them. Bottom line is it's better to have something & not need it than to need something & not have it. Unless there is some sort of cap on how many animations you can have, I'm not going to not include it "just because" or whatever.

 

What I am hoping to do is just have people create animations in 3DS Max & I can add them to the animations pack from there. Again, until I actually start checking out Softimage for myself, I really don't know for sure what is & is not going to happen. I should be getting into it within the next few weeks. I'm actually waiting for some of the Raven crew to get back from vacation so I can find out more about it before I even get started.

[Wudan]

Please explain how common sense is going to help you put new animations in to a game when you have no skeleton for the models?

[Darth Sun]

My words on this, opinions of course (like I gave in past subjects) since I'm not part of the team.

 

I agree with Razor here, all those are not "Star Wars".

Granted you can say people loved it in Quake2 (not that people would use them often, they would get railed or rocketed afterwards about 75% of the times), yet by saying so you're imediatly distancing both since JA is in no way a Q2 game since it includes Light Sabers (which the majority of servers use) and not just "you killed someone with your railgun slug which blew him up to tiny little pieces" kind of play; in fact not many people play JA with weapons, judging by the ammount of servers out there, including mine which is saber only.

 

New animations for new attacks and other stuff (Star Warsy stuff preferably) sure, Michael Jackson style crotch holds, flip-offs and so on aren't that nice for a Star Wars related game; if they were then I'm sure Raven would have included it themselves, although LEC wouldn't let them do it to begin with.

 

If you want OJP to be well respected and also to be recognized to be a good part of the Star Wars gaming universe you surely don't want those sorts of insultous animations to be included.

 

Just two cents from someone who wants OJP to succeed.

[Marker0077]

Originally posted by Wudan

Please explain how common sense is going to help you put new animations in to a game when you have no skeleton for the models?

Quite a few skeletons came in the JK3 SDK. I believe they are in the .XSI files, now the original .XSI plugin that came with the JK2 SDK doesn't work on the new .XSIs however there are other plugins for XSI on the net that do work.

 

Keep in mind, without skeletons, no one could add models for JK3. Even if you didn't have a working plugin, there is info on the net on how to convert JK2 skeletons over to JK3.

 

If you need the plugin, just let me know & I'll email it to you. I'm sure you can find it on the net easy though.

Originally posted by Darth Sun

My words on this, opinions of course (like I gave in past subjects) since I'm not part of the team.

One of the nice things about OJP is everyone is apart of the team, not staff but team. Just because you don't produce code, models, or whatever, that doesn't mean you might not see something cool that eluded the rest of us. All you have to do is post about it. While concept design doesn't have the stress or workload as coding, modeling, or whatever, you wouldn't have code, or models, or whatever, without it.

 

In other words, it's a public forum man & we want feedback from everyone so don't hesitate to speak your opinion on something if you think you have a good idea.

Originally posted by Darth Sun

I agree with Razor here, all those are not "Star Wars".

Granted you can say people loved it in Quake2...

First of all, just because Quake 2 was mainly a firearm weapons game & JA is mainly a melee combat game, that doesn't mean these taunts would be any less useful, matter fact, it's all the more reason.

 

Secondly, let's be honest here. Everyone taunts every now & again while dueling. It's the virtual way of saying "bring it" & it's all in good fun. Tell me you wouldn't love to flip people off in mid-fight, I think that would be funnier than hell at times, especially if people didn't know that it was in there, but of course, they *will* know it's in there. I guarantee it'll be 1 of the highlights that people talk about. Not that I personally would consider it one if the "highlighted" features but knowing how the community is, they will.

 

Thirdly, the beauty about this is, if people do not want to see "Mature" animations - they don't have to. They can keep the clean cut version & they will see people doing the standard taunt & not the new one (at least that's the gameplan).

 

The thing that I am guessing is eluding alot of people is, just because the animations are included in there, that doesn't mean they *have* to get used. Hell, people can disable certain animations just by the .cfg files alone. The way I look at it, the more animations the merrier. It's more flexibility for the developers & the users.

 

As far as the "Its not Star Warsy" thing goes, I think that's crazy to limit yourself like that. That's like saying I shouldn't add non-Star Wars models to the Skins pack just because it's not Star Wars. Forget that. If the model is good quality or just a good idea, I'm adding it.

Originally posted by Darth Sun

If you want OJP to be well respected and also to be recognized to be a good part of the Star Wars gaming universe you surely don't want those sorts of insultous animations to be included.

I plan on making 2 versions of the animations pack. A Standard version, & a Mature version. I already have a Mature pack for CM that adds a Mature version of Lady Vengeance (some profanity), I have more blade sounds added (still need to work on a clean cut blade), I am working on a Eminem & Dre model conversion from Quake 3 to JK3 to go in the pack, etc; etc; so I am hoping to keep the Mature animations there.

 

I will submit both versions of the animations pack to OJP, if RA wants to refuse the Mature version then that's his call. I'm doing both versions for CM either way.

[Wudan]

Take any .XSI skeleton you please, go ahead and try to get an animation from XSI or MAX in to JKA. It's not bloody possible unless you know what the hell you're doing.

 

I know you're a clever guy, but tons of clever guys before you have ground their gears to dust and washed away with their own tears of frustration, long before these posts, or OJP.

 

You can have XSI, you can have 3dsm - you can have all the exporters and converters that you can possibly download - where the rubber meets the road, you'll need to take whatever you make and get it in-game, which just so happens to be the 'hard part'.

 

There are no HUMAN XSI skeletons for JKA. Corto made one, but it's not suitable for creating animations, just for weighting and modelling.

[Marker0077]

Mike Gummelt said we need Softimage in order to make these new animations, so I got it. I'm waiting for him to get back from vacation, email me & go from there.

 

No one knows exactly what they are doing with player animations. Instead of spending mind boggling hours of trying to figure it out on my own, I decided to go to the source. Yes, it is *possible* that I may never be able to produce animations for JK however, the Raven staff have spent time responding between other various developers in this community, I don't see why it would be any different from me. Especially after the CM release.

 

As for "getting it in-game", you're right, it's not possible. Not without a .gla importer & exporter anyways.

[Darth Sun]

Originally posted by Marker0077

One of the nice things about OJP is everyone is apart of the team, not staff but team. Just because you don't produce code, models, or whatever, that doesn't mean you might not see something cool that eluded the rest of us. All you have to do is post about it. While concept design doesn't have the stress or workload as coding, modeling, or whatever, you wouldn't have code, or models, or whatever, without it.

 

Thank you; I'll participate in OJP through opinions very often then, I believe.

 

In other words, it's a public forum man & we want feedback from everyone so don't hesitate to speak your opinion on something if you think you have a good idea.

Secondly, let's be honest here. Everyone taunts every now & again while dueling. It's the virtual way of saying "bring it" & it's all in good fun. Tell me you wouldn't love to flip people off in mid-fight, I think that would be funnier than hell at times, especially if people didn't know that it was in there, but of course, they *will* know it's in there. I guarantee it'll be 1 of the highlights that people talk about. Not that I personally would consider it one if the "highlighted" features but knowing how the community is, they will.

 

Depends, I personaly wouldn't flip-off someone in JA and I never do a taunt mid-duel unless I wanna be cut in half; at the end of the duel is difererent, but I still wouldn't flip them off.

 

Thirdly, the beauty about this is, if people do not want to see "Mature" animations - they don't have to. They can keep the clean cut version & they will see people doing the standard taunt & not the new one (at least that's the gameplan).

 

Like Razor said, this brings the problem for "pure servers".

You either have one animation set or the other animation set, it's impossible to have both working at the same time since the "pure server" setting would detect they defer and kick off people with the diferent set of the server.

The idea is good, just impossible to put to work in JA since there's no way to seperate both unless all the OJP based servers run as "unpure", which I doubt will happen.

 

The thing that I am guessing is eluding alot of people is, just because the animations are included in there, that doesn't mean they *have* to get used. Hell, people can disable certain animations just by the .cfg files alone. The way I look at it, the more animations the merrier. It's more flexibility for the developers & the users.

 

The user and developer flexibility is good, but again the "pure server" issue comes to play since you can't just edit your animation.cfg and play in servers which have it.

 

As far as the "Its not Star Warsy" thing goes, I think that's crazy to limit yourself like that. That's like saying I shouldn't add non-Star Wars models to the Skins pack just because it's not Star Wars. Forget that. If the model is good quality or just a good idea, I'm adding it.I plan on making 2 versions of the animations pack. A Standard version, & a Mature version. I already have a Mature pack for CM that adds a Mature version of Lady Vengeance (some profanity), I have more blade sounds added (still need to work on a clean cut blade), I am working on a Eminem & Dre model conversion from Quake 3 to JK3 to go in the pack, etc; etc; so I am hoping to keep the Mature animations there.

 

It's a bit diferent adding non SW models from adding potentially offensive animations.

I personally try to use SWish stuff in JA, but if a good model from something non SWish appears I instal it anyway.

 

To make all of what I said shorter, new animations is a good idea, but JA's system renders your idea of having two seperate packs functioning simultaneously impossible, plus the fact not many people may like to see their opponent flipping them off or "Michael Jackson crotch hold" at them; also consider some SW fans which will most likely hate it.

[Wudan]

Originally posted by Marker0077

Mike Gummelt said we need Softimage in order to make these new animations, so I got it. I'm waiting for him to get back from vacation, email me & go from there.

 

No one knows exactly what they are doing with player animations. Instead of spending mind boggling hours of trying to figure it out on my own, I decided to go to the source. Yes, it is *possible* that I may never be able to produce animations for JK however, the Raven staff have spent time responding between other various developers in this community, I don't see why it would be any different from me. Especially after the CM release.

 

As for "getting it in-game", you're right, it's not possible. Not without a .gla importer & exporter anyways.

 

I did spend mind-boggling hours figuring it out. I did correspond with Gummelt, Monroe, and Ste Cork (who maintained the format source for JK2) on this.

 

Are you referring to the article Mike Gummelt wrote on it?

[Marker0077]

Originally posted by Darth Sun

Depends, I personaly wouldn't flip-off someone in JA and I never do a taunt mid-duel unless I wanna be cut in half; at the end of the duel is difererent, but I still wouldn't flip them off.

I taunt people in mid-duel every day & very rarely do I get sliced up for it but I play Duel mode only. Anyways, whatever.

Originally posted by Darth Sun

Like Razor said, this brings the problem for "pure servers".

You either have one animation set or the other animation set, it's impossible to have both working at the same time since the "pure server" setting would detect they defer and kick off people with the diferent set of the server.

The idea is good, just impossible to put to work in JA since there's no way to seperate both unless all the OJP based servers run as "unpure", which I doubt will happen.

RA was speculating, he doesn't know that & until we have a newly compiled .GLA & do some testing, none of us will know. There's a few different ways to go about doing this & nothing is for sure at this point.

Originally posted by Darth Sun

...also consider some SW fans which will most likely hate it.

Just a difference in opinion between the 2 of us. I've been dealing with public relations for GF for almost 2 years up until a few months ago & I think people will go nuts over it. I wouldn't pursue it if I felt otherwise.

Originally posted by Wudan

I did spend mind-boggling hours figuring it out. I did correspond with Gummelt, Monroe, and Ste Cork (who maintained the format source for JK2) on this.

Cool, hope it works out well for ya.

Originally posted by Wudan

Are you referring to the article Mike Gummelt wrote on it?

He said that we need Softimage in an interview at some point, I think this was pre-JK3.

 

Anyways, it's a goal of mine & I intend on making it happen one way or another. I'm just not pursuing it heavily at this point for a variety of reasons but I eventually will, probably some time within the next few weeks here.

 

The Softimage software is around 4 to 10 grand so I can understand why alot of people don't have it... you might want to email me on this. There are certain things I don't want to post publically. All my contact info is in my sig, I use ICQ & MSN IM most of the time.

[Darth Sun]

Originally posted by Marker0077

RA was speculating, he doesn't know that & until we have a newly compiled .GLA & do some testing, none of us will know.

It wasn't speculation, it won't work, period.

Trust me on this, I did minor mods for Quake 3 (and previously for Quake 2, but this one didn't have the "pureness" of servers before) and the minor diference in the PK3 files (in this case it would be the animation GLA) is a CRC diference, thus the Quake 3 engine prevents the player from going in since it detects PK3 diferences compared with the server (presuming the server is set to "pure" like the majority of them, however it would work in "unpure" servers).

 

Believe me, I go a long way with the Quake engine functionality, I just don't know enough to do big mods to this extent but I know how it works very well.