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Moving NPCs


riceplant

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Is there a way to move NPCs through the air (A la Kyle & Tavion on Bespin) without using roffs? I've examined the scripts (cin9 and cin23 from JO), and they use roffs. Also, what can I use to make roffs (That doesn't involve a separation between me and my money)? Off topic (can you go off topic in an opening post? Hmm...), what level source has been released for JO and JA? I only have 2 SP levels from JO, and 3 from JA, and would be interested in more, if they are available.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Does no-one know a better way? At the moment, I'm using small platforms made of nodraw_solid, but it just feels wrong, somehow. Also, does no-one know about the levelsource? I would be most interested in acquiring the source for ns_starpad, among others.

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Also, what can I use to make roffs (That doesn't involve a separation between me and my money)?

 

A free way? Find some rare and nice friend who makes 'em for you. The problem is that the requirement is 3DS Max version 4 or 5. And for some odd reason most 3DS Max users seem to prefer new versions, and thus it's hard to find people with the needed software and willingness to make roffs. I know from personal experience, since I have had an otherwise quite ready SP level frozen for months because of lack of roffs.

 

And I think you have all the .maps Raven released. If you want to study the rest, you can either use the entity tool to check entities or decompile them.

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Entity viewer is a small tool made by LJ, which can be used to study the entities in bsp files. So, you don't see any architecture or anything like that. Just a kind of ordered list of entities and their keys and values. Well, you'll have to try it yourself to understand...

http://www.geocities.com/birolaszlo/

 

What comes to the foul act of decompiling bsps, I can't tell you anything, since I have never done it (just like I have never built car bombs, although I know they exist). But you will find the details of the process easily enough by searching.

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I decompile maps, and look at the scripts to see how things are done. In JKA however, they just use the animations to move characters. For example, one frame they are at the door way walking, then in next frame they just move the character to other side of the room.

 

To Decompile a BSP

 

Find a download Q3Map2TOOLZ

Select the BSP

Make this the command lines

-convert -format map

 

Should work out good :) There will be geometric deformation, and texture mess ups, but don't worry about that.

 

 

My method of moving NPCs: I don't really move them, but I appear to move them. By using complex camera angles, I remove the old NPC, then I have a new one (that is invisible) in where I want it appear. Then I just simply make the new one "solid and visible"

 

Scripting takes a lot of playing around. Remember, what the player doesn't see, doesn't hurt them in a cutscene. Sure, you can invisible elevators to make a character appear to fly, or in your case, you moved them instantly. Theres nothing wrong with that, just remove the excess brushes when you are done with them, using the remove command in the script. That frees up memory.

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What I mean by the camera angles is show one scene where kyle is standing in the beginning of the room, switch to a different camera not showing kyle, remove the first kyle, and have a 2nd kyle that is invisible in a different area. Meanwhile, while removing Kyle1, have Kyle2 turn visible, so then just switch to a camera showing the new kyle. It appears as if Kyle moved, but there are really two kyles.

 

Or, if you are animating, just take ALL the bones and move them to a completly different place.

 

Check out my Redemption trailer (link in my sig) the whole thing was scripted. I used like 4 Boba NPCs. They were ALL there from the start, just invisible. They each had different targetnames (Boba1, Boba2, Boba3) so it was easy to keep track of them. While this makes the map look a bit messy, it gets the job done.

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