Vruki Salet Posted June 11, 2006 Share Posted June 11, 2006 I have a few thoughts about how things might be better in the E duelling system: IMO the feedback you get while duelling is either missing or very messed up. When we press the movement keys to try parry our saber just sits doing nothing, there's no feedback that we did anything and that makes it harder to learn than it should be. I suggest that when we are in front of and within sabering range of a swinging enemy and we press a dir key while not pressing attack or alt-attack then our saber should move in the direction of the parry we make. It doesn't matter if the animation is perfect. As long as it indicates that we tried to parry in that direction it's got to be better than nothing at all. Second is what happens when we successfully parry. The opponent goes all slow-motion and we, our saber at least, jerk back. I think it's crazy. First of all why make him slow-motion when, if you want to show him having a disadvantage, there are existing animations that could show him pushed or blasted back like some of the BOTH_H1s and BOTH_V1s and maybe some of BOTH_K1s and losing saberlock anims for milder ones. Maybe dramatic knockbacks could be for if he's parried when he has low dp and the mild ones could when he has high dp. After that there's the exising jerk-back that happens to *you* when *you* parry correctly. I don't get this at all because it's a negative feedback when you do a positive thing. This should just be gone. Let a saber anim play for the direction you parried in and maybe some mild normal post-saber clash bouncing like the game does when there's a collision and that's it. Not for 1 second should it appear that you are losing control of your saber when you have parried successfully. I think improvements in feedback like these would make things more attractive to noobs and easier to learn. While I'm at it I'll ask for one more thing: how about a clientside option to turn off the 'hold the attack button down while you swing' requirement? I'd gladly give up my abilty to fake to be able to more comfortably finish my real swings. Or maybe switch it around so an attack press swings regular full swings like base jka but if you press a special 'fake' button your swing is aborted. Does anyone have any comments about these ideas? How about it Razor? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
razorace Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 1. Good point. I'll give that a shot. But I should point out that this might end up causing problems due to the pre-blocks causing players to change their attack direction if they attempt to attack during these pre-blocks. 2. The bounce animations don't really work for parries so I'm currently using the broken parry animations to give visual feedback for the parries. If you watch the animations carefully, it's supposed to be the player moving their saber in a weird direction to knock their opponent off-guard. Unfortunately, those animations don't always make that clear. As for the BOTH_H1 and BOTH_V1 animations, they're just truncated versions of the same basic "knockback"/stunned animation. Using one set or the other will look pretty much identical ingame. We originally only had stuns and knockdowns, but they weren't enough to allow the combat flow to switch from attacker<->defender because the default animations are too over-the-top. We're pretty limited with our current animation setup unless we can find an animator who's willing to do large sets of new animations to make it work better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vruki Salet Posted June 12, 2006 Author Share Posted June 12, 2006 For #1, what's a pre-block? and, #2, the main problem is that it should be the 'loser' (whose swing was parried) that should look like he's being knocked around/stunned but not the parryer who should have nothing weird happen to him. You're right about the H1 and V2 anims of course. They're the same but regardless I think they're still good to use on the parried-one especially if he has low dp. Even a milder anim would look good so long as we get the idea that *we* are in 100% control cause we "won" and *he* is thrown for a loop cause he "lost." Maybe I can put do some of these, try to program them and see what you think. Oh speaking of animations, what do you know about a way to adjust a model's position or animation by moving a bone individually via the code instead of via the regular pre-made animations? Isn't there something about that referenced somewhere like in the broken arm code? Or pmove, or...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UDM Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 I've always wanted to master animating. Willing to give a hand at doing it, but will need loads of time as usual. Glad this is an open project so we've got lots of time on hand. What program is used for animating md3s? I'm not without experience. I've looked up tutorials in my spare time, and have more or less understood the concept. Just let me know the tools I need to get started with, and I can more or less carry on myself. I think it's also because of this that I hate scripting... I'll let you guys know when I'm ready, since exams are still high on my priority. Hopefully, my job as spokesperson (more upright variation of pimp) right now can help bring in more support and potential modders to help out By the way razor, if you look at the singleplayer code in Jedi Outcast, you might find something helpful there for the pre-block. Apparently, before reborns hits Kyle, he will raise his saber in defense first. Same goes for vice versa. Though I have a feeling that only works because we're dealing with NPCs... If not, how about MB2's animations? I like the manual blocking animations, and since you're friends with renegadeofphunk... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vruki Salet Posted June 12, 2006 Author Share Posted June 12, 2006 You could use dragon (go to http://forums.mt-wudan.com/viewforum.php?f=8&sid=55ba8a3c3cb555437915b956a53ae301), 3d studio max, or xsi but I don't know if you'd need an old version of xsi since I think they made the original anims with v1 and now it's up to...lessee...v5. Dragon is free but under development. Get in touch with Wudan on that forum, he's the developer. Btw this would be animating glms (ghoul2 models) not md3s. JKA doesn't uses md3s for characters. But go forth and animate, please! It's been too hard for heads o' mush like myself lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
razorace Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 For #1, what's a pre-block? and, Sorry, that's just the made up name I gave your block direction feedback concept. #2, the main problem is that it should be the 'loser' (whose swing was parried) that should look like he's being knocked around/stunned but not the parryer who should have nothing weird happen to him. We tried it having the parries have no animation but I felt that wasn't very satisfying. I think we gotta have something different than a default block to give positive feedback to the player. Oh speaking of animations, what do you know about a way to adjust a model's position or animation by moving a bone individually via the code instead of via the regular pre-made animations? Isn't there something about that referenced somewhere like in the broken arm code? Or pmove, or...? It's possible, but very complicated. BEWARE!!! If you're interested in learning more, check out the BG_G2PlayerAngles function. UDM, doing animations would probably be the best way to help the project. Once you have the time, grab a copy of Dragon or xsi and start learning how to animate. Note XSI is very, very expensive so you might not be able to get it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UDM Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 Costs aren't a problem. There's always coughcoughcoughcoughcough Sorry bad sore throat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vruki Salet Posted June 12, 2006 Author Share Posted June 12, 2006 You might want to get that throat checked out, but if you don't then try to get the same old version of xsi that they made the game with (1 or 1.5 or something). Then well see you back in a year or so when you've figured it out or else managed to coughcoughcoughcoughcough up some kind of class to take for it. If I was you I'd try dragon first, it's much simpler and to-the-point, made for jka animations specifically. See if Keshire'll help you out. He's the boss jka animator as far as I can tell. He's actually released a bunch of parries or blocks to the public. They just need to be massaged into usable condition, something I started to do last year but never finished. Those might be a good starting place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UDM Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 Hate exams...just hate them... But I'll see what I can do after my exams. Personally, I'd like to see better animations too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
razorace Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 See if Keshire'll help you out. He's the boss jka animator as far as I can tell. He's actually released a bunch of parries or blocks to the public. They just need to be massaged into usable condition, something I started to do last year but never finished. Those might be a good starting place. I'm working on them as well. I've decided that it was a massive pain to manually merge animation.cfg files to make it work. As such, I've just started on a program that will do the merging work for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vruki Salet Posted June 12, 2006 Author Share Posted June 12, 2006 it was a massive pain to manually merge animation.cfg files to make it work.) No kidding I've just started on a program that will do the merging work for us. Neat. By the way, are there still NPC scripts to be converted from SP to MP? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
razorace Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 You mean the AI code or the ICARUS map scripts from the SP campaign? In both cases, the anwser is yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vruki Salet Posted June 12, 2006 Author Share Posted June 12, 2006 Maybe it's time to crack open my "text processing with python" book. It's full of great parsing tricks, like perl for humans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
razorace Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 Yeah, I can totally see us creating a simple converter that would automatically convert the SP ICARUS scripts into a form useable in MP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vruki Salet Posted June 12, 2006 Author Share Posted June 12, 2006 Razor, where in the code will I find the place that makes the parried one go all slow? And how about where it makes the parrier's saber bounce back for "moving their saber in a weird direction to knock their opponent off-guard"? The sabersys code looks amazingly complicated & is hard for me to follow. I hope you don't mind me asking you to save time...er well my time anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
razorace Posted June 13, 2006 Share Posted June 13, 2006 Look for "slowbounce" and "doparry". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vruki Salet Posted June 13, 2006 Author Share Posted June 13, 2006 thx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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