Spent half the day on what I term an 'Epic Fail' task, which was to solve the issue of an X file loading in but having an animation issue. When I see this from my own art, I often ask the artist to correct the issue, but the engine will need to handle MOST types of X file which means solving this one. Alas after four hours it remains a mystery, so I decided to continue my main list and sort out custom animations for the AI system.
This also turned out to be a pig as I had to manually extract ALL the hacked in animation frames and create a new way to store them externally, and ensure the system did not break in the process. As at 5PM I am half way through this but at least the end is in sight and viable, unlike this mornings coding pain.
Once I have the custom animation frames externalized, I can then bring out the Zombies, Elephants and Robot Waiters to test the functionality, which is basically allowing ANY custom character to follow waypoints and obey the clever systems built into the DarkAI module. Hopefully Thursday will see it in a form that I can test and refine. Until then...
keep at it and don't let it get the better of you ;) when it is done you will see Reloaded come alive with all the different types of characters so keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteyes that is one big problem with reload. x file format form other 3d model software is a pain for characters. fpsc does not have this problem at all. maybe you could look and see wait you did in fpsc pipe line for characters x file. but I see know ever since the first beta you pretty much rewritten this engine because there is a lot of stuff that has been taking out and need to be put back in. good luck .
ReplyDeleteWhile you are working on AI Enemy Characters can you please provide the ability for users the choice to leave AI corpse in place following an enemies death by use of a default script choice. Same as Classic really where deaths are covered by a number of choices for the game designer via default scripts and not hard coded.
ReplyDeleteCurrently the AI is unusable for this reason in addition to anything else. Just looks ridiculous when I shoot an enemy in front of me and before I get to his dead body he vanishes as if by magic in front of my eyes together with his colleagues.
When you are working on the weapons can you remove the insistence on having to ask the game player to stop and press E to collect a weapon or anything else for that matter and leave the choice open to the game makers again instead of forcing this upon us via it being hard coded.
Thanks
:-)
I hope you've learned your lesson about hacking things into the engine. Do it properly the first time around and you'll be far better off later ;)
ReplyDelete(don't think I'm trying to sound "better than you" or anything - I'm sure you had reasons for hacking things in and hard-coding things at the time - and what I say is mostly a joke anyway)
Now that Lee has solved graphics in Reloaded it will be great to see where things go over the next few weeks for AI and game play.
ReplyDeleteHowever if Lee is going to focus on getting AI to work inside buildings and being able to go up stairs / ladders and all those sorts of things it would seem like a good idea to address indoor lighting at the same time. Static and dynamic lights are essentially not usable at the moment but I'm glad we are at least talking about this now.
Its easy to want everything yesterday and I'm trying to avoid that as Lee has clearly made some really good progress in the new beta and that should be celebrated.