Possible Projects Interest

[cmdrkoenig67]

Those are pretty cool, RD.

Dana

[Randomdays]

Thanks Dana

From what I'm seeing. for FFvt3R, collision for objects at least, if not for characters, seems to be almost completely controlled by the bounding box. If I move the part of the box away from the stairs on the motel, it would look likes the character is climbing up some invisible ones, as well as landing or standing on nothing in mid air.

I've been going back and forth between the city side and the park side, so if no one has ever done one before, I think I'll try a gas station next.

For the motel, consider it a first draft since I would still like to do it as separate parts. For the gas station, if I can get a good looking one, the same with separating out the building, the sign the pumps, etc. The pump could be set up like the exploding barrels for some nice explosions.

Not sure how useful everything would be to anyone except a mode maker like Benton, but they might make good cutscenes.

And it is fun running/flying around checking them out.

[Randomdays]

Update on the map  - on the motel, separated the sign and the parking lot from the motel itself. Dividing the motel up into it's separate wings will be pretty complicated and I'm putting that on hold for now.

The gas station is done except for some minor tweaks. Like the motel, it took a while to find a good model with a low poly count, available in a format I could use, and free. I wound up choosing a Chevron model from the 3D Warehouse.

Its divided up into 7 parts - the sign, the parking lot, the store, and the pumps, cleaning boxes, and traffic stop posts (all singled out and then multiple instances on the map), and the cover.

All objects have their bounding boxes on - If the cover is on the map, you won't be able to approach the objects under it due to its bounding box. Since its a separate object, you can remove it if needed.

The pumps are set up to a copy of the exploding barrels template for an explosion if destroyed or thrown.

Pics below

[WyldFyre]

So, if I understand correctly, even if you were to deform a bounding box to match the object (the cover for example) you could not pass underneath because the game engine "sees" it extending to the normal ground?

I had thought that perhaps conforming a bounding box to an object might allow interaction with it in relation to the form. Since you can pass under flying characters and thrown objects, I thought this might be workable. But it sounds like you are limited if the object is static. What if you made the cover a flying stationary object? Would that allow passing underneath to objects below?

Just curious.

[Randomdays]

WyldFyre,

As far as I've seen with experimenting, yes to your question . SA has tried a few things as well with no luck.

What's interesting is how map objects interact. The ride cars on the Haunted House are inside the main bounding box for the object and are staying inside it though they are separate objects. I think that this allowed by the game engine because the carts themselves have no bounding boxes.

The cab,which has a bounding box, in the Gas Station picture with the cover, would not pass the cover until I moved its mesh and bounding box to not overhang the street.

So, an interesting thought.... if you had a character with another form to it, and that second form had NO bounding box on it, you might be able to enter the area inside or below an object's bounding box. But could you click on the character and interact with it? And without a bounding box, the other form character could go anywhere and walk thru all walls.

You could make this into a puzzle where the Vision or the Martian Manhunter could phase though a wall to open a switch to let other characters though a door.

I've shaped the bounding box on the Gas Station Store to match the slanted roof, like I did the motel stairs, and you can walk up and down the roof's slant when on it.

When I was testing in game, I even save a male_civilian walking on the roof.


I tried making a very thin "floor" shaped bounding box and put it on the map about flight level - high enough to walk under. The character could fly over it and land/ walk on it, but not pass underneath.

I'm not sure how the flying stationary character would work, but if its a character then you probably couldn't land or walk on it. SA was looking at making an fx that you could go under but walk on. I don't know a ot about fx's, so I don't know if they have bounding boxes on them or not.

[GogglesPizanno]

The best way I have found to describe the path-finding algorithm (as I understand it), is to imagine you have a map with all your objects on it, and then you drape a big sheet over the top of it (using the bounding box data of each object as the definition of its"shape"). That sheet represents the plane that the game computes where you can walk/fly over and interact with (with normal characters that have mass and bounding boxes). In game when you destroy a building for example, and you remove that building from the map, the "sheet" in that area sinks down to the ground, hence you can now walk on the ground level.

Now when you have an object that you want a character to walk under that has a roof, the "sheet" is still gonna overlay that object entirely, cause the roof or whatever is defining the "top" of the object is still working like a cover over the area. ie. a building with 4 walls and roof is treated exactly the same as 4 poles holding up a roof. When the "sheet" drapes down over the roof, the sides of the sheet become the defacto walls as far as the path-finding is concerned.

As mentioned, there are probably some weird little hacks and cheats that could be done to fake something, but they are all gonna come with their own limitations in terms of reduced interactions, or movement behaviors. The engine at the time was just not designed for that kind of multi level movement.

[Randomdays]

Good explanation Goggles.

The only thing I see, as with my thinking above, is that both you and the object must have bounding box"sheet" to block movement. If the character doesn't have a bounding box, then he should be able to walk into an object that does. Even though, a Goggles said, that would raise new problems.

For other form like mentioned above, could you put a very brief timer on it, so you could walk through the wall and then return to normal?

[Randomdays]

Almost finished with the next park ride - its a 'flying' ride simular to Disney's Dumbo ride from RCT3 called "Barnstormer", with old WW1 planes.

I was able to find some different rotating meshes to use for a base and we'll see how they work. The two RADAR dishes from FFvt3R wouldn't work with Blender, but WP2 had a slow moving windmill and a faster spinning lighthouse.

I waited on the capture this time for some park goers to be on the ride, but its seems that Blender has a limit on what it can handle. All pieces had to be joined to the spinning part to move, and each park goer is made of different random parts. I finally settled on one plane out of twelve with 5 peeps in it, and copied them 3 more times into different planes on the ride.

Hopefully it should be on the map soon, but I need to still work on the fence, gates, and ticket taker for it.

I had hoped to get a ferris wheel in, but even though the wheel would rotate, the seats wouldn't and the peeps would be upside down half the time.

I am looking at a 'rocking" ride and maybe a couple of shows.

Some thoughts if someone wants to do some input;

1) A lion show with peep objects in the stands and some lions in the middle (big_cat_versatile). A bounding box in the shape of a ring with no center to keep them in, but a player could fly over and land in the middle.

2) Bumper cars - another ring shaped bounding box with the cars actually characters with walk paths. they could move around randomly being interrupted by each other.

3) A roofless "bounce house" with a bounding box of different heights on top - it would look like the peeps are bouncing up and down.

4) A raft ride and the roller coaster.  For the roller coaster, my original thought was similar to the Haunted House already done - carts on turntables moving in and out of doors, not just on a flat plane but inside and outside circles as well.  My new thought is lay down a track with ups and downs with the bounding box following underneath. The carts would again be characters following path nodes with bounding box walls to keep them on the track.

   You couldn't walk under the track, but you could fly over it or land on the track.  The same for the raft or water flume ride, though it would mainly be flat.


Besides RCT3, I had found a few items online doing a search for "theme park rides" but found a lot more and different by looking for "amusement park rides"

Along with some shops and food stands, there should be plenty to fill up the park area, and both ZT2 and WP2 have standard nifs with random skins for park goers of different ages and types to walk around the park.

For the city half, besides the 3 objects already done, I have room for 3 to 5 more places, depending on size.

I'm thinking of ; a) comic/ book store, a playground, a tv or radio station, or a post office, finding the right import permitting. Other possibilities are some other stores - hardware, ice cream, or pet, or some more fast food like a Donut or coffee shop.

Suggestions welcome.

[Randomdays]

On the Roller Coaster setup for the map I'm working on - The thought of having a cart shaped character moving along path nodes with bounding box walls to keep it on the track - I think that should work. I wouldn't be able to do loops or spirals with the bounding box issue though.

My question for anyone who knows scripting or pathing - when the "cart" character is moving flat it would look fine, but going up or down a ramp, it wouldn't tilt to match the angle of incline. I could get around this be setting up a up or down angled cart for different looping animations - IE walk = flat ; fly = up angle; run = down angle.

Is there a way to script that a character will switch to a specific animation at a move node, or move that way to a move node (run to move node X)

The Easyscript manual doesn't seem to cover move nodes, and I'm not at home to check out the FFEdit help file.

The water ride would mostly be flat, but I would also need to do something similar if I put in a flume to go down.

[WyldFyre]

I don't know if he had up or down variations, but Tommyboy made a train and tracks a long time ago. Might check his site to see if there is anything helpful.

[Randomdays]

Thanks WyldFyre.

Checked Tommyboy's trains - there are two varieties - normal track and elevated, but no ramps up or down.

Checking on the civnodes, it looks they're only for directing pathway following, one to the next. They have no templates to make changes on. Changing animation type or switching one character to another might be done by scripting, but I'm not sure you could do it over and over again.

A few things to experiment with;

I might be able to get the mesh to change animation by giving the up ramp the ladder attribute. I'll have to test, but if I place a civ node at the bottom of the ramp, and another at the top, the cart should switch to its climb animation until it reaches the top and moves to the the next civ node.

For the down ramp. if the bounding box was set as an invisible set of steps under the ramp, it could trigger the jump animation. That might be a little jerky as the cart moves down the ramp though - going between each step and maybe briefly flipping to the walk animation. I'll have to also see what the minimum height is to trigger the jump animation.

Another option for the down ramp - at the top of the ramp, have a "scary object", hidden from the back by another object. When the cart passes the object and can see it, it should flip to its run animation and go down the ramp. The cart's detect radius could be set to the end of the ramp where it would no longer be scared and would return to walk

Otherwise, it looks like the original idea of turntables might have to be done after all.

Last, here's a pic of the Barnstormer ride. The pole is a separate object from everything else, so you can move the planes up or down as you like. They animate smoothly compared to the other two rides, and spin a lot quicker.

[naitvalis]

I found all this very interesting, i'm tryng experimenting with maps too for my 40k mod , aniway congratulations Randomdays thanks for sharing your experience.

[Randomdays]

You're welcome Nait

I find that the documentation for FFEdit and Ezscript to be fairly good and answers most questions, though I've referred to some info from FF1 as well since the editing for both seems to be about the same.

Placing and setting up objects on the map seems to be not too difficult with the info provided. Scripting will probably be a bit more of a challenge if I get to setting up actual encounters for a level.

While it looks like there's a few things that I found out that the scripting could do that were interesting and a surprise, it also seems that overall I'm a bit more limited than I thought I would be in things I want to do, and having to figure out workarounds till I learn more.

If you have any questions, ask and maybe we can figure it out, or Benton or someone who knows more can chime in.

[Randomdays]

Update on the map project -

Removed almost all the trees, bushes and boulders from the park area while building, adding some back when finished.

I was able to get a simple roller coaster built in RCT3 and imported into FFvt3R. One large nif in game, including the loading area.

Added a bounding box under the two arches so that the player can stand on them.

Adding the ladder attribute to the coaster didn't work correctly - the ramps are too steep to walk up, and a character with the climb ability will walk off the ramp, move to the side, and climb the invisible, vertical bounding box. I assume the game can't handle climbing at an angle.

Going down the arch, the character won't move to the bottom on his own, but will make a series of small jumps when repeatedly told to do so.

For the arches on the coaster at least, it'll mean going to turntables. For the flat sections I'll see if I can get pathing setup for a character cart.

There are 2 different set of park goers in carts to use for the coaster, randomly created by RC3.

Since I'll be using turntables, I'll also have to hide part of them when they/re moving upside down, so I'll probably make the coaster a 'mine" one, with mountains and tunnel entrances and exits.

Pics of the coaster in game, plus a ride cart, mountain and mine entrances for possible use.

[Randomdays]

Learning process -

The coaster is almost done. For the civ pathing, if the node has no info on it, when the civ reaches it, they'll randomly move to another, usually the closest. Since I moved a lot of the nodes around from under the new objects, some civs were "pacing" back and forth between two nodes.

If you place a node destination in the string box for the node, they'll move to that one next.

To set up a new character properly on the map, you have to add it to the templates tab, the character tab, and the mission tab, picking an AI.

I added the coaster cart character to the map at the beginning of a string of nodes with pathing setup from each to the next, and it worked fine. I'll need to add the track following bounding box to keep the cart from taking 'shortcuts' and to keep other civs off the track.

When the cart is inside the mountain, it should follow a path to the next exit, and reappear on the map again.

The final mine entrances are from RCT3. I tried various mountains from Civ4 and the web, but they all knocked me to windows when testing in game for some reason. I finally found a low poly mountain in Deviantart and put a desert skin on it and it looks pretty good.

Still to do - finish pathing for the carts, add the track bounding box, add some black areas on the mountains to simulate the openings you enter/exit, and set up the rotated turntables for the arches.

Pic below the cart, a mine entrance and a mountain in game.

[cranlox]

how much work have you been doing friend.
I was absent for a few days due to contracting covid, damn virus. I'm back home and I'm fine.
That roller coaster looks great.

[Randomdays]

Hey Cranlox.

Not too much at the moment on the map - tons of overtime at the moment, plus not feeling 100%

Pathing is complete for the test cart with the bounding boxes keeping it where it should be. I followed it along a complete lap and while its a little jerky, it looks pretty good.

While I don't have the energy for FF at the moment, I;m playing a little old fashioned Rogue to "relax".

Maybe after all these years, I'll finally get the Amulet of Yendor and get out of the dungeon with it.

[windblown]

I realy like your updates on his thread, you've got great ideas for the game. Can't wait to see more in the future.

[cranlox]

jj's robot is giving me some problems with an alternative mesh that I tried to do

[cmdrkoenig67]

RD, some of those look like they might be really neat mountain/terrain objects too, just saying...haha! Hope everybody is doing okay.

Dana

[Randomdays]

So, not really ready to start back on things yet, but a few thoughts;

1) I found 3D printer stl file of Snarf from the Thundercats. I might try to rig this later but it would probably be hard to set up a uv for skinning

Some Edgar Rice Burroughs Characters; I had put some adult skins on a younger character mesh back on page #12 here, and it changed them enough to look like new skins.

2) We've got a John Carter and a Dejah Thoris. If  no one is willing to skin the younger characters of Cathoris and Thuvia, I wonder if body switching the skins onto a younger mesh will "kiddify" them

3) Same with Tarzan - Maybe putting him on a Speedy mesh would turn him into Korak, and Turok into Andar

4) Adding a couple of legs could turn a lion into a martian Banth, and a gorilla into a martian white ape. Not sure what to do about John Carter's pet Woola.

5) There's a 4 armed mesh that I could stretch and add some tusks to for a Green Martian, if someone wanted to skin it.

6) Since I like mounts I could put a static Tarzan on an elephant for Tantor.

7) The monkey I rigged a while back would be a good Nkima.

[cranlox]

You really plan to do honors in FFVs3 to Burroughs. It would be awesome to see those fantastic creations. I hope those projects come to fruition.

[Randomdays]

So I found that Tomato had done a mirror universe Martian Manhunter back in 2013 that would be great for a ERB Green Martian - it would just need the tusks added.

I saw a couple of stl files of a thoat and Woola and some other characters, but they weren't all  free and I'm not up for spending any money right now.

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3d-john-carter-model-1182788

https://www.modiphius.net/products/john-carter-of-mars-print-at-home-heroes-of-barsoom-stl

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free-printable-woola-3d-model/727485

And a couple of Snarf (and a thundertank!)

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/662521795186406888/

https://www.yeggi.com/q/snarf/

One for the berbils - robo-bears

https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-print-models/miniatures/sci-fi/berbils-thundercats

And Mumm-ra's headquarters;

https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-print-models/miniatures/figurines/temple-mumm-ra-god-statues


Valeria from Conan -

https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-print-models/miniatures/figurines/barbarians-conan-and-valeria-35mm-scale

[Randomdays]

So, some simple body swaps; taking skins from their original meshes and putting them on male_teen 14 and female _teen ponytail

Cathoris is the son of John Carter.

Thuvia is a younger character in the John Carter series that Cathoris falls in love with

Korak is the son of Tarzan

Andar is the younger brother of Turok.

Excuse the standard mesh breakage from the character viewer



Cathoris from John Carter by Lightning Bug;



Thuvia from Dejah Thoris by JKC



Korak from Tarzan by Kenn X



And Andar from Turok by Zulu Delta




They could probably do with some tweaking to their skins if someone is interested, and I would probably move the teen_14 mesh onto some taskmaster kfs and add the weapons back in if I get to it.

[Tomato]

So FYI, Male_teen_14 is a pain to skope, since like male_heavy and male_hulking it has its own keys... but my male_teen_tm model is mb compatible. It's part of WHY I made it, actually. I can send it if you want.

[Randomdays]

Sure Tomato, and thanks. If you didn't see it on the other thread, I'm looking for your male_basic_tm and Male_DPMask_TM.

Does your basic work with taskmaster kfs?

My original thought was to just re-rig the mesh, keeping the teen size, to the original taskmaster so its kf's would work. That would get me the sword, knif and bow animations.

That might be what I might do with your martian mesh also if I can. He would need sword, piston and rifle animations and extras if I can get it to work.

Thanks again.

[Tomato]

so taskmaster takes MB meshes, you just have to skope them onto it because you need to add 20 different pieces otherwise.

As for the base meshes, simple enough. I'll pm you.

[Randomdays]

So, here's the 3 boys moved onto Tomato's male teen. It looked broken in the ff viewer, but good in the FF2 viewer. The original male_teen 14 crashed the FF2 viewer - probably needs conversion.

The do look a bit different that the other pics. Perhaps a bit more mature

[Randomdays]

I was adding to my list and ran across AA's Stature mesh/skin. Here's Dejah Thoris body swapped, either as an alternate Dejah Thoris or Thuvia

Not sure why I have an image in my head of her having a ponytail, but it helps make her different than the original Dejah Thoris.

[Randomdays]

First draft of the Thundertank.

As I feared, even with a sketchup model, there were no skins and no uv setup to add them. Instead of setting them up, I went ahead and changed the color for each of the tank's materials. They still need a little tweaking but the tank is actually pretty bland.

Shown with Dean's Panthro in the driver's seat, though his posture needs to be adjusted for sitting, and not sure if the tank is sized correctly for him.

No "action" model with the rear doors open with the main gun raised planned.