New mod screenshots

[Ryo]

A few screens taken from my mod based on Resident Evil story.

You can find them at:

http://www.geocities.com/v_random/page1.html

[Maddieman]

Hey, that's not bad. images/icons/smile.gif

You've certainly managed to capture the lighting from RE2, no question.

Keep up the good work.

[Alucard]

its looks good

[Kev_Hectic]

Good job so far images/icons/smile.gif The streets really remind me of RE2 and 3.

Man, there has been alot of MOD's poping up lately.

[Maddieman]

Man, there has been alot of MOD's poping up lately. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Good point, these forums have been almost dead for the past month, it's good to see some new work appearing. images/icons/smile.gif

[Ryo]

Thanks for the comments.

I hope to upload my mod in a few days even if many (little) things are still not working as I’d like…
I am also trying to make my levels not just “Open_door -> Enemy_attack”
I want to create a kind of “logical trend” inside, but this take a loooong time to be tested !!

But now I have a bad thought in my mind. I have the MP Italian version (since I am typing from Rome…), so the question is:
what about the meaning of every single story wav? Is that the same for every different language? my story dialogues make sense using another country version?

Please, remove my doubt!

[Maddieman]

Umm...opps....I kind of missed the 10 other screenshots on your site - unless you uploaded them recently. graemlins/doh.gif images/icons/blush.gif

At any rate, I liked the look of the new animations - I hope they work well in the game.

As for the dialogue sounds, they should be ok, because MaxEd uses variable names, not filenames to activate the sound effects. I couldn't be a 100% certain though.

[Co11]

I can't look at them... too scary .. images/icons/smile.gif

[Ryo]

Animations are still a little bit “raw” and must be improved.

The worst problem is that “undead” animations sometime freeze.
The animation stops at a random frame while the character is getting up. Why ? I think of some reasons:

1) animation length: I read MP animations required a defined number of frame: is it true? My animations are 210 frames length
2) Milkshape: is just not good for making MP animations…
3) FSM script: When an enemy dies he can rise again or not depending on his FSM. Maybe it is not supposed you add health to a character after his death.

[Maddieman]

The worst problem is that “undead” animations sometime freeze. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Erm...which animation are you actually using here? I presume it's one of the death ones.

1) animation length: I read MP animations required a defined number of frame: is it true? My animations are 210 frames length
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">So far, the only animations I've had problems with are the death animations. There is a variable in the globalconfig.txt (under the heading activation), which determines how many seconds (after the enemy dies) the game engine will take to confirm that the enemy is not responding - after that, the game stops any animation, and forgets about the enemy.

The explanation in the documentation is more clearer:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> [activation]
// CharacterTimeout variable specifies how many seconds character is
// updated after other activation logic determinates it to be inactive.
// Note: The specified time should cover atleast the character death
// animation length as otherwise characters may die in deactivated
// state meaning the death animation is not fully played to the end
CharacterTimeout = 4.0;
[/code]</blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The only other problem I used to have was with walking animations. They are supposed to be set to 'looping' in 3ds, and unfortunately MIlkshape doesn't have this option - so the animation freezes at the end of the first cycle.

2) Milkshape: is just not good for making MP animations…<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yup it's indeed crap, but at least you can edit existing animations.

3) FSM script: When an enemy dies he can rise again or not depending on his FSM. Maybe it is not supposed you add health to a character after his death. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I've tried to do this a long time ago and came across numerous problems. The most anoying one was the fact that when I tried to ressurrect my enemy, they would return to the non-responsive state, and effectively became vegetables.

However, if you look at the tutorial you will notice that the five enemies are recycled each time you use the enemy dispenser.

I've been playing around with idea of making a zombie mod. I think the way I'd do it [zombies coming back to life], would be through the skins code. Thinking about it, I don't think I'd even let them die - just have a very lengthy wounded animation. Then I'd set it so that you could only kill them with a headshot from a shotgun or something.

Actually, I think I might quickly try this...

EDIT:

Tried this very briefly. The wounded animation idea doesn't work on it's own. I think I'm going to have to change the statemachine to nonreactive or something as well. Gotta go to work now; I'll try it this evening when I get back.

[ 12-11-2002, 08:03 AM: Message edited by: Maddieman ]

[Ryo]

Wow, a lot of good news!!

Basically, for my resurrection animation I got your same idea: I made a very lengthy death animation (e.g. shotgun_death_a.kf2) with many identical frames where character just lies dead until he rises again.

So it could be that character runs out of time while my death animation has not reached its last frame yet (then I add some more health).

I am not sure about the frame rate, but maybe 210 frames are enough to timeout characters.

Your idea of using wounded animation instead of death one is really good.
Unfortunately I have already used wounded animations to avoid the famous looping problem in walking with milkshape: I make a non-stopping walking animation by switching continuously between the normal and the wounded state. I use of course the same animation for both states (a zombie is always wounded, anyway…)

Now, I try to extend the timeout period or reduce the animation length.

[Zer0]

Heres your prob:

Animation length 210 frames.

Max Payne Animation FPS = 24.

Character Timeout 4 seconds (default)

So 210 frames @ 24 fps = about 4.7 seconds.

I assume your adding health at about 150 - 190 frames.

Therefore your anim is timing out as your character starts to resurrect.

Make you char_timeout as about 6 and your fine.

[Maddieman]

To test whether or not your death aniamtion has timed out or not, use a cheat to get the ingram (coder is quickest), and then start shooting the frozen character. If the animation has timed out, what you will notice is that with each bullet hit, the animation progresses by about 2/3 of a frame. It's a very weird occurrence, and one that I have used to my advantage in my katana 2 mod (search for the ragdoll physics thread).

Anyway changing the timeout duration is easy. In ...\data\globalconfig.txt search for the activation block I quoted in my previous post and change the value 4 (seconds) to something larger.

Furthermore, if you DOWNLOAD (http://zer0mods.bwad.org.uk/LT/odtrack.php?url=http://zer0mods.bwad.org.uk/anim_tutorial_example.zip) the mod that accompanies my animation tutorial, you might notice an animation for the Mickey enemy (the bald guy who helps you in the laundry level) which is affected by the time out. I can't remember if I fixed it, but what happens is he plays dead for about 10 seconds before leaning up and blasting like a maniac (and then dies again).

Finally, there is one interesting side effect of the timeout variable that needs a brief mention. Put simply, the timeout duration varies depending on whether or not the player is in bullet time or not. So if you're in bullet time, frames 0-80 will play before the character freezes; however, if you're in real time, frames 0-140 will play before the character freezes (these are approximate frame counts, btw).

Anyway, I have to eat; so if this isn't clear enough I'll refine anything that you're having difficulty understanding. images/icons/smile.gif

I think my animation tutorial is going to have to be updated soon... graemlins/tinyted.gif

[Ryo]

Same thing: when I shoot at the character the animation steps forward.
Now I put 6 sec. and the animation works!

Thanks!