Weapon export max4

[HairlessWookie]

I looked through all of the threads for the answer to this, but no luck. I've been working on getting a chaingun in-game for jokker's doom mod. I have the mesh in 3dsmax4 and is seperated into 2 parts, the spinning barrel, and the handle/base section of the gun. The handle section is the parent bone to the barrel.
There are 24 frames to this animation. the handle is stationary, and the barrels spin 60 deg. every 2 frames. I've exported it to the game, and when i fire it, it fires for a few frames and then freezes. No error message, the game is just froze on the exact same frame every time. (i can tell by the shape and intensity of the muzzleflash). In my weapon file under shoot I have every 2 frames emmiting a projectile, and doing the colt commando muzzleflash.
I've even tried deleting the keyframes of the barrel and setting the last key so it doesnt spin,....same result. and in the skeleton file i got rid of shootempty, to clear any problems up that it might be causing. If anyone can help that would be awesome. I would use milkshape but that would mean no spinning barrel as you can only export kf2 mesh animations with 1 bone.

[HairlessWookie]

Heres another wild twist to this error.
for charanimateshoot chaingun, I reverted to shoot beretta. Undernieith shoot beretta i removed all messages. so when you shoot the beretta or the chaingun, nothing happens except for the character doing the character animation for shooting the beretta. (no weaponanim_shoot, weaponanim_shootempty)
well when i try it like this it works fine. but when i put it in slo-mo and hold shoot down it freezes..., even though there is nothing pointing to a weapon animation at all. I can press shoot once, and his arm will recoil, but if i press shoot again before the character animation completes, lock-up.

[HairlessWookie]

problem half-way fixed now.....
I figured maybe i'd have to make the character animation length longer than the weapon animation length, so i went ahead and made a new chaingun shooting animation for the character 35 frames long, and made animation blocks for shooting the chaingun in the default_skeleton.txt Now the gun works fine in normal time, shoots bullets and does muzzleflashes, all until I go into bullet time. It freezes up on frame 10. (i counted the muzzleflashes) I've tried exporting the animation a number of ways.....looping, etc.
does anyone know what the matrix scaling checkbox does? does it scale the animation as in the movie matrix and bullet time?
I sure hope u know the answer to this one maddie, or hopefully some remedy staff will surf this forum soon.

[Maddieman]

I have 1 quick guess, but since I just woke up it's probably wrong. images/icons/smile.gif

What's the rate of fire set to? Depending on the animation, if you have the rate of fire too quick it can crash out (remember that the animation loops back to the start every time you fire). The important bit is the difference between the minimum and maximum rate of fire - make sure the difference is fairly significant.

Also, the other thing you need to check out is the slow motion rate of fire multiplyer. It sounds like when you go into slow motion that the rate of fire multiplyer changes the rate of fire and causes a conflict which crashes the game.

Like I said, this is a very rare error (because it seems to be specific to the animation), and I don't even know if it's what's causing the problem; but to me, it sounds like it. So the only thing I can suggest is to tweak the rates of fire until it stops crashing. Try entering the values for the ingram and the colt. Also, check kung fu 2 for a quick note on the rates of fire - it's in the weapons/kungfu.txt.

Tell me if that works - I'll think about it later if you haven't fixed it.

[HairlessWookie]

I just figured it out maddie, wish i would have checked here 2 hours ago when u posted. you are absolutely right, it was the slow motion frequency multiplier, and probably a combination of that and the shooting frequency. but what really screws with me is that i used a txt file from lightsaber to make the chaingun, imported a colt commando mesh, and set it to 1 frame anim length with the same problem. So it mustve been exactly like u said, the strange relationship between shooting freq, shooting mult, and the character animation length.
thanx maddie.....and if you figured that out before breakfast....U R the man.

[HairlessWookie]

Oh, and BTW how is your friend's spider project? do they have it all in-game yet?

[Maddieman]

and if you figured that out before breakfast....U R the man. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Actually, it cost me my breakfast. graemlins/tinyted.gif images/icons/wink.gif

It just so happens that I ran into the problem a few months back when I was trying to get a 200-300 frame animation loop after 50 frames if the player held the fire button down.

By the way, if you're feeling crafty you could get an effect for your chain gun where the barrel spins while it's being fired, and then slows down to a halt after the player releases the trigger. Just create an animation of the barrel spinning for x frames before it slows down; then play around with the rates of fire. I think Ken put a comment with a small formula for working out how to do it properly.

how is your friend's spider project? do they have it all in-game yet? <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">It sounds like the spider project is going well. I think they've got it in-game, and are focusing on the maps and animation now.

[HairlessWookie]

Yeah thats a good idea, i thought about doing something like that, but i think I'll let these guys screw with it. I dont have thier database or anything and I have a ton of stuff to do.
Hey I'm starting to work out a kind of saber fencing system with zephyrin. If it's cool with you, I'd like to email you some of my ideas and get your input on it.
Also, have you seen the 3d benchmark test by mad onion? They used maxpayne for some of thier tests, and had some nifty looking stuff. They had reflections on the floor and spacewarps behind bullets in slo-mo.....they said they used max-fx technology by remedy, but reflections and space warps? im thinking they must have made the demo in 3dsmax, but if we could somehow get space warps into a mod, especially a sword fighting mod like katana, that would be the shit.

[Maddieman]

Sure fire some ideas off me; if they're any good I'll gladly exploit them. images/icons/grin.gif

Hehe, I guess I'm not the only person who tried to extract the 3dmark demo with rasmaker, after all. images/icons/tongue.gif

Yeah it's amazing, but I think most of it's just extra effects that can't be done in Max Payne. Perhaps we'll see true bullet waves in mp2? images/icons/smile.gif
Speaking of which, I'm trying to download the new 3dmark demo - no luck so far. graemlins/brickwall.gif

I've already been experimenting with motion blur effects and transparencies (thanks to a clever suggestion from mr.kung fu) - but unfortunately nothing that looks particularly good.

[biXen]

They use MAX-FX, but by now they've developed A LOT on it, so not much of it is the same as what they use in Max... although am sure Max Payne 2 will have some surprises.

Maddie: kemical extracted 3D Mark Demo with some tool, that's where he got the skin to the lobbymod from if I recall correctly. Don't think he managed to get it all out though.

[Maddieman]

that's where he got the skin to the lobbymod from if I recall correctly. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Er...but it's in the game anyway...

I finally a checked out the new 3dmark demo. Some familiar names popped up during the credits, but I don't recall Remedy being mentioned at all; then again perhaps I missed it amidst the tears from a pitiful score ( graemlins/tinyted.gif ).

[HairlessWookie]

yeah my eyes watered up when i scored a 2500. My little brother scored 11,500.