Tutorial: Rope Arrows - Second Edition

New Horizon on 24/9/2005 at 13:13

Quote Posted by ascottk

Less than 24 hours since this post? C'mon NH :erg:

I know it's buggy but this is the closest we've come since the editor came out.

Let's see:
The main problems we had were multiple spawnings & spawning @ weird angles FIXED

Next problem(s):
Only climbable on two sides or blsRope climbing suxWIP
Rope skeletal mesh missing skin & disappears at certain anglesWIP

Quite honestly your post bothers me (and I don't mean to be a jackass):
I am aware of those problems & the post seems reduntant.
You shoot it down in less than 24 hours after the post and do not offer any ideas about solutions.

We'll keep doing what we need to do in order to get this thing ready for prime-time.

Sorry man, I didn't mean for you to take that personally. You have to remember, I might be a bit jaded at this point as I've been slugging it out with Thief 3 for well over a year now. :) I wasn't directing the criticisms at your work, just an overall observation of the state the rope arrows are currently at ingame. If we could import some new animations for rope climbing, and associate them with blsrope, then I think they would be usable in missions. I wasn't really shooting them down, I was just saying that they're not completely ready just yet. ;) Believe me, if I had any suggestions for possible sollutions at the time, I would have given them. The only thing I can think of right now is to get new animations in there. I was poking around the animation viewer last night after I posted. I couldn't even find rope climbing animations, so I think that's why blsrope doesn't work. If we guessed what the rope climbing animations were called and just copied and renamed the ladder anims, that might work since I think the ability to move around the rope is tied to the blsrope setting in the game sys.

Edit:

Ahh, I see how the animations are often setup. garrett_08.sai mentions a rope animation several times, but I don't see it in the list when I use the skeletal viewer. Anyone know how these animation files were created?

Shadowspawn on 24/9/2005 at 13:50

From that particular angle, the video looks awesome. Excellent work you guys! :thumb:

At some point, I'll get to opening the animations and figuring out how they work. I think we could tweak the shoulder joints a little bit and at least the hands would be close to the rope. Making the fingers move to grip the rope would be harder, but not much more difficult.

Getting the legs to animate as if climbing a rope is probably going to be much more work. Maybe somebody like Weyoun could build a T2 motion editor.

Probably the easiest thing to do (longer term) is to write a converter to translate T3 animation format to something we can edit in an existing program, and then a way to convert them back. Any suggestions? 3DS Max? Milkshape? I know some folks were looking into importing those animations into various programs. Any luck yet?

Anyway, outstanding work here guys! Keep it up. I'm going back to work on the matlib editor, IBT cooker, and TimTo3DS.

ascottk on 24/9/2005 at 14:55

Thanks, NH,

It was nothing personal it just seemed like you gave up already.

On another note I received a new skeletal mesh & a static mesh from str8g8 & I'll post the new files after getting them set up.

I was looking at the Garrett_08 psa animation through milkshape. Milkshape doesn't handle psk files too well but it might do psa better. I'll have to try it out.

Another side note: I tried the rope arrows on dock2 & it's pretty fun because that map has a bunch of wood surfaces to play around on :joke:

New Horizon on 24/9/2005 at 16:49

Something that will likely help the functionality of rope arrows is to assign animations to rope climbing in the t3playeranims.t3u. Currently there are none.

What we would have to figure out though, is what the game calls out to when we have the rope actor set to blsclimb...if it still does anything that is.

Since there doesn't appear to be any rope arrow climbing anims anymore, I would simply paste the "ladder" section from the playeranims file and rename the headings rope but leave the references to the ladder climbing animations. If we could get that working, it would at least allow the player to move all the way around the rope. ;) Been trying it out but so far, no luck.

str8g8 on 24/9/2005 at 17:29

Quote:

Probably the easiest thing to do (longer term) is to write a converter to translate T3 animation format to something we can edit in an existing program, and then a way to convert them back. Any suggestions? 3DS Max? Milkshape? I know some folks were looking into importing those animations into various programs. Any luck yet?

I used ActorX to export the psk file, and it could be used to export psa animation files as well, at least in theory, so we already have one half of the puzzle. The problem is you would have to recreate the original source files. This is doable for a rope where you know the number of bones and the approx length etc. But for Garrett it would be pretty difficult if not impossible.

I've been looking around on unreal forums for a way to import psk or psa files back into max, which would be the other half of the puzzle, but no luck so far, in part because Epic released some source files for characters and so on so there wasn't as great a need.

cheers
str8g8

ascottk on 24/9/2005 at 19:49

(http://files.filefront.com/GARropeSkeletal_StaticMeshzip/;4174081;;/fileinfo.html) Here's the new files courtesy of str8g8.

So far the skeletal mesh shows its texture & it can be climbed BUT it has proven to be buggy on my end (climbability seems random). Also when used with the deathspawn link to the static mesh it produces a duplicate (It might be on my end as well EDIT: it was on my end).

The static mesh seems a little buggy as well. Same issues as the skeletal mesh.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I added stuff to the tut

EDIT #2.5: After experimenting with the new meshes the staticmesh seems to work alright although you have to line up perfectly in order to climb it. I was able to climb the skeletal mesh but the spawning was random.

Rantako on 25/9/2005 at 09:59

I've tried adding all the properties you listed in the .uc file above, but no luck. The animation still isn't playing - in fact, the climbable rope is no longer spawning, so one of those properties must be interfering with things. I'll mess around with them to see if I can get it to work.

Out of curiosity, is the animation working for anyone else, or is it just me who has this problem?

EDIT: I've just got it to work, but have to go out now. I'll try and find which property fixed it when I get back.

Rantako on 25/9/2005 at 17:59

Well, it works now. Sometimes. The rope only seems to spawn if the arrow is fired directly upwards into the underside of a wooden smesh - I think the hardpoint I'm using in the script ends up inside the smesh/surface, and so doesn't spawn. But it does work, and that animation looks pretty impressive! (One thing - the animation rope is longer than the smesh rope - whoever made the new smesh might want to consider extending it to match). The next thing I need to try is using different hardpoints...

ascottk on 25/9/2005 at 18:04

Quote Posted by Rantako

I've had problems spawning the rope if I used INVarrowSHAFT1A1 for the mesh. I have no problems with INVarrowROPE except it's a little harder to aim.

ascottk on 2/10/2005 at 03:01

A few changes:

INVarrowSHAFT1A1 (with RopeArrowHead rigid attachment) instead of INVarrowROPE. It's easier to aim.

Used INVarrowROPE for the RopeArrowDummy (solves the inconsistent spawning problem) HardPoint for DeathSpawn to RopeArrowSpawn = RopeAttach

Changed the spawning script to use a different hardpoint: HP_Stick instead of HP_arrowhead (also solves the spawning problem)

If anyone wants to reformat the tutorial so it's easier to read, quote the tutorial then PM me with the changes then I'll copy & paste that into the post.