LowMan Project :: re-designing the scripted player...

[Spyrewolf]

Wow Those video's are amazing federico!!

top notch quality again!

the fluid nature of the animations is what caught my attention, the transistions were beautifully done!

very very nice work!

[wackedoutbiker]

Hey Federico have you made any progress on this scripted player? Let us know when it is ready for me to try out.

[federico]

Low-Man was put in hold for some reasons:
1) I never was able to find my game genre so I always tried to develop too many game types at the same time. Low-man was designed to provide a control for a character in an action-adventure game. I never fineshed developping this game type and now RF engine is too old for this (not for small games like tricks, little simulations, simple fps).
2) I put my whole effors in physics dev.
3) The work is too BIG to be done with scripted player, but also too COMPLEX for my coding knowledge to be done by code. The point is: this script is done by several little blocks. One for every action the character performs (idle2run , run, run2idle). So the script will become greater and greater (too many). But the idea was also to create a scripted player that was fully customizable for all the RF users so RF sscript is the right (but difficult) choice.

I'll try to find the workfolder in my HD and upload it somewhere.

[steven8]

Frederico,

It's wonderful to see your post. RF has great need of a person with your abilities. If you feel that Rf as it stands now will not be able to handle what your projects need, then perhaps you would find a home in helping Andy work on RF2 in the irrlicht engine. You say you have limited ability as a programmer, but your ability as a scripter and a creator show what you can do.

Andy could use an innovator such as yourself. Stick around and be a part of gaming history!! RF is going to be a major force for years to come, and the folks around here could use your input and tutelage. We have so many young, creative folks here who need the guidance and advice of someone like yourself.

Don't be a stranger, my friend.

[wackedoutbiker]

Federico, can you post a link here when you upload what you have of the LowMan Project? I think it would work well with a bunch of game genres. Anyway, you should also make a small map with the LowMan thing in it so we can see how it works if you haven't already. It would really help.

[wackedoutbiker]

I would say to use the Half-life 1 skeleton as it is the one most of the animations out here are compatible with.

And when are you going to upload the folder with what you have of the LowMan project? It looks cool.

[federico]

after days of search in several pc, I have to think that the workfolder is gone lost... I'll do a better search, but my fear is that my last format has erased that project.

[AndyCR]

Oh no! Sorry to hear that!

[wackedoutbiker]

Do you want me to host a funeral for it?

[fps]

So sorry to hear about that, I was looking forward to that one.
With the value and volume of the work that you do you should seriously consider getting a decent CD-RW and a spindle of 100 CD-R's for backing up your work. that is if you havent already done so. I find it to be extreamly usefull for saving monthly editions to the big edits of my game and every time a project is updated i save a copy to a disk.
Heck I have about every actor ever used in halflife or most any mod and every usefull file I've ever found on the fourms saved to dated disks in my organiser, but thats just because i download them elsewhere and take it home.
I am just saying that its usefull to make frequent backups.

Are you plannning on starting over?

[federico]

Are you plannning on starting over?

yes but in a total new way. I didn't backup that work, and it was a mistake, but, really, that script was too big to be handled in a decent way by the engine while calculating all the other things in the same time. Again the problem was this: should I generalize the script or do I have to design a script for every use? My idea was the first. design a pawn script and then extend it to the Ai npc. But it was huge just for the player!
So the idea now is the second, that is to follow different ways for diffent things.

- design the movement system only for the legs. So we can have simple combinations: 1) walking 2) sneaking 3) running 4) jumping/falling . The most part of the lowmen work was only this: let the player to complete the steps. In fact there was only few transition animations, and the most part was to code some timer to let the transition happens without to be stopped by another inputs (what i called skizophenic virgil!).

- Then must be attached the upper part of the body, with the proper animation for every weapons (letting the player firing when running sneaking walking) and every action (letting the player acts while crouched or standing). So we can simply forget the redesign the legs animation.

- the last part is related to aiming system for fight or a "look and act" system for action adventure game. A new command from Nout allows to add relative rotation to bones. Pratically we can add rotation to thjee spine or to the neck to let them turn around following the camera or the aim.

This will work only for the player. For the npc's the solution is the old one (one actor, one script, one set of animation) or the engine could collapse. The only thing that could be added to npc's is some trick to have an attached head to have lip sync or a rotating head(i have some idea). Naturally a priority system for executing the scripts must be designed or the interpreter could be easily overloaded.

I think that this is the maximum allowed by the engine and the script interpreter. This time I will try to be realistic.

[wackedoutbiker]

Well, that sounds cool, Federico. I would love to test it out. Anyway, it's too bad it won't work for NPCs...would make things a lot more realistic. Replacing NPC characters with a player character (along with the camera switching and everything) when switching between people in a team based game would be a good solution for what I want to do.

[AndyCR]

Sounds great!

[federico]

I've got some result in the new Pawn_Player design. Initially I used two pawns attached to have different legs/arms animation combinations but I had to switch again to the one pawn solution. Actually the pawn rotate his spine and neck to follow the camera and turn himself to mantain the orientation of the aim with the camera. I'll post some video.

[federico]

http://uomoartificiale.zippyvideos.com/

Read the descriprion of the videos. This are the base prototype of the new scripted player (as model can be used any CSS or HL2 male model).