QC Coders - Question to you!

[Phenom]

Hello, I'm currently working on a Quake animation project (Qung Fu) and I had a question "do I plan on making this into a game". I currently do not know very much QC to be much use so I am turning to you guys & gals!

My question(s) is(are)...


1. Combo fighting system
Would it be possible to make a mod revolving around a hand to hand combat fighting system and maybe have multiple combos(leftpunch-leftpunch-uppercut-roundhouse-jab-jab)?

2. Animations for wall jumping.
As in running along side a wall(or at) and once you jump towards the wall you press jump on contact which creates a wall jump effect of your character jumping off the wall. I'm not interested in wall running at this point.

3. Dynamic cameras.

Think of most current 3D fighting games, they have fly in cameras that circle around the fighter before the fight begins so they can do their trademark warcry. Would this be possible in QC?

I don't plan for the levels to be very large and the level will probably be layed out in a arena type fashion with little to no corridors(no hiding just fighting.)

Thanks for your input!

[MadGypsy]

I'm not a pro coder but my answer would be yes, yes and yes

1) if you have the animations, defining them in QC is not a big deal. Then you just add impulses. Impulse combos might be a bit more tricky. Probably need a timer and a way to add impulses into numbers that can't be added any other way. Hmmm crappy explanation. Say punch is 2 and kick is 4 but superMove(punch + kick) = punch*kick where no other combo or single press can equal that number. You have nextthink someAmountOfTime to get all your button presses in before they are processed into a new animation number and displayed.

2) walls do not let you walk through them so therefore the game knows if you have hit one. There has to be a way to capitalize on that. You may be able to "hack" this (if all else fails) by putting a slight angle on the wall so it is more like a very steep floor. A floor that is still way too steep to climb but angled enough to where the jump button will work when your feet touch it (pure speculation),

3) this has already been made and can be found somewhere on Quaddicted in the QC mods for cameras. Or at least a good starting point can be found there.

[Cobalt]

Yea like Gypsy said , mostly yess to all, but for #2 its tricky at least in the legacy Quake engines because any part of the map BSP surface is considered world , AKA: the same entity. So if you were falling straight down while touching the surface of a wall, the enging considers you : self.flags & FL_ONGROUND , even though the bottom of your model is not touching the floor. Some fancy traceline code might get this condition to detect, but so far none of the code I have messed with will work, and other experienced coders seem to say we are stuck with that issue.

Newer engines have surface type detection built in and coded into maps...so that would tend to make it a problem solved.

[Phenom]

How would animations have to be layed out?

Right now my mesh is polygon based with an armature heat weighed.

[MadGypsy]

Shape keys - as you can see above there are no armatures in .mdl format. There actually isnt a whole lot of anything in .mdl format, Just frame after frame of mesh "distortions" and a texture.

You need more answers because mine is not sufficient. If you open up a model in (ex) qME it knows the model has X animations on it. I have no idea how to set up your model in blender to have the animations segregated. Maybe it's as simple as putting each animation on it's own timeline - maybe it involves flags - I just don't know...but I would definitely like to, so if you find out please be kind and share your knowledge.

Shape keys is where you need to begin though. I am 100% positive of this much.

Gypsy

Edit: You are also going to have to label every frame for every animation



ECONOMY:

Let's say you have a player delivering a kick and then pulling it back. I wouldn't animate that entire sequence. I would animate exactly half of it and use QC to play the first half backwards after it has played forward. In order for it not to look like it is just half being played forward and back you could easily make like 3 (alternate) frames that "mix it up" a bit. For instance say the half-animation was 9 frames long, it could go like this
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 8 7 6 5 4 10 11 12. 10 11 12 would hold animation frames that work like but are not identical to - 3 2 and 1. In this example I had to "create" exactly 5 less frames, now multiply that times all the individual animations and you could be looking at eliminating like 50 frames (or more), resulting in a smaller file and less work.

The good news is, you would have to be nuts to give all of your models their own fighting style, so if you finish one you have basically finished them all, maybe with the exception of one (or so) special move(s) a piece.

[Phenom]

What about a jump animation?

[Phenom]

Have a look at this quick MDL I made. It only has a 10 frame run cycle, I was unable to test it in game, invisible player modem issues but I kind of expected issues to arise.

Can you do anything with it?

the file can be located here:
http://theendstudios.com/files/player.rar

[MadGypsy]

I'm pretty sure player_jump (respectively) is already a function in QC, so your animation would not include any actual z movement (z in quake is up, not depth as it is in blender) - hmmm you might have to rotate your models before you animate (90 on the X) or maybe it is possible to "turn" blenders coordinate system..

There are some things I just don't know. You need GoldenBoy's ear for a bit. If I'm not mistaken he knows all of this stuff and can probably answer any question you have (blender to quake model related)

note: There is no jump animation in player.mdl (original quake) - which is probably why there is just a whole bunch of running in air when you jump.

[MadGypsy]

We are posting at the same time...lol. I am creating questions that i guess you know the answer to, so disregard 90% of my last post.

I will see if I can make it do something. I don't know what invisible player modem is but it might have something to do with you (assuming) overwriting player.mdl but you are missing the gun, axe, bullet and most of the frames...then again that might be the noobiest thing I have ever said. Who knows..I've guessed my way through my entire "quakeness". I will figure it out for you though.

Michael

Edit: HOLY CRAP! your guy is hauling some serious ass....lol. Looks good though, real smooth.

[nahuel]

if you want, you can use segmented models like codename corporal [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbWDmX6dTTw]Codename: Corporal Complete - YouTube[/ame] If you are using darkplaces extensions, this work will be easier because you can use "setattachment" yo attach models (like quake 3 arena )

[MadGypsy]

I was just reading about this in dpextensions.qc. I think this might also be the answer to someone else on this forum. I forget who but somebody was trying to suppress model movement relative to the mouse (depending on some conditions that I also can't remember). He could probably build models in segments and have only certain segments respond to certain keys/mouse movements. For instance mouse movement will set the angles (and probably mangles) on the torso segment, but not the legs. Kinda like an action figure

[Phenom]

I was just reading about this in dpextensions.qc. I think this might also be the answer to someone else on this forum. I forget who but somebody was trying to suppress model movement relative to the mouse (depending on some conditions that I also can't remember). He could probably build models in segments and have only certain segments respond to certain keys/mouse movements. For instance mouse movement will set the angles (and probably mangles) on the torso segment, but not the legs. Kinda like an action figure

Yes! That would be awesome!


we need to figure this out and maybe go somewhere with it!

[Phenom]

We are posting at the same time...lol. I am creating questions that i guess you know the answer to, so disregard 90% of my last post.

I will see if I can make it do something. I don't know what invisible player modem is but it might have something to do with you (assuming) overwriting player.mdl but you are missing the gun, axe, bullet and most of the frames...then again that might be the noobiest thing I have ever said. Who knows..I've guessed my way through my entire "quakeness". I will figure it out for you though.

Michael

Edit: HOLY CRAP! your guy is hauling some serious ass....lol. Looks good though, real smooth.

I'm really unsure how a proper player.mdl should be layed out so there is only 10 frames 1-10 with a full run cycle. I hope it's useable without the gun and axe?

[MadGypsy]

I did some stuff with QC (not much yet) and i can't get the model to appear in game. I need time to try a few things (troubleshoot) like swap your model for an orig. quake .mdl and see if it appears using my qc (I think I am forgetting something).

Some things I noticed

Open your model in qME, expand the root list and unselect objects 1&2. You have junk in your model. Your frames are labeled frame_anum. I don't think you can have those underscores in your model frame labels. An underscore is used to delimit the x,y and z in a vector (maybe it's still ok, but maybe it's part of the problem).

As is I can tell you that your model cannot replace original player.mdl cause it is 100% different. It's missing everything that is defined in QC for player.mdl, which is why I just wrote a fresh QC for it.

Fear not bro, we are gonna figure this out. I always figure out anything that I want to know. You are obviously no dummy either. between the 2 of us we will get all of this stuff working and upgrade our education significantly in the process.

Actually, thanks for the problem. Hidato & sudoku are feeling less and less challenging these days.

Michael

[MadGypsy]

Bingo! got him in the game and running. I defined his th_stand as a run cycle so basically he just stands in one spot and runs at a slow jog.

Notez:

1) model is too small
2) Run animation is too many frames looks like he is jogging in water



I have to get my ass to work, but when I get home (3 am central) I will give you specs and more info on how to get your model up to par with the original quake models (size, anim frame counts, etc)

disregard my shitty map, I threw him in the first unfinished map I thought of that wasn't going to take a month to vis.