Aldebaran28, Argh,

very nice work, very informative and useful.. more please... Seriously though, it would be good to see a tutorial done on this..

For some time we have been playing with adding custom planets, with custom planetscapes, and some completely new interiors. I have the custom planet, a basin type planetscape similar to Planet Sprague.. no mineshaft tho... .. with a central pad similar to California Minor.., with a base set into a cliff face... I think it could look pretty good, a landing sequence like Crete, Malta or Cali Minor would fit fairly well. So far as I know it hasnt been done yet completely from scratch and it's a pretty big job.. So far pretty much a dream but the work you guys have done would be invaluable. I have not yet started on the interiors tho I dont see correct scale being a huge problem.. some differences from standard freelancer bases would add variety. We also plan to model some new bases from scratch.. If you guys can come together on this I would be pleased to contribute in any way I can..

If either of you is interested either drop me an email or post here.. I can provide some .jpgs of the planet or post them here

Harrier

Edited by - harrier on 5/10/2005 11:14:38 PM

I don't know nearly enough to do the animations- I've been looking other animations, such as in Epsilon, but I don't really understand this yet.

Aldebaran, you've coded some takeoff/landing sequences, haven't you? If so... all I want to know, really, is how to make an object (not the camera) move from Point A to Point B from X time to Y time. If I know that much, I'm sure I could code landing sequences (crude ones to be sure, but eh, whatever...). The code for this is incredibly confusing, though- when I "borrowed" one of Free Worlds' Intros and re-purposed it for WOS B1, I had to leave the camera code alone, because I couldn't make head or tail of it

If you download the code samples I put up, they should put you on firm ground in terms of the minimal things you need, though- those THNs are a lot cleaner than DA's work, which contained a bunch of redundancies, and will make implementing a basic Room pretty easy. I haven't messed with the Camera motion for Equipment Dealers yet- the animation's even more scary than the code to place things lol...

Ha, I cheated when it came to landing and take off camera motions. The landing and take off motions are contained in seperate THN's (as you probably know), so I just find a motion from the existing Freelancer files and build my model to suit the animation not the other way around. Crude, but it works.

Wasabe might know a bit more about it after doing the intro THN's, but from I understand, he said he 'cheated' as well on these. Not quite sure how he 'cheated' some of the scenes together, like the Jedi and Bounty Hunter Fighter scene, but still, I reckon he has more of a clue on animations that I do.

Yes, we really do need to write a Tutorial for this stuff, the only probably is finding the time to write a tutorial that will explain it clearly enough to people because THN's are a whole new ball game. Unfortunately, I am moving house within the week and will be with out internet for a couple of weeks, so it's going to be hard pushed for me to do anything on this front.

@Argh
To animate an object and make it move (assuming this object is already defined and called "ship1" ) you need to define the path object (ignore the .'s ):

........{
................entity_name="Path_1",
................type=MOTION_PATH,
................template_name="",
................lt_grp=0,
................srt_grp=0,
................usr_flg=0,
................spatialprops={
........................pos={
................................0,
................................0,
................................0
........................},
........................orient={
................................{
........................................1,
........................................0,
........................................0
................................},
................................{
........................................0,
........................................1,
........................................0
................................},
................................{
........................................0,
........................................0,
........................................1
................................}
........................}
................},
................pathprops={
........................path_type="CV_CROrientationSplinePath",
........................path_data="OPEN, {0,0,-100}, {1,0,0,0}, {100,50,-200}, {1,0,0,0}, "
................}
........},

The "pos" and "orient" sections are important - they define the position and orientation of the starting node. The rest of the path will be plotted relative to this.

The other VEry important part is the "path_data" line. This defines the nodes that the path will contain and are formatted as pairs of pos/orientation values ({pos}, {orientation}, {pos}, {orientation} etc...). So the above path will start at (0,0,0), move forward 100 units to (0,0,-100), then move upwards, forwards and right at the same time to (100,50,-200).

When you have defined the path you need to start it. This is done using an event, like the following:

........{
................2,
................START_PATH_ANIMATION,
................{
........................"ship1",
........................"Path_1"
................},
................{
........................duration=60,
........................start_percent=0,
........................stop_percent=1,
........................offset={
................................0,
................................0,
................................0
........................},
........................up=Y_AXIS,
........................front=NEG_Z_AXIS,
........................flags=POSITION + ORIENTATION + LOOK_AT
................}
........},

The first number in the block of text is the number of seconds from the beginning of the scene that the event will fire, in this case after two seconds. After this, the first named object is the object that will follow the path, the second is the path it will follow.

"Duration" is (obviously) the amount of time the object will take to get from start to finish, and "offset" allows you to offset the object from the path. This is useful for making a formation of ships fly a path; you can use the same path with each ship having a different offset.

"Flags" is also a useful property. As it is above, the object will inherit it's position and orientation from the path as it travels along. If you omitted the "ORIENTATION" value so it read "flags=POSITION + LOOK_AT" for example, the object would follow the path but would retain it's own orientation.

That's about it really, just two sections

Edited by - Accushot on 5/11/2005 6:28:11 AM

ok what im itching for is the new camera angles coming out in thee awsome mods(espeacialy those wicked pictures ive seen) those mods i cant wait for that would be awsome to chat with a storm trooper for example .Please do not tell me how to change the codes i will wait very patintly for these mods and if there are mods out there that have already changed those place to say the x-wing hangar could you tell me where i can locate it and to give it a cooler more used look to it put like the walls are nastier or a little grimy from ship work and blast marks from lifting off the pads to launch or giving it a more grey color to it would realy make it alot easier to the eye and for the SW fans will eat it up .

Show You're Strenghts........
You've Earned You're Glory.......

It would be great with a tutorial on this, i have been reading lots about .thn files, trying to learn something about them.

Could you make a thread with all the info you know about .thn files and tutorials on how to edit them? Such as making new intros and new bases, all the work you have done, it would be so great and many new and cooler mods.

EcoHooker

I hate to get back on topic, but I have been messing around with a female bartender, and I have gotten some... unusual results, to say the least. For starters, when I first approched her (i.e. she didn't know me), her head spun 180 degrees, her neck got all twisted, and she starts talking. Then, Trent (who, oddly, isn't visible like he is normally) comes THROUGH the bar, SIDEWAY, and the barkeep's head turns impossibly fast to keep up. And it skips large part of the text. If nothing is going on (i.e. an empty talk button over the barkeep), it goes like this:

Bartender: Mr. Trent, you're back.

Trent: That can't be all you've got.

Cuts to normal bar scene. Odd. Here is my mbase entry for it:

[GF_NPC
nickname = fw1701_fix_bartender
body = pl_female2_journeyman_body
head = pl_female6_head
lefthand = benchmark_female_hand_left
righthand = benchmark_female_hand_right
individual_name = 244609
affiliation = gd_z_grp
voice = rvp511
bribe = gd_z_grp, 10000, 16103

[MRoom
nickname = bar
character_density = 4
fixture = fw1701_fix_bartender, Zs/NPC/Bartender/01/A/Stand, scripts\extras\fidget_stand_female_01.thn, bartender

Any help here?

MK

Using the female thn's for the 3 traders is fine because they don't have any cut scenes,but the bartender gives you wierd and wacky results.

To get a female bartender you'll have to copy,rename and edit one of the bartender thn's,but then you'll get the same problem I've got,a mute female bartender,DA didn't program the female voices with as many entries as the male voices.

**shuffles of with a new headache**

Is there any way around this? Argh?

MK

I can't think of a way around that, not offhand, but that doesn't mean there isn't a solution.

Sorry mknote my bad,I have got a talking female bartender (forgot to change the voice),you get the full conversation for bribes,but the rest is all choppy.I still need to figure out why trent lurches into the scene.



**shuffles of with a new headache**

For the moment, I'm going to switch my Freeport 15 bartender (the female one) with F15's Equipment dealer, in the interest of moving forward. However, if you can get the female bartender fully working, I would much appreciate it.

MK

Getting the female bartender working is relatively straight forward, all I've done is decompress the "li_bartender_fidget.thn" with fledthorn,renamed it then opened it with notepad for editting. Change the template from li_bartender to benchmark_female,now its just a case of changing the male animations for female ones.Use the utf editor to get the animation names from "bodygenericfemale.anm" in the characters/animations folder.


This isn't where the problem lies as you can use any of the female thn's for appearance, it's when you talk to them and they try to run the cut scene scripts (still haven't found these yet) that all hell breaks loose.Using my editted bartender thn I at least don't get the body distortions,just the choppy vocals & a lurching Trent.


IMO getting her to talk properly may be a hopeless case. You'd need to create new voice patterns for her then encrypt them into the voice utf files, then figure out how to get the info into the ini & thn files. This job is best left to those who are smarter than us mere mortals.


Anybody know where I can find the cut scene scripts for the bartender.

**shuffles of with a new headache**

anyone have any ideas about how to get female character models working for players?