MONSTERS by LEKI (CLOSED)

[Isaac]

Well... Capsule first I guess.
If you monster rendering in scene is not ok, there is no reason to solve the rest, right?

I wondered originally (months and months ago), if it could not actually be two monsters; a biped front, and biped back... the rear made to follow the front. Under the hood, one of them doesn't even need to have a visible mesh ~come to think of it; just be there and either attack or take up space. The rear monster's onDamage hook could forward [mirror] the damage to the other half; and of course onDie() of either would kill both.

[Leki]

Well... Capsule first I guess.
If you monster rendering in scene is not ok, there is no reason to solve the rest, right?

I wondered originally (months and months ago), if it could not actually be two monsters; a biped front, and biped back... the rear made to follow the front. Under the hood, one of them doesn't even need to have a visible mesh ~come to think of it; just be there and either attack or take up space. The rear monster's onDamage hook could forward [mirror] the damage to the other half.

You can make independent part monsters - as WoW Kologaran has - see : http://youtu.be/Evy8z6Pc8yo?t=35s
But It have to be a static monster. There is no way how to do it with 2 independent moving monsters. Turn for the first one means move, turn, move for second etc... Or you can try to do it... just use two boxes for a test. You no need complex animation for it. If you can coordinate two or three boxes, the rest is easy.

[Isaac]

I dunno... Monsters move independently and at the same time... I've even accidentally spawned two at once, and they move in absolute unison... Killing one leaves the other.

The 2nd monster need not have visible animation; or at least not terribly precise... it could be invisible, or perhaps it could specifically be an animate segment of the tail that follows as close as feasible. One monster's onMove hook could place blockers all around the other ~except where we want it to move to... and if it's invisible (not a visible tail), a brief lapse in timing would probably never be noticed.

Just brainstorming on it... I haven't gotten back to the idea, and never tested any of it ~yet.

What about Mehric's room?

SpoilerShow

Mehric has a completely remote control scavenger on the lower floor.

I haven't yet looked at how it was done; but I'd assume that such commands could be in the first monster's onMove hook.

[Leki]

I dunno... Monsters move independently and at the same time... I've even accidentally spawned two at once, and they move in absolute unison... Killing one leaves the other.

The 2nd monster need not have visible animation; or at least not terribly precise... it could be invisible, or perhaps it could specifically be an animate segment of the tail that follows as close as feasible. One monster's onMove hook could place blockers all around the other ~except where we want it to move to... and if it's invisible (not a visible tail), a brief lapse in timing would probably never be noticed.

Just brainstorming on it... I haven't gotten back to the idea, and never tested any of it ~yet.

Sure... but as I said - you have to solve capsule first, to see big monster if capsule is out of viewport and part of the monster is still in... Check this:Download Dragon Plugin
Place the dragon in test scene and try to walk around of use freelook mouse mode...

[Isaac]

And so imagine having the animation event's spawn invisible blocker objects [from a table of patterns] relative to the current cell, that occupy the space, and move with the shape of the animated dragon?



(And their damage/die hook could 'forward' any damage done to them to the dragon.)

[Leki]

And so imagine having the animation event's spawn invisible blocker objects [from a table of patterns] relative to the current cell, that occupy the space, and move with the shape of the animated dragon?

SpoilerShow

(And their damage/die hook could 'forward' any damage done to them to the dragon.)

Yes. I can imagine it. But that gif is great example to describe it to the rest

When I worked on AI switcher I had similiar idea (it was based on timer, because I was not sure if I can use anim event to call function - as I am not sure now), but then I started to work on something else.

Try dragon plugin and place the dragon into scene as default behawiour (no guard). For better results make big room and add AI Blockers 3cells from the wall etc. There is no turn or move animation, but it does not matter. It's enough for a test:
1) Test how monster works in your viewport (It will disapear and appeat in front of you) - find solution for that
2) Tray to use animation event on idle frame 2 - I mean when dragon turns, spawn barrels or what ever and destroy the old ones - post code

... and remember that the monster must stay in the middle to keem animations fluent - so you have to use distatnt attack AI, as bowman have etc - then monster can breath (as shoot, or spell), and you have to do damage to the cells in front of him or use projectile/fireball hidden in flames... And also you have to use shor timeouts and longer animation sequences to make movement clean - I mean its nothing for dragon to do 3m step... etc

[odinsballs]

why not downsize the beasty to more workable capsule format, i know this might be considered a cheap way out by some but, i can imagine it would still be a rather fierce oponent, or use em as 1 tile young dragons. it would at least save you a butt-load of work i wager.

[Isaac]

why not downsize the beasty to more workable capsule format, i know this might be considered a cheap way out by some but, i can imagine it would still be a rather fierce oponent, or use em as 1 tile young dragons. it would at least save you a butt-load of work i wager.

It's not a bad idea; when I made that Gif last night, it was of a map that I did have the Dragon roaming on, and he is very big.

Try dragon plugin and place the dragon into scene as default behawiour (no guard). For better results make big room and add AI Blockers 3cells from the wall etc. There is no turn or move animation, but it does not matter. It's enough for a test:
1) Test how monster works in your viewport (It will disapear and appeat in front of you) - find solution for that
2) Tray to use animation event on idle frame 2 - I mean when dragon turns, spawn barrels or what ever and destroy the old ones - post code

... and remember that the monster must stay in the middle to keem animations fluent - so you have to use distatnt attack AI, as bowman have etc - then monster can breath (as shoot, or spell), and you have to do damage to the cells in front of him or use projectile/fireball hidden in flames... And also you have to use shor timeouts and longer animation sequences to make movement clean - I mean its nothing for dragon to do 3m step... etc[/color]

It's not likely I will get a chance to do this; I'm behind on my own ORRR2 room, and any time spent in the editor, really needs to be spent finishing up... as it is, I will not be done by the end of the month (the deadline); it will take me the following week as well... at the very least.

But afterwards... then I can dive into it; sometime in the 2nd week of November if all goes well.

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EDIT:
A bit of testing has cleared up some foggy memory about animation events... I was [erroneously] thinking I could place a playSound("footstep") call in the event; but it is actually assigning 'Footstep' As the event... so this would never work as I had been thinking.

A curious thing though in the documentation:
____________________________________________________
animation: the filename of the animation to attach the event to. The filename must be a valid asset reference ending with ".fbx".
event: an event name to attach. Typical event names used are "footstep", "attack" and "ranged_attack".
frame: a frame number in the animation to attach the event to (one frame equals 1/30th of a second).
____________________________________________________

Is it possible to define event names? (and what they do?)

If it isn't. I'm certainly suggesting that it should be in LoG2 ~if not too problematic.

[Leki]

As Petri wrote, you can use:

Code: Select all

defineAnimationEvent{
	animation = "assets/animations/monsters/tunnel_ogre/tunnel_ogre_attack.fbx",
	event = "playSound:ogre_whoosh",
	frame = 17,
}

or

Code: Select all

defineAnimationEvent{
	animation = "assets/animations/monsters/tunnel_ogre/tunnel_ogre_attack.fbx",
	event = "attack",
	frame = 17,
}

The first one could be used to call function but I have not tried it yet.[/color]

[Isaac]

As Petri wrote, you can use:

Code: Select all

defineAnimationEvent{
	animation = "assets/animations/monsters/tunnel_ogre/tunnel_ogre_attack.fbx",
	event = "playSound:ogre_whoosh",
	frame = 17,
}

That is very cool.

This looks very promising (because we are already sort of working on the problem; though not as a priority ~yet).