Fully Working Whip Weapon

[Botdra]

Howdy! So on behalf of the Castlevania Mod team, we'd like your help on making a working whip for JA. Because it is such an iconic weapon in the Castlevania series we really wanna find a way to make this work, even if it's a very simple version of a whip in JA.

I noticed @@katanamaru volunteered to pitch in with weapon styles for it if we get that far, and I know @@ChalklYne had some ideas on how it might work... perhaps a few of us could put our heads together to figure out how to make this work? Right now we're not too worried about the actual model of the whip, at least not until we know we can make this work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[DT.]

That would require animated Ghoul2 models to work when bolted which right now they don't AFAIK. That would be the first issue to tackle. 

[Pande]

I'd not even bother tackling this until the above and also don't forget you'll need hit detection as well to really make this work.. not sure how that will work with a moving weapon.

[Botdra]

That would require animated Ghoul2 models to work when bolted which right now they don't AFAIK. That would be the first issue to tackle. 

 

Is this something that should be done with the new code release or is it not required?

 

 

I'd not even bother tackling this until the above and also don't forget you'll need hit detection as well to really make this work.. not sure how that will work with a moving weapon.

 

Thanks guys. Any possible ideas on how this would be done - even if you aren't interested in doing it yourself - would be really appreciated. If we can just gather the info needed into this thread we're hoping someone will pick it up.

[therfiles]

Would it possibly be possible (lol) to model the whip onto the playermodel? So it could use hand bones and such to animate it?

[DT.]

Short answer: It's possible, yes.

 

Long answer: Yes but you would need to add bones to the existing GLA and add animations for the whip attacks, add the whip model to a player model in his hand and is weighed to every bone you want/need in a GLA then compile.

 

The last bone could be used as a 'damage bone' ( or you could use a tag maybe) where anything alive that touches it will get injured.

[Botdra]

Short answer: It's possible, yes.

 

Long answer: Yes but you would need to add bones to the existing GLA and add animations for the whip attacks, add the whip model to a player model in his hand and is weighed to every bone you want/need in a GLA then compile.

 

The last bone could be used as a 'damage bone' ( or you could use a tag maybe) where anything alive that touches it will get injured.

 

Could work, my only issue is that I think EVERY CV game has the whip disappear when not in use. That might be an issue if we do it in this method. Or you'd just have a random damage bone that could hurt people even when you aren't attacking. I mean, we could pull out some lore here and reference the fact that the Vampire Killer (the famous whip in the series, although there are other whips and whip-like weapons in the series) was made with alchemy and in some ways can be passed off as "magical" therefore causing damage simply on contact, but that depends on where it appears in the timeline etc. Anyways, I suppose if there was a damage bone that means we could have the whip "disappear" simply by having the idle stance of the player have the whip rolled up in his hand like so. This means we could pin it to a model and still have the "disappearing effect" like in the games. But we'd have to make sure it doesn't do damage to our character, heh.

 

The only issues I can think of are that the damage would only be at the very tip of the whip, whereas a more realistic and convenient gameplay scenario would suggest all parts of the whip past the hand cause damage. The other issue is whether or not you would have to set up each individual model for this separately? I don't know much about modeling so...

 

What would be the way to do this WITHOUT pinning it to a player model?

[DT.]

Only thing I can suggest is bone merging, source engine does this but it would require the whip model to have a GLA but not animated.

 

@@Xycaleth @@Raz0r @@eezstreet can answer from a programmers POV.

[CaptainCrazy]

And i suppose that you can't just rig a thing like this having the base bone attach to the hand bone like you can with other engines?

[therfiles]

Well if you do merge it, you could have 2 .skins - One with the whip showing, the other with it off.

[Xycaleth]

In simple terms it's exactly the same as a lightsaber works. You have a model attached to the player, and the saber damages anything that touches it when you're swinging it. The same can be applied to the whip, so the whole model does damage. The difficulty with a whip is it needs to be animated as well, which the code doesn't support. In an ideal world the whip wouldn't even be animated and would bend/flex using some basic physics system but that would be some way in the future

[katanamaru]

I figured the whip would have to be animated for each animation. Make it something like 5-7 segments/bones.

 

What about a new saber trail intead?  I thought about taking a one-handed saber and removing the blade and replace it with an invisible blade plus the sword saber trail. That plus the tavion and desann style would be a good temp holder.

[Circa]

If you're replacing the skeleton with new bones, why not just overwrite melee anims? A whip wouldn't function like a saber really.

[katanamaru]

Also not a bad idea.

[ChalklYne]

ive added stuff in where it wasnt supposed to go via animevents.cfg. Has anyone actually tried putting an animevents and a gla in the saber folder and see what happens? An easy test would be, to take a stormtrooper(base) and make him a saber. Then move his animevents and the _humanoid.gla to the stormtrooper saber folder and see what happens. It sounds dumb but ive seen animevents inject like this in cool ways

[Botdra]

If you're replacing the skeleton with new bones, why not just overwrite melee anims? A whip wouldn't function like a saber really.

 

 

Also not a bad idea.

 

 

Problem is, we do want to try and have a whip and a melee weapon (two handed, maybe right click is whip hand left click is sword hand). But that's just an idea we've brainstormed, and we can always work around whatever it takes to get a working whip in-game. Or if possible have a playable character with a whip, and another playable character with a sword. Basically I don't want to lose all the melee options just to get the whip, heh.

[DT.]

You can have new animations and new bones while keeping the current animations in JKA. I've done it before with my new facial bones + animations.

[CaptainChar]

to quote OJP,

"That was simply a concept shot done by Keshire ages ago. We talked about the idea for a while but unfortunately decided that it would simply be too difficult to implement. Sorry to disappoint."

 

So if it can be pulled of it would mark a first time thing

[DT.]

I think bone merging along with adding support for weapons with GLAs is the best option. The weapon GLA only needs to hold bone info, not animations.

[Botdra]

I think bone merging along with adding support for weapons with GLAs is the best option. The weapon GLA only needs to hold bone info, not animations.

 

Interesting. So this would require - step by step - what exactly? Just we can have some sort of record of what would be required, in case anyone were to pick this up. Add new bones, create animations for the new skeleton with the new bones, pin the whip model onto the desire player model and then just compile it? And then do so for each model that requires the whip, right? Would this eliminate the possibility of having other weapons (swords for example) work properly in game?

[DT.]

I have no problems doing test models if/when the code is ready.

 

First off, the code needs to support bone merging and be able to work with a weapon GLA (which might not be needed, I'm not a coder lol).

 

This is basically how I do it in HL2:

 

- Attach the weapon model to the player model where you want it

- Create the weapon bones you want, and link them to the hand bone (usually the right)

- Weigh the weapon to the new bones

- Export out the weapon with only the hand bone + the weapon bones. Make sure you export WITHOUT the player model!

- Export out the player model with all bones including weapon bones. Make sure you export WITHOUT the weapon mesh!

 

 

So, in the end you have:

 

- Weapon model + weapon bones + hand bone with no animation

- Player model + all bones with animation

 

Merge the weapon to the player model and its skeleton and the weapon will animate.

 

For GLA though, you will have to have the weapon mesh included when exporting the player model + new GLA otherwise you won't get the weapon bones outputted.

[CaptainChar]

So a whip is possible, at least in theory

[Botdra]

Interesting, so what would need to be done with the code then in order for you to have what you need?

[DT.]

Just to somehow allow bone merging, and to attach weapons to the player via bones not tags (forgot to mention that earlier lol).

[Botdra]

Interesting, so what would need to be done with the code then in order for you to have what you need?

 

Just to somehow allow bone merging, and to attach weapons to the player via bones not tags (forgot to mention that earlier lol).

 

Thoughts, @@therfiles @@eezstreet?