vehicle CUSTOM SKEL NPC: AT-ST

[AshuraDX]

and I think I finally figured out what bothers me at that walk cycle ^^U

lower him a bit, the "ankle-segment" of his elgs is standing upright for most of the aniamtion rather than being slanted back and resting in the spring/catch once weight is put onto that foot

[DrXann]

The base model is too tall but with this one the size is just right.As with the animations and the way its death animations play out would it be possible to make the head section blow up leaving only the legs Rogue Squadron 3D style or is the Id tech 3 engine too old to pull this off.

[DT.]

It'd just need to be coded in to turn off the "head" surface(s) upon death.

[minilogoguy18]

This model is actually the same height as the base model, this was done intentionally as the game model is actually too small in actual scale BUT you cannot make it any bigger because of the Cairn maps in JK2. I want this to also be able to totally overwrite the base model in both JK2 and JA.

 

Any smaller would be dumb since its actually to small to begin with but any bigger would break the JK2 SP game. For this mod though we could make it to scale, would have to have the levels planned out for that though.

 

@@AshuraDX, I'll take some of those things into consideration after getting further with the death animation since I kinda already converted it into an action clip but I should be able to revert back to the original keyframe info. The model definitely strides much lower than the base model, the base model hardly bent it's legs at all, I have it imported into Softimage to compare as I made this and to keep it to scale in case I wanted to use any of the base animations.

 

Sorry I've been slow on production, I started working a lot these past 4 months, wanna buy a house but doing it as a single man so I'm not legally stuck with some chicken-head that could jump ship at any time.

[Ramikad]

For this mod though we could make it to scale, would have to have the levels planned out for that though.

 

Can be done. As far as I remember, the AT-ST only appears in very few levels:

Level 6: Into the Dark Palace - There's at least one wandering around on the catwalks, and another one (it may be 2 at higher difficulty) on an elevator that lifts it up on the catwalk.

Level 13: The Lost Planet of the Jedi - As far as I remember, there's just one near the end of the level, in a completely open arena-like area.

Level 18: Descent Into the Valley - The only one in the level is once again at the end, in an underground chamber, once again an open arena-like big room.

[Barricade24]

Can be done. As far as I remember, the AT-ST only appears in very few levels:

Level 6: Into the Dark Palace - There's at least one wandering around on the catwalks, and another one (it may be 2 at higher difficulty) on an elevator that lifts it up on the catwalk.

Level 13: The Lost Planet of the Jedi - As far as I remember, there's just one near the end of the level, in a completely open arena-like area.

Level 18: Descent Into the Valley - The only one in the level is once again at the end, in an underground chamber, once again an open arena-like big room.

Sounds about right. But I believe Level 6 has like quite a few that walk around the cat walks like maybe four. But it has been awhile since I last played JK so I could be a little off.

[Archangel35757]

I think it would be great to have the AT-ST properly scaled... plus add an animatable hatch and have a driver spawn and come out of hatch on certain death animations...

[DT.]

The hatch has two surfaces which it's closed in one and open in the other. The code turns the "open" surface on for when the AT-ST is able to be driven by the player and is idle and "closed" surface is on when it's not drivable by the player and is moving. The reason I believe they didn't just animate it is because you'd need to have the hatch bone have its own animation blend which would require extra code as we only have HEAD/TORSO/LEGS. Would need something like HATCH added to it so we can blend the hatch animation(s) onto any animation. But wouldn't need all this hoopla for having the hatch move on a death animation though.

[Ramikad]

Sounds about right. But I believe Level 6 has like quite a few that walk around the cat walks like maybe four. But it has been awhile since I last played JK so I could be a little off.

 

You're right. I just checked, and in Level 6 there are 5 overall. One on the part of the catwalk near the large doors, just as you enter the Imperial Ring, and another 2 on the catwalk, on the left and on the right, and 2 more in the elevator area. One of them is scripted to be lifted up.

 

Also, as the difficulty changes their HP change, I think. It took 15 thermal detonators to take one of them down at Hard difficulty level.

[minilogoguy18]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMyiC_HdSns

 

Definitely a rough draft to be improved on, not all that happy with it atm but with some tweaking it can probably be made a lot better. The snapping of the right leg joint was fixed as I was uploading this.

[Archangel35757]

I'm talking about a death animation where the cupola/hatch opens and the driver attempts to climb out but succumbs to the smoke/fire in one death anim. And perhaps in another the crew escapes crawls out and you have one or two drivers to deal with.

[minilogoguy18]

That's a bit over the top, the model isn't even in game yet, getting too ahead of ourselves is never a good thing.

 

I just wanna know what people think could be improved on the death animation at this point, I've already edited it some but still open for suggestions before uploading a new video.

[Archangel35757]

@@minilogoguy18 -- perhaps it is a bit over the top... but the video below from Sniper Elite is an example of what I'm talking about (for down the road...).  In the video, after the tank is destroyed by shooting the fuel cap/tank the tank commander attempts to escape by opening the hatch and climbing out of the burning tank-- but he doesn't make it... the game has a few different death animations for the tank commander.  I'm just saying it would be cool to have this for the AT-ST and perhaps some death animations where the "crew lives" and climbs out of the wreckage (i.e., spawn the NPCs for the drivers)

 

[Bek]

I love this idea, it'll make it a little more intimidating when you get in one. 

[minilogoguy18]

@@DT85, anything you would change about the death animation? This is the only real sequence needed before it can be put in game and tested which sense there isn't any level finished that would use this I'd probably just make it overwrite the one in JK2 to test it out as an NPC.

[DT.]

I'd suggest making it fall quicker after frame 110, it just doesn't seem to have enough force when it hits the ground to me for something so heavy and large.

[hhunter6]

Isnt that what happens in MotS?  didn't the AT AT pilot drop after you put down the AT ST? 

[Archangel35757]

@@minilogoguy18 -- maybe have the head rotate a little bit left after its last ground contact bounce.

[Ramikad]

Isnt that what happens in MotS?  didn't the AT AT pilot drop after you put down the AT ST? 

 

As far as I remember, in both JK and MotS the NPC spawns as soon as the AT-ST is killed. I think the type of NPC varies, I remember an Imperial Officer spawning at least a couple of times in JK, and as you pointed out the AT-AT pilot in MotS. I may recall seeing an Imperial Commando spawning once, but I may be mistaken.

[AshuraDX]

I really like that animation !

do what @@Archangel35757 just suggested though

 

also :

I think adding a camera shake effect to the impact frame for that death anim via animevents.cfg would be a great idea, probably you could also add a slight camera shake for the steps I guess it would really help the immersion and believeability of this heavy walker

[Barricade24]

As far as I remember, in both JK and MotS the NPC spawns as soon as the AT-ST is killed. I think the type of NPC varies, I remember an Imperial Officer spawning at least a couple of times in JK, and as you pointed out the AT-AT pilot in MotS. I may recall seeing an Imperial Commando spawning once, but I may be mistaken.

I believe there was a Commando who was in an AT-ST in the Valley of the Jedi. I believe he was carrying a key.

[minilogoguy18]

I really like that animation !

do what @@Archangel35757 just suggested though

 

also :

I think adding a camera shake effect to the impact frame for that death anim via animevents.cfg would be a great idea, probably you could also add a slight camera shake for the steps I guess it would really help the immersion and believeability of this heavy walker

 

Haha, it was so whipped together in a way, I've since improved it by making the fall faster and the leg not snapping oddly, as for the head turning I'll add that in, it'd have to be a slow rotation though I think. I'd really only have to add the turning animations but they aren't currently used in JA unless @@DT85 wants to get them working which would be awesome.

[DT.]

You can enable turning anims via a cvar which in DF2, I've made enabled by default.

[minilogoguy18]

 

Meant to post this like a week ago but kept forgetting, made some small edits, it's playing kinda slow, guess that's the screen capturing software's fault so keep that in mind.

 

I think at this point it could be exported and tested in game, the turning and leg up animations are missing but I don't think that will cause any problems cause I really wanna get this thing in game.

[minilogoguy18]

 

I had to do quite a bit of troubleshooting as somehow somewhere the data was stored saying that the right leg chain was a mirrored clone of the left. While that worked fine and dandy it skewed everything once it was in dotXSI 3.5 so I had to rebuild that chain to get it working. As you can see, if it works in ModView, it pretty much means it works in game, just need to make some of the little files like shaders and such. It still needs turning animations but it should work as a test without them, I wanna run the Artus Topside map to check if it properly overwrites the base assets.