More friendliness to animation mods...

[Dusty]

Personally, I find JA very unfriendly to animation mods. For example most animation mods are incompatible without making a new mod that combines them. Then there are other things, like the fact you must always start a new game for animations to take effect...

 

I have a list of proposals, that I think would make OpenJK way more friendly to animation modding:

 

1. **Allow multiple .gla files to exist**. And allow specification of which .gla to load frames from for an animation slot in the animation config.

 

Current style: BOTH_A7_KICK_S       1008 34 -1 20

My proposal: BOTH_A7_KICK_S       1008 34 -1 20    spinkick

 

This would load BOTH_A1_BL_TR from spinkick.gla in the _humanoid folder. Otherwise it would default to _humanoid.gla

 

 

2. **Allow multiple config files to exist**. Sort of like with pk3s, the last loaded config file will take priority for controlling the properties of any animation slot it defines.

 

An example _humanoid folder:

animation.cfg

(in animation.cfg: BOTH_A7_KICK_S       1008 34 -1 20)

spinkick.cfg

(in spinkick.cfg: BOTH_A7_KICK_S       0 27 -1 45)

 

The properties of the definition of BOTH_A7_KICK_S in spinkick.cfg would take priority over the one in animation.cfg in this scenario.

 

 

3. **Separate config and animevents files for SP and MP**. 

More compartmentalization this way. Any files with a _sp suffix in their name (i.e. _spinkick_sp.cfg, animevents_sp.cfg, animation_sp.cfg_) would take priority in being loaded by Single Player, and would be ignored by multiplayer. That way old mods still work, but you can make mods that are specific to one side of the game.

 

 

4. **Other things that could use addressing**. You shouldn't have to start a new game to get an animation mod to work. The bug where looping animations played in reverse tending to get stuck could use fixing. Also, it would be nice if you could specify in the animation.cfg whether an animation should be played only on the upper body or lower body (but maybe that's asking too much).

 

 

I understand most or all of these would break save game compatibility. This new animation system could just be ifdef'd in that case. But even then, animation mods by nature break save game compatibility, and people can just use cheats to remake their savegames. If I am completely honest, I don't see why that's such a big deal.

 

[DT.]

So I was thinking about this today. I might give the separate GLA and CFG a shot for DF2 some time because idgaf about compatibility, and nor do I need to.

[ensiform]

Well OJK is basically slowed to a halt lately so I wouldn't count on much getting backported even if you were able to come up with a solution that could be brought to OJK.

[minilogoguy18]

I dunno, I bet if we just made a simple "How to merge GLA files" tutorial so people could do that part on their own it wouldn't be so bad cause it's a super simple task. A drag and drop ability would be nice but MP compatibility gets in the way.

 

The end of my animation video shows the process but most people aren't even aware that the couple of minutes at the end of the video can show them how to add whatever animation they want to their own _humanoid.gla.

[Archangel35757]

I dunno, I bet if we just made a simple "How to merge GLA files" tutorial so people could do that part on their own it wouldn't be so bad cause it's a super simple task. A drag and drop ability would be nice but MP compatibility gets in the way.

 

The end of my animation video shows the process but most people aren't even aware that the couple of minutes at the end of the video can show them how to add whatever animation they want to their own _humanoid.gla.

You should break out those last two minutes as a standalone video tutorial for merging in new GLA animations using Ask's GLAmerge tool.

[minilogoguy18]

@@Archangel35757 If I still have the source files I could, if not then I'm just going to make a quick PDF with pictures since it's super simple and takes literally 5 minutes or less.

 

I've also updated the _humanoid rig for Softimage, I don't know how much easier I can keep making that part. I posted a new status update about that, I'll get around to updating the file after making sure I can't break any of the new controls.

[DT.]

I think it's more about the ability to replace certain animations, without a GLA recompile or using GLAmerge.