The Sun Warrior is now in mod form, working with the wonderful NCF. You can find the zip here.
Original post:
Yay! After much fiddling, I finally managed to put the weapon of one creature into the hand of another.
Presenting, the Sun Warrior (video takes a while to load I'm afraid):
(Attacking, moving.)
Unfortunately we cannot pick and choose as we wish - only certain pairs of creatures will work with this method (that's not to say there's a different way of doing it that does work for any pair).
Details coming (yes, I know the sword goes into the ground, my pick of Angel+Footman wasn't the most clever - let's just say it's a vorpal sword ).
Added from a lower post:
How I added the Angel's Sword to the footman...
This is not hugely easy to do - this guide is aimed at people already reasonably confident with using the editor / editing the xml, playing with textures etc..
The trick here is with animations. Here is a brief overview of how it works:
Take the Footman, and edit his sword texture so that the sword disappears. Edit the Angel's textures so that only the sword remains. Then all we do is `overlay` the Angel on top of the Footman - so that we have his body, but the Angel's sword. This results in the sword being animated just like an invisible Angel is holding it (no surprise there...), so we have to give the superimposed Angel the Footman's animations. Here's the issue - any creatures used with this technique must have their weapon joints identically named. Since that is the case here ("Sword_joint"), the Footman's animation set contains all the info necessary to direct the Angel's sword (as it does for his own). The game (+ Granny?) can then add the sword in properly and everything moves realistically.
So how to overlay the models? Well the answer is, using effects. Each effect is made of particle instances (e.g. the three glows applied to my unit), plus model instances. All we do is set the footman's model instance model to that of the Angel (which, remember, is now only a sword). This has to be done for each animation of the footman's animset. The model instance animation is set to be the relevant animation of the Footman for each individual animation- so the Footman's attack animation has that very animation attached to its model instance, which also has the Angel's model attached (hence geometry, skeleton and materials). Now it doesn't feel like much of that made sense...
It is necessary to set Cyclecount to 0 (somewhere!).
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Nice!
(But the sword is too big.) So weapons are moddable, maybe you could put a tutorial how to make it?
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Help and suggestions needed here.
Great idea Interesting how not all pairs can work but this seems to be the beginning to a new series of units ____________
What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate.
This is not hugely easy to do - this guide is aimed at people already reasonably confident with using the editor / editing the xml, playing with textures etc..
The trick here is with animations. Here is a brief overview of how it works:
Take the Footman, and edit his sword texture so that the sword disappears. Edit the Angel's textures so that only the sword remains. Then all we do is `overlay` the Angel on top of the Footman - so that we have his body, but the Angel's sword. This results in the sword being animated just like an invisible Angel is holding it (no surprise there...), so we have to give the superimposed Angel the Footman's animations. Here's the issue - any creatures used with this technique must have their weapon joints identically named. Since that is the case here ("Sword_joint"), the Footman's animation set contains all the info necessary to direct the Angel's sword (as it does for his own). The game (+ Granny?) can then add the sword in properly and everything moves realistically.
Specific modding details coming...
@Elvin - Thanks, I hope indeed that this brings us a few newish-looking creatures, although it is fairly limited and a little fiddly.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure I quite have the ability to package this as a creature in a mod.
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awesome! so i hope you are still helping us with the Undead Faction mod? since you said that "you will look into it" in the thread. thanks a lot for figuring this out, many, many new creatures are going to be created! you rule! ____________
Thank you! But I may be pushed for time from now on for a while, and I said I'd help get ToK finished ASAP, so I might not be able to help too much...
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absolutely supreme work... Thank you so much! Now things really can go beyond recolouring!!Hmm would be interesting to see which creatures go together. But thanks that's awesome and I'm sure this is going to let a whole lot of "new" creatures come to life.
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Crusing through the OSM with Dagoth after midnight is awesome!!
Cheers Azagal! Basically it's any creatures that have similar weapons in the first place. For example, Peasant+Footman is a no-go combination because the peasant's weapon joint is called "Fork", unsurprisingly. The Rakshasha Rani's weapons are called Sabres, so that would not work even if they only had just the one weapon - with two, the joints are something like "Sabre1", "Sabre2" etc..
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You can see which creature pairs will work by comparing their weapon joint names in the Granny viewer (see another thread...). Sorry Anti, the lvl 2 elves won't work with the Vampire because he has only one sword, and they won't work with the Rakshasas either because the elves' swords are actually called swords (there is another issue too actually, the elves' joints use "root", whereas others sometimes use "joint").
Interestingly, the vampire sword will work with the Angel and the Footman, so there's room there for some modifications guys! ____________
A list of compatible creatures would be good, but it would be a long slog through the data files to get it done, which I'm not willing to do at the moment. Anyone who feels like being useful, feel free to make a start!
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posted January 11, 2008 01:05 PM
After much fiddling, I finally managed to put the weapon of one creature into the hand of another.
).
Cannot change the size of the sword I'm afraid, I tried but it doesn't work.
absolutely supreme work... Thank you so much! Now things really can go beyond recolouring!!Hmm would be interesting to see which creatures go together. But thanks that's awesome and I'm sure this is going to let a whole lot of "new" creatures come to life
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