A small(ish) but hopefully pleasing announcement...

[Ded10c]

Look at the tank on the cover of BZ1.

[TheJamsh]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone ... eo_game%29

That one?

I've moved the turret and the cockpit further towards the center. The sense of scale of the unit is pretty poor in game, Might have to start the entire front end again, perhaps something a little more boxy this time.

[Ded10c]

I was referring specifically to the sides; some side jets like that might look good

[MrTwosheds]

Does anyone know how to get them to fire when it strafes?

[TheJamsh]

Does anyone know how to get them to fire when it strafes?

AFAIK it's not possible, even with a particle effect. The new effect velocity flags only count for velocity in general, not in a given direction. Great for dust trails mind you.

As for side jets, nah... I need something more angular for the base, with four fold-out legs that retract and become part of the armour or something. I think 80% of the model needs re-doing, or starting again. it just looks... wrong. Even in game.

Also, I'm trying to persuade N0Str0m0 to do some more models, he sent a butt-load of high-poly ISDF stuff to me a while ago, but some is a bit too high. (e.g, 150K tris for a thunderbolt ). If I'm lucky I can persuade him to do the rest of the ISDF and Scion units in more detail. He's damn good.

[Zero Angel]

Why not just vector the thrusters as part of the strafe anim -- even if they are not at full burn, they will still look like they're allowing the craft to strafe.

[Red Spot]

Does anyone know how to get them to fire when it strafes?

Fake it by masking stuff using the strafe animations, that is ofcourse if the unit is set up for strafing.

[TheJamsh]

On the bright side, the Probe MSA is now in-game. Animations and audio are done, need to finish the weapon and texture it. It too requires some .dll hand holding for the special functions, just a modified version of N1's attacher code.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnRNeGNA ... e=youtu.be

[Ded10c]

Needs a way to force the light off when morphing

[MrTwosheds]

Well there's a lights off when empty (no pilot) function. Don't know if you could trick that somehow.
Other than that, there's only the mutant rotation animation trick, which I suspect you won't like. Not even sure if it still works, haven't done that for ages.

[TheJamsh]

Well there's a lights off when empty (no pilot) function. Don't know if you could trick that somehow.
Other than that, there's only the mutant rotation animation trick, which I suspect you won't like. Not even sure if it still works, haven't done that for ages.

Yeah I was going to ask you about how to do that... I might try and trick it into having no pilot when morphed or something, if that's even possible...

[MrTwosheds]

Bare in mind that I did this before dx9 lighting, no idea if it still works.
Quaternion rotations.
4 values for each key frame, to rotate about 3 axis ?
Yep.

Imagine 2d a diamond shape, with 4 vertex, lined up on the xy axis.

Imagine scaling in all 4 vertex, on the x axis. The ones on the y axis don't move. -1 and 1 on x swap places.
And then imagine all 4 vertex scaled in on the y axis as well...It spins!

This spin is created by 2 columns of keyframe values in a quaternion rotation, there are 4 columns, so there can be 3 different pairings, 1 for each axis.

To make a light blink out you just use 1 column to animate the hp_light, it goes out when the 2 vertex meet at 0 in the middle, the polygon briefly disappears as it goes 2 dimensional, the vertex both being at 0.

Obviously you cannot make an animation like this in animating software, this is exactly what it is designed to not do
Take any rotation animation, zero out all but one column, observe it in 3dex, you might have to fool about with it a bit to get it to stay off for any amount of time, ie getting it to stop when the light is out. Not sure how well that works in practice.

[TheJamsh]

Man that's confusing.

I'll try the morphtank idea first. I wonder if the needPilot flag can be affected by it...

[MrTwosheds]

Just explaining, you need to zero out 3 data columns of a rotation animation, leaving 1 column with the data from the rotation. This causes an animation in 1 dimension to occur, collapsing and inverting the mesh.
Bz2 itself does not display it as such. but it will make a light attached to it blink on and off.

[TheJamsh]

Just explaining, you need to zero out 3 data columns of a rotation animation, leaving 1 column with the data from the rotation. This causes an animation in 1 dimension to occur, collapsing and inverting the mesh.
Bz2 itself does not display it as such. but it will make a light attached to it blink on and off.

Hmm interesting, I still haven't tried the Morph Technique to see if pilots can be removed/deleted like that without issues. The Probe does have some .dll assistance already, so maybe I could flag the script to force it's lights off when deployed. I like to get as much working without a .dll as possible though, even if it is a bit of a rude hack. Do you have an example of the above to work from / get an idea?

--

In other news, I reworked the body of the Negotiator. I probably have about 6 versions of this now, I need to rescale the cockpit and slide the turret further forward again to match one of the other designs, but I think it matches up a lot better with the other ISDF/AAN units. Much more pleased with this result, doesn't look like a floating sponge now. I've learnt tonnes of new stuff about Max in the last few days from Eat3D's 3DS Max 101 Tutorial DVD, so hopefully as soon as I start a new model I can put some of it into practice and pump some interesting stuff out.



I'm still stuck on what class to make it, I love the idea of it being a stationary artillery unit but it's difficult to decide... Those big holes in the front are going to locked to Photon Torpedo's like some of the other units. Depending on what I do with the craft, I'll either add two gun's to the side of the large barrel and make it a cannon, or add two small cannons to either side which are locked to some sort of anti-air cannon, and keep the turret as a mortar. It can serve as the overall anti-air/artillery unit that way.