[geom]

I'm using the CS pack in my current game, Orcs vs. Martians.

I just finished coding up most of the actions/animations that the units do, so I figured this would be a good time to make a little demo movie.  My code's still a little buggy, but this should give a good idea how I plan to use the CS in my game.



http://redbrickgames.com/pix/070626/ovmCsAnimations.wmv (9.6MB file)

Animations shown include:

   chopping - 2h_attack2
   mining - 1h_attack2
   building - 1h_attack2
   paving - idle10
   combat - (various)

[Canon]

very cool video geom!

It's very interesting to see the pack in action.
The next update, next week, will include several animations relevant with your game!

Keep up the good work!

Christophe

[geom]

thanks Christophe!  Looking forward to it!

[geom]

Finally, here's an update.  This movie shows several of the new CS anims and tools (and some of the old ones still).

Anims:

   chopping - idle17
   mining - idle18
   carrying wood - wood_walk
   picking up - action8
   paving - idle10
   building - 1h_attack2

Tools:

   axe01.dts
   pioche.dts
   fourche01.dts
   hammer01.dts

(the first few seconds may appear blank - I don't know what I'm doing wrong with Windows MovieMaker)




This is really good stuff, Christophe!

I know the CS is close to release now and you may not have time to incorporate more feedback, but here's a few more comments:

   * Love the way the wood pile and wood-carrying animation look! perfect!

   * Also like the little "kick back" the axe head has in the chopping animation - nice touch

   * idle10.dsq has a problem where the character's left hand "floats away" from the handle of the fourche as he swings (you can see this in the movie.  Can this be fixed?

   * a programming issue: it's hard for me, programmatically, to make Torque switch between the "run" animation and the "wood_walk" animation.  Torque is not really set up to do that.  Would it be possible to make wood_walk.dsq control *only* the upper body and arms of the character?  i.e. not control the legs.  Then I can let Torque's action thread always control the legs (no switching), and when the character carries wood I can spawn a 2nd, concurrent animation thread to control the arms.  If you look at a some of the stock Orc animations I believe that's how they work.  I'm not an expert in this stuff but I think there is a way to give a priority to certain nodes in an animation, and that's how Torque knows which animation should control which nodes when there are two playing.

[Canon]

One of the first questions I asked myself when I started to work on this pack was : Blend or not blend animations?

The final pack don't includes blend animations because, even if many indie game dev technologies use blend animations, many other don't (like home made technologies).
Netherless, I think blend animations will be part of a futur update, but it will takes time (75 animations in .max, .psa and .ms3d format ... argh!).

I'm going to prepare and send you a modified idle10 animation.

Christophe

PS : the movie is perfect, no blank images.

[geom]

Ok.  It's not too serious an issue for me.  The way I've got it working now is, if the character is carrying wood, I force Torque to play wood_walk.dsq on Torque's action thread.  It overrides Torque's standard forward/backward/side-to-side walking animations.

The downside of that is, since wood_walk isn't one of the standard forward/back/side anims, Torque doesn't do its regular speed control on the animation, to make the speed of the leg movement match the speed that the character walking.  (But, I'm sure I can hack around that...)

I got the new idle10, Looks great!  Thanks.

[Canon]

geom,

I'm going to take a look at this walking animation because maybe I didn't active the ground transform for it. I will keep you in touch.

Christophe