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Anyone with any experience/help on Modding the Animation Files?


Reddbane

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About a week I started a thread asking about changing the equipment appearance on a character Avatar, and after a few rounds of questions and answers and engine experiments, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m actually going to have mod the individual animation set, not anything major, just moving some already created animations around.

 

So now I need to ask, does anyone have any experience with how the animation sets (that in the ones you’re assigned in the beginning of the game, and can apply to your avatar in EEkeeper) in BGEE work, or know anyone? I know specifically most classes-gender-race combos have a specific set applied to them, like a male human cleric uses the animation slot “0x6000 CLERIC_MALE_HUMAN” and that determines not only what the character looks like in on the field and in the inventory screen, but also what the character looks like when an item with a certain equipment script is applied (leather, chainmail, plate, mage robe 1, 2, 3, etc.) The thing is that certain Animation slots do not change appearance when certain item scripts are applied, like a mage avatar’s appearance doesn’t change when equipping armor, and the cleric, fighter, and thief slots don’t change when equipping robes. What would I have to mod/add/edit in the animation files so that, “mage robe 1, 2, or 3” does apply a change to the huma male cleric slot, like say changes it to the “chainmail” appearance?

 

For clearness sake, I will mention that I don’t want to simply change the robe itm files so that they apply the chainmail appearance, as several people already bright this; I don’t want to change the qualities of the robe items themselves, which would make it so the Mage avatars lose their fancy appearances. I want to edit the actual animation slots, improve them if you will, so that they react to the mage robe scripts just as they react to armor scripts.

 

If anyone could offer any advice or point to people who do? As there currently does not seem to be any tutorials on editing animation files that I can find similar to the ones provided on Infinity Engine coding.

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Success!



Now I can finally play a Kensai or Fighter/Mage and not look like a naked goober!


d064fbbuwumy.png



And here is the inventory shot. Note I'm wearing no cloak, but still look cool. Also thanks to the advanced color choices in EEkeeper my character looks like he's wearing some nice threads, plus since I'm not using the chainmail code my character doesn't jingle as he walks.


sbkxloiz1tny.png



Strange these days we take for granted this level of customization in our games.


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I think players expect it because the games don't do it themselves consistently. There are lots of older games - older than the Infinity Engine stuff, say, Realms of Arkania - where you don't get different appearance of characters at all, no matter what they wear, only one type of avatar for a class. And I didn't miss it, not only because I didn't know it was possible to have this level of detail, but because it wasn't important in the overall scope and style of the game. When a temple is just a panel on the right side of the screen with buttons to reform the party, pray to the gods, save, load and quit, you think about completely different things: what you will do once you are out of the temple, where to take the next ship in the port, whether the prayer will succeed... But once detail like avatar types and clothing comes in, at the expense of something else that is lost, players begin to think in realistic terms and want to match things one to one throughout. No chainmail when chaimail is worn becomes a problem.

 

Did you look into animations a lot for this change? Can you tell me this, then: are there are hard-coded obstacles to adding more weapons avatars can use? All of the weapons in the games are BAM animations just like the avatars themselves, so apparently the engine adds 2+2 and puts a mace BAM in the hand of an avatar BAM. Well, could we add different weapons, if we were to draw them? Like a blunderbuss?

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I think players expect it because the games don't do it themselves consistently. There are lots of older games - older than the Infinity Engine stuff, say, Realms of Arkania - where you don't get different appearance of characters at all, no matter what they wear, only one type of avatar for a class. And I didn't miss it, not only because I didn't know it was possible to have this level of detail, but because it wasn't important in the overall scope and style of the game. When a temple is just a panel on the right side of the screen with buttons to reform the party, pray to the gods, save, load and quit, you think about completely different things: what you will do once you are out of the temple, where to take the next ship in the port, whether the prayer will succeed... But once detail like avatar types and clothing comes in, at the expense of something else that is lost, players begin to think in realistic terms and want to match things one to one throughout. No chainmail when chaimail is worn becomes a problem.

 

Did you look into animations a lot for this change? Can you tell me this, then: are there are hard-coded obstacles to adding more weapons avatars can use? All of the weapons in the games are BAM animations just like the avatars themselves, so apparently the engine adds 2+2 and puts a mace BAM in the hand of an avatar BAM. Well, could we add different weapons, if we were to draw them? Like a blunderbuss?

 

You would have to replace an existing weapon animation, say the crossbow or bow, and then prevent the character from using those weapons. I think. I know that Monk can't use two handed weapons because they were used to make its kung fu moves. Then again people were able to make to make custom wing and circlet animations for the head slot. However you would have to make separate animations for each each and gender, because of the height difference. You should probably ask Kjeron, since he was the one who helped me.

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The PC avatar's have 12 different animations for attacks: 3 one-handed, 3 two-handed, 3 dual-wield, 1 sling, 1 bow, and 1 crossbow. Whatever you add would need to line up with one of these existing animations groups or the weapon will basically float in the air and flail about wildly.

Weapons have separate animations for each of 2-3 avatar sizes, 1/3/9 attack types(1 for sling/bow/crossbow, 3 for two-handed weapons, 9 for one-handed weapons) with 9 directions of 14 frames each, and for the 11 non-attack animations(walking, dying, falling down, getting up, etc...) with 9 directions of varying frame counts, or 2115 frames for non-attack animations with double for dual wielded weapons.

A single weapon would require:

2115 + 252-378 frames if the weapon works like a bow(drawn and fired), like a crossbow(point and shoot), or like a sling(thrown).

2115 + 756-1134 frames if it is a two-handed weapon.

4230 + 2268-3402 frames if it is a one-handed weapon.

 

So a blunderbuss would be one of the easier weapon animations to make, compared to something like a club, but its still a lot of work.

 

The paper doll/inventory images only need about 10 frames total.

 

You could reduce some of the load for two-handed weapons by restricting them to only ever use one attack animation, and for one-handed weapons by restricting them to the main or off-hand only. While a concealed weapon could legitimately avoid the 2k non-attack animations.

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