Where to find new animations?

[gamemaster76]

I'm working on a mod that takes the dragon disciple kit and copies it into 5 total kit each focused on a different elemental damage type: fire, cold, electricity, acid and poison.

The mod is finished... except for the breath weapon animations. for cold, I used the animation for Cone of Cold, which works. It doesn't fit the area of the breath weapon completely but its close enough.

the problem is the other 3 elements. There are no suitable animations. The closest I got for acid and maybe poison was with the animation for the Acid Stream ability from the item The Visage... but instead of just playing an animation and doing the damage in a cone like its suppose to, if fires a projectile and damages everything around it, including the caster. Electricity there's nothing. I tried call lightning but it had the same issue as the Acid Stream...

Spells like stinking cloud and storm of vengeance could work, but the clouds stay and continue to damage those in it.

Are there any other animations I can use? Or a way to get the ones I have to just appear and not affect the breath weapon itself then disappear?

In my code I change the source of the "projectile" spell header:

LPF ALTER_SPELL_HEADER // Changes breath weapon animation
    INT_VAR
        projectile = 25
END

 

I know there are animations for dragon breath weapons.. but they are terrible. a few colored lines appear form the caster and for some reason they do no damage to anything.

Edited February 3, 2021 by gamemaster76

[temnix]

If you are going to delve into projectiles, you need to find out how they work. For this you should take some existing animations that aren't hard-coded, i.e. have a PRO file, then try using them and editing them and testing them again. Only when you have a clear idea of the mechanics, the frequency of firing, how "Number of repetitions 1" is different from "Number of repetitions 0," secondary and multiple projectiles, will you be able to make the visual element impressive - and audial, too, because new visuals should come with new sounds for a complete effect. The existing sounds are generic and for the most part cheap and dull, though on occasion you can find a use for one or two. It then becomes a question of where to get new sounds, but to stay on your topic: begin experimenting by making an item with a number of special abilities that you will be using for testing.

I use a ring, copied from the ring of invisibility originally and named +RING.ITM. This way it shows on top of the override files in Near Infinity. I type it in from the console in the game and have it always available. The ring has a bunch of abilities, some targeting Living actor and some Any point within range or Caster, and different projectiles are selected. You can begin by editing, say, INAREANP (Instant area enemies-only), changing it how you like and switching the visual representation for the AoE to "Custom." Then you can try ring and spread animations, with and without glow/blending, or only ring, or only spread. Random speed, yes or no? I would say yes, for damage cones. Try it with 0 repetitions. There are lots of little knacks to learn, but if you like the process, it won't be a chore. And you'll probably invent many more things along the way.  

As to where you can get actual graphics to belch, I suggest, first, looking into fire and changing the existing Dragon Disciple breath weapon to use a cone projectile instead of Agannazar's Scorcher. Try BURNHAND.BAM for the source, but look carefully into the frame centering there. You'll see that the frames aren't centered perfectly within the cycles. The plus (center point) wobbles. You need to adjust its position by a pixel in a couple of frames so that every cycle burns evenly on the Preview screen. I remember this because I've looked into that file myself once. After you have fixed the centering, add more frames to every cycle, beyond 5. This is important for all cone graphics, because cones begin to be drawn incorrectly a short distance away from the source. The standard Cone of cold, for example, will often break chaotically a few feet out and turn sideways. That looks ugly, and the reason it happens is that the engine fails to orient cycles after the first loop. Thus, you need to beef up any cycles which you expect to play for some distance away, especially if you use Repetitions 0 + Random Speed. Here is an example of what that would look like. On this screenshot the caster turns into a flock of birds that spread out in every direction and will fly until they reach the ends of the area. I used the small bird animation, ABIRD.BAM, edited to have 16 directions, but the birds at first turned on their sides, nearly flew backwards. This went on until I realized I needed to add many more frames to every cycle. Cycle 0 had to run like this: 0,1,2,3,4,5,0,1,2,3,4,5,0... A few dozen frames. Repeat this for every direction for your cone - and you need to rotate and mirror that fire cone, importing-exporting-importing until you have a 16 directions PRO.

When the fire cone is ready, try it with a cone-shaped projectile. "Ignore center." "Face target." "Not mirrored (full)." Speed controls the rate of spread. As for the other elements you want... You might be able to recolor SPFIRET or the nearby flame bolts for acid and find a substitute for electricty, but if you want real class, look for graphics outside of the standard set. Two games I know where the graphics are good and extractable are Arcanum and Diablo 2. Another source is the Internet: do a search for the sort of animation you want. There are lots of abstract animated gifs out there. You may not get exactly the right pick, you may have to edit the frames, crop them, turn them around... I suggest ezgif.com for manipulations. But if you find something cool and edit it smartly, your acid, shock and the rest will come out truly original. As for the dragon breath animations that you are unhappy about, they are supposed to represent breath snorted from up high, by a dragon, diagonally (check out the graphics used in Red dragon breath and the cycles there). But Bioware never managed to get those exhalations to play correctly, or rather, make them drawn at the right distance from the dragon and centered where the damage originated. In the end they settled for a fireball for reds, a sort of glow for silvers. Real cones such as I've been talking about here would not do for dragons, because the height would be wrong. You have no such problems with your man-sized dragon disciples, however.  

Edited February 3, 2021 by temnix

[gamemaster76]

59 minutes ago, temnix said:

If you are going to delve into projectiles, you need to find out how they work. For this you should take some existing animations that aren't hard-coded, i.e. have a PRO file, then try using them and editing them and testing them again. Only when you have a clear idea of the mechanics, the frequency of firing, how "Number of repetitions 1" is different from "Number of repetitions 0," secondary and multiple projectiles, will you be able to make the visual element impressive - and audial, too, because new visuals should come with new sounds for a complete effect. The existing sounds are generic and for the most part cheap and dull, though on occasion you can find a use for one or two. It then becomes a question of where to get new sounds, but to stay on your topic: begin experimenting by making an item with a number of special abilities that you will be using for testing.

I use a ring, copied from the ring of invisibility originally and named +RING.ITM. This way it shows on top of the override files in Near Infinity. I type it in from the console in the game and have it always available. The ring has a bunch of abilities, some targeting Living actor and some Any point within range or Caster, and different projectiles are selected. You can begin by editing, say, INAREANP (Instant area enemies-only), changing it how you like and switching the visual representation for the AoE to "Custom." Then you can try ring and spread animations, with and without glow/blending, or only ring, or only spread. Random speed, yes or no? I would say yes, for damage cones. Try it with 0 repetitions. There are lots of little knacks to learn, but if you like the process, it won't be a chore. And you'll probably invent many more things along the way.  

As to where you can get actual graphics to belch, I suggest, first, looking into fire and changing the existing Dragon Disciple breath weapon to use a cone projectile instead of Agannazar's Scorcher. Try BURNHAND.BAM for the source, but look carefully into the frame centering there. You'll see that the frames aren't centered perfectly within the cycles. The plus (center point) wobbles. You need to adjust its position by a pixel in a couple of frames so that every cycle burns evenly on the Preview screen. I remember this because I've looked into that file myself once. After you have fixed the centering, add more frames to every cycle, beyond 5. This is important for all cone graphics, because cones begin to be drawn incorrectly a short distance away from the source. The standard Cone of cold, for example, will often break chaotically a few feet out and turn sideways. That looks ugly, and the reason it happens is that the engine fails to orient cycles after the first loop. Thus, you need to beef up any cycles which you expect to play for some distance away, especially if you use Repetitions 0 + Random Speed. Here is an example of what that would look like. On this screenshot the caster turns into a flock of birds that spread out in every direction and will fly until they reach the ends of the area. I used the small bird animation, ABIRD.BAM, edited to have 16 directions, but the birds at first turned on their sides, nearly flew backwards. This went on until I realized I needed to add many more frames to every cycle. Cycle 0 had to run like this: 0,1,2,3,4,5,0,1,2,3,4,5,0... A few dozen frames. Repeat this for every direction for your cone - and you need to rotate and mirror that fire cone, importing-exporting-importing until you have a 16 directions PRO.

When the fire cone is ready, try it with a cone-shaped projectile. "Ignore center." "Face target." "Not mirrored (full)." Speed controls the rate of spread. As for the other elements you want... You might be able to recolor SPFIRET or the nearby flame bolts for acid and find a substitute for electricty, but if you want real class, look for graphics outside of the standard set. Two games I know where the graphics are good and extractable are Arcanum and Diablo 2. Another source is the Internet: do a search for the sort of animation you want. There are lots of abstract animated gifs out there. You may not get exactly the right pick, you may have to edit the frames, crop them, turn them around... I suggest ezgif.com for manipulations. But if you find something cool and edit it smartly, your acid, shock and the rest will come out truly original. As for the dragon breath animations that you are unhappy about, they are supposed to represent breath snorted from up high, by a dragon, diagonally (check out the graphics used in Red dragon breath and the cycles there). But Bioware never managed to get those exhalations to play correctly, or rather, make them drawn at the right distance from the dragon and centered where the damage originated. In the end they settled for a fireball for reds, a sort of glow for silvers. Real cones such as I've been talking about here would not do for dragons, because the height would be wrong. You have no such problems with your man-sized dragon disciples, however.  

Oh boy that's a lot to take in 

Thank you! I'll see what can do!