Modding help/Question about animation?

[Battlestations]

Greetings fellow adventurers!

 So i've edited spears to be used as 1 handers using NI. I also set them to always use the thrust animation when attacking. My problem is the player avatar holds and walks with the spear just fine but during the attack the spear disappears then reapers
I have also looked at the BAM animation in NI, and i guess my question would be is it possible or not to just get the thrust/piercing animation to display with a 1handed spear. And if so how would one know which BAM or how to make a similar one to add to the animation. Edting a 1 handed sword thrust animation to look like a spear? Or just making new ones all together? Or if its just not possible i can live with what works.

Thanks for the answers you savy modders.

[subtledoctor]

My understanding is, unlike say a 3D game where you have a ragdoll body and an item and some rudimentary physics engine which lets you move things in all sorts of ways, these games have 2D sprites with a set number of animations that can play. If the 1-handed spear animation doesn't exist, it doesn't exist, period, end of story. And, spoilers: the 1-handed spear animation doesn't exist.

Long story short, I doubt this is ever going to be feasible to add.

[Battlestations]

 

42 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

My understanding is, unlike say a 3D game where you have a ragdoll body and an item and some rudimentary physics engine which lets you move things in all sorts of ways, these games have 2D sprites with a set number of animations that can play. If the 1-handed spear animation doesn't exist, it doesn't exist, period, end of story. And, spoilers: the 1-handed spear animation doesn't exist.

Long story short, I doubt this is ever going to be feasible to add.

.Well thanks for the quick and helpful response. I was thinking it was possible to alter existing sprites,  oh well it is what it is. Thanks

Edited March 23, 2021 by Battlestations

[argent77]

A bit of technical information and why so few modders have tried to add more weapon animations in the past. Weapon animations (as well as shield and helmet animations) are separate sprites that are drawn on top of the avatar sprite. These overlays correspond with the individual animation sequences of the avatar sprites. For example, the character animation uses three different animation sequences for one-handed weapons (slash, backslash and thrust). The same is true for two-handed weapons which use a different set of three animation sequences.

Since spears are two-handed weapons in the game, there are only the two-handed weapon animations available. That's why you don't see a weapon animation if you transform spears into one-handed weapons. You could simply rename the weapon animations to match the one-handed animation names, but then weapon movement and avatar movement are out of sync.

You have no choice but to create a new set of animations from scratch or change a similar-looking one-handed weapon animation to match your desired style. However, both options would result in an enormous amount of work. You would have to create individual animations for 9 different directions for each of the three attack types. Moreover, you have to bear in mind that there are creature animations in different sizes. There are halflings/gnomes/dwarves with small-scale animations, elves with medium-scale animations and humans with large-scale animations.

All in all you would have to create or modify thousand or more individual animation frames. On top of that, if you want to allow the weapon to be wielded in the left hand you would also have to create the same set of animations for the left hand.

Edited March 23, 2021 by argent77

[Jarno Mikkola]

11 minutes ago, argent77 said:

However, both options would result in an enormous amount of work. You would have to create individual animations for 9 different directions for each of the three attack types.

Well, or just use weidu to copy the similar animations from one weapon to another ... yes, this will lack the weapon animations, but the character animations would quite well match. And given that the only 1 out of the 3 types of attacks would be used, you could use a stock image to animate the others... as they might need to be there for the game to not crash, but they wouldn't be ever seen if you just use the thrust animation.

What's more important is that one CAN do this ! You perhaps take a good example, say the human male fighter, find it's bam files for sword, copy those over to a new slot, and take it from there. And the quetion now becomes; How do we do this ?

[argent77]

If you simply want to use an existing weapon animation without making any changes then it's much simpler to change the weapon item's equipped appearance to that weapon animation code.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Right, but we do want to change the WEAPON animation, but not the character animation, so we copy the character animations from an existing one, and make the missing weapon animations on our own and match them to the existing animations.

In addition to that, we can add in the twohanded bastard sword ability to all the spear weapons so one can switch between one handed and two handed usage ... as the one item can use old animation and the other will use the new one.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Jarno Mikkola

[subtledoctor]

If you made the weapon animations just so, the character animations for using a sling might work well for a 1-handed spear. 

But, who’s going to make those weapon animations? Line forms over there.

[Battlestations]

So it's possible just a bit of work that would take some time(possibly alot) I suppose just to start with the large animations. So if im gathering it right i could theoretically export out...say short sword large animations and edit those frames to look like a spear. Then put the animation to said weapon.

For example exporting WQSSSA5.bam and editting that  or something along those lines.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Battlestations

[subtledoctor]

For some value of “just a bit.”

FWIW this stuff is way, way out of my wheelhouse. I’m just passing on bits of information I’ve read over the years. 

If someone actually managed to get one-handed spears into the game, though, I would love love love it. I’d love to rock a spear and shield together. 

[Battlestations]

12 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

For some value of “just a bit.”

FWIW this stuff is way, way out of my wheelhouse. I’m just passing on bits of information I’ve read over the years. 

If someone actually managed to get one-handed spears into the game, though, I would love love love it. I’d love to rock a spear and shield together. 

Well upside is you can at least rock the 1 handed spear and shield look on the paper doll and avatar with a shield. Thats what got me thinking about editing the attack animations for 1 handers. The spear shows all the way up till the thrust animation the shields always visible.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Battlestations

[Sir-Kill]

Quote

But, who’s going to make those weapon animations?

I think Shaka Zulu did that once long time ago.

On a more helpful note... Someone could render them in 3d: model your 1-h spear, set your target camera to orthographic projection, change the angle to 45 degree, set the zoom to correct scale (checking with real bg animations), rotationally clone your cameras to how many (attack) angles you need, apply the clown colors appropriately (huge p.i.t.a there at least the fine tuning), set spear angles correctly, set rendering to remove anti-alias), Set environment to rgb 0,255,0 (green), record animation to how many frames desired,  save frames in 256 color, import frames into a bam editor and set offsets, add to slots and attach to item.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Sir-Kill
added a step

[subtledoctor]

Literally the only words I understood in that post are "Shaka Zulu."

[Battlestations]

Think i saw soneone do an edit for 2 handed katana on the beamdog forums seems they altered the 2handed sword animation

[Sir-Kill]

Quote

Figuratively

What about 'rotationally'? (corrected spelling)

Well now you know how I feel when trying to mod.

But unless you are a great artist and can draw animated spears in 2d it is much easier in 3d.

44 minutes ago, Battlestations said:

edit for 2 handed katana

You might be able to shave off pixels in bws2  but the doing so will leave you with very jagged edge that will look awful. So then you have to go through the painstaking repainting and guessing which of the 16 colors (maybe +8) at what will smooth the awfulness out.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Sir-Kill