Warzone 2100 Forums

I was wondering, if anyone has made any animated .pies before?

I *think* the only animated pie that warzone uses is the derrick animation. Perhaps the cyborg legs as well.

Anyway, anyone ever worked with these things before?

I've worked with them a bit. The normal campaign-available cyborg legs do not use trans/ani animation, just the simple frame-based animation, however the heavy/assault cyborgs (forget the name) available in at least the 1.11 and 1.12 mods do use trans animation. I have also made 'centaur' cyborgs that had four legs, and used trans animation as well (frame-based anim couldn't animate fluidly for this sort of thing without hundreds of frames).

There are three reasons that trans anims didn't get used very often:

1. It was said to be hardcoded so that it could only be used for cyborgs and derricks. this may apply to frame-based animation, too
2. There wasn't an editor that supported it (so it took dozens of hours to get it to look right)
3. It wasn't scriptable

If any two of these three issues were remedied, I'm sure we'd see a lot more use out of it. For example, if it could be applied to anything, for example wheeled propulsion, and it were scriptable (and the scripting supported very low level callbacks, such as "vehicle x is turning" then i'm sure somebody would've made a 'rotating wheels' mod that took up an undue amount of processor power and memory, but got the wheels in wheeled/half track propulsion to rotate in opposite directions when moving forward and back, and angled the wheels when they entered into a turn. Such a mod would've definitely pushed mod development for many years if that had ever happened.

I do not understand, why this project is still using this old, unusable model-format in place of something, we could work with
We had already model-format discussion few YEARS ago

Why do not switch to 3DS, ASE, MD5, MD3 or any other format, which is well supported ?

Greetings, MB

MetalBeast wrote:I do not understand, why this project is still using this old, unusable model-format in place of something, we could work with
We had already model-format discussion few YEARS ago

Why do not switch to 3DS, ASE, MD5, MD3 or any other format, which is well supported ?

Greetings, MB

Years?
Who is going to convert all those .pies to those, and then fix those to have the same features that the .pie file has?

A new model format IS being worked on, (.wzm), but that still in planning I think.

I wanted/needed a replacement for the derrick...

Buginator wrote: Years?
Who is going to convert all those .pies to those, and then fix those to have the same features that the .pie file has?

A new model format IS being worked on, (.wzm), but that still in planning I think.

I wanted/needed a replacement for the derrick...

Yeah, it is near 2 years ago: viewtopic.php?p=3301#p3301

New model format isn't good idea in my eyes, because you have than still to create working plugins 3D modelling apps
or completly new tools/converters, which allow to work with this new format.

If I see the progress speed of this project, this could take years (no offence, just sarcasm , I know you guys are making great job! )

Why not use any well supported and already accepted format, like ASE or one of the listed above ?
Which extra features are supported by PIE format and not by standard formats?
I do not think converting these few simple models is a big load of work, I have already done bigger jobs

I can create you an animated model, but conversion woulde be your job
Just say how the oil-derrick replacement should look and the max-polycount I can use.

Greetings, MB

I was looking for a destroyed derrick (rubble), and the animated part would be the oil squirting out from it.

As for max polygons... it would be the same number as the derrick we have now.
I assume that number is 'POLYGONS 28' so that many.

why so low? :-S that was 10 years ago.. and it seems people use some pretty new machines
i'm thinking of 80 (28 polygons: original pie files contain rectangles too, not only triangles)

ps: i could help you with drawing the texture if you like

elio wrote:why so low? :-S that was 10 years ago.. and it seems people use some pretty new machines
i'm thinking of 80 (28 polygons: original pie files contain rectangles too, not only triangles)

ps: i could help you with drawing the texture if you like

I for myself don't see any benefit of high-poly models. Instead i would like improved visual effects like normal mapping or some other nice things like flashing when a Tank fires/hits or better particle effects.

++++++++++++++++

'high-poly', 'low-poly', are loosey-goosey, relative terms. i could show you a 5 million poly model that would
be absurd for wz but standard issue for a CGI feature. but going from 28 to 80 is hardly a leap to 'high-polydom' by any metric applied to wz. you may wanna define your terms more specifically as that would be more useful for those actually creating the art. such definitions would also serve better those actually coding to support enhanced gfx. all around it would help the doers decide whether the constraints are a good fit for the enjoyment they would derive out of the process of converting talk into reality. the majority of 3D gamers do feel 'higher' poly models contribute to immersion along with greater texture detail. borgs in particular would benefit greatly as their GFX now are absolute dog-pooh.

What is the most popular model format?

If someone would like to write a loader for that format in C++, I could give them the interfaces for VisiRaptor.

I'd do it but I'm very busy doing non-warzone things right now..

i have one question:
do WZ use all functions and features of .pie files?

Chojun wrote:What is the most popular model format?

If someone would like to write a loader for that format in C++, I could give them the interfaces for VisiRaptor.

I'd do it but I'm very busy doing non-warzone things right now..

There isn't one. At least not one that supports all of the features required by Warzone (connectors, namely), without resorting to hacks, is universally well supported (i.e., all popular modelling applications can export to it without the need for a plugin) and finally, has no superfluous features. (This is an issue, as otherwise we would be forced to support but a subset of a format, which could be an exercise in frustration for modellers.)

This is one of the reasons we have decided to roll out WZM. Adding support for a model format isn't that difficult, just a simple lexer for textual formats. What is difficult is things such as tessellation (if the format supports polygons), scale conversions, UV co-ordinate conversions, normals and the like. Additionally, things such as specular maps and normal maps need to be specified somehow (how do we know that texture xyz is a normal or specular map, and not a texture?).

Using our own format allows us to add features and functionality on our own terms — rather than having to say something like the model format we use does not allow us to specify this, and therefore are out of luck. Take a look at the WZM discussion thread for more information.

Regards, Freddie.

Could anybody provide me the original oil-derrick in 3ds or blender format ?
Would be nice, thx.

Supports WZ any particle system ?
I think the squirting out oil, would be better to be done with particles.

@EvilGuru: Thx for the info, sound logic.
I hope you guys will provide well working plugins and converting-tools for the new format

MetalBeast wrote:Could anybody provide me the original oil-derrick in 3ds or blender format ?
Would be nice, thx.

Supports WZ any particle system ?
I think the squirting out oil, would be better to be done with particles.

Sure... attached is the .3ds file.

As for the particle system, yeah, it has one, but it isn't easy to work with it, and has some serious limits on it.
The mislick one is the one you see normally...(before a derrick is built)

EvilGuru wrote:(how do we know that texture xyz is a normal or specular map, and not a texture?).

Wouldn't that be the easiest problem to solve? Maybe a own "mtr" (material) format where you assign textures or even simpler. If the model has a specular-/normal-/...-map use: <modelname>_spec.tga, <modelname>_normal.tga... when the loader doesn't find these files, it skips them.