X-Wings anyone? ...finished and textured

Maybe we could try taking the same tack as the Star Wars fan films have.

Greed in game makers is a sad, sad thing. [V]

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Originally posted by Second Chance

Maybe we could try taking the same tack as the Star Wars fan films have.

Never thought about that, but you're right... it's very strange that fan films are openly appreciated, but fan games are shut down. Doesn't make any sense.
But as I wrote already in my previous post, trying to understand LucasArts is something I have given up on.

Here's the new updated and tweaked textures. Most noticeable is the new tex on the back end, now incorporating the s-foil access hatch. Everything else was minor tweaks to the wing textures (if you've got a real sharp eye you might spot the changes ). Enjoy.



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Here are some in game shots.
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1542

Hey MajorTom, I've sucessfully added animation to the wings! I've got them opening and closing using the thruster channel (not what we need I know, but it was just to test the animation ). It looks freakin' cooool! I'm also on the verge of a major comprehension of how animation works in EoC. I've been studying the animation channel INI's and I'm beginning to understand how to achieve complex multiple animations on a single model. It's rediculously complicated, but I'm getting it . It does mean, however, that I'm going to have to do a lot more setting up of scenes for the X- and B-Wings in order for the animations to work. But, I think it also means less work for you in implementing them.

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Way wicked Cool [8D]

Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

Ok MajorTom, here's a quick explanation of how our animation channels will work vs. the standard game channels.

My original thought about having to manually increment the channel value was correct. PS did a very clever thing with the animation channels, they incorporated a level of control of the channel directy into the channel null name. This way, they only had to write one animation function that could be used in different ways, depending on what the null name was. I'll explain:

A typical animation null would be named something like <anim channel="LZ?+s(0.5)">

First, flux parses the LW scene as a text file (I assume). So, as we already know anim channel= is telling flux that what comes next is to be the name of the animation channel to create on the sim. This name incorporates two clever features I didn't figure out until recently. The channel name will be "LZ?+s(0.5)". Originally I couldn't understand what the ? and the s had to do with the name. Then I realized, it's all about the parsing of the string! In this case the LZ channel can be used two different ways depending on whether it's LZ+ or LZ- (LZ is a ship movement direction), the ? is there to tell flux that the next character indicates which LZ direction we're talking about.

Then comes the s, another way to control the animation through the name. The s tells flux to feed the proceeding number in the brackets into its speed variable in the function. So the animation speed is controlled by a variable in the function which uses whatever number the null name gives it. (The fact that this name uses the letter s for the speed control is coincidental, I've seen other names use the letter j.)

There's more to the standard animation channels than this, but for our purposes we only need to deal with what I've talked about above.

Everybody with me so far?

So here's what I've done for our X-Wing animation nulls; each of the wing sets (for all LODs) is parented to a null called <anim channel="sfoil?(0.5)">. What you need to do, MajorTom, is set up a function that assigns the "sfoil?(0.5)" name to an animation channel on the sim. You must then extract the 0.5 from the name into a variable then increment the channel value from 0.0 to 1.0 within the time specified in this variable. I've used the SDK convention of 1.0 = one second, 0.5 = two seconds, etc. If this doesn't work for you we can just change it to 2.0 = two seconds, etc. Since you're writing the function it's up to you. Also, let me know if we need to incorporate more info into the null name.

This way we can reuse this function for other animations and make them go as fast or as slow as we want using only one function.

Sound reasonable?

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