Rancor And Acklay ported to SWBF 1?

[Phobos]

 

[Breakdown]

A while ago,  I tried to get these two units in game, but I couldn't get it to work. The acklays attacks are .combo files if I remember, which don't work in SWBF1

As for the Rancor unit? Well there was too much SWBF2 stuff in the ODF, even after I edited it all it still didn't work..soo

[Maveritchell]

As for the Rancor unit? Well there was too much SWBF2 stuff in the ODF, even after I edited it all it still didn't work..soo

That's because no one has the source to an actual unit-model version of that. Someone made a cheap workaround to get the prop rancor as a unit model, and that won't work in SWBF1. I reenveloped the model to a stock skeleton, but I use it with wampa animations and not stock unit animations (it could be used with stock animations, but that is neither here nor there since I didn't release the assets to it).

The acklay has a custom skeleton and you'll never get that to work in SWBF1.

[Maveritchell]

You may be right about the acklay

I am, and:

but I believe the rancor can be ported to BF1

...it can't. The skeleton structure is different, and without actually using the basepose .msh given to you with the prop model (and compiling a new set of animations), you can't have an animationset that'll work for it. The only thing you can do is reenvelop it to the stock skeleton - which is exactly what I already said.

[Jedikiller]

Why do you assume that your success is not desired? You are simply being told that you will not be able to get the most desirable effect without some extensive editing.

The problem is that you can't get new animation sets in BF1. This will stop you from having anything remotely similar to the BFII versions.

We are not out to get you. In this case, however, your desires are either not possible or will require a lot of work and/or dedication.

[Maveritchell]

You really want me to believe it's "impossible" but I am still not convinced by your arguments, or lack thereof.

In that case, knock yourself out - go ahead and try. Like JK says above, the goal here is only to save you time. The rancor can be done, but you'll need to import the model into XSI, re-envelop and re-weight it, and then export it (and it still won't look very good since it will be running around like a soldier). The acklay "can't" be done - you can technically weight anything to the stock pose but once again this is a functional definition, and it just won't work like you want.

Is an animation set truly necessary? No. Just the model itself loading in game is the main problem here.

I don't think you understand the dynamics of models and animations. You can load the static model ingame and make it move around as a unit without any animations at all. You can weight it incorrectly and it'll look like a stretched mess running around. You won't have something that is also functional without the right animations, and in this case the "animation" that is important is a different basepose skeleton.

[~{PLA}~ Seth]

I don't see how you need to get the rancor from bf2- It's not playable there, either. Also, could you get it to actually move? As far as I know, it's considered part of the map, on both games. It doesn't move in either game aside for the animation, so I doubt you could get rancor play to work-

I've played as an acklay with bf2, using the SWBF2 Conversion Pack 2.0 (It ROCKS, get it if you have bf2.) and it's pretty good. But the rancor isn't considered a unit and doesn't respawn when it gets killed. It can't get killed, because it doesn't have a health bar, because it's part of the map. I'm not a modder, so this is all AFAIK. (As far as I know)

[Maveritchell]

I don't see how you need to get the rancor from bf2- It's not playable there, either.

It's still a model, though. Like mentioned above, it can be reweighted onto a unit skeleton:

(Sorry for the length, it's not my video, but I don't have one of the rancor on hand - see starting appx 2:30)
It's also a prop model with a skeleton, and because it's bipedal the skeleton happens to share some similarities with unit skeletons - enough that if you mix and match animation pose meshes, you can create a hackjob unit with it:
http://www.xfire.com/video/1b7a7/

Only the first option is available for this game, though, and even in SWBF2 the second option is sloppy.

So... one could just make it smaller, baby rancors. Sounds like you're saying there is a middle ground, albeit not a "perfect rancor", one that is semi-playable and semi-realistic.

What I'm saying is that if you set it up like a unit model, it will look bad. It will look small, yes, but the problem is not the size, it's the fact that the animations won't look right with it. It will not look "semi-realistic." It will be playable, but that's only half of the equation.

[Jedikiller]

What we are saying, if I am interpreting correctly, is that you are not going to be able to create a rancor that looks even remotely good without modeling skills, which are tough to acquire. Even then, it still will not look right.

Unless you are willing to dedicate a lot of time for a rather unsatisfactory result, you are not going to be able to get this ingame and moving around with any degree of realism.

[Breakdown]

Acklays just aren't possible, I'm pretty sure. As JK said, you need the new animation sets, unless you make your own customly, but I dunno if that would work well

This game is about 5 years old now, so of course the support for modding has died out a lot. If you were talking about support of the actual TOOLS, well I guess when they were initially released, people just wanted to make new maps, not any of the complicated stuff people are trying nowadays

[Maveritchell]

What I'm saying is that if you set it up like a unit model, it will look bad.

Why do I even bother?

[Breakdown]

Eh, that's cool and all, but no offense, I wouldn't want to play as a rancor that looks like he's gargling down listerine. Perhaps to clean his mouth after some fresh twilek.

[Maveritchell]

You just wait pessimist.

You're still acting like these things are being said out of some misguided attempt to hold you back or rain on your parade. They're not. I'm telling you how this will work because I've seen a number of people do the exact same thing with no discernibly different results. You can make it work but it won't look good. A whole world of possibilities are open to anyone willing to cut corners, but I can't say that any of them are ever worth pursuing.

So I've been looking at droideka assets because since it's a vehicle it gives you more custom definition than a soldier.

No no no no no. This has been discussed and tried multiple times, and you are of course welcome to join the legions of people who try to make this work, but should you be willing to just take my word for it ( no one ever does that, of course), save yourself the trouble.

[Giftheck]

Actually, you bring up a good point there.

Bearing in mind that the Gammoreans also have custom skeleton and shoot animations too. So it isn't exactly 'impossible'. However, I agree that simply 'porting' it won't do. Skeletons ARE possible (somebody ported the Yoda skeleton although it's never been shown how, or released) but it's quite some work there.

As I understand it, the game calls for a specific animation when a unit does a certain action. I have an idea on this. Theoretically, if an animation set has the SAME NAMES for individual .msh files, and the animations (zaabin) are added in the unit .REQ file, then I would assume that the game tries to use the unit's animations, possibly filling the gap with the ones inside common.lvl. I could be mistaken however, as I have never tested this theory myself.

[Maveritchell]

Gammoreans also have custom skeleton and shoot animations too.

If you can support custom animations in SWBF1 then you can make these things look better. All I've ever heard about the game is that you can't support custom animations (although I don't know where this came from - taking a look at your assets, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to create a different animationset as long as you name everything appropriately when you munge your animations).

If you want to try the same hackjob that people have tried for SWBF2, then follow these steps:
1) Download this.
2) Set up your new side (ex. TAT)
3) Add the following to the top of your unit's odf (this is assuming you are using the SWBF2 rancor model unmodified) below the geometryname (and make sure there are no other lines similar to this):

Code Select Expand

SkeletonName = "tat_inf_rancor"
AnimationName = "tat_inf_rancor"
4) Copy the .zafbin and .zaabin files in the .zip file you just downloaded to the (TAT)\munged folder.
5) Make sure your unit has a melee weapon (or not, but I think I set it up for the melee animation as well). You may have a crash if the unit shows up at a distance; there's no specific lowres skeleton made.

I'm spitting in the dark here since I've never tried modding SWBF1, and I'm a little confused why so many have said that new animations don't work when just having looked at the tools it looks like they do (maybe). SWBF1 just draws from a set of common animations instead of individual animationsets, and so creating new animationsets seems to be just overwriting the common animations for that particular unit instead of adding new animations.

Make sure you play around if you do get a crash, because without the ability to test this, I can't tell you whether this needs to have a melee weapon, a rifle weapon, or what. I'm not 100% on how the animations are set up in this game.

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All of this being said, if you do get the above to work it is still just a hackjob and will look sloppy. As I said in my first response, getting this to look halfway-decent requires reenveloping the model.