As Gaia is here now, OTA gasbags should be feasible. So who stands up todo this noble task?



So we can finaly make proper Acid world remakes!

how many do you need?

like 4 different ones?


and thus they have to be animating

well, they will not be able to pulse like that, we have no ability to do mesh deformation. the sway is easy.

ANYONE ELSE DOING THESE!?! before I do them and waste time, I want to be certain that I will not be modeling something that will be vetoed mid process.

You can use lua to draw the units or features (whichever way
you decide to do it). If vertex shaders are available, they're
extremely fast for doing mesh deformations. If the client does
not support vertex shaders, you could fallback to "low grade"
matrix skewing, scaling, etc...

Scaling's easy to do, the only thing stopping me from using that has been the timing-loop factor. I haven't been able to come up with a good way to regulate that- I assume with a WHILE to interpolate between frames? And how can I write a timing loop when the periodicity between frames can vary in terms of clock time? Or should I just write it with the assumption that it takes X number of cycles and if it's too fast or too slow, nobody will see it?

And if you have a fast method of doing cyclic mesh interpolation between static meshes, I'm all ears, now that I have somewhat of a clue as to how that stuff's sitting in display lists. Animations could just be vertex interpolations between "pieces". No IK required, and the number of frames could be adjusted for memory savings easily. We'd all just use animation software, like normal people, for things that aren't turrets.

That said, the main problem I'm having with this is understanding how to build the timing loop and storing the current position and next positions in that loop, to interpolate with, in a way that's fast- I figure that the fast way is to precalculate all of the display lists during startup, so that it's merely a matter of retrieval and display, if we're not going to have a new model / animation format that stores that information for us. Can anybody shed some light on that?

Hang on, hang on, secure made these already and they look great. They even bob around randomly. He's on holidays at the moment, but I'm sure he either sent them to someone, or we can reach him.

Can props be Scripted?

If so, then just do a scripted model swap, and do it just like all the animated tracks that work on my Vehicle remodels.

It doesn't have to mesh deform or anything fancy if we can do it that way.

Just create 1 gasbag model, and set it to an idle position, export it with a name like gasbag_1, then deform it, export the next as gasbag_2, and so on for however frames of animation you need.

Then have the script cycle through them from 1-5 or however many you made.

Just remember that all of those animation stages need to be in 1 model file, only seperated by object name within the single model file.

would it explode as a prop?

true, I forgot about that technique. If warlord doesn't find the models I can do this.

yes if placed as a lua gaia unit.


Do we have a way to do neutral gaia units now?

Next version I believe.

Well there we go
ETA on the next official release?

Why can't you do it with 0.76b1?

unless my understanding is incorrect we have no way past notarget categories to tell the game that a unit is not to be targeted. I am unaware of a way to make a unit !enemy to all players.

Spring.SetUnitNeutral() is available in 76b1.

Yeah but that doesn't make it an enemy hence "Neutral" that would be like an NPC helper to an RPG game.

I've found the files, but I guess I'll wait for a go ahead from secure (I've sent him an email)

You can see them in this vid:

Vid!

Is that actual mesh deformation or are these neutral units controlled by Lua?

Pure cob/bos scripting based solution?

made of win