placeable.2da question

[Legacy_Nissa_Red]

               I for one am looking forwards to your (and LordSullivan's) trees ^.^ Do they also have a fading effect ?

*hops away before derailing YET another thread*
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Nissa_Red, 01 mars 2013 - 02:51 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Here is a link to the post which includes the video Rolo referenced and which demonstrates the effect.  Note the "hugging" effect, which is an artifact of the pathfinding code.

@Rolo - If you look over some of the comments by Robert Babiak in the Omnibus, especially with the "placeable hole" video I did (from that same thread) in mind, I wouldn't be surprised if one could do a 2D PWK plane as walkmesh, with the appropriate bits set to "obscuring" and have it block line of sight without having to make it 3D.  Just a guess though.  Babiak, a programmer at Bioware, had a more nuanced view of walkmesh/PWK which I think still holds true.  FWIW.

Edit: Video link was funny in the post I linked to, hopefully fixed now.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 01 mars 2013 - 03:45 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Nissa_Red]

               Thank you for that link.

I knew about past experiments with "walkable" PWKs, but I've always found better (and safer I wager) alternatives through customizing tiles (or doors) to achieve the same result.

I was convinced that using flat PWKs was the way to go, but I can now see how Bannor correctly points out the "shoot through" issue. I will have to take care of that in the future. Also, since I rarely use placeables on non-even ground, I didn't pay much attention to the "walk through" issue, if placed below z=0.

Two (related) questions though please :

1/ let's say one places a placeable with a WOK at the center of a perfectly flat tile. Would the WOK disappear with the destruction of the placeable ?
2/ what about creating a placeable with a WOK once in game ? Would the WOK appear, dynamically changing the one of the underlying tile ?

In any case, I've learned quite some again, thank you, OTR (and all those who contributed to that thread)..
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               I don't want to push this thread any more off topic than I already did.  '>

If you're a modeler and can perform some of these tests yourself, it couldn't hurt to open up an ongoing thread where a number of us can contribute as time permits.  Right now I'm wrapped up in skin mesh and PLT's and inventory icons (shudder) and I don't imagine revisiting this anytime soon simply because of the work involved to get back to a good environment for testing.  Maybe in such a thread as the one I describe, a test placeable could be created and others could join in the testing to see what the rules governing the effect really are.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Nissa_Red]

               Okay, I spent some time browsing the Omnibus, and found this :

Danmar :
Realistically, tiles have wok meshes these can change heights. Placelabes have pwk meshes, these do two things, dictate where the player cannot walk and provide the use nodes to indicate the points that a player should stand in order to 'use' an item. If there are no use nodes properly set up and the pwk file is larger than about 1 meter if the player tries to use the item they'll use the 0,0 coordinate of the object and then just rubber band off it because they can't reach it. So if you're going to make your object useable make sure its small or you put working use nodes in it at the edge of the pwk mesh so that it can be used.
Technically though we've found out that the engine will allow wok mesh data for a pwk file. This is additive only and has so many restrictions that its not usable. The placeable wok HAS to be 1000x1000 units just like a wok file. It HAS to be located at the exact center of the tile. It CAN'T be placed dynamically, only in the toolset. It doesn't allow multiple z heights. It ONLY works additive, i.e. if the pwk wok is higher then the tile wok data is modified to be higher when the 'area wok' data is compiled. So you could say add the ability to have a placeable mound for a tile and the players could walk up it. But you can't dig a hole.
But pretty much the general consensus of everyone is that its easier and a darn site more reliable to just make tiles if you need to change the z height.

I guess this at least answers my question 2/, unfavorably I suppose >.<

The more I think about it, and the more I agree with Bannor that making a WOK (something which is meant to specify where one can walk and where not) out of a PWK (something which is really only meant to specify where one can NOT walk, and to carry "use" nodes and such) is really a "hack".

And sooooorry Randomdays for derailing your thread, I swear I'll stop with that right here and right now.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Nissa_Red, 01 mars 2013 - 06:15 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               Its all good. Lots of good discusion going on and I'm glad my question opened up new areas that's helping other people out. It shows me that creating placeables is a bit more complicated than I assumed.

I don't think I've seen it done and it would probably be a major hit on the engine, but has anybody done trees, flags or grass that sway in the wind? If you turn on/off rain and a rain sound with a script as well as the tress moving to that wind, it would add a lot to realism.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

Randomdays wrote...
I don't think I've seen it done and it would probably be a major hit on the engine, but has anybody done trees, flags or grass that sway in the wind? If you turn on/off rain and a rain sound with a script as well as the tress moving to that wind, it would add a lot to realism.

I've made flags and grass and wild flowers using dangly meshes, but I never even tried this with trees because I'm pretty sure this will slow the game down far too much. Lots of transparent meshes for the foliage is already bad enough but the engine can still handle it if there are not too many trees. If that foliage was also dangly mesh, I doubt the engine would be able to handle it.

Take for example the cliffs in the TNO tilesets which have a lot of bushes on them that are dangly mesh. I've heard people say that those make the tilesets too slow for them. A single tree would need as many dangly meshes or more, so two or three of those trees would probably slow down the engine so much that the game would become unplayable.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               I've been able to get 4 mdls into the editor/game/2da now - 2 barns with normal and winter textures to them. I had a couple of errors but i'm not sure if I had entered the data wrong or if I had exported them from gmax as the default character mode instead of as an item like I wanted. Redoing the 2da data and re-exporting them seems to have fixed them. I'm also not sure what's changed as I had them with shadows a couple of times but now I can't get them back. I didn't add a use node or destruction emiiters as I'm not sure a structure would need them.

I added a few vertices to the pwk plane so you can walk inside the fence a bit or near the doors in both, or put a creature inside like in the pics. The barrels and hay are part of the mdl and so are not usable.








               
               

               

                     Modifié par Randomdays, 02 mars 2013 - 08:26 .