Useable vehicle?

[Legacy_Who said that I]

               

Hello! 

 

Well I am currently working on a different project, the BUFFY VERSE module.

 

It is a personal project of mine and I was simply wondering if there are, instead of horses, are rideable/useable cars/bikes/vehicles like that?

 

I would really appreciate any input on the matter '> 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_NWN_baba yaga]

               

hi,

 

i had a at-st model done that could walk.... problemw as the rotation axis when turning sidewards. It looked inceadible stupid having this fearsome machine turning exactly on pivot 0 and then move again, rotate on pivot 0 and move again. So how will a car will work ? how do you let it move like a real car and not like a stupid tank that cant even move a little bit to the sides without stoping completely ?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Proleric]

               

There are bikes and cars in D20 Modern.

 

There are several D20 Modern links on the new vault, some with additional material, but I think that's the main one.

 

The vehicles don't work like horses (you'd need a whole new animation set for that). They're creatures. I imagine that when a player uses a placeable car, they turn into a car appearance (or something like that).

 

NWN_baba yaga is right, cars turning on a pivot do look odd. The effect is most ludicrous with very long vehicles, such as the coach-and-horses in CEP. Maybe you can live with it for shorter cars. Alternatively, you can script them to follow a curved pattern of waypoints, as in the following example by Shadooow:

 

 

That video has additional features - the cart is a tail, so the player can sit in it - speed is varied on bends (which I imagine to be a lot of work) - but you could do something simpler for cars (if D20 Modern doesn't do it out-of-the-box).

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_NWN_baba yaga]

               

That demonstration was very awesome but still it´s a scripted scene. For a useable vehicle there is no way you get it to move just a little bit like a real one. I´m sure about that. That would be an engine hardcoded feature like in any generic racing game.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_LastBard]

               

Maybe you can put motorbike model on tails (like horses) and use them, or (just for cars) changing appearance of PG with an object that you have to use on creature/placeable like car/tank/other model. I chose this system for my PW.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Proleric]

               

Well, I did that with my witch's broomstick, but it's a kludge - I wasn't very happy with the position of the legs or the jogging up and down.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_LastBard]

               

I know...we need a good designer for new motorbike (or other type of drivable vehicle) models! '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Draygoth28]

               I have a jeep from the D20 Hak and a few bikes that I made mounts out of. But Proleric is correct about the animations. Unless someone can make a new pheno type. I took the h_ba model, edited it to make the PC not move and lowered the mount animations. It's crude but effective.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_LastBard]

               

I found this on youtube:

I think was a great work, but I don't know who did it. '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Proleric]

               

I found this on youtube...

...I think was a great work, but I don't know who did it. '>

 

@OldTimeRadio - is that one of yours?

 

Oseryn did something similar for sailing ships.

 

Placeable animation on the grand scale can be a very impressive technique, as these examples show. The main limitation is that a placeable animation has to be played in full (unlike creatures animations, which can be played for a specified duration, unless fire-and-forget). It's possible to tailor the animation to the desired length by removing animation frames from the model, of course.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Neat!  Almost forgot about that one.  Yep, that's one of mine using a model from Google 3D Warehouse or whatever it's called now.  It was another in a series of proofs-of-concept showing that models from G3DW could be imported into NWN and also that a simple dummy node with animations (landing and takeoff in this case) could be created and animated just once but used and re-used indefinitely by attaching different models to it.

 

 

The main limitation is that a placeable animation has to be played in full...

Another sort of unexpected limitation involves the viewdistance, wherein a non-static placeable (like the one above, and which is necessary for the animation to play) with a large "flight" radius only becomes visible when the model's base (usually the center of that radius) comes within "view".  This distance is around 50 meters, or five tiles, but it's often better to keep the radius just a little under that, around 35-45 meters.  Some more discussion on the topic may be found in this thread and also in this one.

 

My 2 cents on making new mounts and vehicles:  While most focus on the DLA horses when thinking about creating new vehicles/mounts, I think Ben Harrison's riding barrel and magic carpet (?) are better examples to keep in mind because they show how little work is really required to make a new vehicle/mount.  From memory (which I admit might be a little rusty) all one needs is a model as a tail and creating a new phenotype- something that isn't quite as imposing as it sounds.  While many of us working on CC are perfectionists to one degree or the other, it is worth remembering that players are often-times far more forgiving with imperfect content than we are, when creating it.  '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

Hmmm maybe you are interested it this?

 

demo video

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_LastBard]

               

Another great work, but I can't see the options in the demo video. XD

Anyway, I think it's a good system. '>