Request: A Few New Models

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Request: A Few New Models

Post by Rex Claussen »

I am looking for a few new models for use in Paranoix:

1. Neatly-made beds/cots: We have some cots in Paranoid, but they are grungy and were intended for use in the prison areas. I'm looking for nicer cots to be used in the barracks for the security guards. We can either re-skin the existing bed (Bed01, DooMEd# 30286), or get a completely new model.
2. Satellite dishes and/or radomes: This is in keeping with the player's mission to disable communications.

At this point, these are the only models I can think of. I'll add to this list as I come across a need.

Thanks.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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Thoughts?

Image
Satellite dishes; mostly from Quake 2. They are animated but a bit chunky and low-poly. There might be something more detailed in the Duke Nukem hires pack but I can't check right now.

[edit]
Yup, Duke Nukem hi-res pack has this...

Image
Not animated (but I could probably give it a simple animation of such a thing was needed).
[/edit]

Image
Military cots; single and bunk. These might be by Willem Sitters.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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I really like the DN hi-res version. A simple swivel motion might actually be just what we need. One state can be swivel, one can be stopped. In this way, the player (say) presses a switch to stop the satellite dishes from moving, thereby signalling that the communications array has been disabled.

I like both the military cots. In fact, I have already created 2 barracks - one is larger with more beds, intended for the enlisted men (non-officers); the other is larger with fewer beds, and with a dedicated break room (couch, TV, conference table, etc.) for the officers. The bunks will go well for the former; the single will go well for the latter.

If you have these models handy, would you please send them to me when you get a chance? Zip to email, or web link via forum/PM/email would work. Thanks.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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OK, here we go. The beds and the radar dish.

http://www.aspectsweb.co.uk/enjay/doom/Models/PNOIX.zip

I have just included the models "as is" i.e. no modeldef, test map or whatever. If you want that, let me know.

I haven't animated the dish (yet) but a simple swivel or tilt would be easy enough so I should be able to fit that in at some point.

I noticed that the dish is meant to be huge (or, as I believe it is pronounced these days "yuuuge"). The biggest clue to this is the ladder on the back. So, if the model is scaled to be smaller than full intended size, the ladder would look odd and give the scale away. I can easily remove the ladder if you want so that you can scale it to whatever size you feel suits the map.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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Thanks for the very quick response, Boss. As for the animation, there is no urgency, as the satellite dishes will be used in the final map. I will do the modeldef and summon the sat. dish to see how big it actually is. I don't really see the size as being an issue, but if it needs to be scaled down you can remove the ladder.

Thanks, again.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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Rex Claussen wrote: Tue May 23, 2017 15:13I will do the modeldef and summon the sat. dish to see how big it actually is. I don't really see the size as being an issue, but if it needs to be scaled down you can remove the ladder.
I did the modeldef & DECORATE definitions, and summoned the actors. Very nice!

As for the satellite dish, I didn't realize that you meant the model needs to be scaled up. No worries, about the scaling. My current plan is to have the satellite dishes on a rooftop or compound that the player can't reach, but can see. In this way, I can hide the ladder side of the model, so even if it isn't properly scaled it will not be obvious to the player.

[EDIT: I scaled the sat. dish model up 4 times, which is a reasonable size for our game, but the ladder is still far too small. As a point of reference, scaling it up 10 times makes the scale of the ladder somewhat reasonable; that scale makes the sat dish as large as the guard shacks found at various compound gates. It still is a reasonable size, in my opinion.]
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

Post by Enjay »

To be honest, I didn't know if the model would be big or small when imported into the game. Unless I specifically check, it isn't always something that is immediately obvious with models.

I more meant that I don't really know what size you want the overall thing to be in game so if the scaling (big or small now I think about it) makes the ladder on the back look an inappropriate size for a human to be climbing it, it's an easy job to take the ladder off. The ladder is the only part that really ties the model into a "it's meant to be this size" kind of situation so removing the ladder frees you up to scale it to whatever size you want.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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Rex Claussen wrote: Tue May 23, 2017 15:13As for the animation, there is no urgency, as the satellite dishes will be used in the final map.
As the final map is in the works, this might be a good time to create an animated version of the satellite dish. So, here is what I'm proposing:

1. "Active" state of the model includes a side-by-side swivel motion.
2. "Dormant" state stops the swivel motion.
3. As an option to the dormant state (and if it can be achieved without much additional effort) the dish also dips when it stops swiveling.

Again, there is no urgency, as there's plenty of other work (mapping, gameplay, voice-acting) that still needs to be done.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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A swivel or a tilt animation would be easy enough in principle. The tilt on this particular model would be a little bit more difficult because the dish doesn't have to tilt down by much before it starts fouling the edges of the big bracket that holds it. I could re-shape that a bit though.

The problem is less with the model and more with how to get the animation of going from active to inactive to look good.

Let's imagine the animation for the side-to-side sweep uses frames something like (pseudocode)

Active:
FRAM ABCDEFGHGFEDCBAIJKLMNOPONMLKJI 3
loop

Inactive:
FRAM QRS 3
Fram T -1
stop

Where H is the furthest deviation from central to the right and P the furthest to the left.

The inactive position would be central. It depends exactly what you have in mind but if you just happen to deactivate the dish while it is on frame H or P (or a frame near them), it will suddenly snap to its central position from its furthest out position. At least, if what I think you want is what you are actually doing. i.e. it would be a dish slowly moving from side to side that could be deactivated.

If you have something more cunning or involved in mind, let me know.

I'm unclear whether you wanted the ladder removed or not. Either way is easy enough.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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You said: "it would be a dish slowly moving from side to side that could be deactivated." This is exactly what I had in mind.

I understand the limitations of swivel and tilt. So, let me start by saying that the tilt animation should be considered entirely unessential. The point is to have a visible means of showing that the satellite dishes have been deactivated, and that the player's primary objective has been met. Simply stopping the swivel action will be sufficient to indicate this, and the tilt becomes unnecessary.

In terms of how the swivel ought to stop, I had nothing special in mind. The model simply needs to go from the swivel motion to a complete stop. The speed with which the stop occurs or the position of the stop are not terribly important. Of course, if the stop occurs extremely slowly then the player might not be able to discern that the swivel of the satellite dishes is slowing. I would imagine we'd not want an abrupt stop, nor something that takes, say, 30 seconds. So, ideally, something that results in the satellite dish going from normal swivel to a stop in 5 seconds, with an accompanying (say, grinding or mechanical) sound. [But, I understand this might not be possible - see my next point, below.]

As for the model snapping from the extreme positions (H & P) to the central, inactive, position (QRS), I agree that it would appear abrupt. If there is no other way (e.g., via ACS) to check the position or gradually swivel from the extreme to central positions, then an abrupt swivel to the center will have to do.

As for the ladder: I am scaling the model up by a factor of 10. This provides a reasonable scale for our game. I compared the player to the ladder, and the relative sizes are perfect. In this way, I can place the model anywhere, and its size relative to the player will work very well. Moreover, as the ladder is unreachable the scaling issue becomes less critical. So, to sum up, no need to remove or rescale the ladder, or do any other rework of the model. Thanks.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

Post by Enjay »

OK, that all makes sense.

The difficulty with snapping to the centre is that while the dish is active, it would just be cycling through its animation. However, when it is deactivated, it would jump to the first frame of its deactivation animation which, logically, would be in a centred position.

[edit]Just to be clear, the issue is not with animating the model. The issue is being able to track where in its animation the underlying actor is so that when it jumps to its inactive state sequence, it can jump to a position within that sequence that matches whatever position the actor was in when it left its active state sequence. Given that the dish will be panning back and forth and it could be deactivated at any time during that panning process, this means there needs to be some way of tracking the panning animation and passing its status to the inactive state sequence so that they match up visually.[/edit]

So, what I think would need to happen is that there would be some way of setting a variable or something. Each frame of the active animation would set a unique value for the variable. The inactive animation would be set to have an animation series (or probably two I guess) going from the extreme position to the centre and then drooping down. The inactive state would need to be able to read the variable and jump to the correct point on the inactivation animation to tie in with where the dish was in its active cycle at the time of deactivation.

The thing is, I'm really not sure how to set something like that up. I suspect that it can be done in DECORATE somehow, but it strikes me as the kind of thing that would probably be better handled in zscript. I'm not really sure where to start doing either though. :?

Putting animation frames into the model itself is the easy part as far as I am concerned.

[edit]Oh, forgot to ask, how wide do you want the sweep of the side-to-side animation to be? I take it that 90° in either direction (180° full sweep) is too much? maybe 45°-ish in either direction? [/edit]
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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I understand the limitations of controlling the swiveling actions, as well as the inherent difficulties of coding the switch from swivel to stop. Let me think of another way to set up the scenario. Perhaps, instead of interrupting the broadcast, the player needs to broadcast a fake signal. In this way, the satellite dishes will not need to stop swiveling. Instead, there would be some other visual/aural indicator that the fake signal has started broadcasting.

Alternatively, I'll gladly accept your suggestions for using the satellite dishes as part of some other type of mission objective.

Incidentally, you had created the animation for the diesel generators that can be turned on/off using a switch. The turbine wheel slows to a stop when the switch is turned off, and when turned on it slowly starts up before picking up speed. How did you achieve that?
Enjay wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 19:06Oh, forgot to ask, how wide do you want the sweep of the side-to-side animation to be? I take it that 90° in either direction (180° full sweep) is too much? maybe 45°-ish in either direction?
Yes, 45°in either direction will work very well.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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Rex Claussen wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2020 15:40 Incidentally, you had created the animation for the diesel generators that can be turned on/off using a switch. The turbine wheel slows to a stop when the switch is turned off, and when turned on it slowly starts up before picking up speed. How did you achieve that?
Honestly, I don't remember, but I probably ignored the problem. i.e. the switch-off probably pays no attention whatsoever to the current position of the generator animation when it jumps to its shutdown animation. It just won't be particularly noticeable. With a giant slowly swivelling radar dish, that won't be the case. It's not the slow down/speed up animation (or the tilt down/tilt up animation for the satellite dish) that's the issue. Making the animation frames for the model is easy. The part that I don't know how to do is keeping a track of where the dish is in its "active" animation so that it can jump smoothly to a suitable frame in its "inactive" one. That's all on the DECORATE (or ZScript) side.
Yes, 45°in either direction will work very well.
OK, I'll get on that when I have a moment. It won't take long.


As for how to resolve the issue/providing an alternative to indicate that the signal is off, here I my initial thoughts:
  • We find someone who can code the necessary DECORATE/ZScript
  • We just ignore the problem and accept that sometimes the switch from active to inactive might be a bit abrupt
  • Make it so that the player can't easily see the satellite dish when it deactivates, so they miss seeing the awkward "jump" (e.g. when activating the switch, their back is to the dish so they have to turn around to see it - by which time the jump has happened) It's a dirty work around, but it might do the trick.
  • Computer monitors, sounds and dynamic lights all change when the broadcast is interrupted
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

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Enjay wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 11:44As for how to resolve the issue/providing an alternative to indicate that the signal is off, here I my initial thoughts:
  • We just ignore the problem and accept that sometimes the switch from active to inactive might be a bit abrupt
  • Make it so that the player can't easily see the satellite dish when it deactivates, so they miss seeing the awkward "jump" (e.g. when activating the switch, their back is to the dish so they have to turn around to see it - by which time the jump has happened) It's a dirty work around, but it might do the trick.
  • Computer monitors, sounds and dynamic lights all change when the broadcast is interrupted
I agree, and think we should consider these options:

1. We simply ignore the problem of abruptness. [Probably least desirable of the options.]
2. Maybe the abruptness will be less obvious if the satellite dish is moving faster. The slower it moves, the more obvious will be the switch to the inactive state.
3. Make the angle of swivel smaller (e.g., 30°in either direction). In this way, jumping from an extreme end of the swivel arc back to the center will not be as noticeable, as the distance traveled will be smaller.
4. Set up the switching so the player doesn't actually see the de-activation. [This seems to be, by far, the optimal way of proceeding.]
5. Use visual and aural signals (computer monitors, sounds, etc.) in combination with 4, above.

Thanks for the suggestions.
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Re: Request: A Few New Models

Post by Enjay »

Agreed, in the absence of some "one three three seven" DECORATE/ZScript code from someone, option 5 seems the way to go.

It's all just down to luck anyway I guess. I mean, the player could press the switch at the best point for the animation to look about right too.

I haven't forgotten about doing the animation BTW, it was just a busier week than expected.
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