How's this project fairing?

[cylawyer]

Hey Zunath and others,

I stumbled across this project while researching ways to export EVE online ship models to use in a NWN2 conversion project.

This looks interesting, thought I'd ask how it is going. So, "How's it going?"

[zunath]

Heya, Cylawyer.

Well, this project has slumped because of lack of help. Might be the age of NWN or just the lack of people still playing. I'd still like to keep it going but it's a lot of work to do by yourself.

What are you planning for your NWN2 conversion?

[cylawyer]

Well, I am anxiously awaiting the STAR*DRIVE conversion. I don't know and cannot how much Yaddaman has put into a space system, but I had some ideas and was trying to learn how to export and import EVE models as I thought they would work great. Thereafter, I have some thoughts about how to "fly" them around, including "z-axis" (I know, they say it can't be done, but...) changes, to give a real 3-d space feel to the game. Yaddaman's early screen shots of space vehicles is good, but the high quality EVE models would be even better, or would be a great supplement to his work.

Frankly, I would like to script a space combat system similar to a game called SPACE OPERA from the 80's. That system was unusable as a PnP game mechanic as it took too much calculating and appeared to have some errors in it. However, with some slight adjustments, that could be a good system. The computers can do all the calculating these days, so that shouldn't be an issue as long as it is scripted and tested well. I have a lot of ideas and am willing to work on things, but being an attorney and not a computer scripter or modeler, I don't have a great amount of skill. I am learning though.

[zunath]

Sounds interesting. How are you doing the Z-Axis?

[cylawyer]

Well, it's just a thought right now. But, I was thinking of either creating custom animations with the ship models at differing heights depending on standing, crouching, waving, etc. or I was thinking of ships models imported as special effects on top of an invisible thin model.

In the first instance, many custom animations would have to be developed using current animation entries in order to get the differing elevations and then you'd still have to figure out a way to make the transition between elevations smooth.

In the second instance, invisible thin model would be scaled dynamically, along the z-axis only, through scripting, but the ship would be a special effect at the top of the model. As an example, I fooled around with air elementals in the toolset. They are scalable along all axis, but when scaling along z the special effects don't scale with the supporting body although their z-axis elevation adjusts according to the scaling.

Compare this to a Will-0-wisp, which you may think would be similar, but attempting to scale a will-o-wisp appears to have no result at all. Not sure the distinction between the two, because I thought they both were special effects tied to an invisible base which is what you actually scale.

If importing a ship model as a special effect in the manner of an air elemental is doable (and again, I am not a modeler nor a scripter, but I am willing to learn), then I would think that scaling the z-axis of the invisible base would be fairly straightforward for a scripter.

This second method would require less animating, at a minimum simply: level model, angled 90 degrees up, angled 90 degrees down and rotations between level and each of the angles. With scripting you could use hotkey (unsure on this) entries to activate the animation to rotate up or down and if you could freeze the animation at any point by releasing the hotkey, keeping a set angle, anything from 0 to 90 degrees or 0 to -90 degrees.

If you could do this, it would be a short evolution to set up a script to calculate the movement rate along x and y, based on actual speed and z angle, while scaling the z-axis rate appropriately.

If one was skilled at that sort of thing and so inclined, one could throw in some banking animations and pivoting animations for use while turning.

You tell me. Do you think this is feasable? If not, why not?

Looking forward to a response.

Thanks.

[zunath]

Apologies for the late response.

Graphical animation isn't one of my strong suits, so I'm probably not the best person to ask about this. But it does sound like a plausible solution. The only thing I'd be worried about is the smoothness of the animation but if what you say would work, that could probably be fixed.

I wish I could give more insight to this - you might want to try asking on the NWN forums. There's more people knowledgeable on this than me.