Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

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Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by PsychologicalDevice »

Topic is about as simple as the question asked. I noticed that some magic happened while I was gone and Trespasser has some more beta engine action. Outstanding.

I was curious since, I was never particularly educated on the nitty gritty of it all, if we could make the old animation that work with the old engine, port into the new one. I was watching some videos of all this, ported up some levels myself on the old engines, and I just noticed that brown raptor has some, I wouldn't say great, but some far superior animations to the "Help I got my Head Stuck Where My Pelvis"shouldbeasaurus.

I mean Trespasser CE did some absolute magic, and I am not at all educated on this, so I was wondering if it was somehow possible to edit some tidbits and replace the animations.

I know what I'm asking is probably as easy as ripping out the wisdom teeth from a 16 year old with pliers.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by Draconisaurus »

PsychologicalDevice wrote:I know what I'm asking is probably as easy as ripping out the wisdom teeth from a 16 year old with pliers.
Sounds about right...

The main obstacle here is that we don't have the source code for the betas that we have. In addition and/or in tandem, the animations seem to work differently in older versions of Trespasser... It's my observation that animation became more physics-based over time, where older versions were more rigid in the behavior of both CAnimals and the player. So even if we had the old source code, the behavior you mention (which I myself have also longingly noticed) would probably not be compatible with the final version.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by PsychologicalDevice »

Draconisaurus wrote:
PsychologicalDevice wrote:I know what I'm asking is probably as easy as ripping out the wisdom teeth from a 16 year old with pliers.
Sounds about right...

The main obstacle here is that we don't have the source code for the betas that we have. In addition and/or in tandem, the animations seem to work differently in older versions of Trespasser... It's my observation that animation became more physics-based over time, where older versions were more rigid in the behavior of both CAnimals and the player. So even if we had the old source code, the behavior you mention (which I myself have also longingly noticed) would probably not be compatible with the final version.
Well that's just a drag. Maybe someone will leak the source code of the betas in about, I don't know, however long it took between the release of the first beta leak and now. lol.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by tatu »

The old "animations" (the dinosaurs is emotion based and actually not "animation" based), are really buggy to be fair. They do look good, but I personally don't think they might work with the final game anyway, unless getting replaced.

One thing to notice is that the dinosaur in early version is using some other tscript reference that wasn't used on the retail dinosaurs. If I remember most of these got disabled in later builds because they were a bit buggy. CE allows you to renable them again, however. You still need to apply these back to the dinosaurs tscript. I don't know if anyone have done much experience with this if this is what makes them act like they do. I do however know that the bones and physics seems to be really similar in builds like 32 and retail. However, the dinosaurs in the early versions lacks a lot of the tscript used later, so that might be the key. Then again, it is just my guess :P
I also think experimenting more with various combinations of the dinosaur tscript might be the key. Remember retail got the dinosaurs aggressiveness hardcoded to max, overwriting everything else (well, apparently that is what the devs said), but I think CE got rid of that?

Who knows if an old version of an old source code will pop up. I personally doubt it would contain much new stuff. In any case, we would never say no :D
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by machf »

Not quite the same, but I've been working on figuring out the original PVAs (physics vertex assignments, according to sources) used for the old dinosaurs, before they changed to "PVA = -2" (t-script-defined) for everything. I've run decompilers on the various earlier executables and have found the locations storing the hardcoded vertex assignments for the various dinosaurs. Now it's a matter of converting that into matching t-scripts... which will be a long and tedious process.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by Draconisaurus »

Wow good luck / have fun with that.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by machf »

I don't paste anything here because it's, well, a long list of numbers and more numbers, basically...
Or rather, several lists... not just one for each dinosaur (and Anne), but for every dinosaur in each version of the executable.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by PsychologicalDevice »

machf wrote:I don't paste anything here because it's, well, a long list of numbers and more numbers, basically.
Or rather, several lists... not just one for each dinosaur (and Anne), but for every dinosaur in each version of the executable.
Sorry, I'm still new to all of this, porting in and out of old engines. This must be kind of irritating. I was just wondering, what about porting in old t-script functions that were once deprecated? With the brown long clawed raptor in T-Script, of you put in float ClawLength (could be placebo on my part) it does consider the size of the claws in movement around the neck and head. Or like I said, placebo.

But it got me interested......what about porting the old old ActClaw back in, in the old long clawed raptor since it seems to respect ClawLength? Could a $Physics Sub-Model be restored from porting? Impossible? Implausible? Improbable? Possible? Plausible? Possible?

PVA-2 or not, be a damn shame if we have, for the first time, those claws we looked at for over ten+ years now and, we have nothing to do with them but have them flailing around static as a paraplegic. I have no idea if in the current "release" build this would look good at all (claws getting sucked into the Velociraptor vortex).

What I'm saying is in order for this model to work, PVA or not, something has to be done with the claws, and I'm wondering if it's possible reimplement the function to make them move somehow. I myself can work tirelessly on the idea, possible or implausible. I always look at Tres-CE as a point of motivation for anything we previously considered "impossible".

I want to see those claws look moving around slashing, grabbing, whatever it is. I want to see it on that long clawed raptor. The one we thought we lost to time.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by machf »

AFAIK, that ActionType was never implemented, so there's no way to re-implement it... the ones that were implemented and were later disabled (by commenting them out in the source code) have been (optionally)re-enabled in CE.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by PsychologicalDevice »

machf wrote:AFAIK, that ActionType was never implemented, so there's no way to re-implement it... the ones that were implemented and were later disabled (by commenting them out in the source code) have been (optionally)re-enabled in CE.
I just tested bool tailwagtest = true, and with CE of course that's going to work (somewhat). But aside that there wasn't much tail movement, at least, not that I had already recognized besides that.

But here's where things get interesting. The source code always refereed to ActLashTail and ActLiftTail as dismembered parts of an old Trespasser. Even with CE. Well, I put them on, with my own set of floating emotions to maybe bring them out (I have no clue what I'm doing), but I did notice that the tail movement in the Brown Long Claw Raptor moved even more than I noticed with the previous. I think there's more to this or this game has deranged me for the past few years into trying to find what wasn't there. But the tails, albeit very brokenly and retail Trespasser-esque, were moving. At least until they got stuck. I'll say the movement was slight and it could entirely be my imagination but, were more emotional activities activated we weren't aware were activated with CE's patch? I'm sure they look absolutely broken in game, but maybe a lot of what we thought was deactivated wasn't.

This could all just be old hat but I noticed in the T-Script page there was no reference to an ActLashTail or an ActLiftTail. Like I said, probably seeing things but I swore that the tails on these things occasionally lifted and when attacking, "wagged" in greater arcs than just bool Acttailwagtest = true.

For those who want to try it out, here's the T-Script settings I've used
bool ActLashTail = true
float ActLashTailFear = 0.000000
float ActLashTailLove = 0.000000
float ActLashTailAnger = 2.500000
float ActLashTailCuriosity = 5.000000
float ActLashTailHunger = 0.500000
float ActLashTailThirst = 0.000000
float ActLashTailFatigue = 0.000000
float ActLashTailPain = 0.000000
float ActLashTailSolidity = 0.000000
bool ActLiftTail = true
float ActLiftTailFear = 0.000000
float ActLiftTailTailLove = 1.250000
float ActLiftTailAnger = 0.000000
float ActLiftTailCuriosity = 7.500000
float ActLiftTailHunger = 2.500000
float ActLiftTailThirst = 0.625000
float ActLiftTailFatigue = 0.000000
float ActLiftTailPain = 0.000000
float ActLiftTailSolidity = 0.000000
Like I said, probably placebo, since I'm interested in activating old parts of the game in the source, and CE might have done that? I'm not sure. All I'm sure is I need some sleep and I'm probably assuming a lot.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by machf »

This is the list of activities which were removed/cut/never implemented:
LiftTail: Lift the tail into the air, as a cat might.
LashTail: Lash tail impatiently.
Sleep: Lie down and snore.
LieDown: Lie down.
Scratch: Scratch like a dog might.
MoveHerd: Move body closer to the target.
Claw: Attempts to claw target.
Grab: Move head to target, clamp down with mouth and don't let go.
Throw: After a grab, swing your head wildly and let go of target. Should fling the target.
Shake: After grab, move head back and forth violently. Then drop target.
JumpClaw: Leap into the air and deliver a flying kick, or just plain land on the target.
These are the activities which are enabled in the retail version of Trespasser:
ActEat
ActBite
ActFeint
ActRam
ActDrink
ActTailSwipe
ActOuch
ActHelp
ActHowl
ActSnarl
ActCroon
ActDie
ActMoveToward
ActWander
ActStayNear
ActStayAway
ActFlee
ActPursue
ActJumpBack
ActGetOut
ActApproach
ActMoveBy
ActSniffTarget
ActCockHead
ActRearBack
ActCower
ActGlare
ActSniff
ActLookAround
ActNothing
These (I think) are the ones that were disabled in the final release but sill present in the source code and re-enabled by CE:
ActJumpBite
ActShoulderCharge
ActJump
ActMoveAway
ActDontTouch
ActStalk
ActCircle
ActDash
ActLookAt
ActTaste
ActBackAway
And the test activities which CE didn't bother re-enabling:
ActTestHeadCock
ActTestHeadOrient
ActTestWagTail
ActTestHeadPosition
ActTestMouth
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Sound name listings for the Demo (build 117), Retail (build 116), Beta 103, Beta 99, Beta 97, Beta 96, Build 55, PC Gamer Alpha (build 32) and E3 1998 Alpha (build 22) TPA files
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by PsychologicalDevice »

machf wrote:This is the list of activities which were removed/cut/never implemented:
LiftTail: Lift the tail into the air, as a cat might.
LashTail: Lash tail impatiently.
Sleep: Lie down and snore.
LieDown: Lie down.
Scratch: Scratch like a dog might.
MoveHerd: Move body closer to the target.
Claw: Attempts to claw target.
Grab: Move head to target, clamp down with mouth and don't let go.
Throw: After a grab, swing your head wildly and let go of target. Should fling the target.
Shake: After grab, move head back and forth violently. Then drop target.
JumpClaw: Leap into the air and deliver a flying kick, or just plain land on the target.
Hm. Could have sworn I saw more movement in the tails. I know it must have been my imagination, but I guess my working assumption is that the older model had a larger physics box for the tail and that might have caused it. Oh well.
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Re: Is it possible to port over old Dinosaur animations?

Post by Slugger »

PsychologicalDevice wrote:Hm. Could have sworn I saw more movement in the tails. I know it must have been my imagination, but I guess my working assumption is that the older model had a larger physics box for the tail and that might have caused it. Oh well.
Could also be due to differences in the rigging of the dinosaurs.
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