TresCom Forums

...and attaching a gun to it that fires until the helicopter is "killed"

I feel that something like this is definitely achievable with the current engine. It would probably look awkward as hell but it would still be a nice thing to test out. I think the two hardest parts would be the actual rigging of the helicopter and the scripting. I looked at Drac's Silver Shore level and noticed you can attach guns to CDinos and make them shoot continuously until they are killed. I think putting the minigun from Armory onto a helicopter's hull would do the trick. I just don't know if you can angle the gun so that it's pointing at the player from a reasonable height that a helicopter would be at lol. Since your rigging it to a dino skeleton I guess another challenge would be changing the sound effects that the dinos normally use. I guess you could give the "dinosaur" no sounds, and make its sound material something metal so that when you shoot it you hear metal pings. I'm not sure if you could change the actual blood effects that fall from dinos when they get shot to another particle. Another thing would be getting the rotor effect down right. I'm sure you can attach a rotor that uses .bmp animations to the top of the model, and when you kill it the rotors eventually shut off. I don't know what to do with the "mouth" of the helicopter besides giving it zero damage because I would want the minigun to be doing all the damage. What do you guys think?

I think my head hurts!

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I've done something similar to this in the past by using CEntityAttached to weld a human model and a gun to a Raptor with...whacky results. You simply have to make the Raptor invisible, and add a trigger to have the gun fire every few seconds or so. I attached the human and gun to the Raptor's head and modified the physics boxes so that the "human" would be collidable. Unfortunately what you end up with is this insane stiff human bouncing around, repeatedly firing its gun at nothing. However attaching everything to the CAnimal's head means that whereever it looks, it will "aim" in that direction.
As for the sound, I'd probably just mute the "dinosaur" using unique vocals and have a trigger emit a rotor sound directly from the CAnimal. You'd give the CAnimal's physics a metal SoundMaterial. I belive the particles are linked to the SoundMaterials, though I'm not sure on that. The rotor would be animated, presumably, and when it crashes you could have it switch its animation track or hide the spinning rotor model and un-hide a still rotor. The mouth wouldn't be a problem, provided your invisible CAnimal is tall enough to avoid hitting Anne (which you would probably want to do in order to ensure the chopper is high enough).

For RTJP, all of my helicopter plans would have had to do with animated instances - I'd thought about trying the same thing you'd come up with, but figured it would probably turn out too wonky.

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Current Project: Cloning Facility | My Release Thread

I had thought of something like that a long time ago, but never actually did it... mechanical movement and animal movement don't look too similar.

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Bizarre and interesting. This business about turning Raptor AI into a human or human-thing has gone on quite long enough, someone ought to put together a test this year. I have had experience with two different skeleton riggings for Tres and am probably capable of assisting, mental health permitting, mental health providing.. If all the other details are taken care of, I can see what I may come up with with TPDC and send the files back. On a weekend sometime.

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->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

Reminds me of those Skyrim mods that use the horse rig for making boats, motorcycles, and tanks.

I've been thinking a lot lately about ways to make humans in Trespasser. I was thinking of having a human with their hands forward as if they are holding a weapon, you could rig a raptor's head and neck to the human's hands and arms. To make the human less stiff, you could also rig the raptor's tail to the human's head to make it look like they're looking around when the raptor wiggles its tail. You can then give them a weapon like a knife or a gun using CEntityAttached, or not and they are just trying to strangle you.

Another version is a cowering human in a hunched over position with their hands over their head, similar to Halo's Jackals when they cower away. Maybe they'd use the parasaurolophus rig, so they look at the ground most of the time, but raise their head from time to time to see if it's safe.

Huh interesting ideas. I didn't think about putting the hand on the head bone(s), but that might work. SilverShore has an example of working guns rigged to raptor heads. I don't think the tail for the head part would be feasible though.

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->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

The arms idea is probably feasible, but it might look weird due to the way the neck can stretch and compress while the CAnimal looks around. At least then it would "aim" the gun at you. One problem however is that the CAnimal's skeleton will always try and retain its default shape, so the bones might end up horribly out of position at times.
My best concept for this is to simply rig the legs only and leave everything else static, attached to the body bone. Pose the arms so that they're holding a gun and attach the gun to the model itself, then use the scripting for the spitting dilophosaur to have a few animated mesh frames where the character raises and fire the gun instead of the frill extending outward, and instead of a spit object being launched, it would be a bullet. Since the CAnimal's head would be invisible but looking toward its target due to the fact that the spit action is triggered by ActBite, it would be firing an aimed shot as well. There might also be a way to attach an actual gun to the CAnimal and have that be what fires the bullet, but this seems imprecise and difficult to integrate into an animation unless you used an invisible gun which is what fires instead. This was what I had planned on trying for RTJP, along with simple static human meshes which would use triggers to animate and fire.

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Current Project: Cloning Facility | My Release Thread

I'm looking back on this thread and thinking, has anyone tried to put a working AT-AT or AT-ST from Star Wars into Tres?

I know we've had an X-Wing imported before.

Huh, just a thought, but ATX has an AT that detects when a dino bites, so that it does the jump action. I used it once in ~streams over near the spot where ~trails loads. Maybe that is usable to create a firing gun effect...
*Draco thinks again*
Ah hmm I don't remember how the spitting Dilo works or doesn't in CE.

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->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

What ActionType is this? I've been looking for a trigger to that effect for a long time. Or were you simply reffering to the ATX jump action itself?


It does, but differently - you have to use the .nut script system, but it's rather straightforward once you've got everything arranged. I meant to create an example level of it...

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Current Project: Cloning Facility | My Release Thread

Oye, who has the ATX AT listing? I haven't got a moment to bring it up, but - oh yes. In JPDS I believe I used it in the middle foresty area between the Crossroads Gas Station and the 'exit' of the Raptor Valley. IIRC, a JP/// female was meant to jump up going after a jungle Raptor.

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->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton