LVTwo

[lightbringer]

For anyone not following the progress of this FPS I've spent the past fiveish months developing here's a quick intro. In September I started work on a FPS with my own stylistic gameplay style, it was to be designed to be played online and feature a combination of a powerful physics system with some killer guns/moves/animations. I've made great progress from day one (ODE is integrated although not yet stable, map loading works, a menuing system is laid out, basic elements are setup, etc) but I've always had the animation element hanging over my head. I hadn't done animation before and this game requires bone-based animation (as well as point based) and that has proven to be the largest programming challenge I have ever faced.

Maybe it's because it's hard, maybe it's because I'm just a moron, I'm not quite sure, but I've put all my energy into getting something working for animation since at least early October. I learned the ins and outs of Cinema4D and wrote a plugin since I was unable to find a suitable format, that proved a challenge that ate up a few months, but getting skeletal animation working in-game has proved im-possible for me to do. I've enlisted the help from other developers to guide me through the process (much thanks) but I'm still left with nothing. After another break-down I realized about a half-hour ago this just isn't possible for me to do. I'm throwing in the towel.

Because this game depends on a robust animation system LVTwo is at a standstill, I've got little worth doing other then get animation working, but at the same time I've been trying for so long and always been "so close" that now I realize I'm not capable of getting any closer.

I desperately don't know what to do, so here I have come to seek advice. I have no more motivation to work on animation, nor have I done anything else with my life for the past few months. Without an artist or animator anyways I suppose it doesn't matter much. The situation has brought me down to the point where the only place I can now go is up.

This whole mess would have never happened if there was a file format and loader already built for my needs. (hence the reason I seek to create one for others)

Any suggestions as to what I should do and words of encouragement would be appreciated.

[phydeaux]

Have you looked into Cal3d ( http://cal3d.sourceforge.net/ ) ? The game "A Tale in the Desert" apparently uses some derivative of it, so it's marginally usable for production quality, at least. They seem to have a number of importers and exporters as well, though I haven't tried it myself.

[kberg]

Yeah, this is one of those things still on my to do list. I think there are a few other people working on solutions to bone-based animations as well, just no-one's either finished it or are willing to release it. If you are going to go at it yourself, I think md5 is probably your best bet, get access to 3ds-max and an exporter script for the modeling.

Straight vertex interpolation is much easier to program; md2 and md3 work this way, and several people on this forum have rolled their own solutions to this as well. I know Johan wrote a custom program to take multiple .obj files and roll them into an md2 file.

Personally I would start hacking away at md5 support (just get it working, fast comes later), otherwise maybe sit back and work on other parts of your project until some of these toolsets are ready for release.

Hope that helps. :)

[lightbringer]

Yeah, this is one of those things still on my to do list. I think there are a few other people working on solutions to bone-based animations as well, just no-one's either finished it or are willing to release it. If you are going to go at it yourself, I think md5 is probably your best bet, get access to 3ds-max and an exporter script for the modeling.

Straight vertex interpolation is much easier to program; md2 and md3 work this way, and several people on this forum have rolled their own solutions to this as well. I know Johan wrote a custom program to take multiple .obj files and roll them into an md2 file.

Personally I would start hacking away at md5 support (just get it working, fast comes later), otherwise maybe sit back and work on other parts of your project until some of these toolsets are ready for release.

Hope that helps. :)

I've actually already written my own format (as an exporter for Cinema4D), it supports vertex interpolation and bone-based animation, and I think it's alright as a format (I'd prefer if it were binary though, to reduce file size and quicken the load time)

[kberg]

Hrm.. maybe a more detailed description of what's not working for you then since I'm not quite sure what problems you're running into.

[lightbringer]

It's the code for the skeletal rig that I have constructed. I've reworked it several times to conform to the ideas of several different people, and bug fixed this code like none I've ever done before (one weekend I literally did nothing but eat, sleep, and try to fix this configuration).

Fortunately a friend has been gracious enough to check out my project and see if he can figure things out, so we'll see.