Solving the incompatible weapon animations problem.

[JimTheDinosaur]

Has there ever been any progress in doing this? I don't know anything about graphics modding, but why wouldn't simply, say, copying all of the Vic sprite's rifle animations and renaming these copies to the big gun animations work?

This issue really bugged the crap out of me as I was doing the gear randomization thing, and now that I want to make party members more versatile in terms of weaponry it's all coming back again.

 

[Ardent]

Has there ever been any progress in doing this? I don't know anything about graphics modding, but why wouldn't simply, say, copying all of the Vic sprite's rifle animations and renaming these copies to the big gun animations work?

It would work, as long as you make sure your renamed files cover all animations from the other set. E.g. big guns have an additional animation for flamethrowers that rifle animations don't have. It's nothing complicated - you just copy the burst animation one more time and rename it as flamer animation.
The thing is that it will look pretty bad and will be confusing for the players who, I imagine, are mostly used to seeing what type of weapon the opponent/ally has.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

The thing is that it will look pretty bad

Do you mean because the weapon will no longer "fit" the animation? Because the animations aren't that generic to begin with. They're pretty specific: 10mm pistol for all pistols, 10mm smg for all smg's, hunting rifle for all rifles, flamethrower for all big guns, etc. Does a 223 pistol really look more like the smg animation (i.e. a 10mm smg) or a pistol (i.e. a 10mm pistol)? Similarly, does a laser rifle look more like a hunting rifle or a flamethrower?

Or do you mean because the projectiles (energy, flame) would still come from the (lower) big gun barrels? Not sure how the game calculates where projectiles come from.

If that's the big problem, then removing projectiles (except for flamers and rocket launchers) would work fine for me. Never liked the weird balls of "laser" to begin with.

Otherwise, just giving people sledgehammer animations as club animations, and pistol animations as smg animations (or don't these have bursts?) should be good too.

 

[Ardent]

Do you mean because the weapon will no longer "fit" the animation?

Exactly.

Because the animations aren't that generic to begin with. They're pretty specific: 10mm pistol for all pistols, 10mm smg for all smg's, hunting rifle for all rifles, flamethrower for all big guns, etc. Does a 223 pistol really look more like the smg animation (i.e. a 10mm smg) or a pistol (i.e. a 10mm pistol)? Similarly, does a laser rifle look more like a hunting rifle or a flamethrower?

I'm not saying the original system is perfect. After all - what can you expect from a sprite based engine? I'm just saying that as a player well-familiar with Fallout weapons, I expect a sledgehammer when I see sledgehammer animations and some kind of rifle when I see rifle animations.
I'm not saying you shouldn't copy/rename weapon animations to get more sets for a wider array of critters - you do what you like - I'm just pointing out a possible reason why few people have done that in the past, and why I would be thinking twice before doing it too.

On a side note - there are no problems whatsoever in changing the laser rifle animation set to a rifle set. But forget about supermutants using them (unless you rename the big gun set to a rifle set).

Otherwise, just giving people sledgehammer animations as club animations, and pistol animations as smg animations (or don't these have bursts?) should be good too.

Some matches are close, yes, but you can't do that for all critters. For instance, supermutants don't have any melee weapons animations - just fist fighting. Would you have them use spears or hammers masqueraded as unarmed animations? That would be extremely confusing. What about tribals using firearms? Rifles looking like SMGs? Miniguns looking like SMGs? How about red shirt peasants whose only firearms animations are the rifle set?

You could certainly get more sets for some critters, by using pistol or SMG animations for other one-handed firearms, or use hammer animations as club animations, and that would probably be acceptable and most people would likely adjust to the new system quickly enough. But doing more wacky replacements could look pretty weird and confusing.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

You could certainly get more sets for some critters, by using pistol or SMG animations for other one-handed firearms, or use hammer animations as club animations, and that would probably be acceptable and most people would likely adjust to the new system quickly enough. But doing more wacky replacements could look pretty weird and confusing.

Yeah, I was thinking more or less along these lines. That's why I used the 223 pistol and the laser rifle as examples: the categories they were placed in were pretty arbitrary to begin with and it's a bit silly that Vic can use a Sniper Rifle but not a Laser Rifle which are the same size and weight.

But just to make sure: projectiles are a no go, right? They'd come out of the critter's knee, or not? And I assume pistols don't have burst animations, so that's problematic, or not?

 

[Ardent]

But just to make sure: projectiles are a no go, right? They'd come out of the critter's knee, or not? And I assume pistols don't have burst animations, so that's problematic, or not?

I'm not exactly sure how projectiles are handled, but I don't think they should pose any problem - I once did a Cyclops' glasses weapon for fun and it was shooting laser bolts from a punch animation I'd suggest you download Cubik's item editor, play around and see what effects you can get.

Pistols don't have burst animations, but that's not an issue, since you can make two copies of the standard shot animation and rename one to single fire SMG and the other to burst fire SMG, like this:

Let's say you've got NMLTHRHJ.frm file (bald leather armor male). This file is the single shot animation for the pistol. You want to make an SMG animation out of it. You make two copies:

NMLTHRHJ(1).frm
NMLTHRHJ(2).frm

You rename them to the following:

NMLTHRIJ.frm => SMG single shot animation
NMLTHRIK.frm => SMG burst fire animation

That's it. You can shoot both single and burst fire from your new "SMG" set. It will look exactly the same (like single fire) in both cases, but the weapon will function correctly.

In case you're looking for which animation sets need which animations, see here: http://modguide.nma-fallout.com/#Graphics010

 

[.Pixote.]

Yeah, I was thinking more or less along these lines. That's why I used the 223 pistol and the laser rifle as examples: the categories they were placed in were pretty arbitrary to begin with and it's a bit silly that Vic can use a Sniper Rifle but not a Laser Rifle which are the same size and weight.

I think this was a deliberate choice by the developers. If every NPC could use all of the weapons available it would screw with the balance and lessen the variety/personalities of the various character. Now Sulik is the melee master, and Cassidy the rifle master, and people chose them for those particular roles.

Because the critter animations took up a large chunk of the game data, the developers were limited with variety of weapon types - pistols, SMG, rifles, big guns...and knife, club, spear. All those types make up about 100 weapons in the actual game. and ideally if would be great to have every weapon animated individually, obviously that would have blown the game data out.

What I like about Fallout is a lot of the details are left to the imagination of the player.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

Thanks for the info!

Yeah, I was thinking more or less along these lines. That's why I used the 223 pistol and the laser rifle as examples: the categories they were placed in were pretty arbitrary to begin with and it's a bit silly that Vic can use a Sniper Rifle but not a Laser Rifle which are the same size and weight.

I think this was a deliberate choice by the developers. If every NPC could use all of the weapons available it would screw with the balance and lessen the variety/personalities of the various character. Now Sulik is the melee master, and Cassidy the rifle master, and people chose them for those particular roles.

Because the critter animations took up a large chunk of the game data, the developers were limited with variety of weapon types - pistols, SMG, rifles, big guns...and knife, club, spear. All those types make up about 100 weapons in the actual game. and ideally if would be great to have every weapon animated individually, obviously that would have blown the game data out.

What I like about Fallout is a lot of the details are left to the imagination of the player.

Not agreeing with the variety/personality or the balancing part. You still end up every single friggin' game with your best npc's, Cassidy and Vic carrying Gauss rifles. So much for balance and variety.

The main problem is that the individualization of npc's should come from attributes and skills, not arbitrary animation limitations (again, by that I don't mean not having a knife animation for a rocket launcher, but a pistol animation for the 223 pistol). Vic shouldn't be going around firing M60's because he's too weak for that, Sulik should be waving around sledges because he's strong and his melee skill is way better than others, etc.

 

[Ardent]

Not agreeing with the variety/personality or the balancing part.

I concur. I'd rather tend to think that the decision to cut down on the number of animations was a purely economic one - the game had to fit on a 700 Mb CD-ROM, and given the short time-frame of development for F2 and shitty tools, the art team sure had a lot of different tasks to take care of, such as the large amount of new tiles/scenery.

 

[Lexx]

Yup, pretty sure it is simply due to amount of free space on the cd. They have cut out everything that is not critical for the game, such as Sulik rifle animation or red shirt peasant flamethrower.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

Hmmm... I could probably just make a script that switches weapon animations based on the wielder. Something similar to what I've done with the 1-2-handed thing.