3D model needed for testing

[andrewbuck]

I am working on some of the combat AI code and I need a 3D mesh with animations to use in the testing of these routines. I have a check in the code that will prevent the game from crashing if you try to load an animation that is not supported, however this makes it very difficult to tell the difference between creature states. It would be nice to have a model (preferably a humanoid model) that has (at a minimum) animations for:

Idle
Walk
Attack1
Die

There is a more complete list of the animations to be used in the final game at http://opendungeons.sourceforge.net/index.php/Creature_animations but this list should work for now. Feel free to modify the list on the wiki as it has not really been discussed, my feeling is it may be over-ambitious in some aspects but leave out animations in other aspects.

For the model if you get me the .blend file I can handle the export to the OGRE format that the game uses myself, however please name the animations EXACTLY as they are above. The game currently hard codes the animation names (and I think this is probably how it will stay) so they are case-sensitive, etc.

-Buck

[Skorpio]

I tried to upload the orc and dwarf models to the wiki, but the files with the packed textures were too big. Or something is wrong with the files, it said something like: "the file doesn't seem to contain any data". So I've uploaded them to mediafire instead. LINK

There are two dwarf models in one file (I should have put them in separate files). The dwarf meshes are different, but the armature is the same. I wanted to add an axe throw animation, but it doesn't work correctly, because the axe is parented to the hand and thus moves with the hand even if it has no contact. Oh and the dwarves have only a run animation, I forgot the walk anim (you can just rename it).

Edit: I just realized that the centers of the models don't match with the centers of the armatures. I guess that'll cause problems.

[andrewbuck]

Wow skorpio, you are an excellent animator. I got dwarf2 imported into the game and it's kind of working but it will take me a while to get it all hashed out. A few things I noticed that will make the export to Ogre easier in the future. First, the animations for dwarf2 were named almost correctly, I need the attacks to be "Attack1" and if it is present "Attack2" you had it just labeled "Attack". It is possible to assign a name during the export but if you forget to assign one it defaults to whatever you named it in the file itself. Second, the entities are name Dwarf1 and Dwarf2 but the meshes are named Cube.021 and Cube.023 respectively. When the Ogre export script runs it uses the Cube.021 name for the mesh file name which means it has to be manually renamed. The mesh for everything should be the same (case-sensitive) as what you are calling the creature (for consistency I capitalize the first letter of each name, avoid the use of spaces, and I think the way you are numbering e.g Dwarf1 Dwarf2... is good). I would suggest making all the names on a give creature the same as it makes it a lot easier to ensure that the mesh gets paired up with the right skeleton and texture. Finally, Dwarf1 seems to be missing the texture for the axe he is holding (mesh name axe), the texture for dwarf2 is there (mesh name axe2).

Also on the Orc the mesh name is orci, not sure if the "i" is intentional on the end or not but I would suggest "Orc". He is also missing the texture on his sword.

As a last thing I always do ctrl+a on all the meshes and skeletons, etc and "apply rotation and scale" before export so if you keep them saved in that format it helps out in case I forget to do that.

Anyway, the models look beautiful and the animations are excellent as well. I can't wait to see the rest of them in action. Please don't be offended by my nitpicking on the details, I am just trying to avoid a mess when we get 50 different creatures we have to export to the game.

If you would like me to help you get an export pipeline set up on your computer so you can check out how things will look in the game I would be happy to do that. I will be on IRC today (both #freegamer and #opendungeons) and I also have skype (username andrewbuck40).

-Buck

EDIT: Also, for the dynamic weapon loading to work the skeleton needs to have bones named "Weapon_L" and "Weapon_R" (again case sensitive). Not having these bones will result in a game crash if the creature is assigned to carry a weapon.

[Skorpio]

Thanks. Ah yes I forgot to rename the meshes and to pack the sword texture, which still needs some work anyway. I don't know why the texture of the first axe is missing. Both axes have the same material and texture.

Do the centers of the models and armatures have to be at the same coordinates or doesn't it matter?

[andrewbuck]

I don't think it matters, it seems to be working. Although when I load the Dwarf2 into the game the texture is pure white. I'm going to try the other models to see if I can figure out what the problem is. Also the dwarf seems to be stuck on the "axe throwing" animation. Is that the Idle animation or did a name get crisscrossed somewhere?

-Buck

[Skorpio]

Although when I load the Dwarf2 into the game the texture is pure white. -Buck

Maybe that happens because TexFace is turned on in the material. I also forgot to click the UV button in the map input panel.

I'm going to try the other models to see if I can figure out what the problem is. Also the dwarf seems to be stuck on the "axe throwing" animation. Is that the Idle animation or did a name get crisscrossed somewhere?

-Buck

Not sure what's wrong there. I'll check it later.

[andrewbuck]

I have another request for a model. Since it sounds like we might be narrowing in on how we want the factions to work, and since my next step in the code was to implement some more room types anyway, I have begun working on the "portal" room type. For this, it would be nice to have some kind of mesh, I will probably just copy the "MapLight" mesh for now since that is fairly small and unobtrusive, but it would be nice to have something official for when the next release is done. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just something that indicates that it is a portal. I think I will do like DK did and make the portal 3x3, however it will still be constructed of 9 individual tiles for now so the same format that the quarters and treasury tiles use will work.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

I will try to make a sketch in the style of the dungeon temple, as Keldaryth said that he had and idea for the backstory where they where both involvede. I also have an idea which would fit nicely with the style of the dungeon temple

[Keldaryth]

Very briefly (still needs fleshing out) my initial idea is that a portal is a place on which dungeon temples can be built. So your dungeon temple would BE your first portal. Other portals could be claimed (and possibly need some sort of building/restoration to work properly) but this would give an interesting synergy to the game, as well as explain why you can't just build dungeon temples willy nilly. If each temple is a portal, it also explains why you can move from level to level - Kobolds simply go through the portal and build a temple at their destination. Possibly one of the important things would then be mapping out the portal nexus so you were able to connect to the homes of various creatures and such.

Don't know yet, but that's the basis of the idea. I'll toy with it some more and post what I think is the best idea.

[andrewbuck]

This is an interesting idea. It reminds me of the vespene geysers in StarCraft. Also if you have levels with "undeveloped" you could build additional dungeon hearts on them, making it more difficult for your enemies to destroy you since destruction of a single dungeon heart would not be your downfall. You could also make it so that controlling a greater number of dungeon hearts would allow you to have more stored up mana or something like that to further increase their strategic advantage.

It would be good though to try to think of some disadvantage to claiming more than one dungeon temple to balance the game out a bit. Maybe something like if a dungeon temple is destroyed, all the creatures who came through it are killed instantly. This would mean you would not want to take a temple until you knew you could defend it. Also, you could do something like if you lose a temple you lose all (or at least most) of your mana until it regenerates again, leaving you temporarily weakened by the loss.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

This is an interesting idea. It reminds me of the vespene geysers in StarCraft.

I am pretty sure that you mean Nydus Canal, but yes an interesting idea

Also if you have levels with "undeveloped" you could build additional dungeon hearts on them, making it more difficult for your enemies to destroy you since destruction of a single dungeon heart would not be your downfall. You could also make it so that controlling a greater number of dungeon hearts would allow you to have more stored up mana or something like that to further increase their strategic advantage.

I am not sure that this is a good idea, we must try it out to see how it changes the gameplay. But for that to work story wise then we would need these dungeon temples to be connected as there is only *one* container where the hearth is inside. Maybe the hearth-container could be automatically moved around between dungeon temples (through underground tunnels) if the dungeon temple is attacked, that would be interesting.

It would be good though to try to think of some disadvantage to claiming more than one dungeon temple to balance the game out a bit. Maybe something like if a dungeon temple is destroyed, all the creatures who came through it are killed instantly. This would mean you would not want to take a temple until you knew you could defend it. Also, you could do something like if you lose a temple you lose all (or at least most) of your mana until it regenerates again, leaving you temporarily weakened by the loss.

I think that this is easy to solve. Because a dungeon temple is built on a portal, then that portal should not be able to attract any creatures, and the creatures that it has already attacked would die, that way you would have to balance the benefits of security from more dungeon temples, and the benefit of a large army when having many portals.

[Keldaryth]

Also if you have levels with "undeveloped" you could build additional dungeon hearts on them, making it more difficult for your enemies to destroy you since destruction of a single dungeon heart would not be your downfall. You could also make it so that controlling a greater number of dungeon hearts would allow you to have more stored up mana or something like that to further increase their strategic advantage.

I am not sure that this is a good idea, we must try it out to see how it changes the gameplay. But for that to work story wise then we would need these dungeon temples to be connected as there is only *one* container where the hearth is inside. Maybe the hearth-container could be automatically moved around between dungeon temples (through underground tunnels) if the dungeon temple is attacked, that would be interesting.

I wasn't thinking we should allow additional dungeon temples, largely because that would mean 3 more kobolds and such. Making the portal sites rare would also increase their value. I would like players to be able to construct shrines or something though, which would allow for creature entrance (and egress) and maybe extra mana storage. I guess the idea would be that there are two types of portals - large and small. The large ones can have dungeon hearts on them and lead to the 'next level' where the smaller ones just allow for some extra creatures and/or mana. Maybe they act as 'boosters' for your main temple. This would neatly explain why you'd be trying to fight rival players too - in some cases you're going to want to claim their temple to invade whatever land is on the other side.

It would be good though to try to think of some disadvantage to claiming more than one dungeon temple to balance the game out a bit. Maybe something like if a dungeon temple is destroyed, all the creatures who came through it are killed instantly. This would mean you would not want to take a temple until you knew you could defend it. Also, you could do something like if you lose a temple you lose all (or at least most) of your mana until it regenerates again, leaving you temporarily weakened by the loss.

I think that this is easy to solve. Because a dungeon temple is built on a portal, then that portal should not be able to attract any creatures, and the creatures that it has already attacked would die, that way you would have to balance the benefits of security from more dungeon temples, and the benefit of a large army when having many portals.

The problem there would be forcing creatures to come in at a specific portal and keeping track of which creature came in where. If we don't allow for extra dungeon temples, but allow for booster shrines, the smaller 'portals' (although they'll be called something else) would become strategic objectives which allow you to swell your army and store mana, but don't necessarily improve your game longevity. It would be interesting to have a game option that allowed a player to survive if they had a shrine and not a temple, with the caveat that owning just a shrine would mean that a player would have no kobolds and no portal for getting new creatures. It would certainly add some variety to single player campaigns, and could allow for a very interesting multiplayer situation where a player would be forced to fight back from the loss of a dungeon temple.

[svenskmand]

I wasn't thinking we should allow additional dungeon temples, largely because that would mean 3 more kobolds and such. Making the portal sites rare would also increase their value. I would like players to be able to construct shrines or something though, which would allow for creature entrance (and egress) and maybe extra mana storage. I guess the idea would be that there are two types of portals - large and small. The large ones can have dungeon hearts on them and lead to the 'next level' where the smaller ones just allow for some extra creatures and/or mana. Maybe they act as 'boosters' for your main temple. This would neatly explain why you'd be trying to fight rival players too - in some cases you're going to want to claim their temple to invade whatever land is on the other side.

That also sounds like an idea

The problem there would be forcing creatures to come in at a specific portal and keeping track of which creature came in where. If we don't allow for extra dungeon temples, but allow for booster shrines, the smaller 'portals' (although they'll be called something else) would become strategic objectives which allow you to swell your army and store mana, but don't necessarily improve your game longevity. It would be interesting to have a game option that allowed a player to survive if they had a shrine and not a temple, with the caveat that owning just a shrine would mean that a player would have no kobolds and no portal for getting new creatures. It would certainly add some variety to single player campaigns, and could allow for a very interesting multiplayer situation where a player would be forced to fight back from the loss of a dungeon temple.

Keeping track of creatures and portals is very easy, you just keep a counter for each portal of how many creatures it has spawned, and then for each creature you keep the id of the portal that they are spawned from. That is easy to implement.

Regarding the shrine idea I do not really know, the dungeon temple gives the keeper his ability to control creatures and build stuff and use spells, and it also gives him the 3 kobolds. If he only has some sort of shrine he should not be able to control his creatures, build stuff, cast spells, and the 3 kobolds would not respawn when they die. So the keeper is basically helpless. But the boosting idea might be good if it is properly developed. In DK2 you could also claim certain mana vaults which would increase you mana regeneration, but it did not help you much, so that was not really a help.

[andrewbuck]

I like the idea of having 2 types of portals as described as that gives you a strategic advantage to go out and claim new things to build up your "economy" (to borrow a term from other RTS games). In our game the economy is your gold, your mana, and you creatures; so capturing other portals can increase one or more of these things. The main thing I would like to see added though is some penalty for losing the captured secondary portals; a penalty which is above and beyond the bonus they give you while you hold them.

To go back to starcraft as an example of why this is a good thing, consider the the player's strategy. If they go out and build a secondary base near another crystal/vespene system they gain a bonus to their economy; this is the benefit. However, in order to build the base they must invest money and worker resources which could be allocated somewhere else; this is the potential penalty I am referring to. If they build a secondary base too early, not only do they lose the base and the bonus associated with it, but they also lose their investment into it (money and resources); this loss is over and above the lost income from the secondary base.

Now return to the origninal DK series. Here you gain a benefit if you capture another portal (more creatures). This is the benefit and you want to go out early and do this to maximize the payoff. However in DK there is no such thing as "too early" to capture a portal, if you lose it you lose the added benefit, but you don't lose anything above this (you get to keep the creatures which already came through and you don't lose any mana or gold because you didn't invest any). Therefore in DK the optimum strategy is to just take the portal as early as possible since there is no penalty for the loss.

What I want to add is something like starcraft has, where you must either invest something to capture the new portal that you don't recover if you lose it, or you can capture portals with no investment but losing one causes damages to you above and beyond the loss of the "creature stream" coming from the portal. This forces you to decide when is the best time to "develop" a portal, rather than just allowing you to grab it as early as possible with no potential downside. As to what this investment/penalty should be, I don't think it matters that much, but I do think it matters that there be some investment/penalty. One thing I that think would work well, both from a gameplay and a storyline perspective, is that you need to cast some spell which consumes a significant amount of mana to "activate" the portal, in addition to having your workers claim it. Whenever it is claimed by someone else they need to cast the spell to again to reactivate it, so the lost investment is the mana you used to activate it (and it should be a lot). This means that you can't claim portals willy-nilly, but must protect the ones you capture. Since mana regenerates over time, you can never get into a situation where you have a "deadlock" where no-one has any portals since eventually someone will get enough mana to reactivate theirs.

-Buck

[Keldaryth]

The first thing I would look at is a question regarding the room building mechanics. In the DK series a keeper built rooms and they were automatically constructed, leaving the imps the task of digging out rock/gems, claiming tiles, delivering traps and doors and fighting other imps - well and prison/graveyard duty.

The reason Starcraft worked so well is that buildings had to be built by your workers (protoss being the exception), which meant that their investment into it is lost.

I would propose that we break with DK tradition and have rooms/buildings built by your workers, or at least some of them should be - the Temple and Shrines would be examples of these. So to claim a shrine you would have to:

1) Claim the surrounding tiles
2) Order a shrine build blueprint
3) have your workers construct the shrine

In a sense it's an expansion of the Trap/Door system where a keeper had to place down the blueprint and get it manufactured and delivered.

This also means that a shrine would need to be destroyed before it could be used by another power, and that losing it will cost both the loss of potential creatures (if we go with a creature number cap), the loss of any stored mana in the shrine (I'd suggest going with a proportional system so there's always *some* loss) and the loss of resources and time used to build it in the first place.

Alternatively, yes, the spell is a great idea, especially because it was definitely possible to run out of gold in the original DK games.

Another really crazy idea would be allowing shrines to act as mini-portals - moving creatures from shrine to temple and such, much like the eldar webway gates in Warhammer 40K. However, if such an idea is implemented... it would mean scrapping the ability to pick up and manually move creatures, which I'm not sure people are willing to do.

[svenskmand]

The first thing I would look at is a question regarding the room building mechanics. In the DK series a keeper built rooms and they were automatically constructed, leaving the imps the task of digging out rock/gems, claiming tiles, delivering traps and doors and fighting other imps - well and prison/graveyard duty.

The reason Starcraft worked so well is that buildings had to be built by your workers (protoss being the exception), which meant that their investment into it is lost.

I would propose that we break with DK tradition and have rooms/buildings built by your workers, or at least some of them should be - the Temple and Shrines would be examples of these. So to claim a shrine you would have to:

1) Claim the surrounding tiles
2) Order a shrine build blueprint
3) have your workers construct the shrine

In a sense it's an expansion of the Trap/Door system where a keeper had to place down the blueprint and get it manufactured and delivered.

So you want the built system from Evil Genius?

In regards to build systems, then we should use the very nice trap building and configuration system from Evil Genius.

In regards to starcraft I do not think we should make a game that is as ridiculously hard to play as starcraft is. I have tried to learn how to play it many times and I always looses when I play it in multiplayer or skirmish. There is too much stuff that you need to do to just have a chance of winning the game. I would like OpenDungeons to be very easy to learn, and be a average or good player, but being a really good/godlike player should be harder.

This also means that a shrine would need to be destroyed before it could be used by another power, and that losing it will cost both the loss of potential creatures (if we go with a creature number cap), the loss of any stored mana in the shrine (I'd suggest going with a proportional system so there's always *some* loss) and the loss of resources and time used to build it in the first place.

Alternatively, yes, the spell is a great idea, especially because it was definitely possible to run out of gold in the original DK games.

Another really crazy idea would be allowing shrines to act as mini-portals - moving creatures from shrine to temple and such, much like the eldar webway gates in Warhammer 40K. However, if such an idea is implemented... it would mean scrapping the ability to pick up and manually move creatures, which I'm not sure people are willing to do.

Grapping creatures has to stay, no doubt about that.

[Keldaryth]

Having never played evil genius, I can't comment, but my point was getting workers to actively build rooms would make for a reason to 1) attack rooms 2) defend them vigorously

The problem with room attack and losing penalties for destroying rooms is that currently DK (and OD) work on the basis of limited indirect control coupled with minimal direct control - the indirect control is that it runs of an AI, if left to itself. The direct is the ability to drop things onto creatures (i.e. food, gold) and pick them up - upon dropping them they use their AI to determine what they should do in that context (e.g. warriors would leave a library, wizards would research). There's no current way to say 'attack the shrine' which would be needed. Both Majesty and Startopia got around this through the use of attack flags and muster points respectively, and the latter system would be an interesting one to use in directing your creatures in battle - the ability to place 'targets' on enemy creatures since all of yours are getting paid anyway.

[andrewbuck]

Regarding the comment about the difficulty of starcraft, I agree, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure it out too. I don;t want to make this game as complicated as that, I just meant it as an example of why we should have some investment into the portals. I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of building the portals like you do with traps. I guess this would probably work, but I think just claiming it (which already takes worker time) and casting the spell as the investment would be enough.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

Having never played evil genius, I can't comment, but my point was getting workers to actively build rooms would make for a reason to 1) attack rooms 2) defend them vigorously

The problem with room attack and losing penalties for destroying rooms is that currently DK (and OD) work on the basis of limited indirect control coupled with minimal direct control - the indirect control is that it runs of an AI, if left to itself. The direct is the ability to drop things onto creatures (i.e. food, gold) and pick them up - upon dropping them they use their AI to determine what they should do in that context (e.g. warriors would leave a library, wizards would research). There's no current way to say 'attack the shrine' which would be needed. Both Majesty and Startopia got around this through the use of attack flags and muster points respectively, and the latter system would be an interesting one to use in directing your creatures in battle - the ability to place 'targets' on enemy creatures since all of yours are getting paid anyway.

I think we should have the same level of indirect control as in DK, and there you also had the call to arms flag, which you could use to have a limited control of where your creatures went. Regarding the tags on creatures it is also a possibility -- this they use in Evil Genius and it works okay. Keldaryth: I think you should obtain a copy of Evil Genius and try it out, you can also just try the demo that should be enough as it introduces all the tools of the game.

[VinWij]

Can I suggest GoG.com? Brilliant site, and they have Evil Genius for a small sum.

I actually like the idea of the imps building rooms. In DK they had to reinforce the walls, but the rooms appeared magically. Having them build the rooms makes it feel more like building your dungeon, and makes imps even more important. Maybe make it so that once you blueprint a room, it stays that way when it is destroyed, so that imps rebuild it if you have money and the battle stopped. Same when removing rooms, you flag them for deletion, and the imps break it down and recover a small percentage of gold. I don't know about blueprints that have to be built in the workshop. It would really make it usefull, but I'm just not sure about using it for every room. Maybe some advanced rooms, or the tools in advanced rooms, i.e. torture devices for the torture chamber. Imps build the room, workshop builds the tools and imps place them automaticaly,

[Keldaryth]

My point about the muster points was a way to have indirect control without creature grabbing. With creature grabbing, I don't think it's necessary. I may check out Evil Genius if I ever get time for it - but that's not likely to be until September at the earliest I'm afraid.

I'm really interested in VinWij's idea of placing items IN rooms. Maybe a room could be created with a 'basic' set of furnishings and you can build upgrades for it? Hmm... okay. Enough from me. I'll go back to my corner and work out alignment/faction creature interactions and dungeon skinning.



K

[andrewbuck]

I also like the idea of "addons" to rooms that you can buy. You build the room (for example the library) the same way you did it in DK, but then afterwards you can buy bigger/better bookshelves, cauldrons, potion racks, etc. This would allow you to get a dungeon up and running quickly, which keeps the opening game moving, and then allows you to customize later on making the late-game more fun.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

I also like the idea of "addons" to rooms that you can buy. You build the room (for example the library) the same way you did it in DK, but then afterwards you can buy bigger/better bookshelves, cauldrons, potion racks, etc. This would allow you to get a dungeon up and running quickly, which keeps the opening game moving, and then allows you to customize later on making the late-game more fun.

-Buck

I agree that if we do this then it has to be somewhere in between Evil Genius (EG) and DK. Because in EG you can really spend allot of time on building you rooms, which might be a problem in a multiplayer match as time is a factor there (I suspect, we could also try to make it such that this is not an issue). In DK you can build a room in a few seconds.

We could, as Andrew suggested, equip the room with some default equipment, and then the player can increase the room efficiency/properties by customizing its inventory E.g. one training room could be good for one class of creatures say scouts, while another training room could be good for ranged attack creatures But I think that we should keep the customization fairly simple, else I think we might loose some of the flow in the game as DK had.

[VinWij]

Heh, funny how you guys took my idea to another level. I merely envisioned it as only the standard items being available like they are in DK. But, instead of having them appear when the room is built, the room gets it's tiles and stuff built first, and as soon as you have a 9x9 square available a blue outline appears on it, and the workshop gets an order for one object. As soon as it's made, the imp runs it towards the room and presto. This makes the size of your workshop influence your expansion-speed, and makes rooms more valuable because if it gets wrecked, you also have to make new machines. So it's simply an extra no-touch step, and makes the workshop rather vital.

Upgrades for machines would be cool, but I would suggest some automatic system rather than manual upgrading, because that would be tedious. A simple "upgrade room"-button that upgrades machines to a bigger, better, meaner of nastier version would do the trick, which causes all machines to dissapear and outlines appear for new ones. The workshop could then start working until they are replaced. Makes upgrading them a strategic decision, because the room will be temporarily unusable. Using that system to model a room for different purposes could be used too. If you'd then want a room with multiple functions, build two of them.

Maybe make machines break after a while, so the workshop stays essential and has to be big enough to support your dungeon? Would be a good way to get a good use for it that's continuous, rather than it going idle after a while.