BSP Editing + Building an Airship

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 9:09 am

i like the sound of these flying scarbs but i think u should leave it posable 2 surf banshees itd make it more dynamic if u could fly 2wards a scarb ship and snipe the people on the turrets i cant wait 2 play this ull find it hard if not impossible 2 stop the sarab fliping like a banshee but i think u should leave it in anyway

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 9:49 am

The problem with surfing is I want CTF to be all about having to carry the flag on the airship. That way it's a huge battle trying to get your ship to their base, then you've got to try to defend it on the way back. Sure, with it's 4 turrets and ppl onboard with rl's and snipers it's armed to the teeth, but the other team still has a chance of shooting it down, or using their own airship to block your path while a boarding party attempts to get the flag back. If you could surf, you wouldn't even need to use the airships in ctf or assault.

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:25 pm

who in the right mind would surf on a banshee out in the open easily shot wen they could b inside a massive ship virtualy safe from harm

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:32 pm

Someone in a hurry, I guess. I never did like banshee surfing anyway. Thought it was kind of a cheap trick, like camping. Many of the things I want to do with this mod are to thwart cheap tricks

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:40 pm

its really slow tho so thered b no point

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:00 pm

The scarab will be slower.

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:09 pm

omg thats gonna b slow

t_mann05 · Post by **t_mann05** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:12 pm

I think you got a cool sounding mod underway. keep us updated.

t_mann05

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 9:59 am

Yeah, I want the airships to move at more of a crawl toward eachother. Like you could run faster than they move. Most of the fighting will be done with banshees and... other flying vehicles. I want to make the ghost fly and have it more of a light scout vehicle (tone down firepower and increase speed). I also want to put the sentinel aggresor (I think that's what it's called) as a kind of bomber class vehicle (fire banshee bombs, and be slower/have less dodge). So, yeah, your banshees, bombers, and scouts will be trying to fight their banshees, etc, while on your way to try to soften up the airship (take out snipers/rocketeers/turret operators) while your airship is bringing your snipers, etc, to try to attack their airship. Meanwhile, your fallen teammates will be respawning back at base with new vehicles (I plan on vehi's respawning instantly after they get shot down) and rushing back into the fight either by flying into battle or flying to the airship to take up position there. You should actually be able to land a vehicle on the airship as well.
Slayer matches could have diff strategies: you might try loading everybody up on the ship, operating turrets or carrying rl's to shoot down banshees, or you could ignore your airship all together and go for an all out airstrike on the other team, but I figure most people will mix it up. CTF and assault will be kind of a reverse tug of war, trying to shoot down the enemy ship while bringing yours closer to their base (as your ship will be the only way to transport the flag or bomb).
Ok, so back to the issue of actually making the map. I dropped the coll .obj down by 50 (not sure what the unit of measurement is, but the top of the towers or high walls or whatever they are, in containment are at about 48 or so, so if I was able to add 50 to the banshee barrier, there would be a LOT of sky to fly in... vertically anyway. I decided to leave the invisible walls in, because I want it to be all about flying (no land route at all) and I didn't want to make it so ppl could walk along the rim to the enemy base. So, yeah, dropped the coll, and then I dropped all 49 parts of the bsp by opening them in the coll editor (it's just an .obj editor, after all). But then I discovered that darkmatter doesn't have an option for reinjecting the bsp; it just extracts it. Is there a way to inject it back in? (See; this thread is still about bsp editing after all). If not, I guess the amount of sky is adequate, but if at all possible, I'd at least like to make it high enough that vehicles at the top couldn't be hit from ground level by rl's. (On a side note, I'll probably want to increase how much ammo you can carry since there won't be anywhere to pick up more once you're on the ship).
Also, I'd like to report that I'm making progress on the jmad thing. Yeah, I'd like to report that, but I'd be lying. Atm, I'm trying to figure out how the bone markers are defined (what all those numbers mean) and then I'll look more closely at the jmad to see if I can find where the positions of the bones are defined. If anybody knows this stuff or can help, that'd be awesome, 'cuz I'm still more or less clueless on the subject. Like, does anybody know what a number like 9.5248E-08 means? Is the E-08 representative of some mathematical whatever (like a decimal that keeps going) or is it an actual part of the value. Alternately, if anybody knows how to just null out the collsion on the legs, that'd be even better (yeah, that's like the fiftieth time I've asked that--I keep hoping someone who knows will happen to see the thread THIS time

).

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 10:21 am

me back 2 help again:
E stands for "expedental"(spelt wrong but hey)
number (x) followed by E followed by a number (y) = x * 10 to the power of y
(scientific notation)

injection:
just search the files forum theres loads of injectors around ie. glitch's BSP injector/extractor and theres a beta 4 a new 1 just out but u have 2 ask 4 it

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:11 pm

I'm pretty sure I have glitch's. That only does collision, though, doesn't it? That's easy enough to ibject. Now I need to inject the mesh. I'll try searching that in the morning: gotta' go to work now.

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 5:01 am

no glitchy's doesnt do collison attoll it only does the mesh

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 8:16 am

Yeah, you're right. I have Team Expisor's thing. I've been searching for Glitchy's ap? Know where I can find it?
Also, back to that number thing: so 9.5248E-08 would be 952,480,000? What in the world could 952 billion have to do with a bone in a model? Is it maybe a hex thing or something, then? I see these numbers in a lot of other stuff, too.

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 9:16 am

look in the utils or h2 download setcion 4 glitchys app

and no it wouldnt b 952,480,000 u 4got bout the negative its 0.000000095248

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 10:03 am

Ah, that would make much more sense. I determined that the last 3 unknowns in the bone tag in ADI were coordinates, but couldn't figure out why there would be a Z coord in the billions. I hadn't realized the - was a negative; thought it was a hyphen.
I wanted to try to extract the model with ADI, and get the one that keeps the nodes intact, but I couldn't get it to work--had to settle for the wavefront.obj, without nodes. If someone could extract it (the scarab model) for me, I'd really appreciate it. It'd help a lot to have a model with the nodes intact for reference, and also I could fold up the legs in the model so that, if I do figure out how to move them, I'll know what coords to use for the animation.
Also, it seems that bone 6 (in the scarab; don't know about other models) is the origin marker. My theory is that this is the point where it actually spawns. Since it's distance from the hull is approx the same as what I can determine the height of the hull to be, and it's Y coord is zero, I've determined this to be on the ground beneath the center of the scarab. (the models are sideways, so its Y coord would actually be Z when it's in the map). I only mention this, because I hadn't been sure if I needed to raise a spawn point to account for the height of the scarab. Can anyone confirm this: that you don't have to spawn the scarab higher to keep it from intersecting the level geometry?

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 10:24 am

im fairly sure u dont have 2 change any coords 2 spawn a scarb cause u can spawn it on turf without changing any coords(i think)

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 4:04 am

Ok, I've decided that my theory on the origin marker is correct, since it seems very likely and there is no contradictory evidence.
So, after much research, theorizing, dismissing theories, theorizing again, I've found something I want to experiment with. In Insolence, under the scarab's jmad, in dev mode, it is my theory that unknown 1 is the starting/idle position of the scarab and the values under each part are the coords of each bone in the model--well, not coords, exactly; it seems that each bone's coords are in relation to its parent bone's coords, meaning each part of the model behaves as if it's parent's bone is at 0,0,0. Anyway, I want to try changing some values, but it's not letting me, so I thought I'd try hex. Now, I don't understand hex at all, so I'm stumped at to why Insolence shows the offset as 229420048, which doesn't seem to be a hex value. Does this translate into hex or something? Do I want to extract the meta, hex it, then add it back in, or do I want to edit it where it's at? I'm going to try to learn about hex now, but in the meantime, if anybody knows something and wants to share, I'd be grateful.
On a side note: all my scarab research has been in new mombasa. I decided to check out turf to see how a scarab with no animation is different. I only did a quick check, but it seems all its animations are still there. It's as if Bungie put the scarab in turf the same way we would do it. I'd have thought all they'd need would be the model and collision, since they didn't even bother to pose it (it's in the neutral pose just like when we spawn it, as far as I can tell).

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 4:31 am

4 once i cant help u i no nothing about hex so its over 2 some1 else

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:16 am

Well, I've been kind of feeling my way in the dark with the hex thing... with no real results. I actually did the math by hand, to convert the offset to a hex value, but when I went to hex the jmad, that offset wasn't in it. Might've done the math wrong, so I'll try it again later.
That's not the reason for this post, though. Now I had an idea that it'd be cool to have weapons respawn inside the ship, but had dismissed the notion (as well as the notion of having a map with drivable gondola bases) since I regarded it as impossible to have movable spawn points. Meaning that if the vehicle or base moved, the spawn points wouldn't and you or your weapons or whatever would just fall into the abyss. Then it occurred to me that it seems the covenant spawned inside the moving scarab in sp. I mean it's possible they were all inside to begin with and only came out in waves, but I think they probably were spawning inside it. So now I'm wondering if a spawn point can be assigned to a mach or other movable object. It'd probably be in a script somewhere, but it may be possible. How cool would assault be, if, not only do you have to fight your way to the enemy base and past their defences, but now you have to FIND the base first?

xzodia · Post by **xzodia** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 2:31 pm

ur right in that they spawned inside the scarb while it was moving but they still always spawned at the same point wen the scarb got there since it always followed the same path