Universal Forum Archive

i need models (and textures?) of anything that stabs
at the very least one sword and one spear is what i need.

Ideally, i would like 2 swords: broadsword and skinnysword. as well as 1 spear. and 1 pitchfork would be nice for variety.


everything else i can set differently, like the "longsword", "shortsword" and "dagger" are all the 'skinnysword' model with different range expiration, speed, and power. see what im saying?

yeah and i can get even more varietable than that and get the explosion wepon with a sword and call it "sword of fire" but anyway, change the parameters and i could have an entire games worth of swords from just one model.

I know about the melee skeptics, but I am really gung ho about this idea, its really the basis of my world. my world is going to be like an FPS, but the guns will be very limited and expensive while the stabbing weapons'll be affordable and aplenty. leaving the real skill down to stalking, footwork and positioning.

please!
thanks


*thinks* i remember seeing a javelin in this game. thats a spear! where is that, do i have that!? i dont remember seeing it, i looked and all i could find was grenade and missle, maybe i looked in the wrong folder? data/models/objects?

Since this is the 2D request forum, i could offer a request of some 2D material in return for the sword model.

Heres my proposal,

You know space station trading right? you land in the space station and theres the familiar screen of the room with the planet jupiter and some hoses hanging out the wall, theres a checkerboard hallway in the distance. its a really nice, well done peice.

I think space trading would be alot more fun and a little less monotonous if there were about 10 or so of those pictures. so when you go to each world's space station, some look different than others. it would feel as though you were travelling throughout something more.

I'm an artist, and i think could provide paintings of the same calubur if yall'd wanted to use them. I think it would be fun to illustrate space station interiors and i could keep it on the same theme as the one you guys have, (since the exteriors are all the same) anyway, just wanted to put that idea out there and offer my own services.

Hiya,

First off, I can probably send you some melee weapon models if I can find the various attempts I've made at them in the past. If not, it wouldn't be very hard to make new ones - assuming you don't want accurate replicas of samurai swords or something, they're just a blade and a handle, or a pointy bit and a handle, aren't they. Not very hard to model. I'd just need to know how they will work in game (oh, but melee won't work y'know :)


Second... hedgehog made the space station "interior". It's very nice innit. At some point in the future (it seems further and further away) we want to have a full 3d station interior, so you'd actually be walking about to visit the lounge, the trading system, and so on.

Until then, your approach sounds fine. If you can indeed produce art to that quality, I say go for it. Mit would have to do a bit of work to include them in the game, but I can't imagine it'd be very difficult to do.

Oh, and - if you can produce high-quality 2d art, why not have a go at skinning some of the zillion models I textured very badly, too :)

Oh, oh, and - I hope the myspace site in your profile isn't an example of your work. It looks awful :]

Oh, oh, oh, and - I like your oilpaint monkey avatar, though. Corel, no?

f

melee *could* work

if you make a humanoid model and give it a sword or something, then set up the weapon fire animation to be him swinging the sword then you'll have what will look like melee combat.

then for the actual combat, you use the weapon script. machine gun would probably be good for it since it has no explosion. set it to shoot 1 bullet and have a range of 1 so you need to be next to the person your shotting. give it whatever damage you want.
then when you walk upto somebody and hit tab, your guy will swing the sword and the other guy will take damage.

Bout my myspace page. yeah im not the man at coding yet. i just wanted to set up a funny page there, i dont really know too much about HTML layouts, and that was my first animated gif. when it comes to 2d paintings, id take my time with a combination of real paint, scanner and photoshop, or somtething like that. I wouldnt expect yall to use anything that isnt already up-to-par with the art yall already have.

about skinning textures, sure, that sounds easy enough, but ive seen the textures, its an image with half a face, bits of some sleeves and the outside of a leg. half a hand. all jumbled together. could i simply just run that image into paint and re-color the existing textures? cause i wouldnt know where to begin if i had to skin a model myself.

sword model.
yep nothing fancy, just a blade and a handle!

model 'swinging' animation.
where and how do i learn how to do that?
Id have to make an animtation for every actor that uses the weapons, but if they swang,
the sword model would have to be attached to the actor model. not a sword replacing a bullet in a weapons script like i had origonally planned. the swinging would look better, so if its possible id like to try.


I was just gonna make it so the sword popped out of their chest like a bullet and dissapear about 3 feet in front of them. lol
would that be possible? perhaps a sword sound would make that just beleievable enough to be playable.

my painted monkey image. not mine, found it.

t I'm dying to stretch my legs at some computer art, so i might just draw up some space station interiors for fun! show me the skinning tutorial and i might skin some of your stuff, sure! it would be like painting a sculpture, but alot more weird. sounds like stuff i need to be good at.

flametard wrote:about skinning textures, sure, that sounds easy enough, but ive seen the textures, its an image with half a face, bits of some sleeves and the outside of a leg. half a hand. all jumbled together. could i simply just run that image into paint and re-color the existing textures? cause i wouldnt know where to begin if i had to skin a model myself.

Different people use different words for all of this. What I mean by skinning is simply the final "painting" phase of the modelling process. There's modelling, making the 3d thing itself; mapping, which is laying out the 3d shape on a 2d template so it can be painted; then skinning, which is painting the template. So yeh, you could just paint over an existing texture and it'd work. Better, though, would be to go back to the template itself (so you'd see the exact outlines of all the polygons in a model) and start from that. If you're interested in having a go - whether at character models, buildings, whatever - let me know, and I'll send you some stuff.

flametard wrote:model 'swinging' animation.
where and how do i learn how to do that?
Id have to make an animtation for every actor that uses the weapons, but if they swang,
the sword model would have to be attached to the actor model. not a sword replacing a bullet in a weapons script like i had origonally planned. the swinging would look better, so if its possible id like to try.

Mmmm. This is why I asked how you saw it all working...explained below:

flametard wrote:I was just gonna make it so the sword popped out of their chest like a bullet and dissapear about 3 feet in front of them. lol
would that be possible? perhaps a sword sound would make that just beleievable enough to be playable.

...this would be an easy approach.

Ok, so there are two ways of doing this, as you've described. The first way, you treat a melee weapon just like it was ammo for a gun. So you don't see a sword or spear being held by your character. You just see them when they press fire. Easy to implement (you just need the sword/spear/whatever model, and the right weapon settings). Looks a bit crap though.

The other way, as zar implied above, is to create a character specifically to wield a melee weapon. In "proper" games this is easy enough: you just create the weapon model, tell the game that such-and-such a character is holding it in such-and-such a way, and off you go. We can't do that. I won't bore you with the details, but it basically means that any character you want to "actually" wield a sword, or something, has to be designed to do that in the first place. The character model needs to include the melee weapon in the 3d mesh. It needs the animations building to attack with the weapon. And so on.

Now, this can be "retrofitted" to an existing character, in theory. So if we take the ninja avatar, for example: that doesn['t have a sword at the moment, but in theory I could model one and make the ninja swing it about. That's a fair amount of work, but it is possible. The problem is, if you wanted another character to do the same, that work needs doing for that character too. Multiply by the number of characters you might want on a world, and you start to see why it gets a bit time consuming.

A little while ago I started building a melee combat character as a sort of proof of concept. I stopped, because mit told me melee was pointless (lag is the main problem). But you're welcome to play with it if you like. The concept - realised fairly badly and quickly - is "Tiny Robot Ninja!" (TRN). It looks a bit like this...



...only with a basic metallic texture, and a sword. I've built it so you can use the WASD controls, and turn the torso with the mouse. And it carries a sword and has a handful of different attacking animations, none of which are remotely realistic, but you can play with it if you wanna. What I was trying to do was make it so the end of the sword had the "weapon attach point", configured with a static weapon type: so pressing fire and swinging the sword would, in theory, damage anyone who got close to the end of is. It's not great but who knows, maybe it'll float yer boat. Oh, and the arms tend to detach when you turn a lot. Pff, we need skeletal animation :)

f

f

Fooli wrote:

flametard wrote:about skinning textures, sure, that sounds easy enough, but ive seen the textures, its an image with half a face, bits of some sleeves and the outside of a leg. half a hand. all jumbled together. could i simply just run that image into paint and re-color the existing textures? cause i wouldnt know where to begin if i had to skin a model myself.

Different people use different words for all of this. What I mean by skinning is simply the final "painting" phase of the modelling process. There's modelling, making the 3d thing itself; mapping, which is laying out the 3d shape on a 2d template so it can be painted; then skinning, which is painting the template. So yeh, you could just paint over an existing texture and it'd work. Better, though, would be to go back to the template itself (so you'd see the exact outlines of all the polygons in a model) and start from that. If you're interested in having a go - whether at character models, buildings, whatever - let me know, and I'll send you some stuff.

Yeah Id love to try some skinning. please send me any templates that you need skinning!
and like, now i can make, for instance, my ancient toga man black, or make him look like a zombie. I'm stoked!

Fooli wrote:Ok, so there are two ways of doing this, as you've described. The first way, you treat a melee weapon just like it was ammo for a gun. So you don't see a sword or spear being held by your character. You just see them when they press fire. Easy to implement (you just need the sword/spear/whatever model, and the right weapon settings). Looks a bit crap though.

The other way, as zar implied above, is to create a character specifically to wield a melee weapon. In "proper" games this is easy enough: you just create the weapon model, tell the game that such-and-such a character is holding it in such-and-such a way, and off you go. We can't do that. I won't bore you with the details, but it basically means that any character you want to "actually" wield a sword, or something, has to be designed to do that in the first place. The character model needs to include the melee weapon in the 3d mesh. It needs the animations building to attack with the weapon. And so on.

Now, this can be "retrofitted" to an existing character, in theory. So if we take the ninja avatar, for example: that doesn['t have a sword at the moment, but in theory I could model one and make the ninja swing it about. That's a fair amount of work, but it is possible. The problem is, if you wanted another character to do the same, that work needs doing for that character too. Multiply by the number of characters you might want on a world, and you start to see why it gets a bit time consuming.

I agree. I'm going to save this idea until i can make animations so well i can pump out a few different characters with different weapons. (cause i havent done any modeling or animating yet!)

Fooli wrote:A little while ago I started building a melee combat character as a sort of proof of concept. I stopped, because mit told me melee was pointless (lag is the main problem).

What do you mean? when i go to strike someone at close distance, if the player im trying to strike is lagging it wont strike him? or, the firing animation of swinging a sword would slow the server down?

I like tiny robot ninja! I am very interested in sword fighting engines. I know this game isnt set up for that, but this game sure seems set up to simulate almost anything. at the very least ill go with chest firing swords that act like short range bullets. looks a bit crap, but, its the feeling of pretending that youre knifing someone that i want, not a convinceing looking knifing. shucks, the combat could be TURN BASED as long as it involved swords, I'd be happy. of course the Ideal game is a MMorpg with first person perspective swordfighting, multiple strike types, weapon types, and blocking, but I'm a realistic person. let the sword emerge from my chest, sh*t, thats already where the bullets are coming from!


Ok, so I'm gonna go with plan A. I just need a sword model. oh yeah, where do i find the javelin model? that would make a great spear.

/edit im going to download a modeling program now. just in case i decide that 1 swinging animation is possible. never modeled before, dont know what to expect, let the fun begin. what would a good poly count be for a sword?
what would a good poly count be for an actor with a sword? ) if i decide to make the actor and sword the same model.)

hold the phone. theres a ROMAN FIGHTER whos been UNSKINNED for as long as ive known him. he has a SWORD built into his MODEL. does he have FIGHTING ANIMATIONS!?
can i MAKE SOME for him!?

please send me the TEMPLATE for the roman guy.
booyacachacacha

help me do this. which program should i download for this!!!!?????

I'll send you some things. Few comments:

The Roman fighter ("Sargicus") is one of the oldest models we have. It's rubbish, really :) Yes, it has a couple of fighting type animations but really it's awful. It does have a skin, but that's pretty awful too. I'll send you some stuff but really... it's awful!

The lag thing I don't fully understand. I think the point is, in any online game you have to cater for lag in the code, because there's always lag. The way you do that for ballistic type weapons is different from the way you'd do it for melee (and melee's much more difficult, which is why there aren't many multiplayer melee fighting games).

If bullets come out of your chest, it's because you're using a model that doesn't have a "weapon attach point" defined. Using the model converter you can assign an attach point to the model, and that's where any bullets etc will (should) emerge from. Which model you using? I might be able to fix that fairly quickly. Obviously, for cars and that, there isn't a natural place for weapons to emerge so generally they don't get an attach point (so it defaults to coming from the centre of the model... on a humanoid, that tends to be the chest region)

I also share your liking for swordfighting games, and also wish there was a decent MMO version. There isn't though (maybe Heretic2 got vaguely close... not sure if Might & Magic's doing multiplayer yet...). What I'd like to be able to do is something like, say... Kengo. Only good.

While I'm here I may as well point out that even if you do get some approximation of melee working, you won't have any of the funky stuff you'd normally expect... no location-based damage. No decaps :)

A good polycount for a sword is high enough to look like a sword with the detail you want. Same with a character ;) (1-2000 polys for a reasonably detailed character, but you can get away with a lot less: the Republican guys are more like 600. Depends how close the camera is, etc. For reference, Half Life 1/Quake 2 era characters were probably around 1000 polys or less. UT, maybe twice that. Half Life 2, maybe 10,000 but they do all sorts of clever things with automatic detail reduction and so on)

f

Ok, so after some soul searching, ive downloaded the model convertor and this thing called 'anim8tor'
scrapping the roman guy idea (looked at him after i posted and was like, "oh...")
scrapping chest firing bullets.

I'm gonna try zaroba's idea, make special models with weapons attacted (like roman dude) and the firing animations will be them swinging.
the different weapon types will come with a new vechicle. so you start off as a guy with a broken bottle. then you buy the dagger and youre the same looking guy with a dagger (buts its actually a different vehicle) its not until later that your "suit' upgrades along with the weapon. so, the longsword would come with a shining suit of armour, and the mace would come with a black suit of armor, etc. each having different speeds and firing animations and damage... just like zaroba said, it would use the MG setting with a short range. so the game would theoretically treat it like a first person shooter (hopefully it would lag as much as a regular FPS). so if they can get shot across the room, why shouldnt they get shot up close?

as for location based damage, wouldnt be very imoprtant, scrap it.
as for decaps, why couldnt i make a custom death animation where the model gets chopped in half or falls into a bunch of bloody peices or something? it would be the same kill everytime, but it beats an explosion. can one do that?
I just downloaded and installed the modelling stuff, havent gone through the tutorials yet.
but im hopefully gonna make 15 different models with according swing animations (perhaps 2 types of swings with each vehicle/weapon, cause most vehicles have 2 weapons. so tab is a horisontal slash, shift+tab is a slower vertical slash with more power. sure its not actually melee, but to the player it sure wouls seem that way). so basicly, there'd be 15 different melee weapons. but its just mg with different damage settings.
perhaps i can get the javelin bar to simulate the heavy weapons (hold down the button longer, the hammer hits harder) which would simulate a slower melee weapon like hammer, axe, broadsword, or mace.

I played kengo. yeah when it worked, it was an awesome swordfighter! you could customize the strikes, and you had to learn them as you went along. give it like 5 more years, there will probably be sweet swordfighting MMOs out there. I'm waiting for wii to get online!

That sounds... ambitious. Good luck :)

I've emailed you a bunch of models and templates and that.

f

I got your models, thanks !! ok I will seclude myself to the modeling room for a few weeks and hopefully re-emerge with a greater understanding of whats going on soon!

wow, this sounds awesome!!
Good luck with your project flametard.

If you ever need a beta tester for your world, just contact me here or ingame, my space name is Flowstyler.

thanks,it's going to take a while. right now im still learning how to make buildings sell stuff! ill set up the world with chest firing weapons with default characters temporarily first, and since I'm behind a router, I'm going to have to talk to my neighbor before people can even land on the world!
but I will need all the help i can get thanks!