Re Twitter

Off topic discussion. Talk about gaming and life in general. Be awesome to each other.
Locked
User avatar
Jay_H
Posts: 4062
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 1:54 am
Contact:

Re: Re Twitter

Post by Jay_H »

R.D. wrote:Fixes and adjustments for enemy animations. I'll go through everything below.

(not animation related) Fixed an incorrect null assignment (from my earlier PR) that made a warning in Unity.
Fixed rat being flipped horizontally. For some reason there was specifically code to flip the rat. Instead, the same code was used to flip the giant bat and the imp, who both needed it. There is also existing code to flip the scorpion, but I haven't tested it yet to see if that is functioning properly.
Fixed enemies not playing the first frame of their attack animation. currentFrame was incremented immediately in AnimateEnemy() of DaggerfallMobileUnit, so the first frame didn't show.
Adjusted animation speeds. Slightly sped up enemy attacks, lowered enemy movement animation and added faster animation for flying enemies. The animations should be somewhat closer to classic, and I think they look better.
Added code for enemies to hit on a particular frame of their attack, rather than after finishing. I don't know how classic handles this, and I don't see myself figuring it out anytime soon. Instead I went through all the enemy animations (your Daggerfall Imaging 2 software is so helpful for this stuff) and set each enemy to hit on the frame that it looks like their attack should connect on.
Enemies can continue to move some (1/4 speed) while attacking. I'm not 100% sure about this because the animations for enemies do look like they should be standing still and not "sliding" along the floor, but the player can move while attacking and IMO it's too easy to defeat enemies in DF Unity currently because you can outmaneuver them. Since people are making quests now I think getting game difficulty problems under control is starting to take on some more importance. Enemies can also move while attacking in classic.
I experimented with them moving at 1/2 speed, but I felt like it would maybe be too difficult for new characters in privateer's hold, and I didn't like having the enemies constantly up in my face, so for now I settled on 1/4 speed as making it more difficult but still possible to dodge hits. I would like to alleviate the "walking backwards while swinging your weapon" playstyle somehow. Maybe we can improve the AI at some point to not rush the player so much.

Enemies have some randomness to the time between weapon swings, to make enemies a bit less predictable and robotic.
These are going to be excellent improvements. There are some things I don't report because I'm certain that someone already has plans to fix them, and this is clearly the case here :lol: Looking forward to dodging enemy attacks based on their swing frames!

I think it was easier to dodge them in classic because they sort of had a delayed reaction time; if you moved away they didn't move in on you immediately. Whether we have that in DFU or not doesn't matter to me.

R.D.
Posts: 379
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2016 10:41 am

Re: Re Twitter

Post by R.D. »

I think it was easier to dodge them in classic because they sort of had a delayed reaction time
Yeah, it seems to me like in classic the "countdown" to their attack starts over again whenever they get up next to you, so if you keep backing away from them they pretty much never get a chance to attack. If they do attack, though, they seem to be able to follow along with you, similar to what is in DF Unity now.

User avatar
NikitaTheTanner
Posts: 366
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 7:57 pm

Re: Re Twitter

Post by NikitaTheTanner »

Enemies can continue to move some (1/4 speed) while attacking. I'm not 100% sure about this because the animations for enemies do look like they should be standing still and not "sliding" along the floor, but the player can move while attacking and IMO it's too easy to defeat enemies in DF Unity currently because you can outmaneuver them.
I feel that best solution might be to restrict both Player and NPC movement during an attack, it will make combat much more strategic, but that's obviously not going to replicate classic experience. So if somebody could include an option to stop movement during attack animation for all actors including the player, I would really appreciate it! :)

User avatar
Nystul
Posts: 1501
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:31 am

Re: Re Twitter

Post by Nystul »

Hey Interkarma!

I saw on twitter that you the Missing Prince quest is in the works.

I plan to start on the missing quest actions (dialog link etc.) soon and this one is particularly a good start since it uses some of them ;)

Just wanted to inform you that I will work on these next

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Re Twitter

Post by Interkarma »

That would be awesome! :) I was going to ask later if you'd be interested in taking on the dialog actions. Just let me know if anything I can help with.

User avatar
Nystul
Posts: 1501
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:31 am

Re: Re Twitter

Post by Nystul »

yes, I want to do all ;) It will just take some time till it is complete but lets go step by step and build them out one after another

User avatar
Jay_H
Posts: 4062
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 1:54 am
Contact:

Re: Re Twitter

Post by Jay_H »

Hooray for live-blogging on Twitter! :) You always underestimated how interested we'll be in your progress.

I guess we'll have to mod in more NPC flats and types later, since I'm already getting tired of seeing the same knights, spellcasters, and regulars in all my quests :lol: One male knight flat and one female knight flat for the entire game, Bethesda??

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Re Twitter

Post by Interkarma »

Cheers Jay. :)

For anyone not sure what Jay is referencing, head to #mqstage5 on Twitter, I'm live-blogging my progress on this big chunk of the main quest. That link should show posts in reverse order. Many of these have comments underneath, just click the text area of tweet to expand and view comments.

This stage will culminate with acquiring the totem from Daggerfall's treasury and letters from several different factions about the Mantellan Crux.
Jay_H wrote:I guess we'll have to mod in more NPC flats and types later, since I'm already getting tired of seeing the same knights, spellcasters, and regulars in all my quests :lol: One male knight flat and one female knight flat for the entire game, Bethesda??
Yeah, talk about clone armies. :)

User avatar
Jay_H
Posts: 4062
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 1:54 am
Contact:

Re: Re Twitter

Post by Jay_H »

Interkarma wrote:Add support for "give pc anItem silently". Does not notify, does not mark item permanent.
This sounds like "get anItem." Is the difference that it still offers it through the inventory menu?

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Re Twitter

Post by Interkarma »

Jay_H wrote:
Interkarma wrote:Add support for "give pc anItem silently". Does not notify, does not mark item permanent.
This sounds like "get anItem." Is the difference that it still offers it through the inventory menu?
I believe it works identically to "get anItem". But I want to build a good emulator for the classic quests scripts and it's only a few lines of code to support this variant. And if there's a subtle difference I need to support later, I'm now well-positioned to incorporate this.

No need to use this variant if you don't want to Jay. My focus here is just to support the decompiled classic scripts as much as possible.

Locked