Been following and tinkering with Daggerfall tools for Unity for a while now. So I thought that I should share something. (Download Link below)
Foot Tracks for DaggerFall Tools for Unity
What does this do?
Allows the player to leave foot tracks behind when walking.
Works with both the Player and PlayerAdvanded prefabs in DaggerFall Tools.
Options to make footprints only appear on certain layers (for example only terrain). (As of now, DaggerFall Tools doesn’t really use layers, but the option is there for the future).
Can easily be extended in the future to make npcs and creature leave foot tracks as well.
Support for multiply foot tracks from a single creature (4 at the moment). So in theory, foot tracks can change depending on if or what footwear the player has equipped.
What doesn’t it do?
Because of the way DaggerFall Tools handles terrain textures, I don’t see any way to check the terrain ground textures. So foot tracks will always appears on the terrain, regardless if it’s snow, grass or cobblestone, water etc.
How do I use it?
Unpack the asset package into to your DaggerFall Tools for Unity project
Add the script “PlayerFootTracks” to the “Player” or “PlayerAdvanced” prefab or in the scenes where they are used.
When adding “PlayerFootTracks”, the script “FootTracks” should automatically be attached to the player object as well.
In the script “FootTracks”, set the “Track Material” to “FootTrack_player”. You will also need to change the “Layer Mask “. For example: If you set it to “Everything”, it will appear on all surfaces
Hit “Play” and behold, your character leaves foot tracks.
What are your future plans for this?
Dunno. I will perhaps extend this in the future. I make no promises.
Can I use, edit, change, modify, extend… etc this?
Sure, go ahead. I would love that. And if your make anything awesome, please share it and let me know!
With a little work on the tools, it should be possible to read which texture the player is standing on. For terrains, we can read back texture index from the terrain tilemap based on player coordinates. For general models we can get this from a raycast hit and submesh data. I'll add this to my todo list of tweaks.
Funny how you never realize what you were missing until you see it in front of you (this mod and Nystul's terrain distance mod).
I'm still puzzling out a mod framework in DFUnity (I put my UI stuff on hold so I can do these two things concurrently, to avoid refactoring), but I'd like this to be part of it.
I'm leaning towards having users compile DLLs and load them at runtime, and providing them with some kind of IDaggerfall and IMod interfaces.
Did some more improvements and things... and stuff
Fixed a bug were tracks could sometimes be placed on areas above you (like on the second floor while walking around on the first)
Added a bare feet image as an optional foot track
Made a quick test and added foot tracks to enemies.... It looks weird... They all have the same foot tracks, which has a missing material (since I haven't implemented loading it yet) and even flying creatures leave tracks... but hey... it's kinda cool to see anyway!
@InterKarma
If I could get the tile map index on the terrain, that would be great!
@InconsolableCellist
If my mod can be (or be changed to be) compatible with a future mod framework in anyway, then YES, absolutely! It can be a part of that.
@LypyL
I want to see that too.
Will work on this a bit more and upload a new version when I have a bit more to show.
One interesting thing about the footprints from a gameplay standpoint - that is assuming the footprints don't get destroyed while you're still in a dungeon - you can use the foot prints to help navigate. They'll show where you have and haven't been, and you can use them to backtrack. It reminds me of an idea someone had on the XL forums that I was thinking about implementing down the line for tracing your path in the dungeon with chalk.
Uncanny_Valley wrote:
@InterKarma
If I could get the tile map index on the terrain, that would be great!
Can do! I'll work on getting this into the next Developer Preview.
LypyL wrote:One interesting thing about the footprints from a gameplay standpoint - that is assuming the footprints don't get destroyed while you're still in a dungeon - you can use the foot prints to help navigate. They'll show where you have and haven't been, and you can use them to backtrack. It reminds me of an idea someone had on the XL forums that I was thinking about implementing down the line for tracing your path in the dungeon with chalk.
That's an excellent thought. Maybe a Conjuration spell called "Soot Foot"... or something.
Made some progress. Foot tracks now works correctly for enemies. Rats now create small paw marks as the move around in dungeons, and flying creatures such as Imps and Giant bats leave no foot tracks.
There are still some minor bugs to fix and it will be a while before I'm done creating individual tracks for all types of enemies, but everything is going smoothly.
While working with this, a thought occurred too me , a suggestion for the toolset. Right now, enemies are created by script, with a few options given to the user in the DaggerFallUnity script to modify enemy behavior . Why not create and read all of this from a prefab that you then can drag to this script? It would make it much easier and flexible for users that want to modify enemies and add new functions to them.
It's a good idea and definitely more the Unity Way. I had only roughed out enemy classes until more work was done on hacking ENEMY***.CFG sub-records (from MONSTER.BSA). This format now seems to be well understood, so I can start expanding enemy classes with real data from Daggerfall files now. This should also make it into final 1.3 release, but takes a slightly lower priority than the translation back-end.
