SigniferOne's Animations Pack

[LorDBulA]

Ok i got it. The links are working now. But they realy didnt work when i posted for the first time ... strange.

[plasticfigurine]

Signifer, after DL'ing the animations and seeing them in action I gotta say...they are great! Your pic of the hoplite animation doesn't really do it any justice, because they are vastly better in-game, in my opinion. I'm going to get some good action shots of them later, but for now I have some of those "OWIE!!" moments...

http://img35.echo.cx/img35/7613/owie0br.jpg

http://img35.echo.cx/img35/9636/owie23ju.jpg

EDIT: The only thing I see that can be improved on, is making the spear point downwards just a little bit more while the unit is in ready position.

[SigniferOne]

LordBula:

Removing the phalanx ability provides two very important things: 1) it gives the phalanx tactical mobility and charging, and 2) allows him to aim the spear. One of the biggest problems with the hardcoded phalanx ability is that the spear works independently of the guy who "holds" it, so it always points horizontally forward. If you raise the hand above the head, then the spear will point really high too (horizontally from the hand joint), thus making the unit very weak as he will have a hard time hitting the "hit box" of the enemy. And the problem of lack of cohesion without the phalanx ability can be solved by the "guard" formation.

On the subject of download link, did you get the Tripod error by clicking the direct link, or going to the page and downloading from there?

Edit: On the subject of hosting, anyone to help me out??

[LorDBulA]

On the subject of download link, did you get the Tripod error by clicking the direct link, or going to the page and downloading from there?

I get erron on both. When i downloaded your superb mod both links where working. I just check it and now Direct link doesnt work. Its strange.

About your animations they are GREAT. I love them.
I used your hoplite animation with Phalanx ability and i didnt notice eny drastic performance drop. Phalanxes was still very efective. I didnt do any test so maybe there was some phalanx performance drop but it was unnoticable (they where still kicking butts).
What was the performence drop in your tests? Maybe we can correct it by increasing stats?
I have one question about this animation can you make it so when phalanx advance soldiers are still keeping they speers overhead?
I think that it would look much better (for people who will play with phalanx mode).

I trayed to apply your hoplite animation to other unit and i got strange result. When unit is fighting it keeps shield in strange position.

http://img199.echo.cx/my.php?image=wrongposition4qq.jpg

Are you planing some kind of Animation Guide for Idiots so i can correct this?

Great work.

[SigniferOne]

"What was the performence drop in your tests?"

Well, when people originally tried giving hoplites the phalanx ability and the vanilla fs_javelinman skeleton, it was observed that the hoplites did not do as well and had to be compensated in stats, so yes I think there might be some drop there. And it makes sense, programming wise, because they hold the spear so high that they miss most of the body, unless they aim the spear down, which they don't using phalanx ability.


"I have one question about this animation can you make it so when phalanx advance soldiers are still keeping they speers overhead?"

As I said, what the phalanx ability does is, it takes over the spears of your soldier, effectively controlling them by itself independently of what the soldier is doing at any given moment. Thus, if you give the hoplites the phalanx ability, I cannot control through hoplite animations where the spear is pointing; it has a mind of its own. Thus, if you have the phalanx ability and turn phalanx off for the moment, the spears WILL go vertical, regardless of anything I do.

Incidentally, that is why, if you give them that ability, the back ranks will hold the spears pointing upward, like the Macedonians. I didn't do that, but the hardcoded aspect of the ability controls this. Ever tried holding the spear at the very end, raising it above your head, and then pointing it UP? It is painful just to think about it.

"I trayed to apply your hoplite animation to other unit and i got strange result. When unit is fighting it keeps shield in strange position."

The error you get is a result of different linking to joints. Basically, in the Greek Armored Hoplites model, the shield is attached to the forearm, NOT the wrist, and therefore moving the wrist does not affect the shield, but moving the forearm (and the shoulder) does. In your barbarian model, clearly the shield is attached to the wrist, hence why it looks awkward; the wrist there controls where the shield goes.

"Are you planing some kind of Animation Guide for Idiots so i can correct this?"

Well this is more of a 3ds max issue than a concretely animations issue. Here's what I suggest you do: start a request for help thread, either in the Workshop or in the Newbies Forum, named something like "need help with linking to joints in 3ds max", so that both I and others can reply there. Btw, you do need 3ds max to fix this, OR a different model for the barbarian.

[SigniferOne]

By the way, everyone, I did observe there's a graphical glitch for the Strat Map units. This is really strange, so I'll try to figure it out and release an updated version later today.

[Caius Britannicus]

What is the graphical glitch. I have been working on Strat map units for RTR and find that some of them have white spots all over them. Like someone threw white paint all over them. You have any idea what could be causing this.

[SigniferOne]

Caius, is this "white spot" thingy caused by my mod? I highly doubt it, if so. The only glitch I found was the strat map characters jumping up and down. It's really strange because all of my modifications are isolated into new skeletons, so I don't see how native skeletons could be affected, let alone strat map skeletons which are altogether separate. But I'll see how to fix it.

And about your problem, I'm not sure what's causing it, perhaps you could describe it more? The problem, what caused it, and what you tried to do to fix it.

[The White Knight]

Thank you very much SigniferOne; I think I'll enjoy it as much as your previous pack.

[LorDBulA]

I think that there are two ways to fix this.
1. Modify animation taking into acount that shield is attached to diffrent joint.
2. Modify model, attach shield to arm.

But i guess the second way is easier.
For now i dont have time to toy with this, and this is not to important for me.
Thanks for your answers.

And your animations are great. Good work.

[Admiral Nelson]

Excellent work! This is very impressive....

And bv the way, if you are having trouble downloading it from that link, right click it and save target as. That did the trick for me.

[Caius Britannicus]

Caius, is this "white spot" thingy caused by my mod? I highly doubt it, if so. The only glitch I found was the strat map characters jumping up and down. It's really strange because all of my modifications are isolated into new skeletons, so I don't see how native skeletons could be affected, let alone strat map skeletons which are altogether separate. But I'll see how to fix it.

And about your problem, I'm not sure what's causing it, perhaps you could describe it more? The problem, what caused it, and what you tried to do to fix it.

Its not caused by your mod. I was just browsing the forums and you mentioned graphical glitches on the campaign map. So I was hoping it was the same problem I was running into. The problem seems to be caused by my addition of new models and textures for strat map characters. See this pic: http://www.myimagehosting.com/pic.php?u=191w2AI1&i=2622

No one on the team knows whats causing it. Which is unfortunate. It is totally unrelated to your mod so this probably isn't the best place to discuss it. If you have any idea as whats going maybe you could PM me or join the RTR IRC channel irc.quakenet.org/rometotalrealism

[MaDeInMeXiCo]

please help me , i really like your animations, but , the only one that i dont like is the hoplite animation , is very good , but i prefer the older one , well , how can i install only the other animations without the hoplites animation??? help plx y love the roman animation , please help!!! and can someone can tell me why im a slave?????

[Cyber Ice X]

Made in Mexico: Just don't change the animation for the hoplites in descr_models_battle.txt to fs_s1_hoplite.

Leave the animations for the hoplite units as they are, and nothing will change.

[Chilly5]

signifer, are u gona try to change the greek cavalry (companions particuetly, sp?) animations (underhand thrust) to the historically accruate pre-saddle/stirrups(or something) overhand thrust? u can use ur hoplite animation as the bases . . .

[SigniferOne]

Caius, I am not at all into textures and models, so I don't think I'll be able to help you here. However, you should already know how to solve problems like this. If you've got a complicated set of procedures which produces an unexplainable error as a result, go back and undo the entire procedure to bring the program back to working status, and follow the procedure from there, step by step, isolating each of the steps until you reach the one that causes trouble.

MiM - none of my new animations (except the fix for fs_swordsman) affect vanilla animations. Instead, they are isolated into their own custom skeletons, and you only access those skeletons if you want to. So if you like to keep the vanilla hoplites as they are, you absolutely can, and there's no requirement on you to change the vanilla skeleton to fs_s1_hoplite.

Chilly, there's a lot of things I'd like to do, really, so much that it will change the game beyond recognition That's how much possibility there is in this game. However, I am limited by time, as are all mortals, so while what I want to do (and can do) in RTW is nearly unlimited, what I will have time for is another story. Right now overhand hoplite spearmen are not my priority. Once I get the current skeletons working 100% (i.e. no strat map glitch, etc), I will have my work on Rome to do, and then I always have in the back of my mind to create the skeleton for elephant javelineers, which the RTR team has asked for, long ago. So, we'll see, you probably will see the animations you mention eventually, but I will have my hands full until the expansion, and then expansion will undoubtedly place even more power to revolutionize RTW into my heads, so I'll be gone crazy over that too for a while. In short, I'll have plenty on my hands, in terms of RTW modding, for a long time to come.

[SigniferOne]

Good news, kind of. The strat map glitch is not my doing but a bug in XIDX, and I just wrote up a description for it for Verc in the XIDX thread, so he's aware of it to fix it. So stand by.

[Trajan]

Good news, kind of. The strat map glitch is not my doing but a bug in XIDX, and I just wrote up a description for it for Verc in the XIDX thread, so he's aware of it to fix it. So stand by.

Thats good news. Those bouncing strat chracters are driving me nuts.

[bestantreas]

Can someone send me or upload in this forum the edited "descr_model_battle" and the "export_descr_unit" for the animations.

andyio@cytanet.com.cy

[Timotheus Londinium]

I tried it since yesterday and it works great with ROMA mod. Of course, the bouncing strat characters are somewhat annoying, and I hope it could be fixed soon. Nice work, I look forward to more animations!