Gyrocopter/Gyrobomber-Mount for Dwarven Master Engineers

[Jubeldibub]

Hey guys,

hope you can support me at a little project of mine. I tried a few hours now to build up a mod, that gives a dwarven master engineer a gyrocopter/gyrobomber mount. If I'm successful, I'd gladly load it up, so that others can use it. So if you want something like that to happen and you're a modder or know anyone who is a WH2 modder, please lead him here.

So far I managed to make the gyrocopter chooseable as a mount, if a specific skill is active. If you choose the mount as engineer, than it shows indeed up in combat. It flies, it shoots (with some strange bugs), it bombs. So far the good part, but unfortunately here it ends.

The problem is, that I got massive graphical glitches. It seems to me, that the animation of the regular master engineer don't fit in the animation of the gyrobomber. So if the engineer "mounts" the gyrobomber, then the two animations won't fit.
So here's the question to other modders: How could I make a mount, that in fact is the whole new model, not just the mount model for an existing unit?
Actually for now I just want to make this work, even if the solution is a little "dirty". I don't need to see the engineer in the gyrocopter or fancy stuff like that. I just want a regular gyrocopter/bomber-unit (at least to be seen in battle) instead of my engineer, when I activate the mount.
Any ideas for that?

So far I experimented a little with "man_entity", "man_animation" and "mount" in the "land_units_tables". Made a new unit ("wh_main_dwf_cha_master_engineer_1") in dozens of tables, changed the entity and animation, even made a new mount (gyrobomber) and put it in. But the graphic glitches won't disappear. Somehow the regular master engineer always shows up too (and break the animation of the copter/bomber).
Really could use some help here! Don't know if I can load up files here. But if you contact me, we can exchange emails and I share my actual state of work.

Greetings

[Steph]

The agents are handled differently than regular units.

Have a look at
- agent_uniforms table
- campaign_character_art_set
- campaign_character_art

It may help for campaign at least.

I'm not really sure how to help you, since I didn't try to change mount, only modify textures of an existing mount.

[Jubeldibub]

Hey Steph,

at first, thanks for the reply

The agents are handled differently than regular units.

Have a look at
- agent_uniforms table
- campaign_character_art_set
- campaign_character_art

It may help for campaign at least.

Yep, I saw that too, so in the first step I ruled the whole campaign-map out. As far as I know, these tables are relevant for the great campaign map, not for the battles (which you fight in a campaign). I try to focus at this point on the battles. So I'd be happy, if my engineer would chop flawless in the air at first and shoot some greenies
The correct visualization on the campaign map I would do in a second step.

I'm not really sure how to help you, since I didn't try to change mount, only modify textures of an existing mount.

Cool. I'm at this point only a "table-modder", so new buildings, skills, ancillaries and so on. New mounts are a try and I reach my borders with that, especially because of the animation part (I think).
Unfortunately the engineer got no mounts so far. This would perhaps make it easier to "just" change an existing mount.

I uploaded my mod file. It has just developer status, but it should work (I can start my game and even fight with an engineer in an gyro if I activate it). So if anybody like to take a closer look, feel free to grab it, work on it and give me some comments.

[Steph]

in the custom battle, for general, you still reference an agent_uniform in one of the column.

If you look at the gyrobomber unit, there is no mount. It's directly the unit.

But in your case, you try to use it as a mount, so you have kind of two different units mixed.

I suggest your remove the mount from your land_units table, and in the unitv_variant, insteaf of using the master engineer, use the gyrobomber.

[Jubeldibub]

in the custom battle, for general, you still reference an agent_uniform in one of the column.
If you look at the gyrobomber unit, there is no mount. It's directly the unit.
But in your case, you try to use it as a mount, so you have kind of two different units mixed.

Jep, I did this (the additional gyrobomber mount) because it looked even worse, if I just use the unit, not the mount.

I suggest your remove the mount from your land_units table, and in the unitv_variant, insteaf of using the master engineer, use the gyrobomber.

I did this (I think like you suggest), but this brought unfortunately my old problem back. If you load a battle with an engineer who has the gyrobomber-mount equipped, than you got a really strange visualization (kind of the skeleton of the bomber and the engineer figure merged into it, with heavy graphic glitches all around the model).
With my redundant mount at my engineer1-unit the model in combat was still broke, but looked a little bit better.

I uploaded the changed file, in case I just got you wrong.

[Jubeldibub]

Okay, I give it up for now. Kind of sad, but I thought there were a huge community of WH2-Modders, who support each other and explain things or watch at each others mods in order to get better together. Obviously there is no such community. I guess I expected some activity in this thread or some answers or ideas or... anything But when I take a second look at this forum now, especially at the mod subforum, I see hundreds of threads with a (good) question but zero replies. No discussion, no teaching, no learning. That's sad, but hey, it's reality.
Thanks to you, Steph, for your hints. I thought there would be more of a whole community come along and take a look at this. Probably somebody who has experience with mount-modding.
But probably it's just like so often. Those who know the things, do them for themselves and use them for what they want, but don't pass it on to others, so that they can recreate and do it by themselves.

For my case of a master-engineer-gyro-mount-mod: It's kind of done and works. I'm not really satisfied, because most of the mod is just taken from the mod "!cr_gelt_gyrocopter_mount" from ChaosRobbie and I don't understand all of it (especially how all the tables around the animations are connected). I changed some entries, so that you got the Mount for the dwarven master engineer. But in the small unit animation bubble in the left down corner (and on the campaign and battle map), you see Gelt (not the engineer) sitting in the gyro. It's not that bad (it's so small, you don't really see much of it).

Who want to use it, grab it. I uploaded it to this post. All thanks go to ChaosRobbie, I just use his work to do mine. That's not the problem for me (it's kind of the process to make your steps in modding), but that I don't understand all of it (and there is no/little help to do it), anoys me.

What I don't finish but would like to do:
1.) Let the campaign map animation by itself (so a master engineer guy walk around), but have a gyrocopter animation in battle. This separation of campaign map animation and battle animation seem to be not very sharp in WH2. In my mod, you break the battle animation, if you force the campaign map animation to a walking engineer. Perhaps I just don't find the right place to work on.
2.) Mod a real gyrocopter mount (in battle), which you can put in the land_units_table as an mount, like you do with horses at other heroes and so on. I guess this would the solution for 1 as well. But that leads to heavy graphical glitches in my case. I guess there is much more to it, but I don't see it at this point.

[Steph]

First, there aren't that many active modders for Warhammer here. Second, we have a life you know, maybe a work, or familly, or whatever, so can't be here full time taking all the questions and immediately set of to find the solutions for you. When we already know them, we share. In your case, maybe a gyrcompter mount was not done yet. And maybe because as I told you, it's probably not actually a mount.

Nothing to do with being mean, or keeping things for ourselves.

You arrived yesterday here, post a question, got answer in half a day... And expect all your problems to be solved in the hour?

If you want to achieve something in modding, you'll have to learn patience. And probably reconsider your attitude.

Because as it know, I won't be very willing to help you again with someting.