Possible Projects Interest

[SickAlice]

I would do it the same as Windblown, observing the animations I mean and finding when and where the problem was then zeroing in on the number data. Sounds about right, I mentioned the scaling issue before and the problems that can cause, freeze to full game crash when it's the main Biped on say a known nif (male basic and so on). The latter is something that needs to be caught in game usually though, too hard to notice a small change in the size of the model in CTool half the time. But if that main node or any, like the Neck for example changes too much it throws the engine into a tizz, CTool won't care and will still display the thing.

Else sure thing, pack up whatever. I have my Files open anyways so it won't be a problem to check those out. The weather is bad here anyways so my work is at a halt. Just make sure to send me a PM prompt so I'll notice of course. Otherwise Spider-mobile is very much close, I'm finishing the riders and a couple keyframes speaking of then it's good to go. Lastly going to adjust my Spider-man page before uploading. That mess is long overdue to be cleaned up while I'm at it.

[Randomdays]

Windblown, you have mail.

And once again, thank you and SA for all your help.

SA, and anyone else, I've uploaded "Test pack 1.rar" to the requests folder on the mega site. It includes the broken crayfish (already fixed by windblown), the octopus, and the UO male basic. These are all beta and unfinished - they still need contact points ,bounding and selection boxes and more animations and problems fixed.

The male basic has 8 animations(so far) on it, including the ones talked about on the last page.

The male basic has a "Granny" folder in it. These are all the possible animations that could put on the mesh if I can get them converted into kfs properly - over 180!

RD

[Randomdays]

Doing some more experimenting ; Reinstalling gmax and put in the scripts for NWN1, NWN2 and nifs. Not much different than with max, except gmax can't import dae or fbx files, so I can't test the crash issue.

I'm still having the uo male mesh completely vanish during an animation. Checked the scales for all bones and they all have 0 keys. The quat keys time is all correct for all bones. Maybe SA or Windblown can provide more help.

Trying to complete the kf imports for everything in progress.

[SickAlice]

When I get a little time I'll look at it. In the meantime I was skimming something tonight, I think there's some straightforward things of interest in this link. As well I think Animkit is of high interest to you. I also noticed they covered the sound in keyframes thing you asked about. It seems limitless and has my interest peaked. I'm going to read this entire thing front to back, maybe when I finish my seamless textures for SmB.

https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/modelling-resources

[Randomdays]

That's a very interesting post SA.

The file that can split up the Morrowind kfs could make those usable for FFvt3R

I tried a few different things again with the NWN crab and got a good looking mesh and animations going in Blender 2.49b, even an individual animation by itself. The exported kf though was not linear, but xyz for each bone, with no quaternion keys. I had just read somewhere when researching that Blender handles armatures differently than nifs. The armature for NWN1 and 2 looks good in nifskope, but very different in Blender.

I was looking at Bearded's Spider that he did many years ago and it looks like its from NWN1. So it looks like he figured it out with Max somehow.

Some other odds and ends;

1) For Hanna Barbera - I was going though some files and found Josie and the Pussycats - Josie, Melody, and Valerie, in costume, created by Daglob, downloaded from one of his Yahoo groups. I don't think its on Alex's or SA's site so I'm uploading it the the HB heroes folder on the Mega Site. It should go with his other work if one of you two want to grab it.

I found the VX keyframes that work with them and converted all 3 to FFvt3R, since they were crashing the character viewer.



2) The 4 Halloween entries are done - rat, witch, wraith and the black cat - and will be posted to the mega site soon. The witch still has the alpha problem for the broom skin.

Dana - I didn't see a lot of of  other 'ghost" type meshes for NWN1 or 2, but as with the Phase Spider, alpha transparency could be turned on and make any mesh a ghost.

3) The snake and the crayfish creature are also done and tested and seem to working right. They'll also be going up soon. I don't think I've posted a pic for that yet, so its below - comes with another two alternate skins as well.





4) SA, I think you said you had a problem with getting the timeline in Blender 2.49b to work? I tried working with that with the NWN crab and that was how I got the long animation for it cut down to just one action. I'll try your Knightrider in a little bit and see if I can break up the animation for that as well.

5) I'll also be uploading a kf pack with the new climbing animations for the spider and scorpion based creatures, and the corrected kfs for the mudcrab with the proper land run/walk animation istrad of the swimming idle replacement.

6) The Octopus has the same two disappearing tentacles and a tentacle tip in three animations now - two attack and one pain. If I could fix it for one I could probably fix it for all. Tried Windblown's tip on zeroing out the scales key for what I think are the proper bones, but its not working. Timing for the quaternion keys look right.

Same with the completely disappearing mesh for the UO male basic.

Edit - The rat is in the animals folder

The Wraith is in the Others folder.

The witch, crayfish, snake, black cat and new keyframe pack are in the keyframes folder.

[Randomdays]

SA

Michael Knight experiment.

You have to really zoom in to see the mesh in nifskope since its so spread out.

First check in Blender was also really hard to see anything though after import I did get a vertex/face/obj count in the upper right corner as usual.

1st pic - this is an adjusted view of what I saw in max 8 ; the mesh and armature is on the far right, and on the far left it looks like some cameras. Running animation, it did animate but stopped at 100 frames.



2nd pic - exported out the nif from max 8 in FFvt3R format with the kfs still embedded.



In Blender, the mesh was a lot more visible now and still animated. Blender saw 250 frames of animation - it looks like an idle or looking around, walking across the screen to the left, and then spinning around back in forth.

The two long lines stretching out are the right and left forearms, for some reason. The mesh is 682 vertexes. The vertex groups look like your standard ones seen in the ff games and others - bip01 spine, bip01 calf, etc.

Way to the left are two bones, bip01 Tube05 and bip01 Tube06. No cameras were visible.

Rotating the bones in pose mode moved the mesh like normal.

Exporting the mesh and the kf out separately, the mesh still has the stretched out forearm bones, though they could probably be shortened in edit or pose mode in Blender.

The kf looked good with standard NiKeyframecontrollers and linear quaterneon keys. The NikeyframeControllers put animation at about 48 seconds, while the quaterneon keys look like they usually end about 8 seconds.

Did not edit the kf or put them in the FFvt3R directory to check them out.

Let me know if you want the converted files to check out and I'll post them.

[SickAlice]

Love the Josie and The Pussycats. Thanks for all the work. Lol, no it's simpler than all that. What I mean is I don't know how to get the timeline itself to display. Like how you can see it on the bottom of your screenshots? I can't find the function nor key shortcut to actually display it is what I mean.

Yeah interesting stuff in the link or at least the straightforward essential stuff. Blender has a problem with how it stores things in it's memory (so does the FF games and character tools for that matter), well known but it explains a few of the issues here. Also the writer there noting those fussy values too and how not just different versions of the Nif engine are different but so is what options any game developer chose to include and/or fully in their product. Notable for what we do because of lacking or absent features in either game and/or between the two games. Alpha channels for example are recognized by the first game however they never completed the script for them so they won't display properly (in the second they added Stencil Masks and such to counter this). The second likewise either has incomplete Netimmerse features and some aren't utilized at all, something to look for when doing conversion. Like neither game actually handles bump maps. I studied that one a lot and while you can "sort of" an illusionary effect they never included those features fully so they won't be displayed properly either. Specular channels are an issue in either, the second recognizes them but doesn't handle them completely. I got rid of them from Spider-mobile last night because they were creating a bug with the alpha channels. Same went for built in alphas which you had on the window for example. This game isn't properly coded for it and what happens is then the model in question can never be hidden from sight (it's texture alpha channel can not be alternatively utilized) nor can it be fixed at all from that point and must be scrapped to correct the problem. In addition the presence of it interrupts the lighting values of the other models in the nif when displayed in game to where they all look like glaring light bulbs basically, the specular function also causes that bug. Just examples of stuff to look out for. I wish I had the manifests of what the developers actually did and didn't use in their games but otherwise this all stuff I've just come across over time. Like the fact the ladder function is broken in both games just to point one out. Usable to an extent but not really and it can cause errors pretty easily since they didn't finish the code for it as it seems. And of course all this applies to Blender and differences in versions minding there that these are dev plugin projects and much of what we use rarely completed and/or directed at a single game of interest and the game never being these ones (almost always Morrowind).

Thanks with KR, mostly looking at KITT itself given the unique animations. However given what I'm saying I'm doing with the Spider-mobile elsewhere I think I won't need it anymore and figured out a better way for our games (getting working weapons on vehicles and so on). And I knew some of that, Knight Rider 2 is, well the set-up looks real weird. As I said a lot of the functions are handled by external files these included your standard text based ini's and such. I think it's important to dissect that game though just to learn about this stuff since my understanding is it's set up the way the Netimmerse is meant to be where we and in these games are using it in an unorthodox manner. Same with the nifs themselves of course being exclusive containers holding everything from the animations to the very textures themselves even. Just as important as dissecting  and understanding how things are set up and the big differences between it and the first game engine, of course because nearly all of the nifs and keyframes we use are converted from the first one instead thus not properly set up (mostly the added Dummy node with a 90 degree angle rotation hence the animation stuff for wall climbing I been on about) and an additional node somewhere though I forgot which.

Else I'm sorry I haven't looked at the files you uploaded yet. I've been real busy. Tis the season and all the pine needles and leaves in my forest are falling and I'm working fast to clean them up before the freeze hits. Like I literally pitch forked so many for so long today I ended up puking. Otherwise I'm deep in your Spider-mobile right now, at the very moment completing the animations you wanted that make the headlights flip into the hood and the Webshooters® come out during the ranged. It's a lot of math of course to do but the idea is to be complete so no skoper after the point will have to bother, they'll be able to just copy keyframes and make new ones however they want without any issues after I'm all done. You'll see when it's released, looking a week out from now if the server issue isn't persistent. But just so I let you know I'm not ignoring you. I have a lot going on and picking up the slack for two cancer patients, love em as much as a pain in the patoot they can be dominates my free time often. With exceptions where I ship them off to a casino hotel somewhere for a weekend, they like that stuff for some reason so it's a decent trick to give myself a breather for me-time lol. Anyways thanks for the opportunity to do this Spider-mobile thing, I'm very happy with everything that's going to come from this.

[Randomdays]

You're welcome on the Spider-mobile - I'm glad you took it on and you're doing such an excellent job on it, and learning while you're at it.

I've seen the embedded textures in some of the AO nifs, and Civ 4 has the sound calls in its kfs. Interesting enough, take a look at Bearded's rat for FF1 using the FFvt3R viewer. For walk and run, he has either the sounds themselves or sound calls in those animations. In game, you can hear his little feet pitter - patter as he runs. Some of the other animations look like they have sounds, or sound calls, as well.

For the Timeline, to access it, its just something you overlooked - on the bottom left corner of the action bar, click on the small graph button to bring up a rollout of different screens - timeline is about a third of the way up. I Usually don't deal with split windows, but I'm sure you know how to do that to be able to see the graph and the 3d window at the same time.

Max always has the timeline on the bottom as part of its default setup.

[SickAlice]

Maybe it's my set-up for Freedom Force stuff. I have it saved as is and clicked through the various menus, Timeline included but nothing popped up. I'll have to dig in the preferences or consider finally starting fresh with my Blender set-up.

I seen some about the sound effect thing, that link I provided mentions it. I can't find anything in detail but apparently it's one of the numerous options in the Insert drop down in Nifskope. I don't know that either Freedom Force even utilizes that though, again no manifest on that stuff to be found anywhere. They should have included that actually on a modding specific game really, should have included a lot for that matter between the specific sound ratios to a timeline bar on CTool (the track notes are a decent touch there though). I hate guessing and/or throwing darts until I find what works and doesn't. Also I don't know where to dl Bearded's rat? I never knew he even made one.

I whipped through the keyframes, finishing a few hours ago. Short is I more than doubled what was originally there which wasn't much as you know. Guns of course that pop in out during ranged. The other which you'll see soon is moving wheels. With vanilla hubcaps that doesn't matter much but with these special Spider-mobile ones you can really see they aren't spinning and it looks terrible right? The problem is rotating wheels are a big pain. Ask TJ how that went on Judge Dredd. It's a lot of math and when you're done they end up looking wobbly and weird (rotate around their own axis).

So I had to stop and create a new method and one again that was cumbersome to people here. What I came up with was an illusion using the texture animation property. The wheels have their own texture and use the rotating animation option. Now there's two copies of the wheel mesh, one is the original and it's assigned to a separate instance of the texture in the nif that is not animated. The copy is assigned to the animated version and they are 0.99 the scale of the original and fit comfortably inside the other, our non-moving wheel where the player can't see them. In the keyframes for Idle both are set with a visibility of 1.0000. During the animations where we need them to "move" the visibility changes, the non-moving "parked" wheel to 0.9900 and the one with the animated texture to 1.0100. This makes them swap places but never seen to the naked eye. The whole reason for this is the other complication with swapping models out, at the point we go from one animation to the other where there's a difference you would normally see the models shrink and grow all the way out of existence. It's a problem that's perplexed people for awhile so my resolution is one model is naturally smaller than the other by a hair then the shrink/grow is only a small amount so they never actually have to leave the visible range in fact thus eliminating the problem.

Now I made the entire thing of static models that all share the same exact XYZ so a person can easily import models in with no sweat but the wheels were an exception. They mostly line up with what you'd work with in an outside program however in their cases I had to move them to the zero point position on the axis then move them back to their positions in Nifskope. That marked them essentially giving them a fixed center position for each and resolves the other problem where an object shrinks and grows from center point in the scene. That would normally make the wheels in this example shrink to and from the center of the bottom of the car then which looks horrible of course. Now that isn't a problem anymore and at the same time it still isn't too complicated for people with little no how to work with this whole thing and make whatever vehicle they want from it. Likewise skinners can just as well do what they want with the wheels and make them animated without doing any 3d work if they want to.

So you'd figure eight wheels in the keyframes and coming up with something new I would be in for a world of hurt but darn if I just got lucky here. One flaw the entire way that I had to backstep to the prior saved .kf and I hit the mark with keyframes that are completely workable for future use and the most seamless looking tire animations I've seen in this game. Without using actually 3d animation or weighting at all. There's a few other features like this on the work I'll surprise you with when you see it CTool. Anyways I'm pleased with myself over this of course and happy to introduce it. Now I just have the bonus textures to do (which I mostly did as I modelled anyways to save myself a headache), writing a short How To for it then uploaded and site page work. Next project after is another vehicle but with moving driver, I know exactly how I'm going to do that one already too. I hope this solves a big vehicle headache for the modders here. Oh and I included a separate kf that's just the Idle so people can use it as a map object (driver can removed by it's texture alpha channel, everything can be stripped out that way for that matter).

Next up Captain Caveman, already have him worked out I just need to do the work itself.

[BentonGrey]

Wow guys, I am so completely and totally lost, and it is glorious, ha!  You guys are doing amazing stuff!  Thank you all so much for your hard work and everything you're doing to keep expanding our materials!

RD, I can't wait to see that octopus!  It sounds like it'll be great!

[Randomdays]

Benton, SA gets me lost sometimes too.

As for the Octopus, he's almost done, but is big pain. He's got 79 bones in his armature and it took a while to figure out which ones were causing the disappearing limb problem. The good news is 1) animations are almost done and then I have to go back and correct the 4 problem bones and 2) I think I should be able to put a normal octopus on the armature and you should have a much more useful Topo to put in the mod.

If you haven't seen them, there's a bunch of sea creatures a few pages back, some possibly useful map items like caves and shipwrecks, and a few more undersea map items coming soon.

[BentonGrey]

Wow, you weren't kidding, RD!  I missed even more than I realized!  Yeah, those shipwreck icons will make great set dressing, and all those sea creatures and beasts will be come in handy.

Hey man, will you remind me of your storage site?  I need to add that as a link on the Greylands.

[Randomdays]

Benton - https://mega.nz/folder/bxoATQBA#zhsyE8hp1uwMeDk7r17BcQ

The Evil octopus is done, except for adding bounding/selection boxes. It turns out only 3 of the animations had the scaling issue with the vanishing limbs.

Going to see about doing the normal octopus and the sea items, then expect to sea a LOT of Viking imports on the Hidalgo thread.

[SickAlice]

I talk in circles a lot and I also talk as if anyone has the same before hand knowledge, that was class in schools for art, game dev and math sometimes. I know, I think about it after I type these lengthy diatribes but I also have confidence you can work out what I'm laying down. Like these things will click eventually as you're going through files yourself. And again that or you'll see what I mean when I release the thing in question, Spider-mobile being the example here where all this I'm talking about is implemented. But this whole wheel thing is all plane geometry and high polynomials, subject I returned to school for about four years ago and I forget you guys weren't hunched over that desk next to me (not worth it btw, no reasonable career application these days for all the work you put into it). But maybe you'll get it when you see it in that nif and animated and such.

Again it's been a long standing problem here, you can look at any nif that "morphs", an illusion where one model shrinks out of view and another into view and there's a lapse where you can see the one vanish and the other appear. Apparently they did not streamline that between animation part at least in the version of Netimmerse (Gamebryo I think right?) for some reason at that time. If that helps clear it up. Like they just didn't add anything that factors for the space between two different animations so there's a blip that happens there. Normally there isn't a reason you're eyes would notice it but this is one case. Um, Plastic Man and Mr Fantastic nifs say where a different body pops in and out of view, look at them in CTool once between animations. You'll see it. And it gets worse when the objects don't share a center point (axis) then. So that was I finally resolved the issue, playing a trick on the program and the players eyes basically and just working with the flaw itself rather than trying to around or against it.

Still say we have to get RD proper hosting btw instead of this Mediafire/Megaupload nonsense. If Yahoo Groups taught you anything you don't want to rely on it. I'm waiting for catwhowalksbyhimself to return, usually winter like everyone else to ask him about that or you getting the keys to the hosting he provides me. I had set up CB and daglob to run and use that site in the event of my absence given my health problems but, well, and otherwise I already have a directory there for you anyways given hosting your tutorial and all. We'll see when the time comes. It would be nice if you could have pages and these same previews on them and such. Or maybe on of the sister sites in the Forever network. Or your own, take your pick. I just hate seeing all this hard work stored on some vanilla file host is all.

[Randomdays]

SA,

I had thought about having a nice site like yours, Alex, LP, etc, but was unsure if that would be wise considering that almost everything I put out is probably copyrighted from not only other sources, but other games.

Considering what's already online, probably a slim chance of that. Of course there's also the fact that I'm up to 100's of imports by now and it would take a while to get them all set up.

On another note, you had mentioned being able to grab models/ animations from android games. Sometime in the future after I get done with the current wave of imports, I'd like to take a look at making a map or 2. One would be a zoo map - I've got a lot of animals already, WP2 could offer more plus some zoo civilians and shops/ decor.

Then, either as a separate map or as part of a larger zoo map, I'd like to add an amusement park area. I've already got a few ideas on how to 'fake' some animations for a roller coaster and a merry-go-round.

I don't think we have any maps for those. The Movies game might be able to set up a map for a movie studio. All three have been featured in comc stories over the years.

If you can take a look at the Roller Coaster Tycoon Games on the app store (4 mobile and touch) and see if you could get some of the rides/ shops out that would be great. No hurry of course - we both have a lot of things lined up already. If not, I've got RC3 gold and can always try to rip the models out with Ninja ripper.


Last, I've completed the rigging of the DaoC Octopus to the evil AO armature, and added contact points and bounding/ selection boxes. Both are ready to go

The AO Poison Toad for Halloween is also done. The NWN2 toad will be down the line I think.

Four undersea map items from WP2 are also done -
1) An animated sea anemone in 5 colors - I embedded the animation in the nif - let me know if that works in game
2) A giant clam - it had an opening and closing animation but I couldn't get that to work, so its just static
3) A coral reef block
4) A treasure chest to go into a shipwreck or cave maybe.

Benton, I think that EE2/ EE3 may have a large selection of rocks that might work underwater, maybe some coral too.

The octopi and the poison toad will be in the keyframe import folder, the undersea items in the map items folder.

[cranlox]

excellent work, you keep surprising me with so much

[Randomdays]

Thanks Cranlox

Most credit goes to the original game designers, meshers and skinners of course. I'm just the middle man moving things around.

A few notes on these and others;

1) Going though the map items that came with the base game of FFvt3r I didn't see too many that had bounding boxes. I assume that the collision is set up either in the mesh itself or with mapedit somehow.

2) I've been testing the imported characters as I go, but not the map items. If there's any problem with collisions or game crashes, etc. let me know and I'll try to tweak them. It'll be awhile before I try making any maps myself. From what Goggles said way back in the beginning of the thread, they probably need the destruct nifs for when they're destroyed. That's not in my skill level at the moment.

3) My main input on these is importing them to Blender, sizing them up a bit where needed, exporting them as FFvt3R nifs, and adjusting color and lighting a little in nifskope.

Last note; I did a a quick run thru the EE2/ EE3 files. EE2 didn't have much that was useful here, but EE3 did. While EE3 is terrible as a strategy game, its got a ron of resources that, along with EE2, could be useful for the FF games. Besides units from throughout history, ancient to future, there's buildings and lots of rocks, plants and trees, even farm crops in the field. Civ 4, Morrowind, Oblivion,  and Railroad Tycoon might also have some good map items, I haven't looked into those yet in that aspect.

Below is a quick pic from a rock pack that's now up on the Mega site in the map item folder. The pack has 10 rocks, 10 coral/reef. 4 rock formations, 2 chests and a pirate cove (Benton - you need to put this in your mod somewhere!) The pirate cove has been sized up a bit so it'll be a large item on the map.

[BentonGrey]

Wow, RD, lots of cool stuff!  I'm going to have to test out that animated anemone.  That sounds super cool!  A lot of that looks like it could come in handy!

So,  objects will all need bounding boxes if you want characters to be able to interact with them.

[cranlox]

Hello! I have seen that there is a strange flaw in the textures of the toads. I do not understand the reason but even replacing and penetrating the transparency makes me a kind of shine that reflects badly.
If you agree and you give me freedom, I will totally replace the scratch texture for this toad to see if I can solve it.

[SickAlice]

That makes sense on the site front. My understanding of a lot of game models is they feel it's complimentary so long as one doesn't profit. I always also include their full copyright when I do use a weighted myself. Else if they don't want you to they'll just let you know, Activision that I know of is like that. Mostly what they don't want is the games main components themselves floating around. Activision was triggered by the very thing. Enough culminative files were being shared for modding that basically the library of their games was being given away for free, ones they still sell of course. So when it hits their bottom line is when a company tends to get unchill about it. But it makes sense you'd hesitate. Still though a number of other hosts out there for model collecting/3d print fodder.

Let me know, it's pretty much a snap. I can teach you as well pretty easy. I know the ins and outs myself though with those Android game models. Like which companies use a propriety format that can't be so easily looked at or not. Most that fall into the Unity Engine itself though come out easily. I don't have much a use for them and end up deleting them. Mostly I like taking apart models and art and seeing the methods and such. Unity is a good deal for gaming. Unfortunately actually programming with the thing is a different case but it is one of the most flexible things I've seen in years.

Probably something baked into the model. Looks like inverted faces or doubles? Normally I pull them off in a 3d program, reverse them and stitch it back together. Or convert the model a bit until it looses any data that's cooked into it and start it fresh. I really like them though. I was thinking about frogs and such today. It's cold so my little tree frogs have went to sleep. Probably for the best, I don't need another night of lost sleep chasing one of those things around after it snuck in the house again lol. I swear those things are real life Spider-Man and that agile and hard to catch too.

[Randomdays]

Cranlox, permission granted.

I can tell you that AO by NDoors used altered DDS files for their skins that can't normally be opened. I had to use a hex editor to get it readable, and then converted to a tga. If you want to see the original ddss I can send them to you.

If you take a look at the witch's broom, its got the same problem. But also, while the broom texture appeared on the broom in the character viewer okay without transparency, in game it was completely transparent. I was a able to fix that part at least by converting it to a jpg and then back to a tga again.

You might want to try that - since jpg's have no transparency it could clear out some problems. Alcina the witch also has her original messed up dds textures after they were hex edited if you download it.

SA, whenever you have time. Maybe take a quick look at the apps and see if they're able to be ripped. I did a search on the RC3 windows game and it looks like there's no good way to get the models out of the packed files that I could find - it uses .ovl files I believe.

The frog looks good over all, and more importantly has some good animations on him - the tongue snapping out in melee for one.

Benton - that's what I thought, but when I checked out some of the nifs for the game, I saw that some didn't have any. Maybe that was FF, not FFvt3r. Easy enough to add them though.

I'll go ahead and run them through again and add the bounding boxes.

[Randomdays]

Did a quick check of files before going to work - it looks like it WAS FF I was looking at that the map items didn't use bounding boxes, while FFvt3R does.

I think the 1st caveman pack of items I did was for FF. I'll take a look at those and make a FF2 version with bounding boxes if so. For the other new ones, that all are for FF2, I'll add the boxes and re-upload them. For now, you can download what's there to check out what's available till the new versions are up.

[SickAlice]

I can't do that sorry, just going shorten this then.

[Randomdays]

That's alright SA.

I'll just go ahead and try ninja ripper on the PC version of RC3 then. I checked and I have both the Gold version with the 1st addon pack, and the 2nd pack by itself.

Glad I was able to read your original post before you shortened it - makes more sense that way.

Not in a big rush as said, so it'll be down the road a bit

[SickAlice]

Yeah I type and talk in circles as I mentioned, it's a habit. But also I said I can't nor am I downloading big files nor going to be doing mass conversions/installing programs and such. I do art, I make 3d model requests. That's a 300 mb plus file that I looked at, it's about three days on my dial up connection with my family shut out from using the internet. The downside of living the good life is they don't modernize things like telecommunications, it was worse when I lived in the Smokey Mountains actually. Took me over two hours just to upload the Spider-Mobile rar to my site last night to paint a picture for you of it.

Else I kind of don't get this one. I can tell you those models, roller coaster karts right, are just hollow boxes. That's all those are. Also you can find stock roller coaster stuff all over the internet. Also again these games have modding communities elsewhere that already cracked and provide this stuff, in this case that community is the one that kicked off Nifskope and the Blender plugins that we use here even. I'm making note of it because I know some of the other sequels to this game are options for import/export in both the Blender plugins and Nifskope, right next to Zoo Tycoon (that's the community btw if you want to check in with them). Else if there's some specific model from that one you're trying to get, I dunno. But Zentax/Xenhax and VG-resources are the forums to be on if you need to convert stuff. They know everything and I do mean everything about this stuff, like literally how these files read in hexadecimal and can recall it from memory. It's pretty impressive.

But yeah, I love doing art requests friend but I'm not down with helping with this other stuff, more I don't even the time or means. Like making a model of a cartoon or comic character is really of interest to me. Converting mass files from games isn't my thing though. But still I think you should look at the Nif version of this Roller Coaster game, that's just me. I imagine it would be easier and have to figure the same type of model must exist there and probably something that fits Freedom Force easily, and has animations that are a cakewalk to convert since they'd already be in the right format. Unless I'm missing something specific. Again though I would just make a model of a hollow box with four cylinders, texture it and roller coaster kart achieved. Add in map simple models (this will otherwise crash the game if players use it, there's no way this game engine can load that much junk into memory) with alpha channels to create the tracks. If a roller coaster map is what you're trying to pull off here is what I mean. Those are the options I would be looking at myself.

Again I should make a map speaking of, I'm kicking myself reading these things. More than a decade making content for these games through three different forums and yet I haven't so much touched it. Kind of silly of me and given I make map objects and all that too. I really do want to make a Castle Grayskull map but have to figure out the entering the castle and rooms thing. That's the hang-up there.

[Randomdays]

Understood, and thanks for looking. I did some google search before on what's out there and checked xentax, but I'll look some more. I didn't see anything about nifs being used. I've got Zoo Tycoon and used it for models. The problem with it animations it doesn't look like it uses kfs at  all, but xml.

Mainly looking at the non-coaster rides for import. For the coaster, I don't think I could do an entire visible ride, but as I said above I figured I could fake it a few ways;

1) Turntables; make a bunch of mountains or buildings around the edge of the park. Put the carts on a turntable for the flat part; as the turntable spins the carts would exit and then reenter the mountain and circle back out of sight and repeat. For the upper arch, repeat on a sideways turntable like a car wheel. control the speed by enlarging or shrinking the wheel and moving to cart towards or away from the center. The turntable  would also give you spinning flat rides like a merry-go-round.

2) Forward motion of the nif; as seen with Oblivion and Micheel Knight, the nif actually moves forward on the map when animating. With a looping animation, it would return to its origin and repeat.

3) Scripting - I'd have to ask Benton or an expert, but script a pathway for the nif to follow.

Add some park sounds and screams, have the nifs in the cart holding the bar or with their hands up, and maybe it would work.

[Randomdays]

The first small set of Undersea Items (now v2), with the sea anemone, have been re-uploaded with bounding boxes.

Benton, or anyone, please check at least one of them and see if they work in game as they should.

Starting work on the second, larger, set with the rocks and corals.

[BentonGrey]

Awesome!  I'm pretty busy at the moment, but hopefully I'll be able to test them out tomorrow or Wednesday.

[SickAlice]

Just trying to understand the objective here mind you, I don't know of the initial request and so on. I can help if you can follow though.

0) At Xentax, aluigi. He's the boss over there and wizard of all format code. If someone knows it's him and if he doesn't know it's because it can't be done/doesn't exist. Else I know I've actually opened files from these games myself a few years ago, the zoo versions but I had come across communities devoted to modding them as said where they have specific tools as well the same stuff we use. That's where I would be looking if something specific is desired. It's how I got around the aforementioned Alchemy (X-Men Legends, Marvel Ultimate Alliance) stuff. Well that Tommyboy was into it too and leading the pack, he had a head for all this stuff.

1) Rotating textures for the turntables as I used on the wheels of Spider-mobile, alpha channels on the bars. It's a trick I use in Overdrive on his helicopter blades. There's two models that account for each position and are then only shown as the animated texture rotates over where they are assigned on the texture itself. Maybe sounds complex but it's super easy to pull this off. Else the rotation keyframe stuff I taught you but understand that is hell when it comes to this and you'd be better to take a shortcut like I do. Or, a rotating in game nif as a donor. Like just stick a vanilla turntable in the nif and such and call it a day. Less taxing on the game engine again here too when everything is counted for in the loading.

- If you didn't know this about 3rdR you can use a nif with an idle keyframe as a map object. I used that with the Last Hunt Spider-Man game prop I made. It's how I made him appear to be to struggling to crawl out of his grave. I mean you can full on place it in the character directory and point to it so that means you can use any character by whatever is assigned as their idle just as well. It just defaults to that Idle, I'm not sure why but it's the fast way to make animated map objects.

2.) So same as above, donor use a nif with keyframes and an idle (or choice animation renamed to it's Idle) for forward movement. Else forward movement was also what I explained about keyframes and it's a lot less messy than rotation around an axis point is. Like when I explained the arrows in Nifskope/any 3d program and the football image right? So you just are increasing the value in that choice thing in the keyframes. For reference look at the Spider-Mobile/Houndjeep keyframes and at the melee and ranged animations. In both the object moves backward then forward a distance. And that's the way to it proper but again me? I would just cheat and use something that already has it as a donor to save myself the headache and maybe get a little more sleep while at I'm at it.

3.) I totally suck at scripting. I shouldn't given my education but I'm just obstinate when it comes to that. I'll ask Benton too if the need every arises for me lol.

I'm intending to learn more about sounds this coming month. I have some ready to go voicepacks sitting on my drive but never got around to the specifics of the format here, levels and such. I know all the dat and merging bits and this much in the py at least though. At the same time I want to learn it for webpage design. I'm going add a really corny chime to a page just for experience. Maybe I'll add Snoop Dogg to my Freedom Force page and just leave it there for the winter just to razz people, I dunno.

Speaking of silly thoughts and you'd be weirded out to know how much I think about this but why hasn't anyone added scent to virtual environments yet? Games, the internet, viewing experience, whatever. I'm serious here. We have a total mastery over creating artificial flavor and duping olfactory sense you know? Like because if anything our society is really good at making things to buy, smell and eat. Like I literally have a candle that smells like *checks* spiced pumpkin pie next to me on my nightstand (Better Home & Gardens brand, I'm a simple folk). So you know why can't I smell the forest dew when Link walks into the enchanted fairy forest in my Zelda game? Or post my fart on a social network so people then can swipe it, redistribute it all over the chan sites, remix it all over Youtube and a click bait can resurrect it and pass it off as fresh material on Facebook ten years later? Just your basic Scratch N Snozzberries stuff, you know? Sorry, I probably just destroyed your train of thought but maybe it made you laugh which is good.

[Randomdays]

Its all good.

I had planned to use donor meshes with a spinning turntable like animation. The tank from FFvt3R has spinning wheels and I think there's a radar dish with embedded turning animation. There's also the NPI helicopter and the the Civ4  gunship I'm importing with its kfs. Speaking of which, since I think I can do embedded animations now (see the anemone above), I think I'd try to use that if it works instead of a separate kf file. Donor also for the forward motion -probably an Oblivion mesh with its walk kf, embedded into the mesh.
I almost had that working earlier with some fish attached to wheel for Benton, but couldn't quite pull it off back then.

Checked around some more and still didn't see anything on extracting the RC mobile games, nif or otherwise. I did  find a multi- game extractor that says it can extract +3000 plus games paks - including the RC3 ovl files and the Theme Park World files.

I'll look into that some more later.

Thanks again for all the input.