GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[MRKane]

Yep, I'm back with more stupid questions! Much of this because I don't know where to find the tutorials anymore

I'm concocting a few maps that could do with an added punch, and dreaming up one that involves a moving train.

First question: Animated water. Can we do this in PD? It'd be great to even have a scrolling texture for a river.

Second question: I'm experimenting with using a collection of mesh planes rotating around a point to simulate some sort of "large fire" effect in the background. I know PD can make things rotate but don't know how

Third: So I'm dreaming up a level where the player shoots their way around a moving train. The way to "simulate" movement would be having some terrain blocks moving past, potentially as a vehicle would move. Same sort of problem as the second question here - I don't know what to read to check if it's feasible as an idea
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

In a bit of a rush right now, but...
1) Does the Dam from GE have animated water? I'm very certain that water is part of the geometry, so if it's animated, it should be doable in PD. If not, closest thing is skybox water, like Pelagic II's helipad area.

2) PD can make things rotate? Hmmm... Oh! You mean the fake auto-gun stuff Rare liked to do? Villa's windmill and Surface's dish are in out of the way places, so if you're dreaming of a campfire, it might shoot at you. (But, you can theoretically set its target to 00?)

3) I'm not sure if the engine can simply do UV transformations... Though, since it's PD, you could possibly finagle this stuff by making an animation for a cleverly designed model. PD can make objects do animations, maybe that's a solution.
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Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

Lazlo52 wrote:

3) I'm not sure if the engine can simply do UV transformations... Though, since it's PD, you could possibly finagle this stuff by making an animation for a cleverly designed model. PD can make objects do animations, maybe that's a solution.

Ok - that's exactly what I was thinking of. I'd probably get away with animating a few blocks of "terrain" along a path to simulate the train driving down a narrow gully. It's a cheap and very common trick.

Lazlo52 wrote:

1) Does the Dam from GE have animated water? I'm very certain that water is part of the geometry, so if it's animated, it should be doable in PD. If not, closest thing is skybox water, like Pelagic II's helipad area. 2) PD can make things rotate? Hmmm... Oh! You mean the fake auto-gun stuff Rare liked to do? Villa's windmill and Surface's dish are in out of the way places, so if you're dreaming of a campfire, it might shoot at you. (But, you can theoretically set its target to 00?)

I'm pretty sure that Dam has animated water, but last time I played Villa I actually spent a bit of time looking at it and concluded that it wasn't actually animated (but my childhood memory would swear that it was! And that the Monopoly guy had a monocle...)

As for the fake auto-gun stuff, I was thinking that just might work. I'll have a mess with what's there.

All up: Are there any surviving tutorials on stuff like this at all?
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

Well, no, Villa's water doesn't move. l just checked GE's Dam, its water does move and can be shot. I'd say to check it in the editor, but that "texture combiner" stuff looks confusing.




Does that new N64 Vault have tutorials on it?
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Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[CrashOveride]

All tutorials from vault can be found here: http://n64vault.com/wiki:goldeneye-guides
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Playing old, low poly games since 2003

[MRKane]

Thank you so much for pointing me towards that page! I don't know how I managed to miss it! I guess I spent my time looking for "tutorials" that I didn't even think to search for guides.

While I've been milling out simple levels (albeit some massive) I've this underlying desire to try and push the packet and see about doing something really different with the engine - to twist it in ways that are unexpected. Suffice to say: Max Payne Kung Fu mod rather left an impression on me for that reason
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[MRKane]

Ok, so I'm back at it again - does anyone have any knowledge on animating the position/scale/rotation of objects inside PD or an example in a level I could look at? I've a feeling that to make things move they'd have to be classified as vehicles.
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

Well, for vehicles, dataDyne Defection has hover cars going along a path using one action block, and Air Base has hover bots following multiple paths each using different blocks. One thing I've noticed about hover things on paths is that they tend to disappear when they reach the path's end, then reappear at the path's beginning. That's why Air Base has them changing paths once it reaches a certain number.

Other than that, objects are just told to do animations in the action blocks. There's a sub-action specifically for objects, 0112. I haven't inspected that one at all, so you'd have to look at other stages yourself to learn how it's used. I immediately think of the Chicago limo, the Crash Site skedar ship (it's placed by a single frame animation), and the Area 51 Rescue hover crate. I'm pretty sure almost any type of object can play an animation, so long as the animation matches the object's "archetype."

This may be the extent of my knowledge here, so hopefully someone else can explain more.
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Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

That might be enough for me to go off of - I'm a little curtailed in some of the development (Mac, Linux, occasionally Windows) so much of what I do involves getting ducks in a row for my limited time on a computer that can run the editor.

I'll check it out and see what I can make of it. Might also pay that I start writing down anything that I do figure out!
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[MRKane]

Quick note that I've finally had the time to do something properly on this and it'd appear that hover cars are easy enough to replace and get setup, so I think that will work for the moving terrain I've had in mind.

Basically I want to give the illusion of the player shooting their way along a train that's in motion. It'll need a brutally low poly-count, but that's nothing that a mesh decimate in Blender cannot resolve I'll be sure to flick things up as I get them going!
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[MRKane]

Ok, I'm stuck. I need "baby instructions" on how to get a hovercar to follow a path.

In typical form I've got the editor locking up whenever I try to do it, and I did actually copy the 404 block (bad name omen!!!) from Defection. From rough tests it looks like this will be a totally feasible idea. I also think there's a code block in Defection "handling" the vehicles that are running the paths. Am yet to track that one down
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

Defection's 0404 has a lot of unused code in it. It's set up to, I assume, pick a speed at random, then loop endlessly...but it never picks a speed and just goes straight into the loop. They probably decided against it so the cars don't pass through each other on the same path.

Anyway, it should be as theoretically simple as having the path exist and setting a 37 Hover Vehicle to use block 0404. It should stay on its path and appear back at start (to be fair, I've only used hover bots. The cars might handle paths differently from bots, or maybe Defection has a hardcoded exception). You say the editor locks up? Are you, perhaps, using a custom model already? If so, is it the right archetype in Model Editor? Though, I wouldn't think that'd affect the editor itself, it should instead affect the game. Where is the editor locking up?
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Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

Man I need to use my words here lol.

I've replaced the model of one of the hovercars (52) with a model of "terrain". The null test I had was simply loading Defection without any modification and I could see it moving around the level like the truck did previously.

Ok, so a win there My next step was to import Presets from .obj and thus get accurate positioning. Theoretically there could be the same issue here as there was with sets in that PD seemed to have issues if they were scaled incorrectly, but the injected level still works here.

Next was to link up a path and create a hover vehicle at a path point, assign the action block, and inject into the rom. This is where the level won't load so I was wondering if I'd missed the "assign hover vehicle to a path" step, in that I don't see any way to do that here (I suspect I've missed something here lol)

EDIT: Half way there, it'd seem that paths are "backwards" and putting things at the end of the path means they don't work. The "end" of course seems to be the first pad you put down which seems a little backwards, but I suppose that's Rare for you.

EDIT2: All paths do not appear to be made equal. The ones in Investigation have the bots ping pong along them forever. The ones in Defection have the hover cars loop between paths with seemingly no connection (at least not what I can find) and the ones that I make have the cars ping pong once and then stop at the endpoint. I'm definitely missing something here.

EDIT3: So investigation also uses the <0140> If hover vehicle's point in path is Greater/Less than value, return but there's no information in the ini on how to use this command. I figure it's not just a number here and I simply cannot seem to get it going, so again, help there would be appreciated!

As a question: how does one create and destroy objects via action blocks in PD?


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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

Hmmm, it's most likely that hover cars behave much differently than hover bots. Also, I have no clue how Defection works its car paths. Maybe it increments the path so long as the pads in the paths are in order? But, one path has the pads backwards. And, how does it know to go back to path 0?

Anyway, did you make sure your object bits match Defection's? I believe the hover cars all use 20000008 on the left, with all else zeroes.


But, man, I really need to get my INI files sync'd up with the latest beta so l can replace it officially. Here, this is what I have:

Code:

<0140> 0140.XX.YY.RR If hover vehicle's point in patrol is greater/less than Y, return RR. First point in path is 0. XX = 00, less than XX = 01, greater than

Edit: Oh, uh, you can't create objects, I'm pretty sure. I think you're allowed to have a pre-existing weapon and give out multiple copies. But, you should be able to remove, or at least hide objects. There's an action specifically for hiding: Hide 16-Object? I've had it not work sometimes, so you can also use an action to set hidden and walk-thru flags on a tagged object. Oh, and there definitely is an action for "destroy." I've used it to break glass when other glass breaks.
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Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

I'd almost have sworn that PD would "create" guards in the game!

Ok, back to 140, what is YY measured in? Even a value of 01.01 had the drone drive out a 7m path and not trigger the break. I'd be dead keen on a copy of that INI if you happen to have it lying about!
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!