[TEC] How to see all available characters' animations (for char waypoints modding)

[Vanilla]

Originally Posted by oscar19681

The might fine crew mod has an animation for dieter depp comming down the conning tower and walking throught the hatch near the sound man and it is used in game when have dived the sub. Why would this not be applicabe to the bosun?

I have a look, thanks for the lead!

[urfisch]

interesting topic!

[oscar19681]

Yes maybe this should be merged with Paris his extra crew thread..

[Vanilla]

Originally Posted by oscar19681

The might fine crew mod has an animation for dieter depp comming down the conning tower and walking throught the hatch near the sound man and it is used in game when have dived the sub. Why would this not be applicabe to the bosun?

Ok, I looked through the script. When diving - he just snaps through the hatch, walking through hatch happens only when surfacing. And unfortunately it is done as I thought - the char is teleported into the middle of the Control room and immediately plays the infamous SAILOR01_Go_through_hatch animation. The animation is so made that it immediately 'teleports' the char back almost to the original compartment and then he makes a move that appears as he just 'walked through the hatch', then make few steps forward and turns left - this is all one animation. While this animation is fine for going from bow to heck directions it does not work the other way round. It is impossible to make a char walk from control room through the hatch and to the captains cabin compartment. The other problem with it is that you need to teleport char to a waypoint at a predetermined dictance from the hatch.


But it can be used anyway in some cases like this one. Thanks!

[Vanilla]

Just noticed that I've made a mistake: unfortunately there is no climb ladders transition animation, only walk and run or teleport from the script.

[Vanilla]

It appears that it is way easier to check animations in Granny Viewer. It is simple to install and you can batch-load many animation files in one go then selecting them one by one to display by just clicking on them. I'll write a short manual a bit later.

[Vanilla]

Anybody has any ideas on how .chr file references waypoints in .gr2 file?

[oscar19681]

Originally Posted by Vanilla

Ok, I looked through the script. When diving - he just snaps through the hatch, walking through hatch happens only when surfacing. And unfortunately it is done as I thought - the char is teleported into the middle of the Control room and immediately plays the infamous SAILOR01_Go_through_hatch animation. The animation is so made that it immediately 'teleports' the char back almost to the original compartment and then he makes a move that appears as he just 'walked through the hatch', then make few steps forward and turns left - this is all one animation. While this animation is fine for going from bow to heck directions it does not work the other way round. It is impossible to make a char walk from control room through the hatch and to the captains cabin compartment. The other problem with it is that you need to teleport char to a waypoint at a predetermined dictance from the hatch.


But it can be used anyway in some cases like this one. Thanks!

I,m could swear i see him walking from the captains bunk to the ladder in the conning tower when i surface and back when i dive. Ill check this for you to make sure today.

[Vanilla]

Originally Posted by oscar19681

I,m could swear i see him walking from the captains bunk to the ladder in the conning tower when i surface and back when i dive. Ill check this for you to make sure today.

That's what I meant. Sorry for not explaining it properly. When surfacing - he runs from the captains quarters to the hatch, 'walks the hatch', walks slightly past the stairs turns left aprox 120 degrees, take the stairs and 'climbs' (kinda). The problem now is when diving, just look at him, he gets down the ladder, walks to the hatch and teleports through it. That's because there is no animation for walking the hatch in the bow direction, only for heck-ward walk, that's why sobers made him teleport when diving. And even the existing animation doesn't exactly suit our needs because the sailor in it is not exactly walking the hatch - just look from the captain's quarters - and moreover after walking through the hatch he goes forward pre-determined distance no matter what and then turns left, so you should always adjust for this.
I have a couple of ideas how to mitigate this however there is hardly any probability they will work.

[Vanilla]

Ok, here is the instruction on how to use Granny Viewer to see all the available animations:
First thing you need to do is to download and install the GV. Installation is very simple and you can download the GV here.

Once installing is finished open the GV and do this:





















Enjoy.

[oscar19681]

thanks for that very interessting.

[oscar19681]

What i would like to know is to be able to place certain characters outside of the u-boat pens to create more life in the harbours.

[Vanilla]

Originally Posted by oscar19681

What i would like to know is to be able to place certain characters outside of the u-boat pens to create more life in the harbours.

For this you will need three things:
1. GR2 file with waypoints
2. CHR file with all the characters
3. Set of waypoints' behaviour files: waypoints_info*.txt, waypoints_edges*.txt, animations_info*.txt, bunker_crew.aix

First thing is to determine what is already there, I suggest you try to find GR2 files for the bunker and harbours first. Using GV you can see if and what waypoints already exist.

If there is no GR2 with waypoints for outside the bunker - we will have to create a new GR2 file with all the waypoints through hex-editing (unless privateer finally finishes his epic quest and comes up with an easier way to export into GR2) and I don't know yet if hex-creating a new file is possible at all since they are quite complicated, but I guess it can be done although it surely will not be easy thing to do. If there are some waypoints - we can try to use Paris_england method of copying the same set of waypoints (copying a existing GR2 file) and moving them through waypoints_info file.
Next thing is the CHR file with characters. If it doesn't exist - we can create one by hex-editing, it is not overly complicated and terrible, but I've had only very quick glance at it and I don't know its structure yet, we will have to work out how to do it first. I think Paris_england already knows how to work with this CHR files but I am not sure if he will give the information since he's away now so we have to do it ourselves.
Creation/editing of the behaviours files should be easy - there are quite a few suitable animations and you are not very much limited by cramped and complicated U-boat inner-structure which limits the animations that can be used.

NB: All the files that reference bunker often have BK letters somewhere in their name.
NBB: Look at the harbour expansion mod - I guess they use GR2 files we are looking for.

I am ready to help you in anyway I can.

[Vanilla]

A little tutorial how to delete and add characters to the boat or other places:











I've forgotten to tell that you can leave most of the options as they are, you need to change only head, torso, legs, since if you don't choose all of them you will not see the character and if you choose just head - you will see only his head.



Don't forget to back up old files and save the changes if you want to keep them!

What you are changing by doing this is the CHR file associated with GR2 which holds the actual model, hence you'll have to have a GR2 of the place and its waypoints if you want to have extra characters somewhere.

Enjoy!

[Vanilla]

I'll focus on adding new waypoints now.