I'm still working on my media here in preperation for darkbasic pro to get here. I've run into a bit of a barrier though and I'm wondering if there will be a shortcut or whether I'll have to do it the hard way ...
Basically, I'm making a 3D RTS based on small squad combat. Individual men can be made to lie down, crawl, kneel, shoot etc etc. Think of operation flashpoint, but not quite as complex and looking from above RTS style. The units you get to control are machine gunners, shotgun soldiers, rocket soldiers, snipers, minigunners, pistol soldiers (what units default to when they exhaust the ammo of their main weapon) and mortar soldiers (actual proper mortar launchers where you drop the bomb down the tube and it fires). Take all those units and each one has around 12 animations.
Most of these animations are the same. Shotgun, machine gun and sniper soldiers all fire in the same way. Everyone throws grenades in the same way. Everyone crawls in the same way. All units pretty much animate in the same way, but with exceptions relating to their different guns. The actual unit models are exactly the same, except for their actual weapon.
I've completed all animations for the machine gun soldier (including the extravigant "flying through the air arms flailing frantically after being blown up" animation). My plan was to import the model of each new gun into the animations of the machine gun soldier, attach it to the heirachy, and make slight alterations. This way I might not have to totally redo all the animations (which would take maybe 10 - 20 hours in total).
Things I CANT do:
I can't animate the unit without weapons then glue the weapon to the model from within darkbasic. I can't do this because the weapon animates as well (rotates in the hand, and flys out of the hand when the unit gets killed etc.). That'd be too fiddly.
Thing I thought MIGHT be possible:
I thought maybe if I loaded in each unit model into db and then attached the animations of the machine gun soldier to each different unit, it might animate the unit correctly. E.g. I load in the shotgun soldier, then append the machine gun animations to the shotgun soldier, and hopefully the movements in those animations will translate properly to the shotgun soldier. If was to do this, does anyone think it'd animate properly?
My second option is to import the guns into the animations in my modelling package, and swap the machine gun for the shotgun (for example) and adjust each animation slightly then save it. My only problem here is that the gun won't be placed exactly in each animation, and seeing as I have to reset the guns rotation point each time I import it into a new animation, these rotation points will be different. Will that cause problems?
My final option is to totally remodel every animation for each unit. This will be a huge time drain (especially when I then do the same for enemy units, although these will be different monster/alien models, so that might be ok). This will also allow me to reskin models and make slight changes for more interest, but it'll take A LOT of work.
Anyway, I'm not sure if any of you can help here or want to help .. hehe .. but any ideas, thoughts or suggestions would be great.
Cheers.
Machine: P4 2200, 512MB, GeForce4 64MB, Audigy Platinum
There's a junglist inside every coder. http://www.kontact-kru.com for my own personal breakbeat terrorism.
