When I made my "Mad Zombie World" machinima I had to manually kill a dozen zombies over and over..... and over again before filming the scene and I thought, there HAS to be an easier way.
So I worked for some evenings and finally managed it. These scripts spawn "dead" characters mostly lying on the floor or sitting slumped against a wall.
Characters are immobile, have no collision, are not bleeding and don't show bullet holes.
in-game screenshot:
Stock characters and those from older Model Packs mainly use stock animations and can use the scripts in the "Stock Characters" folder. It includes a ReadMe, listing Model Packs that I checked for using stock animations only.
Other Model Packs have tailored scripts to make use of their different animations.
To properly use the scripts the character properties have to be set like this:
- Deadxxx script goes into "Main".
- "Start" script must use appear1.fpi or appear2.fpi. (a copy of appear1.fpi is included in the "DeadBodies" root directory for convenience).
- "IsImmoble" must be set to YES.
- Characters should not be given any weapons as these usually don't align with the hands as they should.
- Characters with built-in weapons are mostly unusable as they tend to stick up. DeadSitOnFloor scripts work best with these.
- Characters release death moans when damaged by explosives ONLY (no idea why). If you are using explosives in your level, simply remove anything from the characters "Sound" entry.
When testing these dead characters, I found that using more than 10 eats up too much resources to build a larger level.
Feel free to use these scripts as you like. Here is a sample script - it's really quite simple!
//AI script by TheStoryteller01 2011
//Made to work with bond1's Slow Zombie characters from the "Zombie Apocalypse" Model Pack
//desc =
//spawns a character lying on the face with arms on the side
//character is immobile, has no collision, is not bleeding and doesn't show bullet holes
//script goes into "Main"
//"Start" script must use appear1.fpi or appear2.fpi
//"IsImmoble" must be set to YES
//character should not be given any weapons
;Triggers
:state=0:freeze,aistop,state=1
:state=1:setframe=97,incframe=97,state=2
:state=2,frameatend=97:suspend
;end of script
As you can see each and every single script includes a tiny manual how to use the script, for what character(s) it's intended AND even a description of the position in which the character will spawn.
Credits go to bond1, who allready did similar scripts for his Model Pack 22 (I found them by accident while doing animation research for writing these). And of course to Errant AI, not only for his excellent Animation Viewer script - which allowed fast investigation of MP animations - but also for his patient answering of my numerous questions.
download link:
http://www.file-upload.net/download-3212669/DeadBodyScripts.rar.html
IMPORTANT: The Model Pack 23 dead scripts (even the "hibernation" scripts) do NOT work properly
In case you find my grammar and spelling weird ---> native German speaker ^^