RWS Horses

New models, textures, & integration of 3rd party content.

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Ronan
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by Ronan »

Curmudgeon wrote:As many of you know, Hellfire_RWS and brianmeyerdesign have been working on Horses for NWN2 for a long time, and it looks like they're getting close to release. They have asked if ALFA would be willing to be one of a small number of NWN2 PWs to showcase this work on Release Day.
It would be helpful if we got a pre-release version. As we have all logic from our NWN1 horse system, I'd imagine we could get something up and running pretty quickly.

As soon as our new development environment gets up we'll be able to collaborate a lot more easily.
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ElCadaver
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by ElCadaver »

I-KP wrote:Impressive.

Hin and Stumpies on horseback - let the comedy commence. 8)
I take it if you can make horses ridable, you can pretty much make anything ridable? ( boars, badgers, wolves). Or Shetland ponies?

I'd like a Svirfneblin Ranger riding a basilisk, personally.
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Galadorn
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by Galadorn »

omg if this happens, or should I say when this happens (crosses fingers), it is going to flip me out seeing a group of PCs riding to Beregost on horses. Sorry for rubbish post, I just am excited to see it. go team shazam
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by I-KP »

ElCadaver wrote:
I-KP wrote:Impressive.

Hin and Stumpies on horseback - let the comedy commence. 8)
I take it if you can make horses ridable, you can pretty much make anything ridable? ( boars, badgers, wolves). Or Shetland ponies?

I'd like a Svirfneblin Ranger riding a basilisk, personally.
Hin on Bear. Better yet, Wildform Bear on Bear action. Better yet, there are 'special' web sites for this sort of thing. ...I'm lead to understand. *ahem*
t-ice
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by t-ice »

Seriously cool-looking :mrgreen:

Is this just for looks, or mounted combat mechanics too?

While horses are brilliant for rp, horses are probably a game mechanics can of worms at least as nasty as those light/medium/heavy armor speed modifications. Primarily due to monster speeds not being right in the first place, so correcting speeds of PCs under different circumstances against each other is wholly inadequate. A horse should be able to outrun a bandit, but not a wolf, but in nwn2 the wolf and the bandit move at (almost?) the same rate anyway. Couple this with stupid AI, and a speed-boosted horse archer is not only the ultimate farmer, but can gallop around in circles and cheese his/her way to victory against any and all melee opponents.

I would love to see horses in action (No, not the kind of action IKP seems to impy), there's plenty of neat options in mounted combat, and actual use for the ride skill would be swell too. But on the flip side, the situation where everyone buys a horse for a blanket (speed or other) buff is just silly. To finish off in the proper positive note, just to get these beasts active for the looks, rp, and dm-storytelling use would be brilliant. Any mechanics worms can be digested one at a time in no rush.
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by I-KP »

t-ice wrote:No, not the kind of action IKP seems to impy.
"Seems" to..? Don't make me link you. There's nothing more natural than two bears humping in the woods.

(There's never a bestiality emoticon around when you need one.)
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by Sandermann »

I take it if you can make horses ridable, you can pretty much make anything ridable?
You take it wrongly. You could do so, but you would have to do the animation work from scratch for each creature.
Primarily due to monster speeds not being right in the first place, so correcting speeds of PCs under different circumstances against each other is wholly inadequate. A horse should be able to outrun a bandit, but not a wolf, but in nwn2 the wolf and the bandit move at (almost?) the same rate anyway.
A bit off topic, but NWN2 has all the speeds ratings, its just bad building if the creature doesnt have it. Speed ratings are very slow, slow, normal (just slower than PC), PC, fast, very fast and DM fast.

I also believe there are no combat animations for the horses as yet.
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Zelknolf
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by Zelknolf »

Gimlor Stoneaxe wrote:How would that work, could you combine animal companion skill with a riding skill. so you could have the horse follow you around when your not riding it?
It's actually ridiculously simple. Just make the animal companion a horse, with the same scripts used to make ridable horses. Little bit of fuss to integrate systems for permadeath of the AC and persistent health (if we're doing that?), but that's generally just copying data. I had great success in NWN1.
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Gimlor Stoneaxe
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by Gimlor Stoneaxe »

Update.

I am currently tweaking the horse skin weights and trying to finalize the the horse textures and Normal maps. The issues with the skin were bugging the crap out of me and soon I will be getting back to the rest of the non combat animations.

Just to be clear, combat will work from horse back. When in battle the horse and rider will just stand there idle while combat takes place. There will be no combat animations with the first release, and I am not sure that they will ever be made.. Time will tell.

Within a week or 2 I will be able to distribute a few files for servers to test and get the mounts working.

The initial test files will include
The Horse
Human male skeleton
Horse Skeleton
Unarmed Idle animation
Run animation.

A little about other mount types.
I have a second mount in the works but it will be much less useful on most PWs.
Since all the animations are done in C.A.T(character animation toolkit), they only have to be made once. C.A.T uses a layer system for animations, so it would be a very simple job of making adjustment layers to accommodate other mounts (if you had a usable animated max file for what you want to ride).

The current male human on the horse has 40 animation files with about 15 more to make, that 110 files just for male and female human for a total of 550 animations files for all races genders.


Just a bit of progress on the horse.

Saddle (not final texture)
Image

Saddle accessories

Image

First normal map test. I have to rework the normal map, the muscles are all wrong

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Gimlor Stoneaxe
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by Gimlor Stoneaxe »

t-ice wrote:Seriously cool-looking :mrgreen:

everyone buys a horse for a blanket (speed or other) buff is just silly.
Really? That seems odd considering that's what horses are, a better way of getting around.
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Tridisus
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by Tridisus »

Very good work man, cant wait to actually see players riding along road instead of walking hundreds of miles!!!

only thing i need to do is make some roads for Moonshaes!!!
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Galadorn
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by Galadorn »

Gimlor Stoneaxe wrote:
t-ice wrote:Seriously cool-looking :mrgreen:
everyone buys a horse for a blanket (speed or other) buff is just silly.
Really? That seems odd considering that's what horses are, a better way of getting around.
Yes yes! omg seems so fun. :) :)

Perhaps horsies will be expensive? Money is warped in ALFA anyway, and if players can and should go faster longer distances, then maybe to make up for money issues, horses might end up being super expensive(?) maybe. I think expensive or not people will still get them. I will someday too fer sure. :)

Or, and... crazy fun ideas! ..ride checks periodically over time would make it actually inconvenient enough unless alot of skill resources are spent gaining a high Ride skill (not as desirable as most might think), and when checks are failed, the horse freezes (paralysed), PC is booted off horse, and the reason might pop that the horse stepped on a bad rock, and must rest (and cannot be made to move due to stubborness, or whatever), or a horseshoe broke and needs to be re-shod, or with a badly failed roll, the horse may have a sprained leg, thus no movement for quite a long while, or, whatever... and maybe when the horse is stopped due to a failed roll above, then the horsse moves VERY slow, and follows the PC or something... so in effect, the rare fails mmight actually slow down the PC, when in fact getting the horse in the first place was supposed to be a way to "speed up" travel. heehee... I'm sure all the fantastic builders and scripters have their own wicked-cool ideas for all this stuffz. God bless'em.


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<disclaimer-for-post-above> JUST MY THOUGHTS ABOVE! BORN OF MY EXCITEMENT FOR THIS AWESOME ADDITION TO ALFA (Horsies). I WISH I DIDN'T NEED DISCLAIMERS IN MY POSTS TO TRY AND AVOID FLAMES BUT I FEEL IT IS NEEDED. ANYONE WHO TAKES OFFENSE IN ANY WAY OR ASSUMES I AM "OUT TO GET SOMETHING FOR MYSELF" BY THE THOUGHTS ABOVE SHOULD PLEASE RETHINK. </disclaimer-for-post-above>
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by I-KP »

It does look like the pooch's spheriods. Makes you wonder why it was never possible to begin with. No, wait... Obsidian. *nods knowingly* Looking forward to seeing the first mounted poser canter by.
t-ice
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by t-ice »

To respond to this:
everyone buys a horse for a blanket (speed or other) buff is just silly.

Really? That seems odd considering that's what horses are, a better way of getting around.
Of course horses for faster strategic movement across the landscape.

But if horseback combat on the engine works just like before, only with a different model and +50% (or so) speed, the result would be ... more insane than cool in my book. For example, meet the riding rogue who zips to backstab with blinding speed from atop his sleek black stallion.

Further the melee AI having no other response to a faster enemy but to keep on chasing and chasing creates endless options for farming and cheesing when the PC is faster than the enemy. While the farming horse archer is rather obvious, perhaps a bigger spoiler could be the horseman who tags all the melee enemies to run around futily after him, while his friends shoot away with impunity. That "tactic" has the potential to seriously break many if not most battles - DM spawned or not. I've seen it used effectively even without "horse-grade speeds".

So I'm playing the devil's advocate here, saying that while adding nifty new features for players to use is cool and stuff, if it breaks the AI of the game you're essentially playing against, or adds nonsensical "features" when coupled to rules already present, in the end it can remove far more from the overall game experience than it adds.

All that is not to say horse-riding isn't seriously cool and I daresay the most long-waited addition to the game engine ever since it first came out. And I'm just as blown away as the next guy by how cool and well-made those horses and riders look :shock: I was just seeing some mechanical sillyness lurking forward, and decided to drop a word of caution, for what it's worth, noting people to consider holding their horses awhile instead of adding simple speed bonuses on horseback. Suppose shows how new I am to how ALFA works, to assume something would go forwards in haste and need a calming word ;)

The bright side is that there's no mechanical changes to the engine needed to allow for the first bit of strategic movement speedup with horses: Simply relax the no-run across landscape policy on horseback! With a change in only how your PC looks, you *can* do silly things while on horseback, like sneak attack or dive down a cellar, but at least you're not rewarded with a combat bonus like extra speed for it. Without a bonus in there, people are far less likely to come with whatever contrieved justifications that yes, riding their horse is just fine in this dungeon.

For even more simple strategic mobility on horseback, perhaps consider ports between key map locations that are only activateable on horseback.
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Gimlor Stoneaxe
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Re: RWS Horses

Post by Gimlor Stoneaxe »

There will be no combat animations included. IMO the rider should be forcefully dismounted if he enters combat. The resources it would take to make the horses combat ready are huge, and not something I can tackle right now. The combat mechanics would be hard to deal with on horseback anyway and make it look good. Body bags, personal space ans size would make mounted vs non mounted combat look really odd. It may be something I add in the future but right now mounts are being designed as travel only.

You bring up very very valid points. T-Ice and its always importatnt to try and see how a player could exploit something new like this. Horses might give players the ability to run through hostile areas without fighting, something more archers could fix very easily. muhahahaha.

I don't think ALFA would rush into something without weighing the issues, and I am sure it will be implemented with the servers best interest at heart.

As it stands now I can hand over all the files needed for testing and implementation. Who would I send the files to?
Last edited by Gimlor Stoneaxe on Mon Jun 06, 2011 1:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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