City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

An impossible thing we might have seen one day

airhead

By airhead,
Posted on: 2012-09-01 01:19 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Very. Although I'm weaker on 3.x because I'm old and curmudgeny and 3.x can get off my 2.x lawn.
Good, because I have no knowledge or mind for it. Do you think it would be possible to create a python script that could read CoH costume files and then - assuming there was a complete library of costume parts - create a model from that by pulling the parts from a designated library?

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by VoodooGirl View Post
Good, because I have no knowledge or mind for it. Do you think it would be possible to create a python script that could read CoH costume files and then - assuming there was a complete library of costume parts - create a model from that by pulling the parts from a designated library?
Yep. Its just a question of deconstruction and converting file formats. A bit tedious, but not difficult. And lets just say I've had as much practice in deconstructing and converting file formats as the City of Data people.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
And lets just say I've had as much practice in deconstructing and converting file formats as the City of Data people.
I thought you worked on City of Data back in the day? (I don't know, I wasn't around then, just have some archived stuff). Or is that a big secret I wasn't supposed to let out?

 

Posted

Alternatively we could work collectively to capture and create a library of sorts using the OGLE method. The tedious part would be to create the skeleton and poses

 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Codewalker View Post
I thought you worked on City of Data back in the day? (I don't know, I wasn't around then, just have some archived stuff). Or is that a big secret I wasn't supposed to let out?
City of Data was never me. I provided technical information to the people that did it and helped them with field names and definitions at times. However, since some of my information came from private conversations with the devs, I felt I couldn't release that information directly.

But I could nod when people asked me questions.

Iakona did it up to about Issue 9 when he more or less left and that's probably guessable. TopDoc outed himself publicly as the person that did it for most of the time up to now. There were a couple of people that did interim early builds around I12ish I think. I started looking in I10, when it became clear our primary resource (Iakona) was leaving.

Ironically I don't have I24 decoders, I fell behind. I was going to update them after I24 released, and since I knew the CoD people were looking at it and already making significant progress, I was planning of donating my root time calculator so CoD could show true root time.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Codewalker View Post
Using the sequencers to show a "power execution timeline" including root time was one of my goals for the eventual CoD redesign. I knew how to do it from, er, earlier work with the sequencers, just needed coding time to develop the interface for it and sync up the animation times with the power activation times. I assume that's what you were doing as well?
I yanked the mode bits from the power definitions, and wrote my own sequence processor that used those bits to pull the correct initial sequence file, parsed that along with pointers, and generated an animation list. I then noted the ROOTED bit, and summed up the animation time for the rooted part of the sequence.

The code to do it is amazingly ugly, because I was figuring out what things did at the same time I was figuring out how to decode.

I never thought to pull schema from the code, by the way.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironik View Post
Prolly 'cause you're really Floyd Grubb.
Floyd is not a programmer.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
I never thought to pull schema from the code, by the way.
Doing it that way made things so much cleaner in the long run. Prior to that it was a lot of guesswork and experimenting, and though things were mostly right, those ever so persistent "unknown" fields just get under your skin...

 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Codewalker View Post
PS to rednames/former rednames: If anything I'm posting recently is too far over the line, please PM me and I'll remove/redact it. Not sure which topics are still forbidden.

Just thought as we're getting to see behind the dev curtain a little in these trying times, some of them might get a bit of enjoyment out of reading what we were up to behind the scenes as well. I hope that they see people wanting to pick apart their work as the sign of admiration that it is rather than something else.

Besides, I figure the forums will probably all get nuked eventually anyway...
At this point I find it difficult to believe the devs care what anyone knows about the system, although I'm still steering clear of explicit instructions on how to hack any element of gameplay of the client (explaining how to yank models of our characters purely for personal use and souvenirs is, I believe, not a violation of copyright). I'm no longer concerned if other players know I was poking around, as if there exists a player that thinks I wasn't.

I also don't do this as a rule for other games, and I steered clear from it for a long time here. The only reason I did it was because I felt it was important to have a resource like Iakona, and I felt it improved my ability to bridge the communications gap between the devs and the players. The devs always knew, pretty much from day one, what I was doing and had they told me to stop, I would have stopped.

My ability to help the devs explain mechanics and powers design was enhanced greatly by the fact that in many ways my version of the powers database was better than theirs.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
...as if there exists a player that thinks I wasn't.
What? I'm just... I don't even... I can't believe this! How could you?! You were the chosen one! You were supposed to be better than us!!

>_>

Can I copy your notes!?

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Kill 'em all. Let XP sort 'em out.

 

Posted

Oh, one other thing. The pet project I never thought I would have the time to do, but maybe one day I might still do: write a program that takes Mids builds and PvPs them in a MyBrute-type simulation. In theory, I believe I know enough about the game mechanics to recreate a clock-accurate emulation of how the powers work. It would just take an immense amount of time to do it all correctly. But I do have access to the data to do it, right down to projectile speeds and FramesBeforeHit delays. Everything except ragdoll, basically.

My guess is that's about three thousand hours of work, assuming I had the Mids export format spec, for all powersets and invention slotting to be supported as well as all the actual animation times.


What I will probably do, soonish, is upload the code for my attack sim from the snipe thread and my old old old damage simulator from I7 into a dropbox folder so people can look at those and laugh at my extremely bad coding practices when I'm coding for just myself.

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Posted

I'm sure you're right.

Speaking of which, City of Data has been updated with the last I24 beta.

And back on topic, we do have some work on the model format -- enough to get triangles, material names, and UV mapping. The materials can be cross-referenced with tricks to get textures.

It's not complete -- in particular the bones aren't read yet, and animated parts aren't supported. I'm aware of one other individual who also was working on it, he may have gotten farther.

I'll try to get a post up (probably on titan forums for archival) with the details. You may still be better off ripping from the OpenGL driver since you'll be able to get something quicker than manually assembling the costume pieces.

 

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The only things that can't be printed are the decal items - if you see the picture I posted of the male hero you'll see a squarish plate on his chest - that's where the Chest Detail decal went, and while it was mostly invisible it will export as a square plane.

So chest decals are lost in the export process. It is possible, however, to recreate them in a 3D format so that they can extrude from the chest and be visible in the printing process - but they wouldn't bend with the shape of the chest.

 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by VoodooGirl View Post
The only things that can't be printed are the decal items - if you see the picture I posted of the male hero you'll see a squarish plate on his chest - that's where the Chest Detail decal went, and while it was mostly invisible it will export as a square plane.

So chest decals are lost in the export process. It is possible, however, to recreate them in a 3D format so that they can extrude from the chest and be visible in the printing process - but they wouldn't bend with the shape of the chest.
Does this go for Clockwork Chest details and Celestial Chest details?

@Rylas

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Posted

If they are modeled - like the skull chest details - then the geometry should export. If it is an image with transparency details, then no.

However, we could stencil some of the chest details and then create an extrusion from that - but as I said - if the chest is turning, twisting, or bending - then it won't really work. Unless you boolean the detail to the chest and then pose it.

 

Posted

*smiles and nods* M'hmm...

God I wish I knew what all that meant.

I'm determined to, though. So I'll be making demo recordings of my favorites. Especially some Beta demos, since I loved the Corsair pieces.

@Rylas

Kill 'em all. Let XP sort 'em out.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rylas View Post
Does this go for Clockwork Chest details and Celestial Chest details?
Ah, details like Radiant Ascension Armor - where you have the floating glowing detail - will just export as the surface it is on.


The guy in the back on the right side used Radiant Ascension armor IIRC and where the glowing pieces were exported as the object the transparent decal was mapped to. I had taken the floating detail off of his one shoulder but not the other and you can still see it floating.


In a later render attempt I did some more removal of floating pieces that required decals.

We could, however, find the texture for that decal, stencil it and then bend it into that shape - but we could need to create posts that would anchor it to the model for printing purposes.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Very. Although I'm weaker on 3.x because I'm old and curmudgeny and 3.x can get off my 2.x lawn.
Awesome. (Really. I'm that geeky.)

Blue
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Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
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Rendering an animation currently of how figures could be posted on a stand with a character name. Should be done in a few hours (630 frames - 360 rotation)

 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by VoodooGirl View Post
Rendering an animation currently of how figures could be posted on a stand with a character name. Should be done in a few hours (630 frames - 360 rotation)
Can't wait. Reminds me of my college days when I used to spawn off a bunch of POYRAY (DKBTrace initially - I'm that old) renders across the network (no, I didn't have permission) and wait for them so I could combine them into a short animation.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by peterpeter View Post
You know, after all these years of reading your posts Arcanaville, I thought I had a pretty good estimate of how awesome you are. Now I find out that I was off by an entire order of magnitude. Wow.
Even when I disagreed with arcanaville, which was very seldom, I have always had an extremely high estimate of her awesomeness.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Very. Although I'm weaker on 3.x because I'm old and curmudgeny and 3.x can get off my 2.x lawn.
And this is why I have that extremely high estimate of her awesomeness. I love that humor.

There I was between a rock and a hard place. Then I thought, "What am I doing on this side of the rock?"

 

Posted

Actually it's rendering wickedly fast. It's rendering each frame at 0.06 so it should take about 40 minutes to an hour.

 

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Blender also offers some interesting options - like fracture. So you could get the effect of the character fracture the ground (or pedestal) they stand on - or a wall.

It occurred to me you could render what would be L shaped scenes - a backdrop and a floor "scene" area with your character in it - or in action. These would be small to print, though.