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[Toady One]

Or Loin your Cloth:

They look like diapers.  This can be improved.  And all mammals receive them now.  See the rabbit.  Even better than the original Garden of Eden after the apple incident.  More coverage than fig leaves too.

[Captain_Action]

LOL! Diapered Bunnies....

The face on the human seems to say, "Why me?"

[Toady One]

I wouldn't mess with the rabbit:

I think next maybe I should decrease the humpty-dumptiness of the pants by adding half-textures and deformations and frills and things.  Then they'll look normal.  After this, I'll put in an interface for it so you can pull them off and on like training pants (mommy WOW!  I'm a big kid now!).  Also armor effects...  you'll be able to roll up sleeves and various actions like that.  It'll be harder to code things like having your pants around your ankles (even if I don't do the model), although I think this would be fun to do.

There are a few bugs so far, but they are marked for death.  Nothing major.

[Captain_Action]

It would appear that the pants are "Skin-tight". Are they a replacement for skin or are they considered an "extra layer"?

Also can you show a pic of pants made from rabbit hide?

Does the game render the legs inside of the pants?

[ December 10, 2003: Message edited by: Captain_Action ]

[Toady One]

Making items out of creature tissues isn't done yet.  That goes under part (IV) in the Plan for this release.  I have to tweak some material structures to get the full rabbit fur involved, rather than just one color of hair.

As items, the pants are part of your inventory and are an "extra-layer" from the viewpoint of damage and temperature etc.  The game stores what order things are put on, so you can have a bracelet on over your sleeve, and then pull up the sleeve and put it back over the bracelet (once creatures start eyeing you as a target to rob, this might come in handy).

However, from the graphics viewpoint, pants currently replace the leg texture.  All that garbage I've posted recently about item deformations and frills refers to this situation -- if you want the pants to appear as something other than skin tight, I guess there are three choices.  You can use a regular deformation of the human leg model, with the pants texture (this is the same as the distortions that make some of the faces appear fatter than others).  You could also add a "frill" (like hair) to make the pants spread out farther, and tell the frill to turn the obscured leg triangles off.  Or, and I haven't thought this through yet, you could hook an item model (like a sword blade -- something that isn't based on the creature model) into the creature model -- this is somewhat like the frill method, but the model stands alone.

For instance, think of something like a fancy helmet or a giant shoulder-spike pauldron thingy.  These wouldn't work with deformations, because the skin would stretch with them on the uncovered portions.  Frills might not be ideal (although they could be made to work) because the item wouldn't be able to easily stand on the ground in its fixed shape -- this isn't a problem for pants because they would become distorted on the ground anyway (and probably just be displayed as a rectangle most of the time -- folded pants).  Therefore, I'd want to use some kind of item model for helmets and pauldrons, but on the other hand, you'd want it to be morphable to fit the heads of various species, so you could have "helmets for humans" and "helmets for kobolds" that are quite different but shouldn't require me to make a million different models.  This would take me back to frills on the creature model (because helmets seem much like the current hair, and pauldrons would be like giant pointy shoulder hair!), but I'd then have to figure out how to extract that to make a stand-alone item on the ground.  This is why I didn't do hats first.  He he he.  Not 100% thought out, but I think all of the ideas needed are there.

Anyway, so yeah, there shouldn't be a slow-down or anything.  Bodies won't be rendered when they are covered by items.

[Toady One]

So...  flesh balls are mammals.  And the game decided to give them pants even though they have no legs.  Slight bug.  It just made them blue and changed their texture, but I mean, some sicko must have been walking around putting jeans on them or something.  They're used to being cut up, but this is degrading.

Anyway, after the last post I think maybe it will be good to let the clothing ideas stew for a day or two.  I'm going to do some other things on the list in the Plan
in the meantime.  Just minor stuff, although I might get projectiles started now that I have an item editor.  I still have to figure out how bows are going to work.  Containers are also planned for this release, but until then you'll probably have to just start with a bow in one hand and one arrow in the other.  Loser.

I'll try to use the inventory code to get rudimentary stuck-ins working, although I'm not going to handle the full ramifications of those until the combat release.  It gets really ugly (had them before, took them out).  For now, you won't be able to interact with them -- before you could pull them out or twist them to cause pain.  These options will return in the future.

First though, I think I'm going to smooth out the map meshes and fix a display bug with items and lying down.  Shouldn't take long.

[Toady One]

Okay, those two things are done.  Now let's see if I can get some 'Nam action going with bows prior to Christmas break.

[Toady One]

Actually, on that topic, how would people like to shoot things?  The long-winded way would be to press some button, select what you want to shoot/throw, then click on a target, like a spell.  Another way would be to hot-key various objects in your inventory.  Another way would be to set a primary object and click over to attack mode, and then just right-click like melee combat.  Maybe all of these should be available.  Other ideas?

[Toady One]

You can throw things now...  although I still have to do the physicsy part to make the angle appropriate for hitting the target.  Most of the time there are two solutions to that problem, one that arcs way up and one that is more direct.  And there's also the matter of the initial velocity.  So you should have two parameters to set, although for now it will just assume maximum velocity and smallest arc (least time to target).

Bows won't be too far after this.  I just have to figure out what the hell is going on there.  I guess if you put a string of flexible, elastic, tightened material between two ends of whatever, and whatever doesn't get in the way of whatever else, and the two ends are far apart, and whatever is flexible and elastic itself, then you can launch whatever else at whoever or something.

[Eagleon]

First post. This looks like a really interesting engine. Anyway, just so that you know (you may still want to use what you're thinking of), bows and crossbows don't normally use elastic materials. They use tension from a taut string of some kind.

An un-strung bow is usually straight, you have to bend the bow to an unelastic string and hold it in place, and it's the arms of the bow itself that propels a projectile when they snap forward. A common mistake, which apparently even engineers make sometimes (Saw a Junkyard Wars arbalest that tried to use a whole lot of very large rubber bands. *headscratch*).

Completely unrelated, but anyone have any troubles with an FMOD.dll file? For some reason my system errors appear in finnish, so I can't really post anything that would be of use, but if anyone knows something about this, please message me.

[Toady One]

Did you download the FMOD.dll file on the download page and put it with the EXE file?  I had kept them separate so that as new versions of the game come out, people don't have to constantly download the DLL.  However, since the game isn't released so often, maybe I should bundle them together.

Here's a link to the file:
FMOD.zip

Re: the bow, that makes sense.  I think I'll try to code it more along the lines of what you said, although the string does have to have some sort of property...  for instance, if you used a certain kind of metal wire, would it stretch out further and become more thin when you pull it back, and thereby increase in length (permanently) and so not increase the tension on the bow and thus not cause the bow to even bend in the first place?  A regular bowstring seems to have a certain fixed diameter that it has when it is not strung, and so can become taut (seeking to return to the original diameter -- this is what I mean by "elastic"), instead of just becoming more and more thin like a string of viscous liquid or jelly or metal or whatever, without any "memory" of its original width.  That's the sort of material I'm looking for.  Though you are right, I hadn't been thinking about the bend of the bow as much as I should have been.

[ December 13, 2003: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Eagleon]

I feel so silly. The game is working now. I normally don't do something like that, but I completely overlooked the big bold lettering "REQUIRES THIS DLL" below it in my eagerness to try it out.

Thanks for the help.  

[Toady One]

Actually, looking back at the download page, I should probably make those letters in a different color too.  There.  Now that shouldn't happen again!

Are you in Finland?  From what little information I have, it seem Rogue-like games are big over there, at least relative to other places.  There's a famous geometric measure theorist there too.  We like Finland.

Anyway, back to the game.  I think I'll be happy with this release when I can hunt a few rabbits down with a bow and make a hat out of them.

[Eagleon]

I'm in the US. My computer has several thousand idiosyncracies that drive me nuts, this being a recent one. C-alt-del, system and some program errors, and other things, are all in a different language that isn't Norwegian, because my brother says it isn't. I think my aunt said it was Finnish, but it might have been Polish. Heh.

I've tried out the game, and it is a very interesting concept, one which I think more games should use. I look forward to future releases. x.x Now I will stop spamming up this topic.   *goes to try to figure out the editors, no doubt crashing the game twenty times in the process*

[Toady One]

Man... that's weird.

I think there's a crash bug if you make a new model in that editor...  the editors are really quite frustrating as they currently stand.  Small changes to existing files will probably work out well most of the time...  say you wanted to make human male right arms three times as big, it shouldn't be hyper-difficult.

Found an article on bow-making online...  I'm sure there are several more, but it has what seem to be the basics.