GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[SubDrag]

Heh, ok I fixed it. Actually GE mode was ok, I guess I just forgot to also do PDs.

[MRKane]

Whelp I just seem to be hitting odd thing after odd thing Actually that's been my entire month to be totally honest.

So I've started off doing a basic Action block requiring the guard to walk around (as the antagonist in the first mission objective). So essentially he'll be walking from a preset in one room, wait (play an animation if you will) and then to another preset. Shake. Dry. Repeat. If he spots the player the first objective is failed. Simple enough right?

Issues:
-Playing an animation (at least the one I've tried here) causes the guard to vanish
-How can you make a guard "wait" in the action block coding? I figure it'll be a smart little sub-block that I can JAL in and out of

Here's the present setup:


See, this hurts me on a personal level as I use to be so good at this!

EDIT: I just made some other crazy behaviour! Using the "walk to preset" command has NPCs sometimes failing at pathfinding, and thus walking in circles around nodes that they should be following along a path XD. Oh the joys lol
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

(I'm getting 403 Forbidden whenever I try to use a "colon" character in my post. How and who do I contact to report this?)

MRKane wrote:

Issues: -Playing an animation (at least the one I've tried here) causes the guard to vanish -How can you make a guard "wait" in the action block coding? I figure it'll be a smart little sub-block that I can JAL in and out of

The animation? Your parameters are all wrong. The default INI should have some info, but here's my data;

Code:

000B.XXXX.YYYY.ZZZZ.WWww.GG.SS Guard does animation. XXXX = Animation offset into table (ex. swirling, running, holding gun, etc, sent list before) YYYY = Start Point (0000 is start) ZZZZ = End point (FFFF to play all frames) GG = Guard ID SS = Animation Speed (02 normal, 01 double speed, 04 slow speed) WWww = 2 Control bytes First WW (flags) 01 - mirror animation 02 - ?? (cancels no translation flag) 04 - loop/hold last frame (required for reverse flag) 08 - play sfx associated with animation (e.g footsteps) 10 - default pose after animation has completed (does not work with looping animations) 20 - translation multiplier x 4 40 - no translation 80 - reverse animation (only for looped animations) Second ww (acceleration into new animation) 00 = instant 10 = typical quick blend FF = 4 seconds to fully tween into new animation

As a quick guess without testing or double-checking, you might want:
0040.0000.FFFF.0010.FD.02
...so it starts at frame 0 and lasts until anim's end, has no flags but tweens in 0x10 units of time, and plays at the normal speed of 02. I'm sure you could've figured it out yourself, but I wanted to try giving the answer and explaining it.





Make a guard wait? You can either make a cycle counter loop (0x3C cycles per second) to wait a specific amount of time, or do a loop with action 000C (if guard wasting time) to Return until the anim ends.
I would try making a small action block just to randomize an animation, then immediately 'return from subroutine' and wait with action 000C for the anim to end. If the 000C loop is in the subroutine, then the Jo detection code would need to be in two action blocks at once, which can be avoided.

It won't return to the original action at the point of leave, but I'm fairly certain 000C only passes when an animation from 000B is playing. Having it at the top should work.




The pathfinding things I'm less fluent in, but might be because the doorways or hallways are too narrow. Or, they just like to be finicky and you gotta change something up or work around it.
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

Hey thanks! I hit that block first and simply threw it in - it reminded me of the methods in Goldeneye. I'll try it again tomorrow and see if I can get it going.

First time is always the worst right? lol

EDIT: Almost...

So it'd seem I've got to call the animation and then give it time to complete, by dropping into a "time wastage loop", but the OC "guard wasting time) command doesn't appear to be a suitable break clause. Is there any way to see into the action blocks that Rare has made to see how they've done it?

EDITEDIT:
Gave up and used cycle counters. Are cycle counters per-unit or is there one global counter for everyone? More than likely I'll use it later in the level, but this could be easily sidestepped by "removing" the guard that's doing the walkpath.
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

MRKane wrote:

So it'd seem I've got to call the animation and then give it time to complete, by dropping into a "time wastage loop", but the OC "guard wasting time) command doesn't appear to be a suitable break clause. Is there any way to see into the action blocks that Rare has made to see how they've done it?

A suitable break clause? I'm not sure what that means, but I know 000C works the way I described because I've utilized it a number of times. I'll post here an overly simplified version of a custom idle block I use, in case it's the syntax you're hung up on.

Code:

000215 Resume If Return Value Loop Met 0002 (15)  000B032F0000FFFF0010FD02 Guard Does Animation (Guard [whatever called it]) Skedar itch head with leg 000200 Resume If Return Value Loop Met 0002 (00)  0003 Leave The Routine, But When Return Continue From Spot  000C0A If Guard is Wasting Time, Return Value Loop (Unconfirmed) 000C (0A)  0008 Jump to Return Subroutine 00020A Resume If Return Value Loop Met 0002 (0A)  000100 Go To Beginning, Then Return Value Loop 0001 (00) 0004 Terminator

MRKane wrote:

Gave up and used cycle counters. Are cycle counters per-unit or is there one global counter for everyone? More than likely I'll use it later in the level, but this could be easily sidestepped by "removing" the guard that's doing the walkpath.

Cycle counters are used so much in vanilla, I'm very sure each guard and 10XX action block gets their own. The only global counters are the on-screen countdown and the seconds since the level started. You should be able to have multiple guards using cycle counters.
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

Hmmm...I'm sure that's how I set it up. I might strip it back and see about doing things exactly as you've described. Using the cycle counter does mean that I can control how long the character "waits" at a position (and thus not make it too difficult at least - I'm not about making anything hard, just fun).

I did have a stray thought a moment ago: can we control the slow motion effect from a 100X block? I'd imagine we'd have some fun with that!
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

MRKane wrote:

I did have a stray thought a moment ago: can we control the slow motion effect from a 100X block? I'd imagine we'd have some fun with that!

No, aside from some hypothetical zoinkity ASM magic, there's no action for triggering slow-mo. I don't recall it happening in a mission, and I doubt it's sitting around unused.
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

Admittedly it'd be seriously cool. I wonder if we could add an item to play inventory, and then trigger that item by code? I can't remember if we can do that, but I'll follow it up at a later date.

In the meantime I got the character walking from room to room and doing animations when they get to each point which is enough for me. I'll throw a block in handling what happens if the guard sees Jo and push onto some more complicated setup stuff

No doubt I'll be asking questions in less than a few days again lol
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

MRKane wrote:

Admittedly it'd be seriously cool. I wonder if we could add an item to play inventory, and then trigger that item by code? I can't remember if we can do that, but I'll follow it up at a later date.

There's an action for checking a gadget in use, but it's intended for the X-Ray Scanner and those kinds of things. I should test if it happens to check for more than just gadgets.
Also, the invisibility cloak is handled through "guard bits 3" or so, and activating it can cloak the player, but turns off immediately either because there's no ammo or the proper gadget isn't on. I should test that and the other bits in case other things are in there.
I should just get back to testing thing game in general.

Edit: The combat pills aren't considered a gadget, so I wouldn't get too excited.
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

Conclusion (after a few days work): Stealth just doesn't work in Perfect Dark. It's not fun (at least in my opinion) so I guess we're going to have to shoot up the place!
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

MRKane wrote:

Conclusion (after a few days work): Stealth just doesn't work in Perfect Dark. It's not fun (at least in my opinion) so I guess we're going to have to shoot up the place!

GE and PD definitely aren't stealth games, but they at least have some mechanics of it. You know how in dD:Investigation you unlock the weapons cache by hitting that monitor without being seen? The way one does that is the extent of how PD can do stealth. Wait for the sound of the guard's footsteps to pass, go through a hidden hallway, shoot a guard's head through a door's window... No designated stealth game does it that way unless it's Extreme difficulty or something.

That being said, I say you should make the stealth optional at least. Add in some plausible bonus weapon for going through the trouble? Also, I wanted to suggest adding in a second or two grace period before fully detecting Jo...might be a bit tricky, but it's possible and makes stealth more bearable.

(Kinda unrelated to this, but PD also has lights, which doesn't help stealth, but does let you undo some of a guard's alertness)
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

It seemed like a good idea on paper, but in practice having to sneak into a house, collect cell keys and a specific gun just slowed the pace of the game down and it really was a bit of a "fail state". Potentially I could have it so that if you're spotted more guards show up, but gameplay wise...that's kinda what I want to happen (not to mention more fun) and so I dropped some guards in, blasted them, then concluded that that truly was the way to do it lol.

I'd also like to be milling through this stuff at a pretty decent rate instead of getting hung up on something for ages so have concluded that "Grindhouse Western" might be a much better premise.

Moving along: Has anyone figured out how to make the aiming operate like a modern game yet? It was always one of my biggest gripes in these games.

Also: importing path sets from obj seems to have an inversion on the x axis Now in saying that I am totally sure that nobody does that...
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

MRKane wrote:

Moving along: Has anyone figured out how to make the aiming operate like a modern game yet? It was always one of my biggest gripes in these games.

You mean the mouse injector by that carnivorous snake? or more like dual stick aim? Some of the 2.x controls are dual stick, technically...?
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

Lazlo52 wrote:

You mean the mouse injector by that carnivorous snake? or more like dual stick aim? Some of the 2.x controls are dual stick, technically...?

Sorry that was terribly articulated on my part!
When using the aim function in GE or PD the cursor is free to move across the screen lightgun style and only moves the view point when pushed to the edge of the screen, but with most other shooters the aim is locked to the center of the screen. I figure there's a number in there defining the edge of the screen where it starts to move the view, and if we could track that down we could modernize the aiming in both games.

As far as dual stick controls go: I modified a project to convert a PS2 controller to N64, and do actually have it playing dual stick with standard 1.2. It's surprisingly natural and odd at the same time as you've only got 8 axis movement on the left essentially.
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!