Raydium 3D Game Engine

Salut!

Firstly, French isn't my first language so i have to do this in english.
Secondly, i want to say Bonjour!

I have made the switch from CrystalSpace to Raydium for the simple fact that Raydium is so powerful yet so easy to use. I had a network game running in 20 min - CrystalSpace, still waiting.

My question deals with Character animations. I have a little problem. I am trying to create a character to use but i cannot seem to find a decent exporter for Blender. I tried using the Exporters provided by Raydium in the source, but the MD2 exporter isn't working for my animations.

I have been looking at the "anim.c" file and so far i understand and can apply the code to my project. HOWEVER, i am finding the creation of animated characters difficult.

Does Raydium only support animated MD2 files (or the tri version 2 format)?
Would Cal3D be a possibility?

I only ask as i have yet to find any good (english) documentation on how to create good animated characters for Raydium.

Also, another question. Is the "Normal Mapping" of textures applied in Blender exported to tri file format. I can Export my map but i need to go back and manually add "texture.tga#texture_n.tga" to every line after the map is exported.

Again, these questions stem from a lack of reading or resources on my part. Any help would be great. Thank you.

And if the answers already exist, then i am sorry but i looked.

Hi, welcome
Quite interesting, Is your game freesoftware? Can you put a few screenshots?

About the animations: It is a pending task on raydium, currently only a MD2 file support is working but we have plans to add a new system. I suggested Xfennec to add milkshape support but currently i have really don't have so much free time and i'm focussing myself in littler tasks.
Anyway it's time to begin a discussion about animations in raydium (better in a new Thread)

About the textures: As far as i know the textures are not included in the tri file when exported, so you have to manually edit the file. Maybe in the last revision Xfennec added this feature but i don't think so. Surely is a pending task on Raydium.

You can see the roadmap of raydium/mania drive here: http://wiki.raydium.org/wiki/RoadMap

Hi and welcome, Phorem !

As vicente said, right now Raydium only provides a very basic mesh animation support ("morph animations"), using Blender MD2 importer (each step of the animation use one frame in Blender) and our export script.

Again, vicente is right, skeletal support was planned (is it still on the todo ?) to provide a much powerfull animation system, and we must have a serious talk about this (BVH, MS3D, ...)

About normal mapping, the current Blender exporter does not detect triangles with normal maps, so this information must be added manually after the import (with a "search & replace" in a text editor, or even "sed" if you're using Linux). If you send me a small sample of such model, I can try to improve the exporter (if I can find the time ).

First off, thanks for the replies.
I know Raydium is still young and adding features - i was just wondering where animations for characters were at.



Vicente, Yes, the game will be GPL and yes screen shots are on the way - after this weekend hopefully. Oh, and the game art will be creative commons.
It will also only have a Linux build as i have to find a Winshit computer to do the win32 build on.


That is what i have been doing in Kate (love KDE). It works fine and find/replace takes like 2 seconds - no complaints here.

One more question and i'll let this thread die.

What about collision detection with the current characters? I mean, i have seen (and studied) the ragdoll demo, but i was wondering how that would apply to a character in a game?

See, my whole point is to have (literally) people holding Clubs, or a MorningStar (morgenstern for you Germans). I would like to have collision detection done on the "Meshes" if it all possible. So when the character is hit with a blunt object or an Arrow (or a bullet) that a "Ragdoll" sequence would be possible. Or, in some cases, have the Arrow remain stuck in the character until the health has hit zero.

I don't know if that is possible, but i was hoping for a little feed back.

p.s. - i will look over Cal3D this weekend and see if i can get something started for Raydium.

You want to create something a bit like "Rune" or I'm completely wrong ?

If collisions and contacts between players, human or not, is (one of) the main part of the gameplay, the usual way to handle physics for characters is probably not the best answer:
Many FPS, for example, use an approximation of the character mesh with a capsule of a sphere (as we do with test6). In your case, it may be interesting to try a more accurate model, as the traditional "hitboxes", even for the "mace" :
http://img125.exs.cx/img125/1318/source_hitboxes.jpg
It allows you to detect accuratly hits, and you can still use a sphere for ground (and walls).

Sure, the only problem here (again) is that you can't do this without sekeletal animation support in the engine

Almost (Rune was a sweet game). Mostly Melee combat but set in the 1300's (Europe that is). So, Castles, Horses, Mace's, Bow&Arrows, Crossbows would be just some of the examples.

I thought about hit boxes and such but i wasn't sure about the Skeleton support in Raydium.



I guess that answers my question

So, in order to have hit boxes in Raydium, we would need something like Cal3D support?

If we make a good skeleton system a lot of features could be done avoiding mesh collision in a way like:
If the bone of the hand of the player A is closer than 5 units than the head bone of the player B, then the player B has received a good punch.