Roy_E_Brisby

I had to do it the ugly way though, with no access to a decompiler or the actual .dsf file I had to comb through the dxe file the hard way to find out how to do it

Found another bug The MP5 is unusable right now in 3rd person. We definately have to go through + hand tune a *lot* of cameras one by one after figuring out which is which. Assuming this is even the way we should go right now. Here's a sample : GRAW 1.20 - original screenshot is 1920x1200 (1.6 aspect ratio in game) scaled down to 1024x640 (hence the super clear AA look) http://img280.imageshack.us/img280/9858/screenshot31qf.jpg

I've hit a pretty significant wall unfortunately, so far only the "person" cam has done anything of significance in game. There's a catch22 of sorts going on as well, if you set the local_offset, it's what's breaking the camera while running + doing all sorts of other actions, but it does get you a nice, stable behind the back view. But if you set it via "distance", it doesn't track sideways movement very well. However running + doing various other animations are perfectly alined with the camera. I've figured out a few other controls, but they don't really help us in getting a good 3rd person camera. Ironically, most of the problems with the 3rd person camera can be solved via that 1st to 3rd person toggle button. If you have problems with one camera you can just toggle it back to first person + resume playing. Currently I have a pretty good Resident Evil 4 like camera going (over the right shoulder slightly) - the camera has to be pretty close to Mitchell to offset some of the other camera problems. Leaning is working. But still there are problems : 1. No crosshair while zoomed - this one definately needs a lot of work. Something is causing the crosshair to fade out while zoomed in - this is perhaps the most significant problem I have now since it affects gameplay pretty significantly. 2. Going prone causes the camera to freak out (this is largely due to the local_offset, possible fixes may include a compromise between local_offset + distance). I've uninstalled + reinstalled the game, and managed to play through so far 60% of level 1 in 3rd person mode (albeit with no zoom). It's definately a unique experience to say the least to play this way. Also I've started really appreciate the model work GRIN did on Mitchell + the others in a 3rd person view (it's very solid, and they animate very well). Ideally what I'd like to do for this is somehow add some animations to Mitchell (head idle animation, lowering of weapon so he doesn't walk around so "stiff" all the time) - just to make it a bit more natural looking a-la the xbox360 version. From what I can tell the lowering of the gun animation is already in the game (it's what happens when you try to peek around the corner but don't leave enough room for Mitchell to extend his rifle around the corner). and some of the other stuff might be idle animations that Kirkand + others go through while idle. There's still a *lot* of work to be done though. But it's actually looking fairly promising. I'll try + post some progress later (pics, maybe a vid).

Yeah I might go back to square 1 to explore other options. It seems kinda tedious to have to go through + set each individual camera to certain offsets. You can get a 3rd person camera via something like<controller distance>, but from what I can tell it breaks the lock on function behind the back somewhat, since it appears to separate the Mitchell model from the camera somewhat. Also 3rd person practically breaks all the in-game cinematics lol That might need some tweaking if we want this to be perfect. Some random stuff : ---------------- - need to fix the zoom function (currently in 3rd person if you zoom there's no crosshair available). From what I can tell by digging around the weapons files the zoom is simply setting the FOV to a tighter setting (25 or so for the red dot scope, 5 for the sniper scope). This is probably a bigger deal breaker than the Mitchell's head thing at this point since this directly affects gameplay. - I have a sneaking suspicion that the crosshair for the zoom function is disabled in a very similar way as Mitchell's head (I can't confirm this since I don't have a way to edit the .dsf files directly). - fix the running camera(s) : from what I can tell, there's a camera tied to running with a rifle, and a camera tied to running with a pistol. Something important to note is that Mitchell has two or three different running animations depending on what weapon he's holding + what position he's in. - leaning seems okay now on some of the test runs I've had with some newer settings. - a possible fix for cinematics in 3rd person can be to force it to a first person view during them. From what I can tell some of the set pieces were never meant to be viewed outside of a first person perspective (such as the plane where you jump out from - it's doesn't appear to be a complete plane model). - need to figure out what the world_offset setting does + whether or not it can help in fixing some of the views. - need to figure out what camera is which. So far the only confirmed camera that affects 90% of the game is the "person" cam.

Hi all, I'm curious as to whether or not it's possible to draw the default weapon crosshair (which disappears when you right click zoom) while in a zoomed state. I *think* there's something that hides the crosshair everytime you right click, and a GUI for the sniping weapon comes up instead. Poking around the various weapon files + swapping around the GUI for the various combat scopes haven't yielded a thing. Is it possible that the default crosshair is just set to a transparent color while zoomed in? If so, any ideas where I should look for that one?

Going to experiment + see if I can make that strategy hybrid GRAW :lol should be fun....

Great to hear guys, looking forward to seeing it. I restarted from scratch + figured out what exactly needed to be done to modify the camera location. For the most part if you just set the location_offset properly (on a camera to camera basis) you'll get a functional 3rd person cam. The drifiting in some of the previous cams was partially due to the "distance" setting actually. just setting the offset alone gives you a pretty stable 3rd person game cam. <controller> seems to be tied into the mouse movements somewhat. The tilt+ rotate function actually lets you scroll the mouse away from Mitchell like in the overhead map if you add it to the default cam (which is really weird).

Yeah I think I broke the one I handed out earlier :lol Sorry, I've been constantly changing how it works + haven't really made notes of different revisions. The new one I sent out in PM's seems a bit more stable, but it's broken while running . Coincidentally enough, it's the same problem you're describing with a weapon switch (the camera positions itself in a weird way), but it seemed to only happen while running here. There does seem to be "events" tied to certain actions that causes the camera to change (which is a BIG plus, since it potentially lets us tie a different camera to different actions - like setting up a "lean" cam or a different "sprint" cam). The trick now is figuring out what camera does what in the xml file. I'm still playing around with this current install, but I've deleted everything in my /local/English settings folder and am just playing around with one camera_settings.xml now. Going to see if I can do a better cap of the current version with the buggy running. I'll test out a weapon switch (with a rifle) first + foremost. Another thing of note is I've been working with a 1.6 aspect ratio - haven't seen what happens yet when you run it in a different resolution + not widescreen

all i have is the demo currently can i do it in the demo. Did you give a full instruction on how to do this in the xml files. I how it looks, and you figured out how to keep camera behind him. Can you tell me how you did this? Do i need any programs to do this, or can i just do all this in the xml files? A list for dummies would be very helpfull for me, thanks man. It's all done purely in the XML file. Least the adjustments I've been making to it has been purely through the XML file. I don't have immediate access to the modified camera xml file, but you can see the relevant parts of it in the other thread. The first version of the camera was entirely too loose, but if you tighten up the cylinder aspect it *should* follow properly as well. I took out all the other "mods" I had + the camera seemed okay still.

I posted up a small videoclip of where I left off in the other thread. It's slightly newer than the variation I posted where I pretty much burned out on - I found a fix to lock the camera behind Mitchell's position + have it track properly now. Still have to work out the lean function, crawling, zooming + sniping. Also need to figure out how to map a key where you can swing the camera over from the left shoulder to the right shoulder.

I made a really low quality vid of how far I got (tried to cut it down for file size considerations). It's pretty bad qualitywise, but you can see progress somewhat. The cylinder camera follows fairly well behind Mitchell now, and it's pretty responsive to camera motions + pans than the previous version. Leaning doesn't work very well in this version, and there are still bugs when going prone. But the camera tracks movement much better than the previous version. (this was recorded with the game running at 320x200, so if the crosshairs look gigantic it's a side effect of that) Hope this works. http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...82CC816349AB394

Final post(?) possibly. Well there's just too many problems involved in doing it this method : to really "fix" the problems with the Cylinder cam I suspect one would need to bind certain keys to camera controls. Such as binding an event to the lean buttons to set the camera appropriately : Currently leaning doesn't work at all, and the ones I posted up earlier were too dependant on camera location to be effective at all in actual gameplay. Or also binding an event to the crouch/prone buttons, so that the camera adjust accordingly to those actions. Also a button to set the camera to look over the left or right shoulder would be ideal. Much like how it's set up on the 360 version. The only positive out of this is that I've been able to find so far is that it's behind the back, and it's semi playable. Run/lean/prone glitches aside. There are still major tracking issues with this camera though, and judging by what I've tried + what's available merely from the camera_settings.xml, there may not be enough data in the camera_settings.xml to figure out a workaround for this (the answer probably lies in a different file). The funny thing is, there's almost enough pieces here to make a vastly different 3rd person game instead of the traditional 3rd person shooter. To anyone else trying this : there are a *lot* of camera controller variables already listed in the camera_settings.xml. In fact from what I can tell there's already another set of pre-defined 3rd person cameras already in there ( complete with a 0,90,180,270 degree viewpoints inside). All I did was tried to mix+ match certain pieces until something looked good. There was even a camera listed as test_third in there. There's probably another pre-defined camera in there somewhere along the lines of "behind" "distance" "cylinder" that may be even better. I'll try to check in if I find anything else, but for now I'm seriously burned out on this stuff :lol Here's where I left off : I know the cut + paste of the stuff I did earlier didn't work, but going to just try + cut + paste the relevant parts anyway. IIRC, I didn't touch the "person_in_blackhawk" camera at all, only the "person", "new_person" and "anim_cam" sections of the file. (this may not work due to a huge number of factors unfortunately, part of which may be due to me playing around with other minor parts of the game) I had messed around with the bundler compiler function to output certain things, if I get the time I'll try + test it again on a new install. <camera name="person" type="target"> <camera local_offset="-100 5 25"> <controller track_target="false" type="distance" distance="200" lerp="0.08"/> <controller track_target="false" type="height" height="0" lerp="0.08"/> <controller track_target="false" type="cylinder" radius="100" dir="0 0 1" lerp="0.8"/> </camera> <target local_offset="-100 5 25"> <controller type="distance" distance="0" lerp="0.5"/> </target> </camera> <!-- <camera name="person_in_blackhawk" type="target"> <camera> <controller type="distance" distance="0" track_target="false" lerp="1.0" /> </camera> <target local_offset="0 0 0" > <controller name="person_target" type="distance" distance="0" lerp="1.0"/> <controller name="person_up" type="up_vector" ref_object="0" lerp="1.0"/> </target> </camera> --> <camera name="new_person" type="target"> <camera> <controller type="distance" distance="200" track_target="false" lerp="0.9" max_distance="300"/> </camera> <target local_offset="0 0 0" > <controller type="behind" distance="200" lerp="0.9"/> </target> </camera> <camera name="anim_cam" type="target"> <camera> <controller type="distance" distance="200" track_target="false"/> </camera> <target local_offset="0 0 0"> <controller type="behind" distance="200" /> </target> </camera>

One more for the road : Leaning in this version is effectively a "cheat" around the problem of an ineffective lean. Since there's no toggle to go from over the right shoulder to over the left shoulder, you have to position Mitchell manually in a leaning position and hope that the camera adjusts with him. When leaning in 3rd person, it's only the Mitchell model that's leaning. The camera is still a simple "cylinder" cam behind him slightly, and depending on Mitchell's location relative to the camera it will still block line of sight when leaning occasionally. It's probably a bit unclear from the way I've typed it out. Think of it this way - It's a third person camera, behind Mitchell. The camera can be panned around by the mouse. Mitchell has the freedom to move x number of steps sideways before the Camera will track his movements. The target reticle is relatively static in the center of the screen, Mitchell has some freedom to move left + right strafing without moving the camera, only after a certain point does strafing with Mitchell actually cause the camera to follow him Currently Mitchell will move slightly out of the camera before the camera will adjust to him again. This is due to the camera being still largely detached from an immediate "behind" view of him" For non-widescreen users, this is a bigger problem, since I suspect Mitchell will move completely off the screen and thensome before the camera will react properly. I'm *hoping* this problem can be adjusted by values in the Cylinder control.

Noted about the head thing, thanks. It's ashame that the workaround isn't working for 1.16. Just had a horrible thought :lol What if the reason the code in the other thread was crashing was because of different versions (1.10 vs. 1.16) Cripes might have to go back to square 1 with a 1.10 game to get it right :lol

SCRATCH that : setting the "height" tag seems to break leaning somewhat. Maybe a combination of local_offsets + a controller would fix this problem. --------------- Yeah lol it's late... I'll see if I can dump the files in my entire local/english folder somewhere maybe for DL. I found a fix for the height problem while running : <camera name="person" type="target"> <camera local_offset="-100 0 25"> <controller track_target="false" type="distance" distance="200" lerp="0.08"/> <controller track_target="false" type="height" height="10" lerp="0.08"/> <controller track_target="false" type="cylinder" radius="100" dir="0 0 1" lerp="0.8"/> </camera> <target local_offset="-100 25 25"> <controller type="distance" distance="0" lerp="0.5"/> </target> </camera> If you set the height value with local_offset, it apparently causes some tracking issues. adding a <controller track_target="false" type="hight" height="10" lerp="0.08"/> seems to be the preferred way of dealing with this stuff. edit - I removed a copy + paste of my entire camera_settings.xml ( it kinda demolished the thread). I'll send off a few in PM's if you guys want to work with it