SS2 motions of dying AIs that need a fix

[67435762016aevoodoo47]

Tags: °SS2 °request

I have only very hazy understanding of this area, but anyway, it seems like the slain AI's offset from the ground is governed by (dying) motions, and while most slain enemies end up in a visually acceptable position, others end up visibly floating off the ground, looking just bad. good example is the assassin, he ends up floating almost one game unit when falling face down - this means one more corpse would fit into the space with no problems.

Pretty sure that the only thing that can really be done with the death motions is to try and make them as 'flat' as possible with regard to its resting points so they are all at the same z axis height, and get that Z position on the motion zeroed relative to the ground. The motion editor is not very good for fine work though unfortunately. If that has been done they're as good as can be.

I'd presume that the (non) clipping is because there is some primitive mesh collision detection (or use of the pathfinding db perhaps) going on when a motion is performed, in general that would be a sensible approach to stop oddities like the AI falling through the floor or even with half their body through a wall, it's only in the case of death motions that it isn't.

it would be great to have a set of fixed motions that would make this issue less profound.

-Cyborg Assassin (-1541, motion name: ninja, death positions: 2, floatage factor: 0.95 landing face down, 0.5 landing face up)
-Arachnightmare (-189, motion name: arachnid, death position: 1, floatage factor: 0.5)
-OG-Grenade (-176, motion name: grunt, grenade, death position: 1, floatage factor: 0.4)
-OG-Shotgun (-175, motion name: grunt, shotgun, death position: 1, floatage factor: 0.5)
-OG-Grenade (-176, motion name: grunt, grenade, death position: 1, floatage factor: 0.3 - could use 0.4, but that will make the pipe clip into the ground quite obviously)
-Midwife (-179, motion name: Midwife, death position: 2, floatage factor: 0.7 landing on face, 0.45 landing face up) - the left palm will be clipping into the ground if lowered by 0.7 when facing down.

Rebirth specific issues;
-Hybrid's pipe and shotgun clips to the ground after being slain


the shitty thing I can see already is that Rebirth will need a different set of fixes than the orig models, so I cannot say whether attempting to fix this will be worthwhile or not - all that can be done is to fix a couple of motions and see how things work out, then we will have to decide.


more later, just making this topic so I won't forget - also, if someone has any useful info about motions (or about this particular issue), feel free to post.

[6743576201a8aOlfred]

Uhm, now can I test it?
And how do I know which *.mi name it is?
I know there are theese *.mos files. But don't know what "motion name: ninja, death positions: 2" corresponds to.

[6743576201befvoodoo47]

motion name is the name Shocked assigns to the AI archetype. death positions is just number of death positions the creature can end in - the spider only has one, so no matter how you kill it, the corpse will always look the same. the assassin has two, so it can fall face up, or face down.

hopefully someone else can fill in the rest.

[6743576201cf1Olfred]

And how did you test the floating stuff?

[6743576201e37voodoo47]

I load the game (command1.mis) via Shocked, kill the AI, once the death motion is done I open the console (shift+;), type set game_mode_backup 0, return to the editor mode (alt+e if you are using Shocked basic), and try to floor the corpse.

[6743576201fd5Olfred]

It took me some time to even figure out what was wrong. And at some point I even considered that the motions are not at fault.
But finally I found out what needs to be done.

The face down looks much better now.
But the face up is still a bit floaty. It seems his ass is blocking the way and therefore the upper part of the body is floaty.
I could change the whole animation to make his ass stick out less if that is wanted.

[6743576202114Primitive Primate]

Stupid ass

[6743576202250voodoo47]

I see only very slight improvement when falling on the face, the assassin still floats about 0.60 game units (vs 0.90 orig). it would be great to get this under 0.1 units.

//now I get only 0.6 even with the orig motions? hrrmmm will have to test this some more. //now it's 0.9 again. weird.

[67435762023d2Olfred]

It is due to the strange behaviour of the engine. It is possible to have the mesh float (which makes sense in some way). But somehow it is impossible to make it clip into the ground.
So whenever the mesh hits the ground only with a tiny corner, it stops.

Also when you have some stuff laying under him, even when it's only a small ammo clip, it will land ON TOP of the ammo clip. So that may be what you have in difference.

Second Also, don't pay attention to the "floor me" button. It floors the bounding box of the mesh. But the bounding box is soleily based on the base T position of the model, nothing else.

[6743576202555Zygo]

Pretty sure that the only thing that can really be done with the death motions is to try and make them as 'flat' as possible with regard to its resting points so they are all at the same z axis height, and get that Z position on the motion zeroed relative to the ground. The motion editor is not very good for fine work though unfortunately. If that has been done they're as good as can be.

I'd presume that the (non) clipping is because there is some primitive mesh collision detection (or use of the pathfinding db perhaps) going on when a motion is performed, in general that would be a sensible approach to stop oddities like the AI falling through the floor or even with half their body through a wall, it's only in the case of death motions that it isn't.

[67435762026e4Olfred]

Yeah, for the moment I was only repositioning the location and only smoothened the movement out to fit the new position, nothing else.
But when I move the location clearly into the ground, the mesh still won't clip into the floor. (I was trying to clip his ass into the ground).

And I use Blender to edit the motions. I couldn't stay sane using this motion editor which is available in the ShockEd Toolkit.
In case you missed it, someone made a Blender Toolkit which also comes with a script which lets you convert motion files into *.bvh files and vice versa.

[6743576202abdOlfred]

I see only very slight improvement when falling on the face, the assassin still floats about 0.60 game units (vs 0.90 orig). it would be great to get this under 0.1 units.

I checked again and for me falling on the face looks good.
Don't pay any attention to what the editor says, just trust your eyes. And for me it looks good enough.

Also I worked a bit on the falling on back animation. It will differ from the original now but now ne lays closer to the floor with his limbs.
Again, just look if it's good, don't check with the editor, you will get bullshit and the game never will floor it like the editor does.

I'm still trying to figure out what the engine does when someone dies. My current assumption is that the first thing that touches the floor will provide the levitation of the whole model.
When you kill the enemy on top of an object, and then remove it, it won't fall any further.

[6743576202beevoodoo47]

no matter what I do, the assassin corpse still is very floaty.

[6743576202d27Olfred]

Then you are doing something wrong.
Where do you put the files?
I have them in ..\SystemShock2\DataTempMods\motions\

And make sure you don't kill him near a bench, the plants or somewhere else he could "land" on.
That makes him float because he didn't touched the ground but something else.

[6743576202f33voodoo47]

not quite sure what was going on, but re-unzipped everything and looks like it's working now. I hate random stuff.

so yeah, the new motions are much better than the old ones, no more floatiness (actually, his left hand clips into the ground a tiny little bit, but you really need to know this to be able to spot it). but, as expected, Rebirth does not like them too much - this means should the fixed motions are to become a standalone mod (or part of SCP), the orig motions will have to be added to Rebirth to prevent issues (strangely enough, the Rebirth assassin works quite well with the orig dying motions).

[6743576203cdaOlfred]

The whole animation system of the DarkEngine is kinda strange.
On the rebirth models the joints differ from the orignal ones, that's why they behave differently.
Also the model is much bigger and beefier. So even though it still floats a bit, it is less apparent.

[6743576203e79voodoo47]

yes.
yes.
yes.

so, are going to take a shot at the spider as well?

// before I forget, the Rebirth pipe hybrid could use a custom motion as well, his pipe clips into the ground almost completely when slain. shotgun guy ditto - I'll start adding stuff to the first post.

[67435762043c6Olfred]

so, are going to take a shot at the spider as well?

Of course.

// before I forget, the Rebirth pipe hybrid could use a custom motion as well, his pipe clips into the ground almost completely when slain.

Only the rebirth?
Don't really feel like fixing much for rebirth

[67435762044e8voodoo47]

I'll just make the list as always, feel free to fix/not fix as you prefer.

[674357620460fPrimitive Primate]

People still use Rebirth? Breaks the immersion for me.

[67435762047b0voodoo47]

while it's a bit of an acquired taste, yeah, Rebirth is popular (systemshock.org's most downloaded mod if memory serves, 50k+ downloads), the extremely lowpoly looks of the orig model set and unavailability of any other complete AI mesh replacement mod contribute to this by no small means.

the true-to-original, higher poly AI model set request is posted on this subforum, all we can do is hope that someone will take upon the task someday.

[6743576204958Olfred]

My spider senses are tingling

About the Grunts, somehow I have two entries in the grunt.mos files when it comes to dying motions.
One got one animation, the other ones have more.
I am confused.

// Nevermind, I just overlooked something.

[6743576204ac7voodoo47]

maybe there are some unused motions? afaik, hybrids should alway fall on the face.

the spider is better - the original floatage has been about halved, but would go for more, unless there is some technical problem. anyway, the current floatage sits at about 0.2 units, and anything lower than that is hardly noticeable when ingame, so it's up to you.

[6743576204bf7Olfred]

Doesn't look floaty at all for me.

Inside the grunt.mos the Pipe hybrid has 3 death animations.

Code: [Select]

schema Crumple 0, Pipe 0
MType  GroundAction
TimeScale 0.9
XYZScale  0
motion ogpdiefw     0  500
motion ogpdie2     0  500
motion ogpdie03     0  500