tribbles

Yeah this integration would help a lot ! I'm looking forward to it!

Keldryn

No progress to report since the last update. I've been quite busy with real life (especially with the kids going back to school and having to adjust my schedule) and I'm also feeling somewhat over-extended at the moment.

I did update it to TPC 1.3.3 and I thought that everything was working fine, but the bow is completely broken; when you fire the arrow it damages you immediately, which is definitely not how it's supposed to work.

Once TPC 1.4 is in beta, I'll get back to working on this. I've already spent a LOT of time getting the weapons working with ORK and trying to work around TPC's rather inflexible item placement limitations. Item placement is supposed to be getting a re-work in 1.4, and there are also supposed to be changes to allow for more complex melee attack combos. I don't want to spend time integrating features that I know are getting a significant re-work in the next update. :-)

gimme

Ok that makes sense to wait then. Thanks for the info. I had the same happen to me as well with the bow. It's kinda fun watching an archer AI run toward me only to shoot himself in the face! :)

Keldryn

UPDATE:

I avoided saying anything about it in my last couple of updates, as I wanted to be certain of my decision, but at this point I feel like I need to come clean: I'm no longer using Opsive TPC for my own game project.

Before anybody freaks out, this does NOT mean that I'm abandoning ORKsive. I've made a public commitment to delivering certain functionality, and I intend to honour that commitment. At the very least, I will ensure that the 3B scenario (real-time/direct control, attacks initiated by TPC) is solid enough to extend and build upon.

It does mean that progress on it will be slower than it would be if I was still using TPC in my project, and ultimately the feature set won't be as extensive. I've already put a lot more time into developing ORKsive than I had thought it would take (which is virtually always the case in software development, LOL), and I could easily spend 3-4 times as many hours as I've already put into it trying to get a truly comprehensive integration working. At that point it just becomes a distraction from working on my own game (and far too much time spent on unpaid work).

However, I will make ORKsive a priority when TPC 1.4 is released. I will set aside my own game development for a week or two and focus on getting ORKsive ready for all of you to start using. When that is ready, I need everyone to try using it and let me know what is missing or what doesn't work properly. It is likely that you will still need to do a bit of custom coding in order to adapt ORKsive to work with your game -- but that was always going to be the case. (Disclaimer: it is possible that it might take a bit longer than 1-2 weeks if I have a lot of other stuff going on in real life.)

I will keep ORKsive up to date as new TPC versions are released, and I'll always be around to answer questions. And as I work on my own game, I may migrate some functionality over to ORKsive, as I'll be taking a similar approach in many aspects anyway. For those who are curious, I've gone back to using ootii's Motion Controller instead. Ultimately, Motion Controller was a better fit for what I wanted to do with my game and it integrates with ORK much more smoothly. If anybody wants to discuss that further, we can open up a new thread.

So please don't take this as "the sky is falling." It's not. I'm going to honour the commitment I made. It just won't have the benefit of being developed as part of my own game, which means it will get less of my time and be of lower priority. But as I said above, when TPC 1.4 is ready, I will make ORKsive a priority for a week or two so that you all have something to work with.

gimme

Thanks for letting us know. Ooti's motion controller is also integrated with TPC so you won't be going too far away ;). I may be using it myself on a future project. So whatever you learn I'd be interested. As for unpaid time, set up a PayPal. I'll donate and I'm sure other serious people who want Orksive will do so as well.

Keldryn

@gimme,

Behavior Designer has an (outdated) integration with Motion Controller; I've never seen anything for TPC.

You could use TPC on the player and MC for the AI characters I suppose, but I'm not sure why anybody would do that. ;-)

The ORK integration is (conceptually) very similar between TPC and MC, so I was able to port a lot of what I did for ORKsive right over. Thus I suspect that I'll be able to port new functionality that I create in the MC integration back to ORKsive.

(My mobile phone now recognizes ORKsive as a word!)

MC sidesteps the whole weapon/Inventory integration mess by virtue of not having those systems. :-) The flexibility of Motions makes it easy to have them activate based on what weapon is equipped in ORK. UMA is also easier because all of the components need to be configured via code (and TPC's components are full of serialized protected and private fields).

I hadn't even thought about donations. That would certainly help a bit. ;-)

bomobee

Dear Keldryn,

I read this again and again but I could not even realize how to integrate Opsive Third Person. I tried it many times but failed.

Can you please kindly help me if you can share this project as Unity Package or share your step by step guide of this perfect integration?

Please.

gimme

@Keldryn yeah man make a PayPal donation link I'll be happy to help. So far on my very basic programming experience I see how much stress and work it is to script especially to integrate stuff.

Hopefully Opsive releases 1.4 by January

gimme

"...and TPC's components are full of serialized protected and private fields)."

Yeah Opsive is on a tight operation lol. I don't even try to modify their code except for bugs correction that they post to make.

Behavior Designer integration is the only reason why I haven't made my own character system already but I am working on developing one. It's in the very early pre stages haha

jrock84

@Keldryn This is something I'm serious about. I'd be happy to contribute to the pot to get this project up and running again. I really need this integration to accomplish my project I'm working on. Thanks!

avantis

I try to use another approach

(Using the weapon in tpc)
Imagined you had in your ork inventory, a katana and a pistol and fist (yes as an object)
It is possible to launch an event when we equip a weapon?
Use a shortcut system on the interface to change weapons.
This would make visible the katana on the prefab (child object) for example.

And put the same action key to equip the Katana weapon of the Ork inventory and the real katana of TPC (here the figure "4".)
that is possible?

Then put on the real katana a damage dealer.
In theory it will work?


Small parenthesis:
TPC has an integration with playmaker and ork with playmaker. Both allow to interact on the inventory

GearedGeek

I don't understand why he hasn't released the scripts since he isn't working on this anymore...

Keldryn

Quick status update:

Unfortunately, it looks as though this TPC 1.4 version that I have discussed here will not come to pass. Justin is hard at work on TPC 2.0, and that version will support weapons added at run-time. He's hired someone else to maintain and update the TPC 1.x versions, but it looks as though the run-time weapon equipping will not be part of the 1.x update roadmap. It's possible that some 2.0 features will be ported over to a future 1.x version, but I haven't heard anything definite.

TPC 2.0 is expected sometime this year, but I highly doubt that it will be released before Fall.

So... yeah, that leaves this project in its current stalled state. I can't get the weapons working the way that they need to without making extensive modifications to the TPC source code. I can't distribute modified TPC source files, so my only option would be to include a set of instructions to follow for modifying the source files. I've already tried doing that, and it was a massive headache for all involved.

@avantis:

Imagined you had in your ork inventory, a katana and a pistol and fist (yes as an object)
It is possible to launch an event when we equip a weapon?

I don't believe that you can launch an event when you equip a weapon (or piece of armor). It probably wouldn't be too difficult to write a custom component that you place on the viewer prefab that executes an event in its Start() method.

Then put on the real katana a damage dealer.
In theory it will work?

If you intend to use ORK's damage dealers, then you can probably simplify the integration somewhat.

I elected not to use the damage dealers, as I wanted to use as much of TPC's weapon combat system as I could. The code where I apply the damage from TPC's weapons to the ORK combatant is inspired by looking at the damage dealer's source code. I found that when using damage dealers and ORK events, the weapon is "live" throughout the entire animation, which can be a problem. With the TPC melee weapons, the weapon is only "live" during a specific part of the animation. On top of that, it's much easier to synchronize sound effects, particle effects, the application of an impulse force on the target, etc with the animation when using TPC's system. It can also use object pooling for things like particle effects.

The primary roadblock with handling weapons has always been that TPC insists on having all weapons that a character can use set up on that character at design time. The solution that I came up with was to set up a "prototype" for each broad class of weapon (sword, two-handed sword, bow, pistol, etc) on the character and then attach an EquipmentViewer to the same object. Then I hide the mesh and collision on the base weapon object and "redirect" the combat system to use those on the weapon prefab displayed in the Viewer.

It's not very elegant and I still had some bugs to work out when switching between weapons.

@GearedGeek:

I don't understand why he hasn't released the scripts since he isn't working on this anymore...

I have both offered to share the scripts with anybody who contacts me privately and explained why I can't just link to them: there are several modified TPC source files that are needed for this to work, and I can't distribute those.

If you want the package, send me a PM and I can get the files to you.

avantis

I found with the "check equipment" I can know that it weapon I have. But I don't know how to change the walk run animation ... depending on the weapon.
I open another subject this is not ORKive.

Thank you Keldryn for all your work and your past time.

Keldryn

@avantis:

I found with the "check equipment" I can know that it weapon I have. But I don't know how to change the walk run animation ... depending on the weapon.
I open another subject this is not ORKive.

No, this is ORKsive, and this is another major reason why I was trying to get TPC's weapon system integrated with ORK.

In TPC, if you have a Sword equipped & drawn, then it will play animations from the "Sword Movement" blend tree instead of just the "Movement" blend tree. All of the weapon-specific animation overrides are handled by TPC. Its animator is convention-based, so you if you had different animations for jumping when holding a sword, they would go in a sub-state machine called Sword Jump, and the Jump ability would use these animations when you have a Sword equipped.

TPC takes total control of the animator on your character, so you pretty much have to do this within TPC's framework. This is true for any advanced character controller; whether you're using Opsive TPC, ootii Motion Controller, or Invector TPC, it's going to be the character controller that is in charge of the animator.