Off Topic Productions

Hi all, requesting some feedback here:

As you no doubt know, the HDTP MJ12 troop mesh makes the game crash because it has some buggy anims. I have now managed to track down exactly what the problem is, and it is essentially "the last six frames of the entire series are mysteriously gone".

No idea where, when, or why. Go go magic unreal modelling.

This means that the final frame of the shocked anim is missing, and all 5 frames of "sitbreathe" are missing. Attempts to call those anims lead to the game trying to tween the entire mesh into a singularity and DX explodes.


I have an old version of the MJ12 mesh which DOES have those anims, but (ahahhaha) does not move his mouth when speaking (all the frames for mouthO, mouthU, mouthF etc are just 'blank, neutral expression').

SO. At the moment I have simply turned a 4 frame shocked anim into a 3 frame shocked anim (the fuckers tween it all anyway) which looks ok in-game, and made them simply ....not breathe, when they're sitting. Yeah, ok, this does look a trifle creepy if you pay attention, but I figure "watching MJ12 troops sitting" is not something many people spend a lot of time doing, in game.

It's that or "troops can breathe while sitting, but are all mysteriously expert ventriloquists".

So, of those two options, which would you prefer?

A) Troops don't breathe while sitting, but are otherwise normal
B) Troops can breathe while sitting, but are facially inert ventriloquists


I'm working on the premise of "A" at the moment.

DDL wrote: I'm working on the premise of "A" at the moment.

Most certainly.

Option A, yes. There is no way to export the Mouth anims from corrupt model and import them to the old model?

A, without a doubt. Only the most prying eyes will even notice the lack of breathing. Personally it's something I've only ever noticed on animal meshes anyways. Glad a feasible solution could be found considering how unforgiving, ahem, wonderful the Unreal Engine can be.

A, no question. I know it won't suit people (witness the griping about Anna's lips not moving. At least she's there in the new texture), but a working MJ12 troop mesh with a limitation is much better than nothing at all.

People griped about anna's lips not moving?

In other news, anna's lips don't move?? Fucksake.

Ok, I'll add that to the list of "WHY THE FUCK IS THIS HAPPENING" stuff. Any other characters that don't speak?

DDL wrote:People griped about anna's lips not moving?

Yep, other projects are completely disabling the HDTP model because of it too. Bit extreme for something that isn't breaking the game. Another "for instance"

Heh. Specially when there's an actual menu option specifically fulfilling that function.

Ah well. I do appear to have an anna mesh with working lip anims, but the fact that I haven't used it probably means it has some terrible gaping flaw, like a weapon triangle located in the forehead or no hands or something, but I'll have a look.

Is there a workaround for this without having to disable the entire thing? Because it crashes my game completely, and I know I'm going to be swarmed in MJ12 from here on out.

Seegtease wrote:Is there a workaround for this without having to disable the entire thing? Because it crashes my game completely, and I know I'm going to be swarmed in MJ12 from here on out.

No, disabling the MJ12 trooper is the workaround. You'll just get the vanilla texture, but the game works. If you wish to see the texture you can always enable it on levels where the MJ12 trooper isn't seated (that's the bug). But once you hit a level where one is sitting, you'll get the crash again.

ggrotz wrote:No, disabling the MJ12 trooper is the workaround. You'll just get the vanilla texture, but the game works. If you wish to see the texture you can always enable it on levels where the MJ12 trooper isn't seated (that's the bug). But once you hit a level where one is sitting, you'll get the crash again.

Yeah, I figured that out. At first, I tried disabling it, but it didn't work. I realized I never disabled it, because even though it was set to false, I had the "all on" option set. It should really automatically disable that if I change any manually.

Hah. Hey, if you want to write the window code for that, I'll incorporate it. DX has really fucking awful window code, and writing it is a massive pain in arse. I just went for the easiest and least suicide-inducing method I could manage.

DDL wrote:Hah. Hey, if you want to write the window code for that, I'll incorporate it. DX has really fucking awful window code, and writing it is a massive pain in arse. I just went for the easiest and least suicide-inducing method I could manage.

Fair enough. For a simple solution, it might be better to just do away with the select all option, since as it is, it's kind of awkward.

Any update on the bugfixing on HDTP?

Yeah, sorry: been a tad hectic (see below).

Generally speaking, my plans to release an updated build have thus far (without fail) precipitated a massive hardware failure. This time has sadly not been an exception.

Last time it was my entire desktop going to hard disk heaven (and, I shortly after discovered, RAM heaven and motherboard heaven too: box was fuucked), this time it was my laptop. Hard disk again: 6 or 7 year-old laptop running windows? Yeah, it was about due.

"BUT DDL," I hear you cry, "DID YOU NOT MAKE BACKUPS?"

....hahaha oh fuck yes. SO many backups. So that's ok. Getting my laptop back into working condition with a spangly new hard disk (it's still a shit laptop, but it runs ok) gave me a chance to make sure that

A) the latest build works on a clean install of DX (it does), and ascertain whether
B) the latest build works with ggrotz's installer (it does, and the installer is really pretty damn sweet).

So all told, it wasn't actually that much of a disaster.

I am planning to upload the latest packages uh..fuck it, today, and will send a link to ggrotz for installerification and bjorn for revision stuffs, and hopefully both those guys can have a quick mooch around and make sure Anna doesn't have anything critically wrong with her (she can speak now, but fuck knows if that means she can't do something else: viewmodeladd testing seems to play through her full set of anims without borking, and she holds a gun in the right place, so....fingers crossed), and then I'm hoping ggrotz will upload the new package to moddb.

Sound like a plan?