Roll Call Thread - BattleTech Fan Game Developers

So who do we have in here so far?I told someone who might be interested about this, don't know if he checked it out yet. He's working on his own project, so who knows if we'll see him.

I have a concept artist working drawing some stuff right now, but he has not joined the IndieDB member page yet. He said the next time he gets the chance he will.

Other than that, I have been asking around if some people will help. I can also post a job description on here for a volunteer position.

I am currently lucky enough to have had someone volunteer to help me with modeling new mechs for my Mech3 mod. He's doing a great job. As we get closer to being done with what we're doing I'll ask him if he wants to join us.

Alright, sounds nice! Any screenshots of things he has made? I was really scared about not being able to get a decent 3d artist that would be willing to help.

I haven't seen anything by him that would be of the kind of detail you'd expect on a project like mwo or mwll, but he's been doing his own project with the MC2 source code where he's taken the MC2 meshes and has applied Mech3 textures to them. For me, he's been doing an Atlas which we plan to exchange in Mech3 with the Annihilator. He's doing very good with those two projects but I don't know how good he actually is but he seems to know his way around 3ds max. Screens/links to follow...

Youtube.com

That Atlas we worked on together, I supplied the textures from Pirate's Moon and he applied them to the MC2 Atlas. I had him make several adjustments to the mesh to make it work. The original shoulders were too wide and huge, the hip and thumb guns were originally too small, the torso missile racks didn't work at first, the legs needed adjusting as well. I think we pretty much came up with the best looking "MechWarrior 3 Atlas" that could've been done, and maybe even the best looking Mech3 mech ever. I have high hopes we'll get it into the game. From there we'll do other replacement mechs. I'm thinking of replacing the Avatar with a Warhammer, maybe the Supernova with a Blood Asp, the Champion with a Rifleman. He has done several Mechs in MC2 with Mech3 textures applied...an Orion, Annihilator, Bushwacker, and Avatar. They look great. He's got videos of all of them on youtube.

Looks very good, but one question.

Why would you replace the mechs instead of just adding them?

Because I don't have the source code for Mech3 or PM., however I have tools that enable certain files to be edited. For Mechs there is a file called mechlib.zbd, which holds the meshes and texture scripts but the actual controls for adding mechs, I believe, is in the .exe, and as far as I know we can't edit that without the source. If you think it's possible I'd love to hear about it.

I don't know how good a programmer you are, but if you're interested in a little (haha) side project I'd love it if you dove into the mech3.exe to figure some things out. First thing would be how to activate dev tools that may be within the .exe, but need some kind of activation code. If you look at the materials files with something like PE explorer you'll see there are remnants of development GUI's (actual inactive gui's). It's always been a fantasy of mine to get those dev tools to work. Adding mechs and worlds is likely controlled by this dev program.

Generally .exe files are only for execution, but the Dev tools in the .exe seems interesting. I would assume it is just references to the developer toolkit and it does not actually contain the tool it itself. If the files for the meshes and textures are in the mechlib.zbd, I would assume that some other place (That isn't the .exe), most likely just only loads certain meshes and textures in from the mechlib.zdb, but if we could find out where the actual script code for the game itself is then you could find the definitions for each mech and all its properties somewhere in the same place.

Edited by: BitGlitch

The definitions for each mech are in the main reader.zbd file. There are subfiles .zrd....each mech has a dfn_"mech".zrd, also animation.zrd files such as "mech_limb.zrd" "mech_footprint.zrd" and so forth (where "mech" is actually the particular mech's name). These I believe are merely animation definition/instruction files and I believe the actual animation/movement files exist in two places, one is another "overall" file called "motion.zbd" and the others exist, one in each world, called "anim.zbd". These are files the editing tool I use does not access, but I have looked at them in hex, and I believe the anim.zbd's hold A LOT of animation stuff regarding not only asset movement but also weapons, use of visual effects and so forth. Sounds are handled in one file that exists in the main reader.zbd, and the .wav's themselves exist in two files called soundsH.zbd and soundsL.zbd. SoundsL does not show up right away after installing the game for some reason I don't understand...I'm guessing it only shows up for certain sound requirements/settings. I have a friend who made a mesh extraction tool for the mechlib.zbd, and when he and I tested it successfully we tried adding a mech. With my editing tool I duplicated the necessary files for the new mech in the main reader and we made a mechlib that had the extra mech. It was simply a second rendition of the annihilator and we named it "annihilatorX". It didn't work, however I did not have access to the motion.zbd nor the anim.zbd's, but, we surmised that the .exe would still have to be told to recognize all these new files.

The textures are not in the mechlib btw, they have their own files, about 6 of them, all repeating the same textures. Mech3 is very different from modern games.

And each mech is made up of about 15 or so small separate textures. I know that modern games do all one texture most of the time.

Interesting. It seems like a weird architecture; and because so many of the Mechwarrior games seem to have this problem, this is one of the many reasons why i want to make this one from scratch.

Yup. Making one from scratch is something that's been on the back of my mind for a long time.

So dude, how are we doing?I know that things are getting busier in real life for me lately, I work 3rd shift and then landscaping for myself during the day. I don't even have time for my own Mech3 modding project lately and I still have a lot to do on that. So for now I like the role of helping organize a little and trying to have some artistic influence, but until I put together a system for this I can't really participate with actual development, unless I do some sound files and maybe some texturing...although the most I can do with that would be editing something that already exists as I don't have a lot of experience with creating textures. If I had the system I could load Unity and fool around with weapons properties/animations scripts maybe, but it will be a while before I can prioritize buying a better PC.How are you coming along with your end? It seems unfair that you're doing most of the work, and so far it seems like it's just you and me. Granted, we are still mostly in the planning stage, but it would go better if we had a few more members providing input into that.

Yeah. things have gotten a bit busier for me as well. I should have more free time in the summer to work on the game, and I have a clear idea of how I'm going to program each basic system. I'll let you know when I get enough progress done to actually show something, and maybe then your friend could help make some of the models for the game afterwards.

Hey guys, thank you for letting me to be a part of this. How do I get started? What kind of model work are you looking for? Would this be the kind of models you want for this type of game?

Postimg.org

Alright, so the first model I would need is an Enforcer or Warhammer mech of some kind. The best way to do the rig would be to have each part of the mech be a separate mesh but in the same model. For example, each part of the leg, meaning Feet, Calves, Thighs, Lower Torso, Upper Torso, Upper Arms, Lower Arms,and Head would each be a separate object in a hierarchy of the total object.

This is important because when I do the programming for the arms to point towards the reticule, I can easily do that without having to mess with skinned meshes and instead can do it in the regular object oriented way.

Yes, that model looks great! Because we are focusing one era at a time, I wanted to start with all pre-clan invasion tech first. Then for updates, we would do them each as addon packs or just an update including the new Era technology.

The art style I wanted to go towards is like how Shimmering Sword does his NGNG Warhammer (link to picture) and etc. These types of models look semi realistic so it would be pretty easy to model them, and if we wanted to make them look more gritty and realistic we could do that with the textures.

I'm already used to creating models in segments. I have not worked with parenting single meshes to one rig or animation. Here's how I'm used to creating them

Torso

Upper arms

Lower arms

Hip

Upper legs

Lower legs

Feet

Here's a pic of a warhammer model I made

Postimg.org

Nice, looks good! By the way, you can go high poly for this game, it is from a first person perspective view. Whenever you finish a model, if you send me a link to the file I can import it into Unity and get working on getting the first mech up and running!

Thanks, I have yet to do anything high poly, but I will do my best. I kinda just do modding for fun. What format does the model need to be in? Should I send the model I have as is?

I would say to export it as a .fbx, but keep a blend file for yourself

Here is a pic of the model with a texture

Postimg.org

Here is a link to the 3d model in FBX

4shared.com

That should work for now, thanks! But later down the road we might need a better texture and a little bit more detail on the models themselves.

Also, there was no texture included with the model?

Another thing, next time you make a model, make sure to put everything in hierarchical order. Like putting the Torso as the parent of the upper left arm, the upper left arm as the parent of the lower left arm, and etc. This makes it easier to animate first of all, and also helps a bit on the programming side too.

I'm setting up the mech to be in the game at the moment with the system I have coded. Another small thing is that putting the origin of each mesh at where it connects to it's parent part would help a lot, again in both animating and programming.

Other than these small things, its working pretty well!

One last thing, when I got it up and running in game I noticed that the entire model is rotated at a 90 degree angle. This is caused by someone rotating an object in object mode, and not edit mode. This can usually screw up things on the programming side of things, so try to avoid that next time as well.

Interesting. In game and because its turned -90 degrees, instead of turning side to side, it tilts lol. I'm going to try and see if I can make a work-around for now.

Sorry about the 90 degree angle, I'm still learning as I go. I have the models rigged with nodes from MC2, they are already parented and some of them animated. For this one I just exported the model from obj. Should I export them with the nodes to fbx. as well?

Link to the texture file, if you need me to upload it somewhere else let me know.

Postimg.org

More classic era mechs

Postimg.org

Postimg.org

Edited by: ThorC3050

I guess try exporting the nodes too, in game I went ahead and just manually parented all the parts in the way they need to be. But that takes a decent amount of time, and also I have to do that every time I bring a model into the scene, so it saves a lot of time to have it done beforehand.

Also, those mechs look really nice! Can you link me to the models/textures?

Thanks Man.

Here's the link to the rifleman, I still need to add nodes to the marauder. I hope this one doesn't need that much adjusting.

4shared.com

Looking good guys.

Any news?