Grumbling

Sorry to dump this on u guys but this is going to be rather a depressing rant.

I have just spent the last 5 1/2 hours trying to figure out how to make the models do their little animations. Specifically, how to make the goblins dance (for unfinished business in DH) and more importantly, how to make the Blacksmith do his 'thump the anvil' animation in KotB (and I think Allyx has a smith in Verbobonc for memory so it would be of benefit to him too).

At first I thought it was something to do with the 'addmesh' column in the protos.tab, but a couple hours fiddling with that made me realise that in fact it has nothing to do with it. There is something in the mobs that activates the animations - the animations are in the mesh section as far as I can tell, in the .txt docs. Eg Brother Smyth's looks like this:

animation "sword_unarmed_special1" "sword_unarmed_special1.mae"

{
________event 22 "script" "game.sound_local_obj ( 4007, anim_obj )"
________event 72 "script" "game.sound_local_obj ( 4007, anim_obj )"
________event 122 "script" "game.sound_local_obj ( 4007, anim_obj )"
________event 172 "script" "game.sound_local_obj ( 4007, anim_obj )"
________event 222 "script" "game.sound_local_obj ( 4007, anim_obj )"
________event 272 "script" "game.sound_local_obj ( 4007, anim_obj )"
________event 322 "script" "game.sound_local_obj ( 4007, anim_obj )"
________event 372 "script" "game.sound_local_obj ( 4007, anim_obj )"
________event 422 "script" "game.sound_local_obj ( 4007, anim_obj )"
}

where 'sword' simply refers to a standard weapon in the right hand if I am not mistaken (in his case, a hammer). By the way, the 9 animations? Go stare at him and you will see he does indeed whack his anvil 9 times. Anyways, the goblins have a similar file, with their dancing also under 'special' if I am not mistaken.

How the .mobs call these animations is still a mystery to me.

The thing is, discovering ways to do new things is fun and exciting and challenging and all that. However, discovering how to do stuff the game does easily but modders can't because there have been no proper tools released etc, well some days its a pain in the ass. This is the 3rd or 6th or 15th time I have revisited this issue and I still don't have a solution and there are SOOOO many better things I could have done with the last 5 1/2 hours, like updating the gallery as I promised Screeg or putting in 2 or 3 quests or adding about 2 dozen new items to the protos.tab.

Sometime soon I am getting married and some time VERY soon I have to start thinking about the whole mortage thing and all that crap. I really don't have time to waste in this manner.

This is NOT an 'I'm thinking of giving up on KotB' whinge, not by a long shot. Actually, its the exact opposite. I want KotB to be an EXPERIENCE, I wanna hit for the fences with it. I want it to have all the little things that make a game fun, make a world real to the player. For instance, I want my Blacksmith to hammer his damn anvil! I don't just want a dlg line saying "you meet a blacksmith hammering away" while the model stands there. We all know how lame that looked for Paida, and of course the ever present Thrommel issue - "you see a sleeping guy" when he is standing looking around.

I don't think its too much to ask to make use of what is already there. I don't mind testing for new stuff - like making Thrommel lie down (not currently in the game in any way afaik) - but to spend hours on end looking for something that one of the developers could explain in seconds, well its lame. Palming it off on someone else like Agetian is lame also.

Now I know things were worse for the modders who came before - imagine what it was like before ProtoEd! - but I'm having a whinge anyways. It just shits me.