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That green looks REALLY good, maybe some slightly lighter brownish weathering splotches and darker, shiny, oil stains would do it some good.

 

But it'll have to come after you give it a proper UV.

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Looks great so far. The material gives it new lease of life.

 

If you're trying to unwrap using smart projection it's going to break it up. The best results will come from manually placed seams and then using the standard LSCM unwrap from there. Smart projection has it's uses. But I've found it's not always the best choice for a complex mesh.

 

If you need any help with that side of things, I could offer some assistance.

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Quick WIP report - unwrapping the dropship model is proving difficult.  For "version 1" I may just leave it as-is.  Olive drab is the color anyway.

 

Getting the APC into the game w/ little effort.  I copy/pasted Physx settings from one of my other APC's and it worked perfectly... need to adjust engine torque so it drives faster than 15 kph :)

 

Then on to the guns, then the armor.

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Another update.  Weapons conversion coming along.  Vilas correctly referenced mostly "local" textures etc. so they didn't have that many default A2 textures to relocate.  I have animated the weapons w/ slides and triggers and the other basic animations a gun needs.  Some were missing from the A2 versions.  Coming along.  I have to work on the configs more and make sure that Vilas' RTM's work.

 

 

Spent most of the weekend tweaking the dropship's FM based in part on the new Avenger's hoverplane we have in-game.  It actually flies better now :)  The only "problem" if I can call it that is that it dips the nose down (or perhaps more accurately it raises the tail section) when autohovering off of the ground, so it tends to want to fly forward and not directly vertical.  I am assuming this is due to the mass balance and I have been working to make it take off with less nose dip.  The BIS hoverplane does NOT dip so I can't imagine it is a config-related issue.  Just more trial-and-error testing.

 

I also discovered that unfortunately the memory points for the engine effects do NOT animate, although they are part of the "bones" for the vectoring nozzles.  I have found that most memory points for "effects" cannot be animated by a movement animation, which is especially noticeable here.  Same thing happens for the wingtip lights on sweep-wing planes like the F14 or Tornado.  So I set the effects points in a mostly centered location for the nozzles.  The dust effects are enhanced, based on my (more realistic) MV22 mod dust effects.  Water effects are the "default" VTOL effects.  Weapon proxies all working as well.  Pilot-controlled rockets and AA missiles, WSO gets the rest.

 

dropship_Fly1.jpg

 

 

I have also tweaked the paint on the APC to look more like the movie tone.  Removed the USCM insignia in favor of a subdued version.  Looks much better IMO.  Also gave the interior some love so it looks more like the real thing.  Seats 12 passengers, gunner, commander, and driver.  I experimented with animating the turret to be "stored" but it was too much work to disable it, then re-enable it and animate it for what it would achieve.  So the turret stays in-place!  New volumetric lighting effects look good too although there is some bleed-in to the interior from the top floodlight.  Not a deal breaker.

 

Put the sentry gun config together and it works, but shoot backward :(  I always forget about how the BIS memory point structure is backward :(

 

apcinterior.jpg  apcpaintjob.jpg

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.... AND the UA-571 gun works :)  You need to have the UAV terminal but it works.  I gave it a new sound too.  I am going to look at which pack to make it.  I want to use a big backpack since it is so large, but just a single pack.  No need for the "base" tripod pack IMO.

 

Also of interest is that new dust effect over land... those jet nozzles kick up a lot of dirt!

 

ua571.jpg

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Damn hcpookie, are you publishing those shots deliberately so grainy & low quality ingame? :o Otherwise topnotch work, can't wait to try it out, big Aliens fan here (watched the movie well over 50 times) ;)

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No I'm currently running in windowed mode for testing.  Makes it much easier since my 3x monitor switching to full screen is super annoying.  So the window is 640 or something like that.  The textures are for the most part 2048x2048. 

 

The labels are that size too, making them super detailed when reading them close-up :)

 

Another low-quality image.  :D  The light blinks and the gun now does the beeping like in the movie.  Number randomly generated on the back.  I am converting the alphabet to the font too

 

ua571_2.jpg

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Hadley's Hope.  With a remote sentry gun.  And dinosaurs.  Lot's of fun!  :D

 

dinotest1.jpg

 

Transporting troops to investigate strange happenings near a research station

 

LZdropoff2.jpg

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I figured out the backpack parts!  The sentry gun can now be carried with your wherever you go :)  The trick is that you have to use the entire "armaman" model.cfg, and you can't just cherry-pick specific bone parts of it.  So the backpack "assemble/disassmble" works now.  With this work and the BIKI information I should now be able to add on the armor parts and uniforms.  I'll just have to follow that BIKI information to the letter.  Now whether I can actually add armor values to the armor pieces is another story.  I understand others have added "bulletproof vests" so I would think I could follow their examples to make the armor work as more than eye candy.  Here's hoping! :)

 

Oh, the UAV terminal soldier works with the guns as well.  It turns out all the hard parts are now (correctly) automated by use of the UAV terminal, for which I'm thankful to BIS.  The mere fact you have a UAV terminal makes the remote control work.  Now I'm using CUP soldiers as a test so this may be a CUP innovation... more testing is required to verify this.  I'm adding a UAV terminal to the inventory of the APC and the dropship so you can pack everything with your squad.  4x sentry guns in the APC like in the movie.  2x on the dropship.  I made the packs heavier so the soldiers can't run around like madmen very long with them on.

 

Speaking of dropship carry-ons, I'm thinking of putting 12 soldiers on the dropship, and 1x APC.  It was never revealed how many soldiers the dropship could carry w/o the APC but it stands to reason you could.  You only see wounded Hicks on one of the "roller coaster" seats immediately before the Queen showdown, implying that there are at least some of those seats for non-APC deployments.  So I'll add some of those in addition to the APC.

 

 

 

 

The APC has to use the BIS Vehicle-in-Vehicle feature since I am having some weird Phys-X related crashes without it.  Using a simple attachto script to anchor the vehicles like I have done before on other vehicles, the dropship will lose control and crash about half the time.  Since I MUST use Phys-x for the VTOL to operate correctly, it is the best I can do at this point.  W/O physx the dropship can never lift off vertically, and has to slide along the ground to gain speed.  Kind of a pain.  I thought about just making it a helicopter but the VTOL seems to work OK for now.

 

I was trying to avoid the BIS VIV feature because like all other memory points, the VIV points in the model don't animate along with the user-defined ramp.  They ARE defined to inherit the ramp animations, so I expected that they would cause the attached vehicle to animate with the ramp as well.  NOPE!  So instead of being anchored "on" the ramp, the APC unfortunately gets anchored in the final "ramp up" position which appears to float in the air while the ramp is up.  I consider it a bug because as before, these memory points CANNOT be animated on another user-defined animation (referring back to the inability to add things like light points to swept-wing aircraft).  So there we are.  I can attachto a box to the ramp and it works.  I even made a script that points the APC in the right direction and tilts it onto the ramp "just right", but the attachto issues prevent me from using it!  :(  So really it is a Phys-X shortcoming that prevents the use of the "cool looking" attachto script.  Perhaps I'll re-examine that helicopter class inheritance...

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Making progress on the soldiers.  Armor was the hardest part.  Figured out how to get them into the ammo crates so they are selectable that way.  AND with the basic A3 uniform they don't look too bad.  The Tanoa jungle uniform looks good enough so I don't think I'm going to worry about the uniform.  Too difficult to import in the textures from A2 anyway since they had the armor on the uniform textures.  So the helmet texture needs to be updated as well.  But we are making progress :)

 

Pulse rifle sounds integrated now and they actually don't sound half bad regardless of the things that A3 tries to do to the sounds.  It seems like it tries to "smooth" the sounds (I can't think of a better description) and makes it sound less staccato like the movie sounds.  Again, progress :)  Need to figure how to get the damn grenade launcher muzzle working now.

 

USMC1.jpg

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G'day HCPookie,

 

Your Marines are looking good. Booce might be able to help you with the grenade launcher. His Pulse rifle still works and fires grenades.

 

Road Runner produced a Colonial Marines camouflage texture a short time ago. If you asked him, he might let you use it.

 

Are you going to upgrade the weapons to utilize the weapon attachments currently available?

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Those models looks pretty good but I would ask for you to review updating it bit. Most of the gear was based off of Vietnam War era gear with scifi mixed into it. The helmets are too big as those should be Vietnam Helmets with the extra blast cover on the back. 

 

Also the guns look a tad big in the mod. It could be scaled down maybe 10-15% further if you compare to to these screenshots from Aliens Colonial Marines Game for size:

 

aliens_colonial_marines_14.jpgaliens_colonial_marines.jpgaliens-colonial-marines-bella-oneal.jpg

 

I think if you borrow some gear from the Unsung mod and added the bits back on, it would be more scaled properly to how the movie was.

 

But all good stuff in any case.

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all this "alternative" stuff these days is giving me that warm ofp feeling back when i used to browse http://ofp.gamepark.cz/

 

let me start up my military simulator to go hunt some raptors while flying with my jetpack on a sci fi map. good times!

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It's always great to see more projects that wander off the beaten track. :)

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Those models looks pretty good but I would ask for you to review updating it bit. Most of the gear was based off of Vietnam War era gear with scifi mixed into it. The helmets are too big as those should be Vietnam Helmets with the extra blast cover on the back. 

 

Also the guns look a tad big in the mod. It could be scaled down maybe 10-15% further if you compare to to these screenshots from Aliens Colonial Marines Game for size:

 

aliens_colonial_marines_14.jpgaliens_colonial_marines.jpgaliens-colonial-marines-bella-oneal.jpg

 

I think if you borrow some gear from the Unsung mod and added the bits back on, it would be more scaled properly to how the movie was.

 

But all good stuff in any case.

Looks good to me.

http://imgur.com/a/F2lp9

As a side note, I would avoid using Aliens: Colonial Marines as a primary reference.

Looking good so far pookie, sucks that plane_X and memory points are so limited. Perhaps you could make it change memory points when the ramp is down? It'll look clunky, but its better than having a floating APC in the cargo hold. RHS's C130 could also be of interest, I wonder if (With permission of course) it could be adapted to work with vehicles.

 

Edit:

 

Also, I really studied the footage during the atmos escape at the end, it looks like there's only one of the two seat benches and the swivel chair from the APC.

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Hit a snag today.  The flashlight on the vest cannot illuminate with the weapon "flashlight" value in the config.  Even though the vest is under cfgWeapons.  So that part may not work. 

 

Also trying to understand why addWeaponTurret is not consistent.  I am adding / removing weapons based on the pod extend/retract script.  The net effect is that the weapon pods must be deployed for all the weapons to work, with the exception of the chin turret and the AAM missiles, which are exposed when the wings are folded.

 

This works "most" of the time, but seems to choke when adding the last few AGM weapons.  Sometimes the last few weapons don't get added.  Sometimes.  I am adding some sleep commands in the hopes the script is simply running too fast.  Perhaps my stupid AI gunner is doing something when the weapons are added but it doesn't seem likely.

 

EDIT:  This seems to be a completely pilot-related issue w/ the Manual Fire command.  I switch to gunner, all weapons are there.  CURIOS behavior - I added a trigger to HINT the weaponsTurret [0] list.  After doing this, all weapons are visible.  I am adding this to the script so it does it automatically.  So it seems to be how Arma handles the ManualFire command w/ multiple weapons.  I guess.

 

 

 

 

I have a few sounds to collect for the dropship engines and the weapons and then it may be ready to release.  Getting closer :)

 

all this "alternative" stuff these days is giving me that warm ofp feeling back when i used to browse http://ofp.gamepark.cz/

 

let me start up my military simulator to go hunt some raptors while flying with my jetpack on a sci fi map. good times!

 

The static guns work fairly well against your raptors.  Lots of fun!  I noticed that when I put them to spawn in the SciFi map at the Hadleys Hope area, they tend to run in-between buildings but once in a while will clip through the walls.  Probably a map problem.  It makes for a fun moment when "they are coming out of the walls, man!"  :)  The AI sentry guns will light up and you know they are coming :)

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I'm with b00ce on this one. Just....... don't ever use that trainwreck of a game as a source. It's a disgrace to the ALIENS series. I pity the people who had Aliens: Colonial Marines as their first experience in the ALIENS universe. I grew up on the movies, the game doesn't even come close.

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I'm with b00ce on this one. Just....... don't ever use that trainwreck of a game as a source. It's a disgrace to the ALIENS series. I pity the people who had Aliens: Colonial Marines as their first experience in the ALIENS universe. I grew up on the movies, the game doesn't even come close.

I liked the game for what it was, an Aliens FPS in the shoes of some USCM grunt. I had high hopes when I was following it on the gearbox forums, but I've always had a "hope for the best, expect the worst" mentality. It definitely could have been MUCH better, but, it isn't a bad game by any means, the hype just killed it (Just like it did for No Man's Sky to a lesser extent). I fear that this same reason is why HL:3 will never be released.

 

For the light, would it be at all possible to make it an M41/M56 attachment, but it's positioned/weighted to the shoulder? You'd probably need a different one for each gun, unfortunately...

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Don't worry, I've been relying on the Colonial Marines Field Manual which is apparently what all the "spin-off" items utilized.  Found a copy of it online :)  To be honest there is very little in the way of "official" information and so things like the shotgun, etc. are pretty much a best-guess.

 

Not sure how I'm going to handle the light thing.  The idea of having a "vest" portion of a weapon is interesting.  If it fits to the bone correctly, that might work.  It may just be a simple matter of making a weapon light memory point "floating" apart from the weapon and accepting its limitations.

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G'day Hcpookie,

Glad to see you're still,progressing with this. Please keep up the good work.

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Good luck with this, We are all counting on you!

 

I hope the project is going well! Everything so far is looking amazing!

 

out of Curiosity how much would it be to purchase the model for an alien?

 

are you planning to do this project all alone or are you seeking extra help?

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you might have a talk with the Raptor mod creators on animations perhaps some useful info

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