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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 6th Sep 2007 at 6:40 PM
Default Changing the Behavior/Effects of the Nightlife Coffin?
I've been working on a "Mark II" version of a freezer bed I made last year, this time basing it off of the Nightlife coffin so that it has a properly animated lid and, I was hoping, fog effects. I was so focused on how I'd have to finally get around to learning how to make Milkshape & wes_h's tools work with my antique copy of 3DS Max to get the lid properly animated that I hadn't done much research first into what would actually be involved in modifying the effects themselves.

I basically have three things I want to do, and after doing some reading up and poking around in the .package file, I'm not sure I have the right ideas about how to make the changes I want to do. I'm 99% sure I need to edit the BHAVs, and about 30% sure I might need to modify or create some "#STR Linked Resources". I've started reading up on BHAVs but I can already see I have a steep learning curve ahead of me. At this point I basically know I have a bear of a job ahead of me, since I need to learn an entirely new set of object-creation skills, I'm just clueless about how big of a bear it is... and what's the best way to approach it.

Anyway, the three things I want to change are as follows:

1. Remove the sound effects (thunderclap and howl) triggered when vampires climb into or out of the bed, since they're not appropriate to it's new shape.

2. Remove the flame effects that are also no longer relevant to the mesh shape.

3. Have the foggy effect that happens when vampires get out of the bed happen when anyone gets out of the bed.

I had a suggestion given to me on TSR that I change the reference in the Object Anims text list from o2a-coffin-getOut-normal to o2a-coffin-getOut-vampire to solve problem #3. That did add the fog effect, but also added the werewolf howl, and makes the non-vampires do the "sitting up with arms crossed on chest" animation, which I suppose I could live with, but isn't what I ideally want.

I know all the pieces to create the effects I really want are already there somewhere, but I don't know how to even locate them, much less manipulate them. Any pointers people can give me toward where to start learning the relevant skills would be greatly appreciated! Are there any tutorials relevant to these specific tasks, for example?

Oh, and a second problem I have with the object - for some reason the game only removes part of the character's shadow when they're in the coffin. I haven't even the beginning of a clue as to what I need to do to fix this additional problem (see Fig. 1 for the shadow problem, and Fig. 2 for the Cryobed with effects).
Screenshots

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#2 Old 6th Sep 2007 at 9:00 PM Last edited by maybesomethingdunno : 6th Sep 2007 at 9:06 PM.
I am probably one of the last people that could offer any real help. But, by any chance are those sounds and the fire effect listed in a text file inside the package? With some objects, you can delete/rename the name effect or sound (e.g. from "sample" to "sample_removed") to remove them or change to them to another sound or effect. Then whenever called in the BHAVs, if the game does not have a "sample_removed" sound or effect, it just skips over it with no ill-effects from what I have seen. Of course, this may not be the best thing to do and for all I know I may be five seconds from computer-explosion from doing the aforementioned method of getting rid of or changing sounds/effects.

Now, if the sounds are attached to the o2a-coffin-getOut-normal and/or o2a-coffin-getOut-vampire animations, then I most certainly cannot help you sadly.

I'd look at the coffin's code, but I am limited in time and my understanding.

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#3 Old 6th Sep 2007 at 10:29 PM
The effects and events are called with a script-like entity at the end of the ANIM itself. This is editable, to some extent, in SimPE. You cannot readily change the length of the milti-line strings, but often you can squeeze what you want to change it to in there.

There is a tutorial here on changing the sounds, but I do not have a ready link. If you study some other animations, you may find a quiet sound name to substitute for the howls.

<* Wes *>

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Test Subject
Original Poster
#4 Old 7th Sep 2007 at 12:01 AM
Quote: Originally posted by maybesomethingdunno
But, by any chance are those sounds and the fire effect listed in a text file inside the package? With some objects, you can delete/rename the name effect or sound (e.g. from "sample" to "sample_removed") to remove them or change to them to another sound or effect.


Ahh, now that might actually help me with the flames - one of the suggestions I'd gotten was to remove the name of the flame effect from the text lists. While that didn't cause any problem with normal humans entering or exiting the bed (even after they were exiting it like a vampire does), it was causing the vampire test subject to jump-reset out of the climb-in animation, and the error message I was getting was about a missing effect name. I'll try renaming it the way you suggest and see if that works. Thanks!

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Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 8th Sep 2007 at 7:38 AM Last edited by MsBarrows : 8th Sep 2007 at 8:57 AM.
Well, in looking over the BHAVs, I was able to figure out how to disable the flame effects, by basically doing minor edits to skip over the steps where the flame effect was coming into play. So I can strike one thing off of my list!

Still no luck on figuring out how to add the fog effect to the normal "get out of coffin" animations, though I've at least located the BHAV that seems to reference it for the vampire. Ditto no luck on finding where the sound effects happen.

I tried cloning the original coffin with pretty much everything checked, and while that did make the ANIM entries show up as editable parts of the package, I only saw lists of joint vectors in them, no "script like entities". I guess I'm looking in the wrong place still.

Edited to add: Found this tutorial about effects and I'm trying to make enough sense of it to add the existing smoke effect as a step in the BHAV for getting out of the coffin. Ie, I'm committing butchery on my BHAVs :p

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Retired Duck
retired moderator
#6 Old 8th Sep 2007 at 11:58 AM
The "script like entities" Wes was referring to are these lines which you can find at the end of the "raw view" in o2a-coffin-coffinvampire-getout-vampire_anim:

effectName=EP2_VampireSmokeGetOutFx boneName=slot_coffinvampire_smoke_fx op=softStart preroll= comment=

effectName=EP2_vampireSmokeGetOutFx boneName=slot_coffinvampire_smoke_fx op=softStop preroll= comment=

Are you sure you only changed the o2a line to "o2a-coffin-getOut-vampire"? Or did you also change the a2o line in the "Anim adults" file? The smoke effect is in the o2a (object to adult) animation, but the other sound effects (howling etc) as well as the crossed arms are in the a2o (adult to object) animation. You should be able to change one without changing the other, and I think that would probably do what you want it to do.

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Ie, I'm committing butchery on my BHAVs :p
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Test Subject
Original Poster
#7 Old 9th Sep 2007 at 2:28 AM Last edited by MsBarrows : 9th Sep 2007 at 3:07 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by Echo
The "script like entities" Wes was referring to are these lines which you can find at the end of the "raw view"


A-ha! Okay, now that I have SimPE in Advanced mode and can actually find the raw view, it's making a lot more sense to me

Quote:
Are you sure you only changed the o2a line to "o2a-coffin-getOut-vampire"? Or did you also change the a2o line in the "Anim adults" file?


I'd changed it in both. I've now corrected it to be changed in just the one location. Off to play test! Thanks so much for the help

Edit - and it worked perfectly Wheee!

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