Hey Danimal I am sorry that I suck so much with Blender to animate stuff. My brain does not understand Blender very well right now. Yet I want to make more creature animations for Flare to fill out more creature types found in my older rpg projects. Which I am currently trying to ~'port' over to Flare (~'Flare-ification'). If I can learn how to do this (current personal major stumbling block / blind spot) I can share all of my new creature animations with the community freely so everyone wins.
---------------
Myself trying to figure out how to animate with Blender:
---------------
I opened Clint Bellanger's Skeleton in Blender 2.79 (I have this version of blender from working with WoW dungeon models) for Blender 2.83 crashes when the older .blend file of the Skeleton is opened by it.
I am not sure how I should set up blender and what windows should be where. I have to relearn a bunch of things for I never properly animated with blender before.
"go to Mod/animations/enemies and copy any of your previous models, since they are 1:1 frame wise (if you follow my tip) just copy&change the file name and the direction/name of the new image you generated."
--------------- - I take it that if I stick to a standard animation definition set of animation images / 'tilesets' with the same pixel dimension frame size I can better ~'mass produce' animations?
For the animation definitions can be standardized and all that is needed is a name swap from new animation definition to new animation definition? With standardized animation frame orders / animations definitions; if done properly will save a HUGE amount of work hand stitching and bug fixing animation images to work in Flare?
If standardized animation image definitions are done properly all of the major work / heavy lifting is in creating the frames needed to fit into the standardized animation image definition for Flare to utilize?
So stick to "Frames:Idle 1-4,Run 5-12,Attack 13-17,Death 18-28,Critical death 29-38,Spell/breath 39-42" and focus on making the animation images with Blender + ImageMagick?
--------------- So in general I need to learn Blender to make new animations and train my brain to figure out the work flow from 0 to hero XD. I like pictures so this is going to take a while :-S. Eh bit by bit piece by piece until there is nothing left but success:-).
---------------
Myself trying to ~'cheat' with a quick fix:
--------------- "By the way the slime you posted somewhere else is Flare ready, by my hand. Play my mod to see lots of new enemies." - Can I dig through your module and use that slime you speak of?
I am currently working on making the starting area in my project currently and it has slimes. If I could use your slime asset I can make a bunch of different colour variants like a rainbow and publicly share them with the same license(s) as all of your other free use / open source / public access works.
My starting area of my older rpg project(s) uses slimes and has a small slime / water cave themed starter dungeon that I want to convert into Flare: https://youtu.be/47Eu8DKzHcI?t=180 (Old non 3D version I hand on hand to quickly share).
I could get a jump start on this 'Flare-ification' if I could use your slime and add many different colour variations and have them be open free for the community on Opengameart.org.
If I knew what steps to take to make the animation 'tileset' with blender and what script(s) to use I can go through all of the 300-700 blender creatures and make Flare compatible animation 'tileset' .png images. I wish to have all of my creatures be open source and free for the community to use; not just to use for myself.
I am currently just without a tutorial / step by step guide on how to go from animated blender file to creature animation.png for Flare to use. I know it can be done and many people within the Flare community have done so successfully. It feels like I am missing a step or two or some kind of tutorial process to successfully convert animated blender creatures into working Flare creature animations.
It bugs myself not having any assets myself for the community to currently use freely and open source. I want to convert many aspects of my older simpler rpgs into a flare RPG. One BIG feature from my older simpler rpg game projects is a diverse and extensive roster of enemies and non-player characters; a very large bestiary.
If I knew how to make flare creature animations / could find a tutorial I would make many creatures for Flare and the community to use freely.
@Danimal * Do you intend on letting people like myself use your new content and mix and remix it and add on onto it for many different projects across the community?
For my current game being built with Flare I hope to sell the whole game on the usual online game store sites and offer a shareware version (like the original Doom being ~1/3 of the game but free). I wish to make a commercially viable game (like how every other 'proper' / established RPG and video game developer operates) but the assets and the engine and everything it is constituted from is open source / free for the community / properly credited / generally open and free to use and remix.
I am just interested in making a 'proper' game that is sold mainly for the time and or work investment. Also so I can pay for more outside developer work and assets. For example I pay for developers to work on my Unity tank game. I am working towards making that Unity tank game commercially viable to justify the devlopment cost investment. In my heart of hearts the players must always win first; profits second and the lion's share of the profit must be reinvested into developers and high quality content.
What is your view / the general view of the community / general legality of such a commercial development intent? I think that it is possible to create a commercially viable RPG game from the Flare engine and assets with the current licenses with Flare and most of the assets on Opengameart.org (proper accreditation / credits and openness for people to use the assets). Yet to my current understanding a person can copyright an IP / 'completed game'.
This is more or less like what Clint Bellanger did with the Flare RPG game; I think / believe. I think Clint Bellanger legally owns the copywrite to the 'completed Flare game' but he kept it open source to play. I think Clint Bellanger then also kept the engine and assets ~'open source' / free to use for the community for personal and commercial games.
* Does that '@' even work? How do you properly '@' someone this forum like you did yourself to myself; reply?
@Danimal I have not tinkered with chance to spawn enemies but I do think that is an option for random spawns based upon % chance. Although I am not sure if it is for events or enemies. Also the enemies who are spawned in by events have a random north / south / west / east etc. direction and do pursue and reset if they are unable to find the player after a pursuit. @dorkster To my knowledge the wander / pathing commands for only for enemies and not event commands. I wish there were also working event commands for wandering range and pathing for events so that the event spawned level scaling enemies can do more than stand in one spot. I like the ruined settlement + statue idea, much like the campaign in Path of Exile.
Also what is the work flow / pipeline for making a new animation asset for a Flare compatible enemy / npc / hero from start to finish; is there a ~video / gallery around for visual learners? Specifically what script(s) is/are used and all of the little tricks used along the way? I feel that there is a trick to this process and once a person understands from start to finish all of the enemies / creature animations can more or less be cranked out in a similar efficient process to convert art assets in blender into finished working Flare creature / armour / weapon animations. Is there a tutorial or a guide or something to follow before I start stumbling around in the dark XD?
Also how is it possible to use the hero / heroine armour animation customization but for enemies / npcs? Like in World or Warcraft they use player models as enemy 'bandit' and or 'evil cultist' but it uses the same hero / heroine model. I am aware that there are pre-baked villains that use a non-customizable hero / heroine animation but it is limited and cannot be remixed and matched for a huge variety / possibilities like if there is a way to use hero / heroine animations for enemies. Has anyone in Flare used hero / heroine animations for enemies / npcs successfully?
What is your custom content and what is the unused content? What are your plans for the mod / content / use of the project? Where is your minotaur? Do you have any more animals and npcs?
@Danimal It is a pain a bit to scale the levels of the enemies for you have to make separate instances of each enemy and you have less command options but it does work; you just have to work two or three times harder each enemy than with the default campaign.
Say you want an enemy to give half xp after so many levels below the player, you need to spawn all enemies as events (like the surprise zombies event in the graveyard map). Use the ~'Requires level' event thing with the events on the map for the enemies. Then with your half xp version of the monster you spawn that once the player is above a certain level. Then have the 100% xp version spawn for if the player is below the desired xp 'cutoff' level. This is a 'hack' and it (as far as I can currently tell) 'disables' the enemy layer and enemy commands so no wandering; but it works. It can get more complicated (more enemy versions) but that is the simpler version.
The multiple layers is a 'hack' / glitch / bug / thing I found after brute force experimenting with the maps to get them to work after making new tileset definitions. A person can have duplicate layers with the same name in Tiled then still being compatible with Flare. Then have all of the ~'stacking layers' named as "object" (I think) and layer all of them the way you see fit. Also 'background' works as usual.
How hard is it to make new armour / weapons for the player hero / heroine and monsters? I downloaded pretty much ~3/4 of the rpg assets on Opengameart (one by one, list by list, artist by artist organized by individual artists folders to give proper credits; ~2,000 assets yesterday alone). Although I am going to have cross the bridge with more enemies and arts assets probably sooner than later and I have some experience with blender; but I need to get better in general to work efficiently. I really like your https://opengameart.org/content/charging-minotaur .
I*
Night*
Hey Danimal I am sorry that I suck so much with Blender to animate stuff. My brain does not understand Blender very well right now. Yet I want to make more creature animations for Flare to fill out more creature types found in my older rpg projects. Which I am currently trying to ~'port' over to Flare (~'Flare-ification'). If I can learn how to do this (current personal major stumbling block / blind spot) I can share all of my new creature animations with the community freely so everyone wins.
---------------
Myself trying to figure out how to animate with Blender:
---------------
I opened Clint Bellanger's Skeleton in Blender 2.79 (I have this version of blender from working with WoW dungeon models) for Blender 2.83 crashes when the older .blend file of the Skeleton is opened by it.
I am not sure how I should set up blender and what windows should be where. I have to relearn a bunch of things for I never properly animated with blender before.
It feels as if I truly am starting from 0 XD. I have to figure out what blender wants and how to properly utilize https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.79/editors/3dview/object/properties... + https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/eevee/lighting.html (is emit shadows in here?) + https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/dope_sheet/index.html + https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/nla/tracks.html + https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/scene_layout/object/editing/tr... + https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-distribute-keyframes-in-dopesheet/11... . Does this Skeleton use your template for animation definitions: https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/blob/master/mods/fantasycore/ani... ?
"After that, run script..."
- What script, where is the script and how is it used?
I have installed ImageMagick https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php and I need to figure out how to use it XD.
"drop new model into Mod/images/enemies"
- I take that this means when I make one of these: https://lpc.opengameart.org/sites/default/files/forum-attachments/minota... I put it in there, not the .blend file?
"go to Mod/animations/enemies and copy any of your previous models, since they are 1:1 frame wise (if you follow my tip) just copy&change the file name and the direction/name of the new image you generated."
---------------
- I take it that if I stick to a standard animation definition set of animation images / 'tilesets' with the same pixel dimension frame size I can better ~'mass produce' animations?
For the animation definitions can be standardized and all that is needed is a name swap from new animation definition to new animation definition? With standardized animation frame orders / animations definitions; if done properly will save a HUGE amount of work hand stitching and bug fixing animation images to work in Flare?
If standardized animation image definitions are done properly all of the major work / heavy lifting is in creating the frames needed to fit into the standardized animation image definition for Flare to utilize?
So stick to "Frames:Idle 1-4,Run 5-12,Attack 13-17,Death 18-28,Critical death 29-38,Spell/breath 39-42" and focus on making the animation images with Blender + ImageMagick?
---------------
So in general I need to learn Blender to make new animations and train my brain to figure out the work flow from 0 to hero XD. I like pictures so this is going to take a while :-S. Eh bit by bit piece by piece until there is nothing left but success:-).
---------------
Myself trying to ~'cheat' with a quick fix:
---------------
"By the way the slime you posted somewhere else is Flare ready, by my hand. Play my mod to see lots of new enemies."
- Can I dig through your module and use that slime you speak of?
I am currently working on making the starting area in my project currently and it has slimes. If I could use your slime asset I can make a bunch of different colour variants like a rainbow and publicly share them with the same license(s) as all of your other free use / open source / public access works.
I have extensive experience / skill with 2D / isometric art asset creating and remixing: https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/gallery .
My starting area of my older rpg project(s) uses slimes and has a small slime / water cave themed starter dungeon that I want to convert into Flare: https://youtu.be/47Eu8DKzHcI?t=180 (Old non 3D version I hand on hand to quickly share).
I could get a jump start on this 'Flare-ification' if I could use your slime and add many different colour variations and have them be open free for the community on Opengameart.org.
Is there an unarmoured version of your more depth armoured minotaur? Or did I miss it? It would be nice to have variety of minotaurs.
Danimal what are the steps required to make a Flare version of these Slimes for example?
https://opengameart.org/content/slimemonster + https://opengameart.org/content/slime-mold
If I knew what steps to take to make the animation 'tileset' with blender and what script(s) to use I can go through all of the 300-700 blender creatures and make Flare compatible animation 'tileset' .png images. I wish to have all of my creatures be open source and free for the community to use; not just to use for myself.
I am currently just without a tutorial / step by step guide on how to go from animated blender file to creature animation.png for Flare to use. I know it can be done and many people within the Flare community have done so successfully. It feels like I am missing a step or two or some kind of tutorial process to successfully convert animated blender creatures into working Flare creature animations.
It bugs myself not having any assets myself for the community to currently use freely and open source. I want to convert many aspects of my older simpler rpgs into a flare RPG. One BIG feature from my older simpler rpg game projects is a diverse and extensive roster of enemies and non-player characters; a very large bestiary.
If I knew how to make flare creature animations / could find a tutorial I would make many creatures for Flare and the community to use freely.
@Danimal * Do you intend on letting people like myself use your new content and mix and remix it and add on onto it for many different projects across the community?
For my current game being built with Flare I hope to sell the whole game on the usual online game store sites and offer a shareware version (like the original Doom being ~1/3 of the game but free). I wish to make a commercially viable game (like how every other 'proper' / established RPG and video game developer operates) but the assets and the engine and everything it is constituted from is open source / free for the community / properly credited / generally open and free to use and remix.
I am just interested in making a 'proper' game that is sold mainly for the time and or work investment. Also so I can pay for more outside developer work and assets. For example I pay for developers to work on my Unity tank game. I am working towards making that Unity tank game commercially viable to justify the devlopment cost investment. In my heart of hearts the players must always win first; profits second and the lion's share of the profit must be reinvested into developers and high quality content.
What is your view / the general view of the community / general legality of such a commercial development intent? I think that it is possible to create a commercially viable RPG game from the Flare engine and assets with the current licenses with Flare and most of the assets on Opengameart.org (proper accreditation / credits and openness for people to use the assets). Yet to my current understanding a person can copyright an IP / 'completed game'.
This is more or less like what Clint Bellanger did with the Flare RPG game; I think / believe. I think Clint Bellanger legally owns the copywrite to the 'completed Flare game' but he kept it open source to play. I think Clint Bellanger then also kept the engine and assets ~'open source' / free to use for the community for personal and commercial games.
* Does that '@' even work? How do you properly '@' someone this forum like you did yourself to myself; reply?
@Danimal I have not tinkered with chance to spawn enemies but I do think that is an option for random spawns based upon % chance. Although I am not sure if it is for events or enemies. Also the enemies who are spawned in by events have a random north / south / west / east etc. direction and do pursue and reset if they are unable to find the player after a pursuit. @dorkster To my knowledge the wander / pathing commands for only for enemies and not event commands. I wish there were also working event commands for wandering range and pathing for events so that the event spawned level scaling enemies can do more than stand in one spot. I like the ruined settlement + statue idea, much like the campaign in Path of Exile.
Also what is the work flow / pipeline for making a new animation asset for a Flare compatible enemy / npc / hero from start to finish; is there a ~video / gallery around for visual learners? Specifically what script(s) is/are used and all of the little tricks used along the way? I feel that there is a trick to this process and once a person understands from start to finish all of the enemies / creature animations can more or less be cranked out in a similar efficient process to convert art assets in blender into finished working Flare creature / armour / weapon animations. Is there a tutorial or a guide or something to follow before I start stumbling around in the dark XD?
Also how is it possible to use the hero / heroine armour animation customization but for enemies / npcs? Like in World or Warcraft they use player models as enemy 'bandit' and or 'evil cultist' but it uses the same hero / heroine model. I am aware that there are pre-baked villains that use a non-customizable hero / heroine animation but it is limited and cannot be remixed and matched for a huge variety / possibilities like if there is a way to use hero / heroine animations for enemies. Has anyone in Flare used hero / heroine animations for enemies / npcs successfully?
What is your custom content and what is the unused content? What are your plans for the mod / content / use of the project? Where is your minotaur? Do you have any more animals and npcs?
@Danimal It is a pain a bit to scale the levels of the enemies for you have to make separate instances of each enemy and you have less command options but it does work; you just have to work two or three times harder each enemy than with the default campaign.
Say you want an enemy to give half xp after so many levels below the player, you need to spawn all enemies as events (like the surprise zombies event in the graveyard map). Use the ~'Requires level' event thing with the events on the map for the enemies. Then with your half xp version of the monster you spawn that once the player is above a certain level. Then have the 100% xp version spawn for if the player is below the desired xp 'cutoff' level. This is a 'hack' and it (as far as I can currently tell) 'disables' the enemy layer and enemy commands so no wandering; but it works. It can get more complicated (more enemy versions) but that is the simpler version.
The multiple layers is a 'hack' / glitch / bug / thing I found after brute force experimenting with the maps to get them to work after making new tileset definitions. A person can have duplicate layers with the same name in Tiled then still being compatible with Flare. Then have all of the ~'stacking layers' named as "object" (I think) and layer all of them the way you see fit. Also 'background' works as usual.
How hard is it to make new armour / weapons for the player hero / heroine and monsters? I downloaded pretty much ~3/4 of the rpg assets on Opengameart (one by one, list by list, artist by artist organized by individual artists folders to give proper credits; ~2,000 assets yesterday alone). Although I am going to have cross the bridge with more enemies and arts assets probably sooner than later and I have some experience with blender; but I need to get better in general to work efficiently. I really like your https://opengameart.org/content/charging-minotaur .
The person needs some clothes XD
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