Climb the Mast

[kalamaru]

Has the idea ever been considered of making the first person sailing deck view able to climb up the mast/masts? i wouldn't know where to begin messing with the camera programming but from the very little i know about the general process it doesn't seem like it would be to hard. but i think ship battles and whatnot would be really awesome from that viewpoint, just thought i'd throw it out there.

 

[Captain Maggee]

I think it would probably be harder than it sounds I'm afraid <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />

But don't take my word for it, my coding experience basically extends to storyline and writing in locations <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Indeed it HAS been considered. You'd probably have to extend the ship walk patch into the masts.
Might be possible, though all experiments with it so far have failed. It's not easy, that's for sure.
And it'd have to be done for each ship seperately.

 

[D4V1DXxX]

As CAPTAIN Pieter said it would be hard to make it to be done for each ship seperately.
But we can have a deal and to everyone take 1 or 2 maybe 3 ships for itself and make the ship walk work.
And then we could all enjoy!!!

 

[superdurnius]

Yes, but how many modders know what is walk file, and how many knows, how to edit them? And even better question, how many modders want to do that?

I'll try expand walk files to top of the sails... to see if it's logical and possible...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Indeed we don't even know IF it is possible. And even if it is,
we're not going to find enough people to do it for all ships.
We have some simple needs-to-be-done-on-all-ships work for the Different Flags mod,
and since nobody else seemed to be willing to seriously work on that,
I got to work on doing it myself. And that is with a really EASY five-minutes-per-ship job.
Imagine messing around with the walk files,
which is complicated and will take hours per ship!

 

[superdurnius]

About 15 mins, if you don't need to make walk file from scratch... But if you need to do that (mostly yes), then I guess about 1-1.5 hours of work with one ship...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You've been able to enable player walk into a mast already then?

 

[superdurnius]

no, not yet, just get back from work and "playing" with swamp... Trying right now...

 

[superdurnius]

Alright. Made walkfile visible of Black Pearl... So you'll be able to see it ingame. That's just quick test.

But still take time of make it correctly. Afcourse everyone wants, that walk file will fit some places, and won't be some random fly-up feature... If that will be decided to do, then I suggest make them for special ships (as black pearl), at least for a start...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Cool! And indeed "special ships only" would probably be the best idea.
And of course we've got lots of reskins of stock game ships, so if one of those is done,
it can be copied to all ships using the same hull.

I'd imagine that the "going up" walk thing should be at the same point as one of the masts,
so you can climb up into the rigging to scan the horizon.

 

[Captain Maggee]

It does indeed look good but it would be far to much work to do all ships (at this point in time anyway)

So I agree special ships are the way to go for the moment

 

[superdurnius]

if there won't be volunteers for macing this, I can think about macing some after I'll finish playing with swamps...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As far as I personally am concerned, I wouldn't put it high on the priority list.
There's other model-work that I'd be MUCH more interested in.
On the other hand, I won't complain if you work on this either.
Anything cool is something cool, no?

 

[Kazeite]

I thought about it as well, and I think that editing the walk file would be the easiest way to achieve that for individual ships. Since walk file surfaces can overlap (that is, you can have one surface above another with no problem), making some sort of ramp to the ratline and then up the mast.

Of course, one problem with exporting walk files from Maya is that such construct is gonna be visible from below, but it can be averted by using TOOL - just make one, tiny triangle, export it into the TOOL, and use walk file as collision data donor. Since collision data is independent from actual model, this triangle can be hidden inside the model, below the waterline for example, and still serve as perfectly functional walk file.

Um... I just got another idea... Is it possible to add another "location" to the ship? Like, "crow's nest", which places you X units above the ship or smth?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

For the visibility issue, you could always assign a 100% transparent alpha map to the surface,
but Kazeite's suggestion also decreases the number of polygons used.

I have no idea on adding another 'location'. Maybe we can indeed make a button that,
when pressed, moves the camera much further up. But that's only maybe...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Could we get this done properly for at least one ship?
Just so people can try it?