Universal look-up system for named animation sequences. More...

Detailed Description

Universal look-up system for named animation sequences.

Instead of hard-coding framegroups/sequences in the code or in the decl we have access to a universal look-up system for named sequences. The system is fully extendable through external means.

Defining New Activities

Global activities can be defined within decls/typeinfo/activities.decl which will look a lot like the following:

typeInfo activities {
    "act_reset" "0"
    "act_idle" "1"
    "act_walk" "2"
    "act_run" "3"
}

Behaviour

For example, when entities try to look up GetAct("walk"), it will figure out if an activity with the ID of 2 exists inside for the entity. If not, it will return ACTIVITY_NOTFOUND and the code will skip performing an action altogether.

Generally, if an activity does not exist for an entity/model, said activity never takes place. Neither visually nor functionally.

There are exceptions, like in the weapon animation system - a weapon might fire successfully but an animation for said event may not exist in the thing that fired it - since it's not directly relative to the weapon (we're passing an event off to our owner) it doesn't affect weapon functionality.

This system powers NPCs, but also weapons. So some weapon functionality is only available when certain activities exist.

Defining Activities In Models

The primary way of assigning activities to sequences within models is to do so when compiling it. Formats such as Half-Life MDL support activities, others do not.

In a Half-Life model's qc file, you will find them defined like so:

$sequence "idle1" "idle1" fps 20 loop ACT_IDLE 15 
$sequence "idle2" "idle2" fps 20 ACT_IDLE 1 
$sequence "idle3" "idle3" fps 20 ACT_IDLE 1 
$sequence "walk" "walk" LX fps 30 loop ACT_WALK 1 
$sequence "run" "run" LX fps 30 loop ACT_RUN 1 

Internally, the model compiler will convert ACT_IDLE to the value 1. Models don't store names for activities - only IDs. Because of this, in order to define custom activities in the Half-Life engine you would need a modified model compiler and modified game code that are aware of your new activities, whereas we define it externally in Nuclide.

There is currently no way to assign them to a model per external means in FTE, but there are plans to do so.

There are also plans of adding extensions to VVM (as implemented by IQM-FTE) models to handle activity support.

Defining Activities in EntityDef

In addition to defining activities within a model file, an entityDef can override activities or define new activities for an entity on a non-model basis. You might want to leverage this during development anyway so you don't rebuild your models all the time, or if your artists don't want to define them in the model.

For this, you will simply define activities in your entityDef decl as you would in Defining New Activities, but instead of the value being the supposed internal act ID it will have to match the numeric value of the animation sequence in the model that is defined within the decl.

Simply put, if you want the very first animation in the model to be an idle animation, add this line to your entityDef:

"act_idle" "0"

Functions
void	Activities_Init (void)
	Initializes the sub-system for Activities. More...

void	Activities_Shutdown (void)
	Shuts the Activities system down. More...

float	Activities_GetSequenceForEntity (ncEntity targetEntity, string actNameCheck)
	Looks up the animation sequence for an entity by name of activity. More...

float	Activities_GetSequenceForEntityDef (ncEntity targetEntity, string actNameCheck, string subDef)
	Looks up the animation sequence by name of activity in another entityDef (or fireInfo), before looking it up in an entity. More...

Macros
#define	ACTIVITY_NOTFOUND -1
	Activity does not exist. More...

Function Documentation

◆ Activities_GetSequenceForEntity()

float Activities_GetSequenceForEntity	(	ncEntity	targetEntity,
		string	actNameCheck
	)

Looks up the animation sequence for an entity by name of activity.

Parameters

targetEntity	the entity to query.
actNameCheck	the name of activity to look up for this entity

Returns: The id of this entity's animation sequence that matches said activity. Returns ACTIVITY_NOTFOUND when not valid.

◆ Activities_GetSequenceForEntityDef()

float Activities_GetSequenceForEntityDef	(	ncEntity	targetEntity,
		string	actNameCheck,
		string	subDef
	)

Looks up the animation sequence by name of activity in another entityDef (or fireInfo), before looking it up in an entity.

Parameters

targetEntity	the entity to query.
actNameCheck	the name of activity to look up for this entity
subDef	the name of entityDef in which we'll look it up first

Returns: The id of this entity's animation sequence that matches said activity. Returns ACTIVITY_NOTFOUND when not valid.

◆ Activities_Init()

void Activities_Init ( void )

Initializes the sub-system for Activities.

◆ Activities_Shutdown()

void Activities_Shutdown ( void )

Shuts the Activities system down.

Every query will return ACTIVITY_NOTFOUND.

Macro Definition Documentation

◆ ACTIVITY_NOTFOUND

#define ACTIVITY_NOTFOUND -1

Activity does not exist.