Weapon animations and firing delays

[themuffinman]

I'm trying to get my head around how the weapon animations work in Q2. I take it that the animations control the pre- and post- firing delays too.

Let's use the BFG for an example, in p_weapon.c:

Code: [Select]

void Weapon_BFG (edict_t *ent)
{
static int pause_frames[] = {39, 45, 50, 55, 0};
static int fire_frames[] = {9, 17, 0};

Weapon_Generic (ent, 8, 32, 55, 58, pause_frames, fire_frames, weapon_bfg_fire);
}

Now according to Weapon_Generic it means that:
FRAME_ACTIVATE_LAST = 8
FRAME_FIRE_LAST = 32
FRAME_IDLE_LAST = 55
FRAME_DEACTIVATE_LAST = 58

Which corresponds to the md3 frames:
active08
pow23
idle23
putway04

So I understand where they get that from, but what do all the numbers in the pause_frames and fire_frames mean? What is the frame rate it runs at so I know how long the delay is?

[peewee_RotA]

IIRC, the pause frames are intermittent idle animations. For example look at the Blaster while standing still. The hand will move around and adjust his wrist a little.

The timing is server frames, so I believe it's 0.1 sec.


If you are trying to modify the frames to change speeds, then altering the arrays is a visual nightmare. That's how WOD/LOX used to do it. So what you end up seeing are the wrong animations at put-away and occasionally a missing "Last Frame" error that shows up until the weapon switches.

You're right to take a look at weapon generic. I had a mod that adjusted the speed of firing based on a "Speed" player stat. What I did was change the way that generic handles the fire animation in order to replay some frames after the attack finished.

If you're just making new p view models, then I think you've got all the information that you need.

[themuffinman]

Yeah it seems a rather finicky way to do it. How about the fire frames?

Why I'm asking though is for a Q3 game and engine mod I've been working on for a while now. Part of my goal is to have it play more like Q2 with similar weapons and items etc.. Right now the animations aren't important as such since I don't have the gun models made. Just the delays I need to know, but the more I know of how Q2 handles the weapons the better. Then when I get the models and animations done I can take advantage of the more advanced MD3 animation system and animation files.

So maybe it's best to just have approximate delay values. I'm not looking at replicating it 100% in any case.

[peewee_RotA]

I do have to agree. Running every individual frame animation on the server is a bad idea. There are some advantages to it, but those advantages are only due to a tight coupling between functionality and display concerns. Even the HUD is managed from the server in q2.