multiple Animation threads for vehicles

#1 I'm also having trouble wit this sort of thing. In the racing mod there is a buggy. The wheels of the buggy are programatically moved up and down in the engine code whereas the springs and steering are dts animations.

I want to replace the wheels with legs that are animated in the dts file.

So far I have changed the wheel radius calulation so it doesn't divide by 2 so that the shoulder is the hub. And I've commented out the code in the engine that rotates the wheels. I have legs now on the buggy that are facing the right direction when I steer but they do not animate.

I've read WheeledVehicle.h and WheeledVehicle.cc many times and I tried a few idea but I'm getting nowhere.

Has anyone tried anything like this?

#2 maybe i'm wrong, but i found this in Rick Gorman's Scripting Tutorials

Quote:
function Flag::onAdd(%this,%obj)
{
// %obj is the object being added to the world
// with %this datablock. Start up a thread on the
// new object. Since the ambient sequence is cyclic
// this animation will run continously.

%obj.playThread(0,"ambient");
echo("onAdd");
%obj.isPlaying = 1;

}

So this means to me, i can define more than one sequence in a dts model ("ambient" is define in the milkshape file as material)

#3 That's a good tip. Thanks. However, the animation of my vehicle's tires needs to be controlled, e.g. forward and reverse, etc. Will this approach still work?

#4 Woops, you're scripting this animation. That would work for objects that are just animated eye candy i think. I'm sure I've got to change the engine to do what I want to do.

#5 My problem is a little more advanced than the tutorial.
in the example

function Flag::onAdd(%this,%obj) 
{ 
// %obj is the object being added to the world 
// with %this datablock. Start up a thread on the 
// new object. Since the ambient sequence is cyclic 
// this animation will run continously. 

%obj.playThread(0,"ambient"); 
echo("onAdd"); 
%obj.isPlaying = 1; 

}

the sequence "ambient" is played most likely it is a cyclic sequence that gets repeated.

I require the controls to activate a "door_open" and "door_close" when the player mounts and dismounts WHILE using an "engines_up" or "engines_down" threads determined by if a key is press when the player is mounted. I think the code only supports 1 thread at a time. Would Blending be what I need?

#6 have you tried such like this ???

function Armor::onMount(%this,%obj,%vehicle,%node)
{
  ...
  %obj.isPlaying = 0;    
  // maybe you won't need this, but it's always good, stopping the animation befor you change the thread ;)
  %obj.playThread(0,"Mountanimation");
  %obj.isPlaying = 1; 
 
  ...
}

function Armor::onUnMount(%this,%obj,%vehicle,%node)
{
  ...
  %obj.isPlaying = 0; 
  %obj.playThread(1,"UnMountanimation");
  %obj.isPlaying = 1; 
 
  ...
}

In milkshape you should have to add the two animations in "materials" like this

"opt: fps=5, cyclic
seq: Mountanimation=1-10
seq: UnMountanimation=11-20"

hope, i'm not totaly wrong ;)

[edit]uppss, the second animation should have it's own slot ;) => ...playThread(1, ....)[/edit]

#7 The problem I have with that code , cause I tried somthing similar, is this. My vehicle has a place for the pilot with a cotpit then 2 ppl can ride on the skids. If I do it like that then ALL playes who mount/unmount will cause the cotpit to open. . . . .so then I use a variable called "isPilot" which works for mounting fine, but if I use it for dismounting well by the time it checks to see if the player isPilot the player is already dismounted so the test becomes invalid.