[RELzWIPz] Footprints : V

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:10 pm

Footprints

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1336303-req-footprints-in-the-snow/

Footprints, as the name might imply, adds footprints to the player character, NPCs, and creatures. Initial release contains snow footprints for the player/NPCs and a subset of the creatures. Sand and mud prints will be added in later releases. See Readme section for what is currently implemented as well as future plans.

Downloads
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/22745/

Readme

Spoiler

==============================================================================Footprints														   by jonwd7v0.1 BETA															8/20/2012==============================================================================Adds footprints to the player, NPCs, and creatures.==============================================================================CURRENTLY IMPLEMENTED==============================================================================1. All humanoid (non-creature) NPCs2. Bear, Deer, Draugr, Falmer, Hagravens, Horses, Sabrecats,Skeletons, Spriggans3. Race-switching support for player character. Werewolf/Vampire Lord printsare NOT yet implemented, though Shape Shifter mods should work fine given Ihave the prints implemented for the race in question.==============================================================================FUTURE PLANS==============================================================================** DISCLAIMER : Any Dawnguard support will be via an OPTIONAL plugin. **1. Additional creatures will be added as I finalize their footprints.2. Werewolf and Vampire Lord support.3. Additional Dawnguard support for new creatures/races.4. Ghost/Familiar detection. They probably have footprints currently, and Iwill be looking into either no footprints at all, or glowy, ectoplasmic ones.5. OPTIONAL plugin providing "Hunter Vision" which exposes newly placed printsby making them glow.6. Blood trails... Pending any technical limitations that make it toohard to implement.7. Snow "splashes" at character's feet. Mostly for larger creatures and duringsprints.8. Support for bare feet and a few various armor types==============================================================================INSTALLATION==============================================================================Install the BSA and ESP to your Data folder.==============================================================================UNINSTALLATION==============================================================================1. Hit "`" to open the console.2. Type "setstage footprintsQuest 100".3. Fast travel (or COC in console) to somewhere far away from your currentlocation, ideally a place you haven't been to in a several game days.4. (OPTIONAL) Wait a few game days at your new location.5. Save and Exit.6. Deactivate the mod.7. Continue your game and verify you can visit the previous location where themod was last active without a CTD (Crash To Desktop).8. (OPTIONAL) Remove the BSA and ESP from your Data folder. ** BE SURE YOUHAVE UNINSTALLED CORRECTLY! **==============================================================================COMPATIBILITY==============================================================================There are no known compatibility issues.==============================================================================CHANGELOG==============================================================================0.1 - Initial Release==============================================================================PERMISSIONS / LICENSING==============================================================================- Permission is NOT given to redistribute this mod in whole or in part.==============================================================================SPECIAL THANKS==============================================================================Chesko for initial brainstormingRalphDamiani for initial test textureseztwister for the mod idea

Special Thanks
Chesko, for initial brainstorming with implementation
RalphDamiani for providing initial textures to test with
eztwister for the mod idea and http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1336303-req-footprints-in-the-snow/

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:02 pm

Known Issues

- Placement/sizing issues for various footprints (Will be fixed in next release)
- Placement issues while strafing. I've looked into this early on in development and was unsure if it was fixable. Pending further research.
- Lack of prints during jumping/landing. I also looked into this early on and was unsure if it was fixable. Pending further research.
- Any animations that do not fire "FootRight" or "FootLeft" events cannot leave prints, such as certain combat animations with lots of foot motion. Pending further research.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 3:30 am

Awesome work! I was following the other thread, and it's nice for you to have a RELz thread finally

Awesome work

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:47 pm

Fantastic! Downloading the beta now, will let you know how I get on with it.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 1:48 am

Awesome work! ... finally :smile:

Emphasis mine.

There was indeed a huge lull in development, mostly brought on by my crashy/unstable CK. I seem to no longer have the issues, but I fear talking about that any further may jinx it... :biggrin:

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 7:39 pm

Fantastic! This was sorely needed, great work! Also, I didn't expect quite so many different footprint types for the first release, (not that I'm complaining) can't wait until the nexus lets me download!
Edit: London server being slow, Salt Lake is fine. Downloading now.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 1:50 am

Nice start!

Got it running in game. Works very well for player (1st or 3rd person) in snowy exteriors. In snowy cave interiors, the detection is a little erratic, but that's to be expected. Wolves worked well too. Mountain goats didn't appear to have any footprints, and neither did a Dark Brotherhood assassin who came out of nowhere to attack me...I ran away from him, leaving my own footprints behind, but he didn't leave any.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 11:42 am

Aww man this is awesome! Thanks for all your hard work and continuation for whatever you might want to advance with in this mod!

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 5:58 am

Nice start!

Got it running in game. Works very well for player (1st or 3rd person) in snowy exteriors. In snowy cave interiors, the detection is a little erratic, but that's to be expected. Wolves worked well too. Mountain goats didn't appear to have any footprints, and neither did a Dark Brotherhood assassin who came out of nowhere to attack me...I ran away from him, leaving my own footprints behind, but he didn't leave any.

Yeah, I haven't gotten around to goats or cows. And honestly elk/deer have an old texture that looks a bit out of place from the rest. Those are my "next release" candidates, as well as giants (which I forgot to add the texture for before release).

As for the DB assassin, can you tell me where you were? Hopefully it's not in the middle of a quest, which I have no access to. If it's a placed ref I might be able to PRID him and moveto. What is his REF? If it's a random encounter I haven't tested those yet, but I see no reason why it won't work. My implementation simply cloaks everyone in a wide area and adds the appropriate magic effect. Also, if you can, maybe check your Papyrus logs for any errors. I've had intermittent (and very rare) errors spit out with no explanation, but I haven't had one in a long while.

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:48 pm

Damn, that looks really impressive.
What the effect of performance?

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:52 pm

Very cool mod, congrats!

...neither did a Dark Brotherhood assassin who came out of nowhere to attack me...I ran away from him, leaving my own footprints behind, but he didn't leave any.

Proving simply that he was skilled in the art of evading detection! :biggrin:

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:28 pm

you have done a great service for the community here, sir

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:16 pm

Yes he has!

Are you going to make it open-source so that hunting mods can impliment it? It would be really cool to literally track animals to hunt

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:23 pm

Yeah, I haven't gotten around to goats or cows. And honestly elk/deer have an old texture that looks a bit out of place from the rest. Those are my "next release" candidates, as well as giants (which I forgot to add the texture for before release).

As for the DB assassin, can you tell me where you were? Hopefully it's not in the middle of a quest, which I have no access to. If it's a placed ref I might be able to PRID him and moveto. What is his REF? If it's a random encounter I haven't tested those yet, but I see no reason why it won't work. My implementation simply cloaks everyone in a wide area and adds the appropriate magic effect. Also, if you can, maybe check your Papyrus logs for any errors. I've had intermittent (and very rare) errors spit out with no explanation, but I haven't had one in a long while.

No errors in the Papyrus logs. The assasssin attacked me just outside Forsaken Cave, near the path. I think he was just a random encounter, carrying the usual "wanted" note - I haven't done anything regarding the DB yet (with any of my characters!) FF000d2C.

Another observation is that the camera angle also seems to make a difference as to whether the footprints get placed - in 3rd person if I raise the angle higher, looking down on myself, no footprints seem to be placed at all, or very sporadically. If I tilt back down again, the footprints place perfectly with every footstep.

By the way, just wanted to sound my support for what you're doing with this - even at this stage of development it makes a big difference to immersion.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 8:18 am

Are you going to make it open-source so that hunting mods can impliment it? It would be really cool to literally track animals to hunt :biggrin:

I'm not innately against the free sharing of mods (my first two releases were resources), but honestly there's so much going on in my mod that incorporating it into another mod seems equal parts silly and scary. And once you branch off from what I've done in my version, you lose access to any of my updates and improvements. I'd rather see plugins from other authors that require mine as a parent, or use newer methods like GetFormFromFile().

I was already planning on a plugin to go with the main plugin that adds something like "Hunter's Vision". But it would require a "glowy" version of every single footprint. Now if I can set it up correctly, I'm not against other hunting mods incorporating their own "Hunter's Vision" plugin into their mods.

No errors in the Papyrus logs. The assasssin attacked me just outside Forsaken Cave, near the path. I think he was just a random encounter, carrying the usual "wanted" note - I haven't done anything regarding the DB yet (with any of my characters!) FF000d2C.

Another observation is that the camera angle also seems to make a difference as to whether the footprints get placed - in 3rd person if I raise the angle higher, looking down on myself, no footprints seem to be placed at all, or very sporadically. If I tilt back down again, the footprints place perfectly with every footstep.

I'll look into it, though I need to figure out how to force a random encounter.

As for viewing angle, I thought I had the angle bias sufficiently high enough that no one would notice... but I guess not.

You basically need to be nearly perpendicular to the ground for footprints to become sporadic. At least in my testing. I may up the values in a next release, but that requires editing the bajillion and a half ImpactData forms... per foot, per creature/NPC.

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 10:08 pm

Yeah. There are a bunch of extra things that I want to include after a few beta releases. Once I get all the creatures/NPCs covered, I want to go back and do sand and mud, and then work on some edge cases that I don't currently have covered, like ghosts/familiars. I have no idea what happens with those currently. I was thinking either having no footprints at all or or having glowy, ectoplasmic footprints.

I think no footprints would be easier and more fitting. In my opinion ghosts and familiars arnt living and have no physical dimension to them and only interact with things that they want to.

Aside from that I was thinking about having a "Hunter's Vision" addon which causes footprints to glow. The unfortunate thing is that engine limitations prevent me from making already placed footprints glow... It would basically be a toggle that makes newly placed footprints glow. Then the other unfortunate side effect from that is that after you stop using the power/spell footprints will continue to glow -- until they start disappearing from the decal limit or you fast travel away from the area and stay away long enough for them to disappear (that may be instantaneous, I'm not sure).

That would be pretty cool, I wanted something like that a while back but it laid a clairvoyance trail. Would be awesome for vampire's and werewolves.

Blood trails would definitely go along with the Hunter's Vision idea. Aside from a health check, a "is bleeding out" check is possible, though I'm not sure if they continue to bleed out at a certain health level or if it's just a reaction to being struck with a weapon.

Hope it works out that way.

I'm going to be working over the next several hours at packaging a first release. It's mostly getting screenshots ready, videos, and documentation. I have a solid uninstall method, but currently no upgrade scripting. Fortunately it seems like a clean uninstall works so when I do change the scripting a lot a clean reinstall is an option. In fact I may not need upgrade scripting.

Either way I'm just glad this is happening.

» Mon Aug 20, 2012 11:32 pm

As for viewing angle, I thought I had the angle bias sufficiently high enough that no one would notice... but I guess not. :wink:

You basically need to be nearly perpendicular to the ground for footprints to become sporadic. At least in my testing. I may up the values in a next release, but that requires editing the bajillion and a half ImpactData forms... per foot, per creature/NPC.

I'm also having fun trying to hide my tracks by jumping - if I jump immediately as I land, the footprints don't get the chance to be laid, and it's possible to hop around leaving no tracks. This is in no way a criticism of the mod, more an inditement of my immature desire to implement an athletics skill back into the game. The equivalent of side-to-side bunny-hopping from the mountain foothills to the the top of High Hrothgar in order to avoid the pathed route.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 4:07 am

Getting some odd sound issues, footsteps doubling up and sometimes playing when I'm not actually moving. It seems sporadic though, and only after a load from when I was in the snow to a location where I wasn't. That might be to do with one of my other mods though (most likely instigator is my slower running speed mod), so I'll try it clean. Also, if I walk diagonally the prints don't turn with me and continue to apply straight forward.

Happy with the rest though, very nice touch. Makes you feel much more like your character actually interacts with the world as opposed to just gliding through it.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 2:13 am

Getting some odd sound issues, footsteps doubling up and sometimes playing when I'm not actually moving

I haven't noticed these issues on my game so far...still running around having fun making patterns in the snow. Next update: Snow angels? :tongue:

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 4:20 am

I'm also having fun trying to hide my tracks by jumping - if I jump immediately as I land, the footprints don't get the chance to be laid, and it's possible to hop around leaving no tracks.

Detecting jumps and such may have turned out to be impossible... I can't remember now. In any case I know there are ImpactData for "Jump Up" and "Jump Down" essentially, but I need to be able to listen to the animation events that precede this. In any case it would require two more RegisterForAnimationEvent() calls on the player (and all NPCs since they use the same script) which I'll have to look into the impact of. I was definitely aware of this issue, but off the top of my head I can't remember if it's possible to implement support for.

Getting some odd sound issues, footsteps doubling up and sometimes playing when I'm not actually moving. It seems sporadic though, and only after a load from when I was in the snow to a location where I wasn't. That might be to do with one of my other mods though (most likely instigator is my slower running speed mod), so I'll try it clean. Also, if I walk diagonally the prints don't turn with me and continue to apply straight forward.it.

I was worried about sound issues. I can never get the darn game loud enough to test though. The issue being I'm essentially telling the game to play the ImpactData again. For whatever reason the game doesn't register the decal part of the ImpactData unless scripting is used. So I use PlayImpactEffect() which seems to support the decal, but I guess plays the sound again also. In my testing I thought it sounded good, though. Usually I thought the snow didn't sound loud and crunchy enough.

Strafing is something I want to support in additional releases. The only issue (like jumping above) is listening for more AnimationEvents or testing for AnimationVariables ... From my testing with strafing, I could not reliably detect strafing. There is an animation variable "iState" that had some hope of exposing this, and also there are animation events for strafing. I'm pretty sure when I tested none of these things actually worked. The only solution I've thought of so far is listening for keypresses, but I don't like that idea.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 12:50 am

Strafing is something I want to support in additional releases. The only issue (like jumping above) is listening for more AnimationEvents or testing for AnimationVariables ... From my testing with strafing, I could not reliably detect strafing. There is an animation variable "iState" that had some hope of exposing this, and also there are animation events for strafing. I'm pretty sure when I tested none of these things actually worked. The only solution I've thought of so far is listening for keypresses, but I don't like that idea.

What is more noticable than this is the enemies in combat - their foot movements during combat moves leave no footprints, which is quite evident when they run up to you leaving prints, but then up-close they don't leave any as they get in close for the kill.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 8:42 am

I think no footprints would be easier and more fitting. In my opinion ghosts and familiars arnt living and have no physical dimension to them and only interact with things that they want to.

Well, I know that even though such beings are not corporeal, per se, you can still damage them and they have some effect on the environment around them. Also some people believe that ghosts and things leave behind a trace, such as ectoplasm. I think it definitely has a "cool" factor to leave behind ectoplasm trails, but I'm not necessarily in favor of one option over the other. (Edit: And they do leave ash or goo piles on death, right?)

What is more noticable than this is the enemies in combat - their foot movements during combat moves leave no footprints, which is quite evident when they run up to you leaving prints, but then up-close they don't leave any as they get in close for the kill.

If they are moving due to some other animation event, such as a "forward lunge", etc., I can't really support it without registering for additional animation events. I'm not sure if there is a "cure all" for this because I do not know how many different combat animations involve a lot of foot motion.

In my testing it was never an issue really. It may be down to your combat style. I do a lot of dodging and running and backing up from the enemies, so they're always moving toward you.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 5:22 am

This combined with 1st person body view = doing Bethesda's job for them. You guys should be getting paid for effectively patching their games!

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 2:10 am

Grats on release! I'm so excited to give this a try.

» Tue Aug 21, 2012 6:38 am

Grats on release! I'm so excited to give this a try.