Journal of a young adventurer 06/Jan/08

I bought TGE + AFX few months back together with 2 torque reference books. but only recently i have time to fool around with TGE.

my TGE project goal is to create a multiplayer online dancing game, something similar to Audition Online, but much smaller scale, but even that it's quite a undertaking for me. i guess this would be a long and tough journey, but i hope unleast it won't be a lonely journey. i would like to use this space to note down the changes i have made to TGE and hope that some TGE veterans could give some guidance to me.

#1 problem
my project required "multi threaded" animations, e.g. a dance sequence consists of a set of head, body and legs animations. i find that Player::setActionThread() alone is very difficult to achieve the desired result and i have no confidence to hack player class without broken things

#1 problem's solution
my solution is ShapeBase::playThread() function, shapebase's animation functions are more primitive and easier to hack. i also noted that sequence priority play a big role here, for my case legs should has highest priority and head should has the least priority.

#2 problem
shapebase can't play the same animation consecutively

#2 problem's solution
after spamming breakpoints, i discovered this problem was caused by animation sequence didn't rewind properly at end and the sequence did't marked as Thread::Stop. therefore ShapeBase::advanceThreads() always prohibit the same animation sequence being played consecutively.

to solve this problem i added

if (!mShapeInstance->getShape()->sequences[st.sequence].isCyclic() && !st.atEnd &&
	 (st.forward? mShapeInstance->getPos(st.thread) >= 1.0:
	  mShapeInstance->getPos(st.thread) <= 0)) {
	st.atEnd = true;
	updateThread(st);
	st.state = Thread::Stop; // new line
	if (!isGhost()) {
	   char slot[16];
	   dSprintf(slot,sizeof(slot),"%d",i);
	   Con::executef(mDataBlock,3,"onEndSequence",scriptThis(),slot);
	}
 }

after ShapeBase::advanceThreads() marked the thread as atEnd and updated the thread's state.

to ensure the thread was rewind properly at the end, add these lines to ShapeBase::updateThread() under Thread::Play case, where st.atEnd != true

TSShape::Sequence seq = mShapeInstance->getShape()->sequences[st.sequence];
if (!seq.isCyclic() && !st.transit && 
(st.forward? mShapeInstance->getPos(st.thread) >= 1.0 : mShapeInstance->getPos(st.thread) <= 0)) {
    mShapeInstance->setPos(st.thread,st.forward? 0: 1);
}

#3 problem
shapebase doesn't support animation transition but this is a must have feature for my project

#3 problem's solution
the solution is simple, expose the TSShapeinstance::transitionToSequence to script. one thing to take note is the transitionToSequence() must called after timeScale being set properly. for my case, i do it in this order

updateThread(st);
mShapeInstance->transitionToSequence(st.thread,seq,0, duration, continuePlay); // must call after setTimeScale(), updateThread() contains setTimeScale()

#4 problem
after all these changes, now the avatar lost full body animation such as root and walk animation, this due to shapebase's animations have higher piority than player's animation

#4 problem's solution
to solve this problem we need to "disable" shapebase's animation thread when player's animations are needed. for my case, i added in a bool variable called disabled into TSThread class in tsShapeInstance.h
and then in S32 TSThread::operator<(const TSThread & th2) const add in these lines

if (disabled && !th2.disabled) 
	   return 1;
   if (th2.disabled && !disabled) 
	   return -1;

and also expose a method in shapebase class to script, to do that add in these few lines into shapeBase.cc

bool ShapeBase::disableThread(U32 slot,bool disable)
{
	if (mShapeInstance) {
		Thread& st = mScriptThread[slot];
		if (st.thread)
		{
			TSThread * th = st.thread;
			if (th->isDisable() == disable) return disable;
			setMaskBits(ThreadMaskN << slot);
			return th->disableThread(disable);
		}
	}
	return false;
}

ConsoleMethod( ShapeBase, disableThread, bool, 4, 4, "(int slot, bool disable)")
{
   int slot = dAtoi(argv[2]);
   if (slot >= 0 && slot < ShapeBase::MaxScriptThreads) {
      if (object->disableThread(slot,dAtob(argv[3])))
         return true;
   }
   return false;
}

btw, TSShapeInstance::animate(S32 dl) is a great place to study the threads' order, just put some breakpoints after sortThreads(mThreadList);

one last point is don't forget to modify your ShapeBase::packUpdate() and ShapeBase::unpackUpdate() methods. for my case, they become these at the end

// packData
if (stream->writeFlag(mask & ThreadMask)) {
  for (int i = 0; i < MaxScriptThreads; i++) {
	 Thread& st = mScriptThread[i];
	 if (stream->writeFlag(st.sequence != -1 && (mask & (ThreadMaskN << i)))) {
		stream->writeInt(st.sequence,ThreadSequenceBits);
		stream->writeInt(st.state,2);
		stream->writeFlag(st.forward);
		stream->writeFlag(st.atEnd);
		stream->writeInt (st.speed*1000, 11);
		stream->writeFlag(st.transit);
		stream->writeInt(st.duration*100, 10);
		stream->writeFlag(st.simulPlay);
		stream->writeFlag(st.thread ? st.thread->isDisable() : false);
	 }
  }

// unpackData
if (stream->readFlag()) {
for (S32 i = 0; i < MaxScriptThreads; i++) {
 if (stream->readFlag()) {
	Thread& st = mScriptThread[i];
	U32 seq = stream->readInt(ThreadSequenceBits);
	st.state = stream->readInt(2);
	st.forward = stream->readFlag();
	st.atEnd = stream->readFlag();
	st.speed = stream->readInt(11)*0.001f; 
	st.transit = stream->readFlag();
	st.duration = stream->readInt(10)*0.01f; 
	st.simulPlay = stream->readFlag();
	bool disable = stream->readFlag();

	if (st.sequence != seq)
	{
	   if (st.transit)
		   setThreadTransitSequence(i,seq,st.duration,st.simulPlay,false);
	   else
		   setThreadSequence(i,seq,false);
	}
	else
	   updateThread(st);
	
	disableThread(i, disable);
 }
}