Game Development Community

Sequence naming

by Todd D. Degani · in Artist Corner · 02/15/2005 (8:31 am) · 5 replies

I know that certain sequences have certain names associated with them in the engine, i.e. root,run, etc. Now in the script file for the character model there are lines linking the animation file to those particular names, such as:
sequence0 = "./player_root.dsq root";

Now a couple questions.
1)Is order important here?
2)Does sequence 0 always need to be root or does a sequence just have to be bound to the root name in order to function?
3)In the orc example seq 1 is run, 2 is back, 3 is side etc, does this need to be the case for all character models?

Also about the sequence name before it is exported, in my case the animation is still in Max. A name is assigned to the sequence helper.
4)Does the name of the sequence helper need to conform to anything?
5)Should it be named after its engine counterpart, like root, run, walk, standjump, etc.
6)Should it be named sequence0, sequence1, sequence2, etc to correspond to the sequence names in the script for the model?
7)Does it not matter what it is named?

With some testing I noticed that I had a my root animation sequence helper and my celsalute sequence helper both named sequence01 and this caused celsalute not to work, so i am assuming that the sequence helper names for a particular character model need to be unique. Do they need to be unique on a global scale or just per character?

Any help or insights would be appreciated. I had looked at this which seemed very descriptive but was quite dated so I do not think a lot of the information was still accurate.

#1
02/24/2005 (9:09 am)
The sequence helpers need to be named different for each DSQ you do. For example, player_root.dsq would have one named player_root, whereas player_forward.dsq would have one named player_forward.

That's what has been working for me. :)
#2
02/24/2005 (10:26 am)
Thanks Jimmy. Do you have any insight into the my question about the script file (questions 1, 2, or 3)?
#3
02/24/2005 (1:39 pm)
I left my script file as close to the original as possible. The only animations I have in are run, wait, and death.

I was having some crashes when the player would die, if I didn't have something set for all the death anims. As you can see, I used the same DSQ for each death.

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Torque Game Engine
// Copyright (C) GarageGames.com, Inc.
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

datablock TSShapeConstructor(Terrorist01Dts)
{
baseShape = "./terrorist01.dts";
sequence0 = "./terrorist_root.dsq root";
sequence1 = "./terrorist_forward.dsq run";
sequence2 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death1";
sequence3 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death2";
sequence4 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death3";
sequence5 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death4";
sequence6 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death5";
sequence7 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death6";
sequence8 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death7";
sequence9 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death8";
sequence10 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death9";
sequence11 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death10";
sequence12 = "./terrorist_dieback.dsq death11";
sequence13 = "./terrorist_side.dsq side";
sequence14 = "./terrorist_recoilde.dsq light_recoil";
};
#4
02/24/2005 (2:00 pm)
Are your side and recoil animations working correctly? The reason I am curious if your animations are working with your script setup this way are because:

1) It would mean you do not have to set certain animations to certain sequence numbers, i.e. sequence0 would not have to always be root, etc.

2) It would mean that the link referenced in my original post is incorrect. The phrase from that post that most concerns me is
Quote:The first eight sequences listed above are put into the first eight slots in the actionList and given special treatment in various situations.
#5
02/24/2005 (2:31 pm)
Actually, I have the recoil commented out with // in mine. The side does work though.