XML-Stuff

[weedkiller]

Hello,
I've started with this "coding stuff" now.
I want you to collect all the tipps you have so we share knowledge and get "unique" character and unit-behaviour.

OK, my current question is, how can i implement different attackstyles?
Yes i just made three skills, but they arent treated equal. Always one ani is prefered and the others only show when they are user-enforced.

I also tried to "enumerate" different anis (<animation path="models\***.g3d"/>) but i wasn't sucessful. is there a standart syntax in XML, which lets the program choose one value randomly? I searched like a syntax like it is shown at the sounds, but it seems this feature isnot supported for animations.

My last idea would be to connect all attack styles into one ani. when the unit attacks for a longer time it should use the different styles. but this creates a new balancing problem: can i damage severaltimes during one attack-sequence?

feel free to post your own questions and successes(?).

[titi]

I think multiple animations for one skill are not possible for animations at the moment

The only way to create 2 different behaviours is to attack on air and ground .
These can be different skills. If you have differnt ground attack types, these must be choosen manually.

EDIT:
Probabaly you can fake something with attack on and stop which is used in buildings ( beehive totem ...). than you can create different attack skills
and switch them on and off. The first attack which is on is used then....probably, but I didn't checked that yet.

If this works the user can choose, which attack should be used.

[weedkiller]

I tried the long animation-one.
The unit now has a very unbalanced attack, but this can make the game more interesting  
The shaman hits once with big damage and then he just "displayes" the other attacks. I have to try some things out till it is some kind of balancen.

Something what confuses me is: The spear i use in the same mesh (can glest use several meshes ?) uses another texture, but unfortunately only the upper part is visible. Maybe there is a colorproblem, is black used as unvisible ?! hmmm. Will try some other colors. An alphachannel is not included in the tga.

[titi]

Black color: The black color transparental effect is something I also noticed when I created the black dragon. But I don't know if this will always work.
The alpha-channel is used for the team color and should always be use in a units texture.

Multi meshes: What do you mean with several meshes?
You can export more than one object to the xml-file ( from blender ) and the meshes are exported one after another in the same xml-file. So you'll have more than one object in the .g3d-file.

Multi attack: Not possible this way!  One animation = one attack, that's a fact.

[weedkiller]

i solved the problem with the spear now. it was a meshproblem, but the texture is now changed, too (less black ). but it was kind of a meshproblem since i found that the spear had only 8 faces in xml, although it should have ~26... i exported the spear an imported an then the error was gone. so no problem for me, but how should a less expierienced modeller find this out? damn...
ok, the multi-attack is now kind of working, i connected two anis together (so it is now too long) and made the attack stronger and the attack time just at the beginning. a problem with balancing: as far i know the unit can break its attack (example: opponent is dead) but then it attacks just the next one and perhaps it can kill much faster if this is used as a trick... so multi-attack is now real solution, will try to find a solid but not to boring attack-style.