First person weapons for MCoop

[AlCapowned]

MCoop is probably one of my favorite Unreal mods in existence. Winged Unicorn did an amazing job by only using stock assets and relying on the player's third person model to do the attacks. The problem is that it's sometimes hard to play as a monster when your attacks are interrupted by other monsters and there is no indicator of whether or not your attack worked. I was messing around in 227's mesh viewer and saw how well some monster meshes would work for first person weapons, so I took a few monster meshes, hid the parts that got in the way, and made basic weapons out of them. Instead of the player doing damage based on their own animations, the weapons do.

What I want to do eventually is add first person meshes for most of the pawns in MCoop (they would have separate classes), a modified gametype, ammo icons for every monster, and some different abilities to make playing as certain monsters more interesting. Assuming everything goes well, I'd also like to make some beta/tech demo/other custom pawns playable. Maybe I could even release a separate package that wouldn't need MCoop and would work for single player games.

Here are some examples of what I have so far:


For some monsters like the pupae and fly, I think a pseudo third person view works well. For the brute and gasbag, getting rid of everything but the arms works well for a first person weapon, even if the texture looks bad. The main problem I see is that neither view works for some monsters, like the mercenary and slith. For those two, I can change the animations in my skeletal versions of them and make them into vertex meshes, but I can't do that with others like the titan or tentacle.

I know Unreal's multiplayer is pretty much dead, but is anyone here interested in this, or at least the single player part? I want to know before I spend too much time on it.

Edit: Changed thread title because people are interested and I'm working on this.

Edit 2: Okay, my interest is pretty much all gone. Unless a lot of people want me to keep working on this, I won't be releasing the project.

[StalwartUK]

MCoop... that takes me back years. I remember playing a ton of it on Hyper.nl's old server. I like your ideas. While MCoop was a good mod overall I never really liked how it handled monster attacks. Your solution would fix that. By all means go ahead.

[Jigoku]

My server runs MCoop!!! Before I came across MCoop I've been wanting to play as a bad guy for a long time til I found something that allows me to do such a thing. <3

[ividyon]

I'd be very impressed if you managed to spin the player's view when executing the Skaarj spin attack.
Overall it sounds like a great idea! You should totally go for it, if you got the motivation and inspiration.

[UB_]

Oh YES DO THAT

Also I suggest making some demo release, for more suggestions, etc...

[Jigoku]

Bob is making (or I at least I hope so) the pawns from RTNP playable in MCoop along with a tree and a torchflame. ._. This thing you thought up would make my server more interesting I hope...

[Z-enzyme]

I did some mod once, full body awareness for Unreal 227. It just sticked the camera on the player model's head and followed its animation using vertex attach. Maybe that would be of a use here for the skaarj animations for example? OR, using same technique I used for alternate pawns I can prepare first person meshes of the pawns for you a bit more detailed and with removed monsters' bodies and legs, so only hands and weapons are left.

[Tarydax]

This is something I'd definitely be interested in.

What kind of different abilities would you have in mind?

[bob]

Look instersting , It will just make things more complexs tho,*( more subclasses etc) I dont play that much mcoop , so i dont have much to say unfortinitly.

Bob is making (or I at least I hope so) the pawns from RTNP playable in MCoop along with a tree and a torchflame. ._.

ALC could make the rtnp part alot higher quality and alot faster then i can ,
Especially when i have no time lately ( not to mention that big crash i had)
Just thought i would mention that , so it dosnt seem like i tried to jump over/in front of someone else work.

[AlCapowned]

Thanks for the feedback, everybody.

I did some mod once, full body awareness for Unreal 227. It just sticked the camera on the player model's head and followed its animation using vertex attach. Maybe that would be of a use here for the skaarj animations for example? OR, using same technique I used for alternate pawns I can prepare first person meshes of the pawns for you a bit more detailed and with removed monsters' bodies and legs, so only hands and weapons are left.

I played through a few maps with that mod of yours; it really was great for immersion, but isn't MCoop limited to 224/225/226 because of the dlls it uses? More detailed meshes would be great, since I'm just using UnrealFX to hide everything that gets in the way.

Oh YES DO THAT

Also I suggest making some demo release, for more suggestions, etc...

Yeah, I'm definitely going to have a beta test or demo for this.

What kind of different abilities would you have in mind?

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head, but I think they would be nice to have. Normally, the MCoop brute uses the charge animation when it moves, but it's still really slow. I'd like to change that so it normally uses the walk animation, and then when the player uses a keybind or combination of mouse buttons (I'm not sure about the controls for it yet), they would charge forward at a much faster speed. Something similar could be used for the squid, except they would move backwards to escape from enemies.

I want players to have more control over what attacks they use, so if I can make the skaarj's spin attack change the player's view, it won't be random and annoying. The same thing could apply to the krall's throw ability. I have the brute weapon set up so that standing still and using the primary fire button will play the gutshot animation, holding the primary and secondary fire buttons will play the stillfire animation, and moving and firing plays the walkfire animation. It isn't fully coded, but it works as an early concept.

ALC could make the rtnp part alot higher quality and alot faster then i can ,
Especially when i have no time lately ( not to mention that big crash i had)
Just thought i would mention that , so it dosnt seem like i tried to jump over/in front of someone else work.

I was having trouble with some of the animations for the predator the last time I tried to make RtNP pawns, but I think they would be great to have.

I'm not sure what I would do with the nali, space marines, or skaarj troopers, now that I think about it. I'll post some screenshots of other stuff I have so far.

[UB_]

Are you going to add some of the special resistances that Scripted Pawns have? a.k.a. immunity to "bitten" damage for not being bothered by Biterfish and 90% resistance to fall damage (even though that could break some stuff). Resistances need to be coded for PlayerPawns though - and you have to do it also for Ice, Burned, Corroded, Exploded resistances for several pawns because the DamageResistance for PlayerPawns don't work (except for "All" which is God mode).

Spinners would be really nice to play as since they weren't in MCoop.

But let's go with SkWarriors first.
For Skaarj Warriors, the Claw attack is used when the Skaarj stands still, while the Spin is used only when the Skaarj moves. The lunge is a huge problem. Using it with forward-dodge doesn't sound like a good idea; maybe activated while in air? Skaarj Lunges can go vertical too.
MCoop Skaarj Warriors did not have the side-stepping run/runfire, which shouldn't be a problem to code. The Jump animation was also screwy and missed frames unlike the ScriptedPawn version.

As for the 4 taunts, I'd think of like this
Taunt Button 1: Hairflip with sound
Taunt Button 2: the "yawn" animation
Taunt Button 3: well, the whole "cleaning claws" animation set? Like MCoop does, but better and maybe with sounds. Looking around and Claw checking animations should rarely happen.
Taunt Button 4: all animations about pressing buttons. Otherwise, the Fighter stance with random Skaarj sounds.

Yeah there's a lot to think about. Ice Skaarj also need their Ice immunity coded.

Another thing about ScriptedPawns is that any of their "hurt" animations pretty much happen only when they are near death (that's why it is pointless playing as the big monsters in MCoop because their animations get stopped by simple projectiles).

Oh, and ScriptedPawns also do not have the default Fighter animation occuring between anims, making them more fluid to look at.

It's recommended to work on one monster at time otherwise you'll be too much confused. Fully playable Skaarj Warriors are annoying as hell to code so I guess you'd want to begin with something easier? (Slith or Gasbags)

[AlCapowned]

I want to add most of the resistances, but the falling damage one could cause some problems with players getting stuck in places where they don't want to be.

I'd like to use those taunts, but some taunts will be problematic in first person because of how the arms are positioned. If a mesh is too far away, things like this happen:


To stop that problem, the meshes need to be moved closer to the player's view, but then some animations can't be seen. This is a problem with the slith's shooting animation, and it'll probably be the same way for the mercenary. If it's possible to change the weapon's playerviewoffset when a certain animation plays, that might solve everything. Or the taunts could just animate the third person model.

First I'm going to get as many meshes in first person as I can, then I'm going to make a few base classes, and then I'm going to work on each monster/weapon one by one. I'll probably work on the gasbag first. I really want to add abilities that are missing in MCoop, like the slith being able to attack while moving. Adding midair dodging for the gasbag and warlord would be great, but I'm not sure it would be possible. Should the skaarj's lunge change the player's view? That would be pretty cool and accurate to the third person animations, but maybe it would be disorienting for some players. The same goes for the dodge animations.

Yep, there's definitely a lot to think about. Some more shots:

Warlord (fighter)

Krall (shoot2)

Skaarj (claw)

[UB_]

Oh you are going to add 1st person animations for taunts too. Kind of surprising you decided that since that doesn't happen with regular PlayerPawns; that's one boulder on the way to move then. Taunt animations do play a major part of the personality of the Unreal monsters so that would make sense having them in 1st person though...

Not sure what you meant with the Skaarj lunge and camera view, but I recommend not doing anything that would confuse the player or that is headache-inducing. The lunge sound is just enough as a message that you did a damaging forward barrel roll.

About the mid-air dodge, I'm not sure if it can be coded while flying with Unreal's movement system. Gasbags and Warlords' flying dodges are sudden, ultra-high increase of Air Speed, which is something that cannot be replicated for PlayerPawns.
Always about the Gasbag, not sure what stuff was missing in the MCoop version. Besides being able to melee while moving (we're going with random types of melee attacks like any normal Gasbag does?), a "Pound" taunt with sound and voices.
Exiting from water is going to be annoying because you need to "jump" from the water surface if you want to fly again.

[AlCapowned]

If I can't change the playerviewoffset property when certain animations player, I'll probably skip the first person taunts for the most part. For some taunts, like when the skaarj sharpens its blade, I want to change player's view so it seems like they're crouching. I was on one server that did this for the skaarj trooper, so I know that's possible, at least.

By changing the camera view for the skaarj's lunge, I meant that it would rotate the player's view so it would be like they're really lunging. It would be similar to what Sana suggested for the spin attack. Like you said, it could get disorienting. If people are split between a normal and more realistic skaarj, I'll probably just include both types as separate classes.

Too bad about the air dodging ability. That would have been perfect.

[ividyon]

For taunts, you could do it like in Team Fortress 2 or Portal 2, where the game briefly shifts to a third person camera (freely rotatable) for the duration of the taunt before returning to first person. That would eliminate those animation issues, and allows you to see how exactly you're taunting your enemy (as well as providing a greater risk for taunting). Bonus points if the taunt can be aborted at any moment by shooting/moving and return you to first person.