Engine questions, for a Battletech mod.

[Tylinol]

Hi, I'm Tylinol and I was reffered to your game via a member of the Battletech simulator forums. It looks like a great engine for a Battletech mod, with plain-english file structure and such. So I have a few questions for the developers.

1. Are you planning to release a script for something like Blender that would allow the user to export their models and the physicalobject file? I'm working on a script right now to export collision triangles and nozle points, as well as internal components, armor thickness, etc. in Blender 3d. But I imagine you guys have something similar and probably more powerful.

2. How do UVs need to be configured for the 3d models? I notice you have texture files and .cob files, and I wondered if you map the UVs in your 3d modeling program or if the UVs are set in another application.

3. How much animation support does the engine have? I noticed some animation snippets in the physicalobject code, do these support full animations (walking, etc) or just basic object rotation. If they do indeed support walking animations and the like, how are animations created and added to the physicalobject file?

Thanks for your time, and good luck developing your engine.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Hi, Tylinol.

Are you planning to release a script for something like Blender

We do most of our work in Calagari Truespace which is why you see .cob model files used so much in the game. However, our engine is capable of reading a variety of other model formats including .x, .3ds, .obj, .lwo, etc. so getting models out of Blender and into DropTeam shouldn't be very difficult.

I'm working on a script right now to export collision triangles and nozle points, as well as internal components, armor thickness, etc. in Blender 3d.

That's very exciting! If you need any kind of help please feel free to say so and we'll do what we can to support your effort. First class support for Blender would definitely be a boon to the mod community since Blender is free.

How do UVs need to be configured for the 3d models?

They're read directly from the model itself not from anything external. So, just make your textures look good in Blender and they will look the same way in the game.

How much animation support does the engine have?

The animation support that you see in the .physicalobjectgroup files is a way of animating in the old, original Quake 1 style: a series of static meshes that are replaced at each "frame" of the animation. This is OK for very basic things but in your case, for making walking mechs, there's something much better now. As of the 1.1.0 release which includes infantry, DropTeam now supports real bones and skinning. So you can rig a character, animate its skeleton using IK or motion capture, and export that animation into DropTeam. DropTeam will do real animation of the skeleton and realtime skinning for the mesh. This is definitely the way you will want to implement your mechs but you will need to wait for the 1.1.0 release in order to try it (which is hopefully only a few days away!) So in the meantime, you might want to start getting your mechs rigged as characters with bones and skin and animate them so that when you have 1.1.0 you can immediately start exporting into DropTeam.