Weapons Animation for Dodge,Halftracks and Bren Carrier

Hi mod community: I am trying to achive some new elements for my mod and I am a stuck with some animations. I have some questions, then lets start.

a. I want to achive a Dodge with a mounted .30 cal instead of the .50cal. The main reason is to balance my mod at the early game.
b. Also could be nice a similar animation for halftracks (.30 cal gunner)
c. At the end I want to know if possible to have a dshk 38 (.50cal) animation on Dodge and Bren Carrier.

What I know:

a. Vanilla game have a .30cal weapon for the dodge. I already tried put this weapon on the hardpoint 1 (of the dodge) and replace the .50 cal and see whats happens, but the gun dont shows up.

Vanilla weapon:
weapon\aef\small_arms\machine_gun\heavy_machine_gun\dodge_wc51_m1917_30cal_mp

b. I took a look in the world builder to see the animations states of the dodge and got two possible options in there:

pintle_dsk38_state
pintle_mg_state

c. The vanilla .30 cal for dodge has the follow animations values in the weapon ext:

state_name: maxim_state
track_horizontal: maxim_horz
track_vertical: maxim_vertical
variety_name: dshk38

I think the modding is possible but I can not find the correct values to mod it. I will gratefull with any kind of support. Also, the rest of the mod community will be benefit with this data.

Regards
Olhausen

a. I want to achive a Dodge with a mounted .30 cal instead of the .50cal. The main reason is to balance my mod at the early game.

I tried this my self and sadly the Dodge only supports .50 cal animation.

b. Also could be nice a similar animation for halftracks (.30 cal gunner)

Again same as the Dodge all halftracks only support .50 cal animations. The only halftrack that has a .30 cal mounted on him is the Russian M3A1 and its only the rear gun.

c. At the end I want to know if possible to have a dshk 38 (.50cal) animation on Dodge and Bren Carrier.

Here I guess you are asking if the DShK 38 can be mounted on the Dodge or the Brem Carrier. The answer is no to both. Dodge only supports the .50 cal and Bren Carrier only the Vikers.

Thank you for the answer Ragnar, I asked this because I though Sneak Eye achived something like that (maybe I am wrong), and I read some things around .30cals on american halftracks.
I tried to use the search option here in the forum but I could not find something related.

It sure is possible


I replaced the 50.cal with this weapon in the .abp:

"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\crew\\pintle_m1919a4\\pintle_m1919a4",

Then clone the default dodge 50 cal and apply these settings:

Damn! That is fancy! Thank you for this cool addition!

Here I guess you are asking if the DShK 38 can be mounted on the Dodge or the Brem Carrier. The answer is no to both. Dodge only supports the .50 cal and Bren Carrier only the Vikers.

DShK is possible as well

Add to the .abp:

	"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\crew\\pintle_dshk38\\pintle_dshk38",

And the changes compared to the 50 cal:

DShK is possible as well

This is black magic then

@sneakeye: Thanks a lot mate !!. Once again the mod community is benefit with your valuable expertices.

I am going to try them both. I will full credit you in my discord and steam page. I hope this could help others doing his own creations.

EDITED OLHAUSEN:

Hi again, I do my best trying to mod the weapon but I think I am missing something because the animation is not working for me. I am going to leave here my animation elements and the dodge .abp modding.

Here a screenshot about how my problem looks like:



My dodge .abp:

--3dsmax toolset generated: abp_functions.ms--
model =
{
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\driver\\driver",
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\crew\\pintle_aef_m2hb50cal\\pintle_aef_m2hb50cal",
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\crew\\pintle_m1919a4\\pintle_m1919a4",
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\crew\\pintle_dshk38\\pintle_dshk38",
"..\\..\\props\\aef_parachute\\aef_parachute",

"dodge_wc51",
}

My .30cal weapon animations on the weapon ext:





My Dshk 38 weapon animation on the weapon ext:





Also my dodge only have the canopy off and nothing else regarding extra modding elements. Here some screenshot of it just in case there is another problem around.

Dshk38 hardpoint 1:


Dodge crew:


At the end: My .50cal is a clone from the original one. I just replace the animations as you recommend.
Here my weapon archive just in case:

.30cal M3 Dodge


Regards
Olhausen

I only tested with one weapon in the .abp at a time, but I don't think those conflict. The first screenshot looks like the weapon state is wrong. Is the hardpoint enabled?

I did not take a screenshot with the .30cal at hardpoint 1. But yes I added the weapon to the dodge hardpoint 1 in both cases. I took only a picture with the dshk38

I would try removing the .50 cal from the abp file because from the screenshot I can see the .50 cal under the DShK.

Edit: Also could you put a screenshot of the animations state on the Dodge enabling the gun to show up?

Yes, I am going to try it again tomorrow, right now I am having some problems with internet.

Thanks for the reply guys.

EDITED OLHAUSEN:

I finally solve the problem. My problem was to use all weapons animations in the same abp file.
The way to solve it is to create exclusive .abp file for each dodge. In each .abp I added his unique weapon animation.

Then now in my mod I have three dodge.abp file. Each one has his own weapon animation

dodge_wc51_.abp

{
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\driver\\driver",
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\crew\\pintle_aef_m2hb50cal\\pintle_aef_m2hb50cal",
"..\\..\\props\\aef_parachute\\aef_parachute",

"dodge_wc51",
}

dodge_wc51_30cal.abp

{
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\driver\\driver",
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\crew\\pintle_m1919a4\\pintle_m1919a4",
"..\\..\\props\\aef_parachute\\aef_parachute",

"dodge_wc51",
}

dodge_wc51_dshk38.abp

{
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\driver\\driver",
"..\\..\\..\\common\\vehicles\\crew\\pintle_dshk38\\pintle_dshk38",
"..\\..\\props\\aef_parachute\\aef_parachute",

"dodge_wc51",
}

To finish the job I added to the ebps of each dodge the new entity with his proper name.
Now works perfectly ok.

I want to say thank you to Sneakeye for his time supporting me during the mod my respect to him and I hope this could help other like it did it with me.

PD: I just wondering if Bren Carrier could support dshk 1938 animation. I will check the world builder tomorrow.

This is quite amazing, I was not aware of this whole possibility.

Is this theoretically possible with every vehicle that supports mounted machineguns? For instance, could I mount a DSHK MG on a universal carrier instead of the Vickers?

This is quite amazing, I was not aware of this whole possibility.

Is this theoretically possible with every vehicle that supports mounted machineguns? For instance, could I mount a DSHK MG on a universal carrier instead of the Vickers?

Theoretically yes, although the Universal Carrier is the only vehicle that uses a new hardpoint for the vickers and not using the mounted gun. So it looks a little different:

Cheers SneakEye, that is fantastic. Gonna have to toy around with that on a bunch of vehicles.

@sneakeye: Thank you again for your wonderful advice mate. You are like Eliwood a great modder and the coh2 mod community is lucky to have you.

Jut to complete the information for those ones who wants to mod the vehicle:

a. The vehicle only works if the modder removes all the vickers from the bren carrier .abp file.
b. If the modder wants the previous vickers animations for another version then he needs to create a new .abp file with the new animation of dshk38
c. The animations values of the dshk38 for the Dodge works perfectly with the Bren

@sneakeye: Thank you again for your wonderful advice mate. You are like Eliwood a great modder and the coh2 mod community is lucky to have you.

I've always looked up to Eliw00d. This means a lot to me!

One important piece of information for those wanting to mount a dshk on vehicles:

Don't forget to change the weapons anim_table/track_horizontal key from "turret_gunner_horiz" to "pintle_dshk38_horiz", otherwise the gun won't animate horizontal movement.

Sorry for the double comment, but can someone confirm this problem:

When cloning the WC-51 abp to create a new one sporting the DShK, the marker extension will stop working, most likely because there is no corresponding .mua or .muax or wherever the markers are stored anymore.

That means units in the vehicle's hold will not longer be shown.

So if I would want my mod to have a WC-51 with a DShK for the Russians and one with an M2 Browning for the Americans, I would have to decide on one to have a funcioning hold.

Or is there a way to fix this?

When cloning the WC-51 abp to create a new one sporting the DShK, the marker extension will stop working, most likely because there is no corresponding .mua or .muax or wherever the markers are stored anymore.

That is true sadly. I encountered the same issue and don't know any solution.