SRIV Restoring Cloth Simulation on NPCs

[GPZ]

I've been trying to fix the lack of "cloth simulation" on Morning Star 2 (The female African-American solider) from the Morning Star Saints customization.

Upon checking the files for the Saints character, I noticed it is lacking a .sim_pc file, which would explain why it isn't animated in-game. I tried to copy over the files from "morningstar_female_zoey.str2_pc" into "saints_female_zoeys.str2_pc". I renamed them all appropriately from the "zoey" prefix into "zoeys" and I added the appropriate cloth simulation command on the "character_definitions.xtbl" for the Saints variant. However, it still shows up static in-game.

Is there a way to restore the cloth simulation while keeping the Saints skin?

 

[Meatplowz]

The simulations are paired by name with the *.rig_pc at game startup, while the character containers are being constructed. So, if the "saints_female_zoeys" rig field is "zoeys.rigx" then the simulation file should be named zoeys.sim_pc. If that pairing exists, it should work. The only thing I can think that would further prevent this from working would be that character was exported later without the proper skeleton containing the simulated bones that are found in the sim_pc file. I won't be able to tell for sure until I'm at my desk what changed.

 

[GPZ]

Aha, I believe I've tried copying the rig & simulation together as I thought they were related, however no matter what I did it did not seem to work in-game... the model either did not show up at all or if it did show up it had no changes. It seems like the cloth simulations were accidentally left out on a couple of Gang variants, it's been like that since SR:TT.

I compared Morning Star 1 for reference, "saints_female_claras" and she seems to refer to "clara.simx" in her definition, paired with "claras" mesh and rig, and it clearly works in-game.

 

[Meatplowz]

I just looked at the data for zoeys.rigx and zoey.rigx and the two are essentially the same. Copying, the zoey.sim_pc and renaming it to zoeys.sim_pc and putting it into the stream container or however that happens, should get it to work. Sure you could add it to the table but it shouldn't be necessary after a change we added at the end of production to load based on the rigs with the same name. There is also a cloth_sims.xtbl that used to hold all of the simulations to preload but after our memory change we only loaded npc and customization items with the rig names. You could try adding that reference in there as well, if nothing else works.

 

[GPZ]

Right, so basically I just need to add the zoey.sim file into the Saints folder and then rename it "zoeys.sim"? I think I tried that before trying anything else but I'll give it a shot and let you know if it works.

EDIT: Unfortunately, it did not work, I got the same result as before. It's interesting to note that the minute you load the model into the screen, the colors switch from morning star red into saints purple, as if the latter overrides that texture.

 

[[V] Knobby]

EDIT: Unfortunately, it did not work, I got the same result as before. It's interesting to note that the minute you load the model into the screen, the colors switch from morning star red into saints purple, as if the latter overrides that texture.

You probably need to put the file into the str2 file and update the asm file. Just dropping the sim file into the base directory probably will not do anything.

 

[GPZ]

That's what I did, I knew it wouldn't work otherwise. I added zoeys.sim_pc into "saints_female_zoeys" and rebuilt the package using Minimaul's repack app. I updated character_containers.asm as well while using the app.

I remember you guys said that you use an app to calculate and export the cloth sims. I'm wondering - how is that process different than what I am trying to do here? Is there anything else that could prevent it from working?

 

[[V] Knobby]

We work with loose files mostly. The app would do it completely differently in that it simply produces the sim_pc file. We have many tools internally and a special build of the game in order to resolve the file into a path to read. This is part of why the SDK is taking so long. Everything we do is completely different from the way you have to do things.

 

[GPZ]

I see, I imagined that you would do that, since SR modding (and video game modding in general) is built off reverse-engineering. I suppose there is something that we're missing, because you guys made it seem as simple as putting the sim file in, renaming it, repacking it into str2 & updating the character_container.asm and placing it all in the SRIV directory.

I noticed that "Zoey" appears one additional time as "npc_mstar_female_soldier" (I assume that's an unused leftover of some sort, a template perhaps?) with a working cloth simulation. Since I cannot manage to repair "saints_female_zoeys" I thought I could get away with transferring the Saints materials.

I have an additional unrelated question - when you "unlock" the Morning Star in SRIV they appear on the Gang customization menu as "New Colvin", while the Deckers and Luchadores are named as they should be.

Is there a way to rename it back to Morning Star? Is there a file that controls how they are named?

 

[[V] Knobby]

In the future please make a new thread so people can more easily find questions and answers.

As for the question, I would use the localization tools, released by Minimaul I believe, to alter the string file. You should be able to change it to say anything you want.