[WEAPONS] Torchlight Chainsword Massacre

[Arkham]

This mod adds seven chainsword weapons to Torchlight.

Four of them are based on the chainswords from Warhammer 40,000:
- Loyalist Marine's Chainsword (1-handed sword)
- Traitor Marine's Chainsword (1-handed sword)
- Ecclesiarchal Eviscerator (polearm)
- Repentia's Eviscerator (polearm)

The other three are original creations:
- Steampunk Chain-Glaive (polearm)
- Clockwork Chainsword (1-handed sword)
- Space-Age Electric Carving Knife (1-handed sword)

All are unique items, and have a requirement of level 30.

View screenshot | Download from RGF

For those interested, some technical details concerning the weapons can be found below:

Spoiler: show

• All of the weapons utilize basic texture animation (scrolling) to achieve the movement on the various cutting chains.
• The Space-Age Electric Carving Knife uses a glow map with texture scrolling to achieve the "flashing red lights" effect.
• The Clockwork Chainsword uses a texture rotation for the circular saw blade at the top end of the sword. The "face" of the blade (guide bar) uses a series of texture frames played in quick succession for the animation of the various elements shown on it (gears, clock hands, large screw, etc.)
• The Steampunk Chain-Glaive uses particle effects in two different ways -- one for the steam/smoke coming out of the pipe-vent at the base of the handle, and the other for the two spinning gears on the blade.

[Phanjam]

DEFINITELY will play these! Thanks very much for the technical texture explanations too Arkham - you inspire me to try out these techniques too !

[screamosilence]

holy shizz its out! its out! downloading...

[SixshotOverdrive]

Awesome work Arkham.

I'm curious though, did you try out the vertex animations?

[Rusty]

These look awesome!! Amazing work!

[Arkham]

I'm curious though, did you try out the vertex animations?

Yeah, I tried it, although I didn't spend a ton of time on it. But I tried out what I thought would work -- vertex animations in Ogre store the animation in the .mesh file instead of a .skeleton file, so I set up an animation state thing, similar to the way the "idle" animation on shrines are set up, pointed all the stuff (that would ordinarily point at the animation skeleton) toward the mesh file and toward the animation clip inside of it, instead. Didn't work.
I wonder if I should PM one of the devs and ask them if this sort of thing is possible, or if I'm doing something wrong, because while the gears on the chain-glaive being set in as particles technically works, it would look a lot better if it could be done through vert animation.

[AttackGorilla]

awesome work , but no chainsaw axe...

[SixshotOverdrive]

Yeah, I tried it, although I didn't spend a ton of time on it. But I tried out what I thought would work -- vertex animations in Ogre store the animation in the .mesh file instead of a .skeleton file, so I set up an animation state thing, similar to the way the "idle" animation on shrines are set up, pointed all the stuff (that would ordinarily point at the animation skeleton) toward the mesh file and toward the animation clip inside of it, instead. Didn't work.
I wonder if I should PM one of the devs and ask them if this sort of thing is possible, or if I'm doing something wrong, because while the gears on the chain-glaive being set in as particles technically works, it would look a lot better if it could be done through vert animation.

Ah, that's a shame. I'd say it's worth PMing the devs about though. I know OGRE supports them, but the multiple skeletons and *.animation files are all Torchlight, which suggests they aren't following the standard animation routine. So they would probably need to be linked in differently, that is, if they work at all.

[Arkham]

All right, so I PMed Brian about it; he was kind enough to forward my question to one of Runic's animators. As the old cliche goes, I got good news and I got bad news:
Bad news is, vertex animation can't be done, even though Ogre supports it. However, the good news is TL2 is apparently going to support skeletal animation on weapons (in a limited form -- basically an idle and maybe a fidget animation), so it sounds like I can port this mod over and use that method of animation for the gears; and, being able to use that type of animation on weapons will open a whole host of other possibilities besides.

[Brixtan]

- WOW! These are freaking awesome Arkham! Great work man!

/bow

[RMUK]

Meant to comment on this days ago! These weapons are pretty damn cool, Arkham - Thanks for sharing your mod! Absolutely top notch job on 'em, they're pretty kickass!

[N3MES1S]

Meant to comment on this days ago! These weapons are pretty damn cool, Arkham - Thanks for sharing your mod! Absolutely top notch job on 'em, they're pretty kickass!

Unfortunately, i have this mod installed but for now i only did the chance to try 1 sword, so im still waiting (my test characters are about lvl 25), but i saw the models in the meshviewer and yea they are awesome, and they served as an example on wat we can do with weapons. It helped me a lot to experiment in the material management file and how the texture animations works.

But Arkham, i have one question, i still cant get a custom sound working on my weapons mod, i looked into your mod to see wat i was doing wrong, but i didnt see anything useful (i mean i did all the steps u did in your mod). I tried copying your sound files to my mod (just in case the sound must have some special formats) but still they didnt work, so i dunno if u did something special about the sound files.

[Arkham]

but i saw the models in the meshviewer and yea they are awesome, and they served as an example on wat we can do with weapons. It helped me a lot to experiment in the material management file and how the texture animations works.

Glad it was able to help you with this. And I forgot to thank everyone for the compliments -- thanks, everybody!

But Arkham, i have one question, i still cant get a custom sound working on my weapons mod, i looked into your mod to see wat i was doing wrong, but i didnt see anything useful (i mean i did all the steps u did in your mod). I tried copying your sound files to my mod (just in case the sound must have some special formats) but still they didnt work, so i dunno if u did something special about the sound files.

Well, first I'd have to ask: are you linking up the sound effects to the weapons via text editor, or via TorchED?

[N3MES1S]

I am linking the sounds via text editor (it is easier for me). Should i use torched instead?

[Arkham]

Personally, I wound up using TorchED. I had tried hooking them up through a text editor initially, only to encounter a similar problem (some of the weapons weren't making noise, while others were). When I did it through TorchED's sound panel thing, what I had done wrong became immediately clear, and I just found the whole process a lot quicker and clearer in general. So yeah, I'd recommend trying it that way and seeing if something's just hooked up wrong (given that you tried my mod's sound effects and couldn't get it to work, this is what the problem likely is).

[Morbus]

I am linking the sounds via text editor (it is easier for me). Should i use torched instead?

What Arkham said. When I tried to create a new sound group etc. for Doctor Bloodaxe (Webbstre's challenge), it never worked until I created it in TorchEd.

[N3MES1S]

I am linking the sounds via text editor (it is easier for me). Should i use torched instead?

What Arkham said. When I tried to create a new sound group etc. for Doctor Bloodaxe (Webbstre's challenge), it never worked until I created it in TorchEd.

So, this is like when u create particle effects attached to weapons, if u dont use torched to link the particles with the layout file, it wont work.

I guess this is the same, the sounds need to be linked with torched to work, but i think i already tried once with no result, maybe i was doing something wrong, i will try it again in my next wip. Thx guys.

[Jaz1]

I was just wondering how to activate this mod? Are these items at a shop? or are they random drops/loot? please reply as soon as you can, thank you.

[N3MES1S]

As far as i know, the items are spawned as regular items (of course they are unique so the probabilites of spawning the items are low). I think i saw once the clockwork sword in the shop, but to be honest, i only saw it once in a few months.. =). I stop using this mod cuz some weapons were not showing up correctly (particle issues i guess) but u need patience to adquire one of these weapons, since they are very rare. If u wish to know if the mod is installed correctly on your TL installation, just use the console and spawn manually any of the weapons, if u dont have any problems on that, the mod should be working ok.

[Arkham]

I was just wondering how to activate this mod? Are these items at a shop? or are they random drops/loot? please reply as soon as you can, thank you.

Nemesis is correct, they are random.

I stop using this mod cuz some weapons were not showing up correctly (particle issues i guess)

Do you think you could specify which weapon(s) had the problem?
If it's the chain-glaive, the particle-related issue with that one basically can't be solved, at least for TL1. If it's something with one of the other ones though, that's likely a problem I'm not familiar with.