hi..
when i use to make special ai on mobs i definately use a model.. this means that if u want a mob to act a decent way i look for a ingame mob which works similar to what i want and use it's ai and its structure..
for example.. open mon3.wil with wmlibeditor or another wil reader and look at the picture structure of the skeleton..
as u can see u have from images 0 to 9 its idle position looking up then the next 10 images are again idle positione looking upright and again 10 images for right then for the other directions.. since the directions are 8 this means that from 0 to 79 u get its idle position animation..
from frame 80 u have its walking animation repeated again for 8 directions which means u get walking animation from 80 to 159
from 160 to 239 (80 images) u have its attacking animation
from 240 to 255 (16 images) u have the animation when it gets hit
this is only 16images because in this picture structure u get only 2 bmps for each direction
from 260 to 339 (80 images) u have its dieing animation
and from 340 to 359 u get its magic explosion animation when it dies..
now if u watch in the tbl_monster u get some values for race and imgrace which are 86 and 14.. this means that if u want a monster to act exactly as this skeleton and have its explosion animation its not enough to have this values in the monster race and raceimg fields but it MUST also have its picture structure.. so open the mon file u want and make sure it has the same animations of the mob u want to copy in the same picture frames..
for istance ill try to make an example to you here..
lets say that i got this mob here:
and i will like it to have the ai and the lightning skill of the wiz red fox..
so i open the mob with wmlibeditor.. i open the wil which has the red fox in it and i put them so that thier animation start at the very top line of the wmlibeditor like in the picture above.. as u can see the mob i want to edit starts on frame 0 and my red fox on frame 440.. now look at the picture.. from frame 0 to 95 my mob acts exacly as the first 95 images of the red fox.. which means that for now the ai the red fox uses might be ok for my mob.. let's scroll the animations down to see more..
now as u can see from this picture, the mob and the red fox are the same till frame 155 (595 for the red fox) and from frame 160 the animation starts to change.. so what are we going to do now? we must now check if the picture structure is the same..
do to this press on frame 600 of the red fox and see what it does.. now as u can see from frame 600 to 605 it does an attacking animation with direction look up.. then from frame 610 to 615 it repeats.. this means it has a picture structure of 610-600 (10 images) which are used to the attacking animation.. in this example it uses 6 images and 4 blank images which the client will not show ingame.. (but this are 4 images which will be shown if they actually contained a bmp)..
let's see what my other mob does.. my other mob does an attack animation starting from fram 160 (aka 600) to frame 169.. then changes direction from 170 to 179..
this means that even though i has more images than the fox it uses it's same picture structure..so red fox ai will be good anyway..
so ill scroll down to the end of the attacking animation of my mob and my redfox..
on frame 240 of my mob (which is 240+440 (starting postion of red fox animation) = 680 of my red fox and compare again the frames)
as i can see the mobs use the same picture structure till the end of thier animations.. the only thing that misses ovviously is the magic skill which in the red fox picture animation starts from frame 780 which is frame 340 for my mob.. this means that now if i want my mob to use ai of the red fox i need to copy also its magic which goes from frame 780 to 819 so from frame 340 to frame 379 i will need to have its magic there.. now if u understood what i did u can now save the mob.. go in the monster db and edit its race and raceimg to the ones the redfox has.. then test it ingame..
if u want to make it do different things then using the same logic u can use the ai of the redfox and insert instead of the thunder skill animation a skill taken from your magic.wil.. it will be the same.. and will work correctly as far u keep the same picture structure..
for example if i want it to do a firebag attack instead i know that from frame 340 to 349 i can put a skill animation instead of thunderbolt and from frame 350 to 379 i can put a longer skill.. so u can copy one and edit it to fit in this spaces and cheers
