GTA IV Birds Project - going well but I've ran into a problem.

[Internet Rob]

I've been placing birds throughout GTA IV  one at a time. Seagulls on the coast and other species inland, it's tedious but the result is impressive. I'm in love with these creatures.

 

  

 

They count as "animated buildings" and the game is limited to 500 at once. There are other "animated buildings" around the world but, unlike my birds, the game unloads most of them when they're not in viewing distance.

 

How do I make the game unload something?

 

Spoiler

Inside nj_docks.ide you can find the seagull I'm using, here's its data. I had no success making adjustments to this.

 

ET_GullParentA, ship, nj_docks, 200, 12591616, 0, -32.3811, -20.9541, -4.79227, 32.363, 20.9494, 4.752, -0.00904083, -0.00233269, -0.0201364, 38.8548, null, 16900576

(ModelName, TextureName, Wad, DrawDist, Flag1, Flag2, (Bounds min)X,Y,Z, (Bounds max)X,Y,Z, (Bounds Sphere)X,Y,Z, Radius, WDD)

 

and I've been placing the individual co-ordinates inside nj_docks_strbig0.wpl, here's what a typical line looks like.

1382, -145, 55, 0, 0, 0, 1, ET_GullParentA, 384, -1, 1, -1

 

I'm not sure what all of this means, except for the co-ordinates I wrote "1382, -145, 55", there's values to change the rotation, and obviously the model name.

 

If I fly away from Liberty City, the game actually does what I want, it unloads them the birds. And flying back will reload them.

  

As you can see about 450 items clear from the list, I've placed about 450, the remaining 22 must be various "animated buildings" in the world that have a flag preventing them from unloading. 

 

I will give credit to anyone with a solution, it will release on the weekend if I can solve this. 

Edited January 26 by Rob_

[Internet Rob]

Solved

It's all about your placement of assets, I went wrong putting everything under jersey - the birds, their anims, the co-ordinates. You've gotta spread it out across the map for a project like this, now I've got a version of my Algonquin birds, their anims, and their co-ords under manhat, for example, in one of its .img files. And I also changed the .ide associated with that .img to let the game recognise the animation I'm trying to get it to use.

Edited January 28 by Rob_

[MiesThies]

Omg this is SO cool! Looking forward to release!