MM Shows, Strings and Toys: need help

[(Designer)Khaydar]

So I'm making a MM show animal that uses toys that I have created, however I have trouble making it work: the shows starts normaly, the animals look confused and then leave the show tank.
I used vanilla code as reference and checked if it's a case of bad behaviour/animation declaration/typo.
Other symptoms include the trick not being greyed even when there's no toy to be used.

Under [m/tricks/hoop], when I edit the "building = " line to use a string I've made the trick is grey on the show program even when the toy is there. Using the toy ucs name or anything else, results on what I wrote first.
This lead me believe it might be a limitation? As all strings I've seen where text for Cname, Cthought, Chelp, etc, text to be shown ingame rather than a toy/object id.

I also checked from the toy ucs side and made sure the animal is listed as user via string.
Added the uca, ucs and dll to this post incase someone wants to give a look

LANG--Khaydar.dll KhHoop.ucs KhSFPW.uca

[Fern]

I will pass this on to Jay as that probably will not work.

Most likely one problem will be that it should not be a ucs file. Probably would need to be ai or ucb. But this is just me guessing.

 

[Fern]

He only had time for a quick look.

From Jay: Although I have configured toys and tricks, I do not believe I configured show toys before. So without the ztd files, I can only speculate. As was mentioned, I also believe the show toy has to be a ".ucb" instead of ".ucs". In addition, I believe the building setting in the uca needs to be set to a dll number, which looks like would be 5968 for this. Also, cHelpID is supposed to be set to the same value of cNameID when cNameID is not 19000 in uca and ucb files. I did not look in the ".dll", If there are still problems, it is best for me to look at the ztd files. As for other things, the checker shows the following for the uca:

*** Warning: uca/ai file has 'fPlayWithSound(' without comma.
*** Warning: No fPlay... type of line before fPlayTime line.
*** Warning: No fPlay... type of line or fDie line after fPlayTime line.
* Efficiency: Line pair with 2nd being 'v=0' not needed in cCompatibleTerrain.
* Efficiency: iCharacteristics/Integers] sections are unused + can be removed.

I noticed some other inefficiencies as well.

[(Designer)Khaydar]

On 3/2/2024 at 3:08 AM, Fern said:

uca needs to be set to a dll number, which looks like would be 5968 for this.

Did that and the result is that the trick is greyed no matter what as shown.

https://imgur.com/pDPwXjDhttps://imgur.com/
Likely an issu between the hoop and string.
I have already declared the string on the dll, however I don't know how to do it on the toy ucs.

 Does it have to do with?:

[Characteristics/Strings]
cInfoImageName = scenery/building/inbldg/inbldg

It's the only thing under strings except for the cName and cInfo

[(Designer)Zarawatto]

Pretty interesting... I wonder if new show toys might be used by in-game performing animals or if they are just for UCAs that will perform a show 🤔🤔

[(Designer)Khaydar]

28 minutes ago, Zarawatto said:

in-game performing animals or if they are just for UCAs

UCAs, pretty much impossible to add completelly new animations to vanilla animals without sprite editing, which I find tedious. As for UCA you can kind of make them use vanilla show toys but not having a 3D model means a lot of trial and errors to get it working, also to tedious. The best alternative was to make new 3D toys that can be reused by future mods.