Prequel Conversion

[Circa]

In addition to my Prequel Music Replacement, I have been working on a Prequel Conversion mod for Single Player. It's inspired by my old mod "Battledroid SP" that I released ages ago. This mod takes it a few steps forward, replacing various aspects of Jedi Academy to make it appear as if it were taking place during the prequel movies. The goal is to not convert the game to a completely different story, but leaving the game still in tact with the same characters, plot, etc.

Here are some things I have changed so far:

• All Imperial NPCs are now Battledroids (With their corresponding rank colors)
• Rebel NPCs are now Clones from ROTS
• AT-ST NPC is now a Hailfire Droid (Very buggy - Might need help with it)
• E-11 Blaster Rifle is now an E-5 Blaster Rifle with correct sounds
• Imperial Repeater is now a DC-15A Blaster Rifle with correct sounds and effects (blue bullets)
• All Battledroid NPCs have only the E-5, no other gun, like in the movies. I don't recall seeing any droids with anything else.
• All clone NPCs just have repeaters, nothing else
• All menu items changed accordingly to real gun names (DC-15A and E-5)

What I still plan on doing and might need help with (Crossed out ones are now finished):

• Implement Super Battle Droids somehow with correct animations and arm gun. Not sure if this is possible. The animations being the arm gun. I'd be content with just the animation and not able to have the gun fire from the correct spot.
• Get the Hailfire Droid working properly. It spawns and moves but it doesn't shoot anything. It's also very clumsy looking and drives over other NPCs. (Not really possible, I've done all I can really)
• Maybe get Droidekas to work. I did this once, replacing the AT-ST with them but I lost my original mod and figured I could replace a different NPC that made more sense this time.
• Change ingame Imperial voices to droid voices. I won't need help with this.
• Change the few ingame Rebel voices to Clone voices. Again, easy.
• Possibly change ingame text to match CIS/Trade Federation/Seperatist labeling. (In menus and such)
• Maybe include the Prequel Music Replacement once I get it finished, as a separate optional pk3
• Change ingame ships to prequel ships. (Z-95 to Jedi Starfighter, TIE to Droid Starfighter, etc.)
• Nute Gunray replaces Racto, Wat Tambor replaces Rax. (Complete with new voices)

I'm still debating whether or not to change every mention of Imperial, Empire, Stormtrooper, etc to what they should be. That would take forever to do though. 
 
There are going to be problems no matter what, like the fact that it will still be Luke and Kyle in the story, which would be confusing. Not sure if it's worth going all out and changing literally everything from models to text in the menus. And the voices. That would require a lot of work.
 
Any opinions? Again this is for Single Player, the part hardly anyone has played since getting the game. Don't reply with "SP sucks, you're wasting your time" garbage. I'm hoping to maybe get some people to play SP at least one more time with this mod, to give it a different feel.
 

Released!
 

https://jkhub.org/files/file/1548-prequel-conversion-mod/

 

Check the description for the full rundown.

[Kualan]

Not to sound discouraging, but I think this has been done before. Some mods on Moddb and JK3 achieve the same I think, from memory.

 

Still, good luck with your modding.

[Circa]

I have seen a couple over the years and most of them are old and incomplete. The reason I started it originally was for myself personally.

[therfiles]

This sounds really cool! While it has been attempted before, I believe you can finish it and have an awesome product! Here are some suggestions:

 

 

Implement Super Battle Droids somehow with correct animations and arm gun. Not sure if this is possible. The animations being the arm gun. I'd be content with just the animation and not able to have the gun fire from the correct spot.

 

 

This should be quite possible. Do you have any experience using Dragon? The file description has a nice little tutorial. You would then need to make an new custom _humanoid file for the SBD model, something I have tried and failed to do. You can take a stab at it though. I know Dragon may not be the best animator, but it is much easier to use for newcomers to animation. I may need to elaborate on this more...

 

Get the Hailfire Droid working properly. It spawns and moves but it doesn't shoot anything. It's also very clumsy looking and drives over other NPCs.

 

 

Would you mind posing the .NPC file you are using? That way I can see what you should change.

 

Maybe get Droidekas to work. I did this once, replacing the AT-ST with them but I lost my original mod and figured I could replace a different NPC that made more sense this time.

 

I think the droideka model already has custom animations packaged with it (please correct me if I am wrong). You would then need to just make an npc with a weapon that somehow shoots two projectiles, which may be tricky. I know a little about .efx modding, so I can elaborate if you wish.

 

Another suggestion I have for you is this: change the stormtrooper's CLASS from STORMTROOPER to PROTOCOL (or what ever protocol uses). This is a technique that KOTF uses (please allow me to live) that make the npc explode on death. However, this may be counter productive with other aspects of npcs. Please check it out, though.

 

[minilogoguy18]

Dragon sucks, you can animate 1 bone 1 frame at a time or you can try out my rig and more than likely have things done in a fraction of the time, I even made a video tutorial on it's usage, the run sequence you see me export took less than an hour to make. You still have to get familiar with the software but that's something you'd have to do with Dragon also so why waste the time.

 

If you made a custom skeleton and gla for a SBD you definitely cannot use Dragon since it cannot make a skeleton and I think a custom skeleton would be the only real option if you want the wrist cannons to move and act the way they do in the movies.

 

Your largest obsticle is that you're on Mac, which is the worst thing ever to have when modding any game, windows dominates the world of game design. Neither Dragon or Mod Tool will run on the Mac OS.

 

Your hailfire droid will probably never work without some serious code work since you are limited to the NPC classes that already exist in game.

[therfiles]

Dragon sucks, you can animate 1 bone 1 frame at a time or you can try out my rig and more than likely have things done in a fraction of the time, I even made a video tutorial on it's usage, the run sequence you see me export took less than an hour to make. You still have to get familiar with the software but that's something you'd have to do with Dragon also so why waste the time.

 

If you made a custom skeleton and gla for a SBD you definitely cannot use Dragon since it cannot make a skeleton and I think a custom skeleton would be the only real option if you want the wrist cannons to move and act the way they do in the movies.

 

Your largest obsticle is that you're on Mac, which is the worst thing ever to have when modding any game, windows dominates the world of game design. Neither Dragon or Mod Tool will run on the Mac OS.

 

Yeah, I agree. Dragon is a pretty obsolete tool compared to your rig. However, doesn't softimage cost money....?

 

Anyway, all he would theoretically do is make a couple of anims in dragon, moving the gun tag to the wrist, and all the various animation. Package them all up in a humanoid gla, and then target the model's glm to use that animation set rather than the default humanoid using the method I referenced above. This is only for SP, though.

[Kessno]

Yeah, I agree. Dragon is a pretty obsolete tool compared to your rig. However, doesn't softimage cost money....?

 

I should probably let minilogoguy18 handle this, as I'm not a modeler. Anyway, Autodesk Softimage costs money, Softimage Mod Tool does not.

 

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?id=13571257&siteID=123112

[redsaurus]

I suppose it might be doable in blender?

[minilogoguy18]

^Of course but you'd be animating similarly to Dragon unless you build or have someone else build some sort of animation friendly biped rig.

 

Softimage Mod Tool is free, the rig is saved as a Mod Tool 7.5 scene and the video and animation I made as an example were all done in Mod Tool to show just how capable this free program is.

 

I've tried blender, if you can get past it's terrible interface (not just my opinion, tons complain about it) then it can be used with Mr. Wonkos exporter, Softimage still has probably the best animation tools though, even poeple using 3ds Max, Maya and other major 3d apps. Mod Tool has all the same modeling and animating tools as the full version, rendering is the only thing that is capped.

[Circa]

therfiles, on 12 Mar 2013 - 18:24, said:

This sounds really cool! While it has been attempted before, I believe you can finish it and have an awesome product! Here are some suggestions:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This should be quite possible. Do you have any experience using Dragon? The file description has a nice little tutorial. You would then need to make an new custom _humanoid file for the SBD model, something I have tried and failed to do. You can take a stab at it though. I know Dragon may not be the best animator, but it is much easier to use for newcomers to animation. I may need to elaborate on this more...

 

 

 

 

Would you mind posing the .NPC file you are using? That way I can see what you should change.

 

 

 

I think the droideka model already has custom animations packaged with it (please correct me if I am wrong). You would then need to just make an npc with a weapon that somehow shoots two projectiles, which may be tricky. I know a little about .efx modding, so I can elaborate if you wish.

 

Another suggestion I have for you is this: change the stormtrooper's CLASS from STORMTROOPER to PROTOCOL (or what ever protocol uses). This is a technique that KOTF uses (please allow me to live) that make the npc explode on death. However, this may be counter productive with other aspects of npcs. Please check it out, though.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

 

As far as the animations for the SBD go, I could have sworn I've seen one with it's own .gla and everything somewhere. I don't think I'd have to make a whole new skeleton really. The model itself looks decent on the humanoid skeleton.

 

I do have experience with Dragon and it is a huge pain. I have a few stance mods under my belt, they should be on here. I haven't used Dragon in years though.

 

For the Hailfire NPC file, it's basically the atst.npc file but I changed the playermodel, and, initially the weapon because the weapon listed for the vehicle NPC file that came with the Hailfire had the weapon as WP_ROCKET_LAUNCHER. I just changed it back to the ATST guns and it now shoots, but it looks kinda bad.

 

I will look into the droideka model. Would it have to have just an existing gun like the blaster rifle or a new gun specifically for it? Which brings me to another point.

 

Is it possible to replace the DEMP2 gun with a duplicate of the blaster rifle? I want to put the DC-15S in but don't know if it was possible to do that. Wanted to get advice before I tried.

 

The protocol class suggestion is a really cool idea. But the thing is, in the movies, none of the droids ever exploded when they were destroyed, be it by lightsaber or blaster. That's one of the things I didn't like about Battlefront II actually. I might play around with it and see what it's like.

 

 

 

 

@@minilogoguy18:

 

I am on Mac but I have Windows 7 in VirtualBox. It meets my requirements for the most part. I haven't really needed it yet. Wineskin helps with that too.

[therfiles]

Yeah. I know MB2 made some SBD anims...and so did Movie Duels 2, but I wouldn't suggest using them. Besides, you'd really only need 4 anims = SBD Arm out, SBD Arm out walking, SBD Arm out dead, SBD Arm out dieing.

 

Try playing around with the size of the npc for the Hailfire. Try making it smarter, faster, more viligant, and maybe even start playing around with some of the weapon_ATST's properties in the weapons.dat.

 

I would suggest using a new gun for the droideka, something unused, like weapon_bot, or _bryar...

 

And no, you cannot make a copy of a gun. What you could do is modify the bryar pistol, but unfortunatly it doesn't really work with JKA (bugged hud display)

[Circa]

Yeah. I know MB2 made some SBD anims...and so did Movie Duels 2, but I wouldn't suggest using them. Besides, you'd really only need 4 anims = SBD Arm out, SBD Arm out walking, SBD Arm out dead, SBD Arm out dieing.

Yeah. I searched throughout the MBII assets and couldn't find it anywhere. I'm about to look at MDII. If it looks good, I probably will just use it. It will take less time and hassle. How do I make the model use the .gla?

 

Try playing around with the size of the npc for the Hailfire. Try making it smarter, faster, more viligant, and maybe even start playing around with some of the weapon_ATST's properties in the weapons.dat.

I'll try that. One problem with the model is it's actually bigger than it looks. I'm not sure what it is, but when you get close to it, you run into it without actually touching it. It's weird and make it get stuck in places it get's automatically spawned in like the Hoth level when you get to Echo Base.

I would suggest using a new gun for the droideka, something unused, like weapon_bot, or _bryar...

Isn't the weapon_bot basically the bryar anyway?

And no, you cannot make a copy of a gun. What you could do is modify the bryar pistol, but unfortunatly it doesn't really work with JKA (bugged hud display)

So I can't copy the effect files and things to overwrite another gun?

[therfiles]

Yeah. I searched throughout the MBII assets and couldn't find it anywhere. I'm about to look at MDII. If it looks good, I probably will just use it. It will take less time and hassle. How do I make the model use the .gla?

 

Well if you decide to do that, than just take the whole package. Take Wector's humanoid_SBD and his SBD model. They will already be linked together. I think. Be sure to credit Wector, though!

 

 

 I'll try that. One problem with the model is it's actually bigger than it looks. I'm not sure what it is, but when you get close to it, you run into it without actually touching it. It's weird and make it get stuck in places it get's automatically spawned in like the Hoth level when you get to Echo Base.

 

That goes along with the scale properties. You gotta just tweak around with settings until you find a good bounding box size, which the parameter controls. If you want, go ahead and post the file and I'll play with it.

 

Isn't the weapon_bot basically the bryar anyway?

 

Yes. However, it has no hud display, so you won't be wrecking any guns that the player can use. However, you may want to find another one, because I think the remote npc uses it. Just an example. You will need to change the func of the gun you choose to something else...like another gun that isn't used so you can modify it. Sorry if that sounds confusing... I'll elaborate later...

 

So I can't copy the effect files and things to overwrite another gun?

 

No. You can make the demp look and fire a projectile that looks like a new gun, but it will still just stun the npc and make them have the energy thing on them.

[Circa]

Well if you decide to do that, than just take the whole package. Take Wector's humanoid_SBD and his SBD model. They will already be linked together. I think. Be sure to credit Wector, though!

Okay sweet. Got it to work. Thanks. One other question in which I'm not sure is possible but I think I did it be accident once. Can an NPC have a gun but no model? Usually this happens on accident due to a wrong tag or something. I ask because obviously the SBD is firing from his arm and not a blaster. I tried a couple things but it didn't work. Any suggestions?

 

 

That goes along with the scale properties. You gotta just tweak around with settings until you find a good bounding box size, which the parameter controls. If you want, go ahead and post the file and I'll play with it.

Well I just used the properties that were in the npc file that came with the model. Here it is:

 

 

 

atst

{

playerModel hailfire_droid

weapon WP_ATST_MAIN

headYawRangeLeft 80

headYawRangeRight 80

headPitchRangeUp 30

headPitchRangeDown 30

torsoYawRangeLeft 0

torsoYawRangeRight 0

torsoPitchRangeUp 0

torsoPitchRangeDown 0

health 500

reactions 5

aim 5

move 5

aggression 5

evasion 1

intelligence 5

playerTeam TEAM_ENEMY

enemyTeam TEAM_PLAYER

height 200

width 224

// race bot

class CLASS_ATST

yawSpeed 60

runSpeed 150

walkSpeed 150

hFOV 220

vfov 95

snd hailfire_droid

}

 

 

 

Yes. However, it has no hud display, so you won't be wrecking any guns that the player can use. However, you may want to find another one, because I think the remote npc uses it. Just an example. You will need to change the func of the gun you choose to something else...like another gun that isn't used so you can modify it. Sorry if that sounds confusing... I'll elaborate later...

It would be awesome if I could at least get a gun that is basically the repeater but red bullets instead of blue, and with no model, like what I said before. I could use both of those for the SBD and the droideka.

 

No. You can make the demp look and fire a projectile that looks like a new gun, but it will still just stun the npc and make them have the energy thing on them.

I see. So any further would require the source code?

[therfiles]

Okay sweet. Got it to work. Thanks. One other question in which I'm not sure is possible but I think I did it be accident once. Can an NPC have a gun but no model? Usually this happens on accident due to a wrong tag or something. I ask because obviously the SBD is firing from his arm and not a blaster. I tried a couple things but it didn't work. Any suggestions?

 

 

I think the only way would be to make the gun the npc uses have no model...like the bryar or something. This is what Wector does I think. Poke around there.

 

 

 Well I just used the properties that were in the npc file that came with the model. Here it is:

 

 

My suggestion is that you need to tweak the height and width properties. It may take some time, but just play around with it until you get a decentish bounding box. I think there is a command that shows the box...check the wiki.

 

 

 

 

 It would be awesome if I could at least get a gun that is basically the repeater but red bullets instead of blue, and with no model, like what I said before. I could use both of those for the SBD and the droideka.

 

 I see. So any further would require the source code?

 

Sure. You just got to find an unused gun in weapons.dat. That's really your only way forward. I think the droideka's gun would need to be different because it shoots 2 projectiles. Look at how Wector did it.

 

And, yes, unfortunately we would need the code.

[eezstreet]

Depends on how the droideka is used. If it's an NPC, you can get away with weapon_bot. The droideka could be reusing the cultist_commando stuff, since it's hardcoded to have two weapons.

[Circa]

I think the only way would be to make the gun the npc uses have no model...like the bryar or something. This is what Wector does I think. Poke around there.

 

 

My suggestion is that you need to tweak the height and width properties. It may take some time, but just play around with it until you get a decentish bounding box. I think there is a command that shows the box...check the wiki.

 

 

 

 

Sure. You just got to find an unused gun in weapons.dat. That's really your only way forward. I think the droideka's gun would need to be different because it shoots 2 projectiles. Look at how Wector did it.

 

And, yes, unfortunately we would need the code.

Alright, awesome. I got the SBD all set. I wonder if there is a way to make an NPC fire faster? There's a way for the gun to fire faster in weapons.dat and I did that because that's how it was in MDII but I can't find a way to do it for NPCs. If there's no way then that's fine. It would look better though.

 

I'm working on the Droideka. It's looking pretty good so far I think.

 

I just ran into a weird problem where some random NPC don't even exist when I use the command "npc spawn"

 

EDIT: Nevermind that error. Fixed it. I got pretty far today. SBD and Droideka are all set I think. The SBD is using the bryar weapon and I used the effect files from MDII to see what he did. He has them shooting two bullets (since there are two barrels on their arm) and it looks great, but it was making the blaster pistol do that too (because they use the same effects) so I changed them back but left the "npcshot.efx" the same so it still uses it. The only downside is when NPCs are actually are using the blaster pistol visibly which should only happen with this mod with cheats.

[minilogoguy18]

The SBD should be using the secondary fire from the E-11, a rapid fire of red bolts, would be more accurate to the movies.

[Circa]

The SBD should be using the secondary fire from the E-11, a rapid fire of red bolts, would be more accurate to the movies.

That's exactly what I wanted but there's no way to do it. AltFire doesn't even work in NPC files.

 

 

 

Okay, I got the bounding box fixed on the Hailfire. Now I'm trying to get it to actually be dangerous. Before I would have to run in front of it and shoot it to get it to react. I'm not having much luck.

 

But here's something that cheered me up a little bit. I went to t2_trip since it's a very open map and spawned one and look what it hopped on...

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure how that happened. It's class is set to ATST. It was amusing for sure.

 

 

[minilogoguy18]

That's exactly what I wanted but there's no way to do it. AltFire doesn't even work in NPC files.

 

You sure? The stormtroopers and imp commanders (black uniform) use the E-11 alt fire in JK2 and some of that may still be in the JA game code. Must have something to do with the aggression and rank settings in the NPC file, playing around with it some may prove useful.

[eezstreet]

Set the "rank" to be "commander" iirc, that's what makes them spray in alt fire.

[therfiles]

Not sure how that happened. It's class is set to ATST. It was amusing for sure.

 

 

LOL. This is so awesome. Haha!

 

Nice work, man! You seem to be making some great progress!

 

 

The SBD should be using the secondary fire from the E-11, a rapid fire of red bolts, would be more accurate to the movies.

 

While that would be great, I think he is planning to use the E-11 for a player weapon, so having a huge bulky blaster poking out of the npc's wrist may not be the right way to go.

 

I think you should be able to get him to shoot faster by just upping the firetime in weapons.dat. If that doesn't work, a script can always do it, but it may be too much work. I don't think it will be too big of a problem, my suggestion would be to then up the health of the npc to compensate for his lower fire-rate. As for the bryar pistol problem, replace the bryar's model (md3 and glm) with noweaps. This will make the gun invisible. Or, change some of the model entries in the weapons.dat.

 

Depends on how the droideka is used. If it's an NPC, you can get away with weapon_bot. The droideka could be reusing the cultist_commando stuff, since it's hardcoded to have two weapons.

 

I would really like to use this idea, but wouldn't he have to use the blaster pistol? Or can it be any 2 weapons? Because it would be the same problem as before: having two guns jut out of it's cannons. Would it still use force and stuff as well?

 

 

 

Keep up the great work!

[Dusty]

Set the "rank" to be "commander" iirc, that's what makes them spray in alt fire.

 

I'm pretty sure that the AltFire in .npc files does nothing. I think for any NPC to be able to use AltFire it has to be scripted through ICARUS.

[Circa]

LOL. This is so awesome. Haha!

 

Nice work, man! You seem to be making some great progress!

 

 

 

While that would be great, I think he is planning to use the E-11 for a player weapon, so having a huge bulky blaster poking out of the npc's wrist may not be the right way to go.

 

I think you should be able to get him to shoot faster by just upping the firetime in weapons.dat. If that doesn't work, a script can always do it, but it may be too much work. I don't think it will be too big of a problem, my suggestion would be to then up the health of the npc to compensate for his lower fire-rate. As for the bryar pistol problem, replace the bryar's model (md3 and glm) with noweaps. This will make the gun invisible. Or, change some of the model entries in the weapons.dat.

 

 

I would really like to use this idea, but wouldn't he have to use the blaster pistol? Or can it be any 2 weapons? Because it would be the same problem as before: having two guns jut out of it's cannons. Would it still use force and stuff as well?

 

 

 

Keep up the great work!

I have pretty much everything fixed that I was having issue with. There's a few things though. In MDII, the droideka uses the "emplaced" effect, so I just used that. Now all of a sudden the bullets being fired from the droideka is aligned vertically instead of horizontally to match up with the gun barrels. Here's an illustration:

 

 

 

 

The other thing is the hailfire droid is still amusingly clumsy. I don't know what else to do to the NPC file.

 

 

 

 

As far as the weapons and everything go, I'm pretty much set, aside from the droideka effect. Since it uses the emplaced effect, I will probably have to change the emplaced guns to use the ATST main guns if I can, it doesn't look goofy.

 

 

If you're wondering how they got 2 bullets to be shot at the same time, I'm fairly certain it's the "origin 1" and "origin 2" lines in the efx files. Though I don't have much experience with effect files to be certain.

[therfiles]

I have pretty much everything fixed that I was having issue with. There's a few things though. In MDII, the droideka uses the "emplaced" effect, so I just used that. Now all of a sudden the bullets being fired from the droideka is aligned vertically instead of horizontally to match up with the gun barrels.

 

This, unfortunately, is unfixable. Other than modding the animation files, you really don't have a choice. You could play around more with the .efx files to turn the bullets and line them up, but I remember the emplaced gun being notoriously difficult to use. Not only does it have tons of damage, more than a deka would deal, but it doesn't draw properly. If you can find another gun, that would probably be best.

 

The other thing is the hailfire droid is still amusingly clumsy. I don't know what else to do to the NPC file.

 

Yeah. There is a certain point where you really can't do anymore with NPCs. Does it handle well at all in combat? Perhaps up the aggression and aim levels? Give it a rocket launcher? Just keep poking it.

 

If you're wondering how they got 2 bullets to be shot at the same time, I'm fairly certain it's the "origin 1" and "origin 2" lines in the efx files. Though I don't have much experience with effect files to be certain.

 

I think I knew this, but nice job! I don't use efxEd, the proper tool, so all I can really do is just blindly play with it.