JK2 The Lost Mission

[eezstreet]

@@Jedi_Mediator I have finally gotten to playing through the mission. I really really like it. I think it's ready to proceed with the scripting, area portal fixing, and other things that need to get done to get it as part of the mod. The addition of lights helps immensely with the maze level and I feel like I noticed a bunch of extra details in some places, but this could be my memory mistaking me. I think instead of there being switches to indicate locked doors though, you could try what is done with Bespin Undercity and having a red light over the doors that are locked, and a white one above the ones that are unlocked, since the switches don't do anything currently.

 

Does the current version of the .map have the ref_tags and other things required to script the crane puzzle? The next step should probably be to fix the areaportals on the doors (I have provided you with the cairn_assembly.map as I recall, it should have some ideas as to how to fix the areaportals to work properly) and populate the level with NPCs. The crane puzzle honestly can be fixed last as it's inconsequential to the rest of the map design.

[Jedi_Mediator]

Okay...after some more experimentation, I still couldn't fix the existing areaportals. I have no idea what's wrong. So for lack of a better solution, I literally grafted in a working, areaportaled door from cairn_assembly. That finally worked. So we officially now have one fewer malfunctioning areaportals. Next I'll copy the working door setup several times into the other problem areas until all areaportals are functional. It will be tedious, but it will also be nice to finally make this issue go away.

 

As for the crane puzzle, yes, all the ref_tags that I anticipated you needing are already in the map. I can add more as needed. The names of the tags are listed in one of my previous posts.

[eezstreet]

Okay. Do you want me to handle the spawned NPCs and pickups, or is it something you want to tackle?

[Jedi_Mediator]

At long last, the four broken areaportals that I was aware of have been replaced, and are in working order! If you find any more broken areaportals during your own tests, just let me know.

 

As for the NPCs and pickups, how about we split the job? I have some ideas I want to try for NPC placement, but I'm not quite as interested in pickups. Do you have any specific ideas or instructions for placing the NPCs before I get started?

[eezstreet]

At long last, the four broken areaportals that I was aware of have been replaced, and are in working order! If you find any more broken areaportals during your own tests, just let me know.

 

As for the NPCs and pickups, how about we split the job? I have some ideas I want to try for NPC placement, but I'm not quite as interested in pickups. Do you have any specific ideas or instructions for placing the NPCs before I get started?

Well, ideally the upper level (the area with all the shadowtrooper armor) should have imperials, officers and possibly a commander or stormtrooper officer or two. Apart from that, the main floor (area with the crane) should be devoid of any enemies, the stairs leading from the lower crane area should have a group of stormtroopers running down the stairs to engage the player, and the maze should have a reborn. Other than that, it's pretty much up to you, although I wouldn't recommend having any enemies in the goodie rooms. The areas can be spiced up with a few droids roaming about (though don't go too crazy!) and ideally the maze should have relatively few enemies, although a patrol of stormtroopers in one of the sections towards the beginning would be a nice touch.

[Jedi_Mediator]

Apart from that, the main floor (area with the crane) should be devoid of any enemies, the stairs leading from the lower crane area should have a group of stormtroopers running down the stairs to engage the player, and the maze should have a reborn.

 

Obviously the level in its current state already has some enemies on the main floor, in the rooms leading up to the crane room--are we keeping these where they are?

 

As for the crane room itself, did you know that the floor of that room is covered in a large network of NPC waypoints? This makes me wonder if the developers originally envisioned the crane room containing some enemies. If we do make this room uninhabited, we should probably delete all those waypoints--without NPCs, I don't think there's a use for them.

[Archangel35757]

Obviously the level in its current state already has some enemies on the main floor, in the rooms leading up to the crane room--are we keeping these where they are?

 

As for the crane room itself, did you know that the floor of that room is covered in a large network of NPC waypoints? This makes me wonder if the developers originally envisioned the crane room containing some enemies. If we do make this room uninhabited, we should probably delete all those waypoints--without NPCs, I don't think there's a use for them.

 

Maybe you could add NPCs to patrol the crane room-- like they're searching for the player... so it means the player has to solve the crane puzzle between patrols?

[eezstreet]

Obviously the level in its current state already has some enemies on the main floor, in the rooms leading up to the crane room--are we keeping these where they are?

 

As for the crane room itself, did you know that the floor of that room is covered in a large network of NPC waypoints? This makes me wonder if the developers originally envisioned the crane room containing some enemies. If we do make this room uninhabited, we should probably delete all those waypoints--without NPCs, I don't think there's a use for them.

It's probably a good idea to keep those in case the AI wanders out there.

[Jedi_Mediator]

Do you have any suggestions for tutorials on NPC navigation? I've been able to figure out a little bit through trial and error, but things still aren't working quite the way I want them to. I can get the NPCs to go places, but then they just stand there forever, even when fighting. I specifically want to know how to make waypoint networks (and how to make the NPCs actually *use* them).

 

I did look through the JKHub tutorials already, but couldn't find much that would help.

[eezstreet]

Hm. I suppose I could write something up. Note that JK2 and JKA waypointing are totally different, but I can speak in general.

 

In general, there are two different kinds of objects:

- Goals (either a ref_tag or an entity)

- Interlinking nodes (waypoint entities)

 

Note that I said ref_tag or entity. ref_tags aren't actually entities, they are parsed out of the BSP and stored internally as points of interest. Also, some entities are automatically converted to ref_tags: waypoint_navgoal, point_combat.

 

In order for an NPC to reach its goal, it needs to traverse the waypoint network. You can see which nodes are connected to each other by using the "nav show all" command ingame and view any errors with your navigation. Navigation is compiled as .nav files. Important: JK2 Enhanced allows you to place waypoints ingame, but the save feature isn't implemented yet. There are several different types of waypoint entity: waypoint_1, waypoint_2, waypoint_4, waypoint_8, ..., these are just waypoint entities with different radiuses. In general you want a waypoint to have as wide of a radius as possible so that NPCs aren't trying to be too precise.

 

Your waypoint grid should be designed as smartly as possible. You need to connect waypoints using CTRL+K linking. So for instance, take two waypoints:

 

WAY1 <----> WAY2

 

You can traverse from WAY1 to WAY2 and vice versa. But if we remove the link from one direction:

 

WAY1 ------> WAY2

 

We can no longer traverse from WAY2 to WAY1.

NPCs should be able to reach their goals from a waypoint. If a navgoal is outside the radius of a waypoint, the NPC can't path to it!

 

point_combat is a special type of ref_tag that has some special AI related information to it. These can be flee points, cover positions, places to crouch, places to jump to, and places to snipe from. Some of the functionality doesn't work correctly, such as sniping points - the AI is just placed in strategic positions.

[Jedi_Mediator]

Wow, that is quite a console command! I had no idea JK2 had such a useful feature. I will definitely be using it as I figure out waypointing. Thanks for the tips.

 

As I was placing NPCs in the big two-level control room, I felt that the top level had too much open floor space, and so I put in some banks of computer terminals on either side. I felt that this would improve gameplay, since the player will be under fire from multiple directions when they enter the room. This way, they can take cover after entering if they want to.

 

Let me know if it looks out of place or doesn't work for some other reason. It wasn't a difficult change to make, so I don't mind if you don't want it that way.

 

With the computer terminals:

 

 

 

 

Compare to previous version:

 

 

 

[eezstreet]

Looks good! I suspect Raven intended for it to be filled in with stuff.

[Jedi_Mediator]

I have added scripted NPCs to the stairway, the area above the stairway, the two-level control room, the catwalk room, and the first maintenance hallway. I have also added a reborn to one of the shafts in the maze and set the shadowtroopers to not take fall damage. The reborn fight isn't great right now; I stretched a pretty ridiculous "safety net" of the "blocknpc" texture over the shaft to keep him from committing suicide, but nevertheless, he likes to drop his lightsaber down the shaft and stand defenseless for awkward periods of time. Let me know what you think of this issue.

 

There is also a friendly droid doing endless laps around the crane room, just to make it feel a little less empty.

 

@@eezstreet, I'll send you the .zip in a PM.

[eezstreet]

@@Jedi_Mediator

 

I had a playthrough of it and I'm really impressed. You did a lot of good work with the scripting and waypointing. It's really coming together!

 

I did notice a few things though. The areaportals still feel...off to me. But I'll have a crack at fixing them and see if there's something I'm missing. There's a huge FPS drop right at the beginning room that leads into the intermediate zone. Also, I can't help but shake that maybe fighting two fully-powered Shadowtroopers is a little bit of a difficulty spike, since the player only fights one in cairn_dock2. Maybe have two weaker "prototype" shadowtroopers that are fought here, with lower stats. Just a thought, of course. We can tweak it later. I also think that the Reborn is a bit oddly placed and is too much of a hint to the player as to where to go. I think it would be better suited in the tight corridors of the maze rather than the shafts. In addition, I kinda feel like the fight at the beginning of the maze area is unnecessary, and a bit much, as the player will need some time to cool off from that big Shadowtrooper fight, and probably scavenge some items.

 

I also noticed that the large control room had some errors in the waypointing -- if you use "nav show all" you'll see some red (broken) links between a few waypoints.

The elevators in the beginning area also have non-responsive switches - they maybe need to have the arrows show correctly? I can fix it later if need be.

 

The next thing we will need to focus on is pickups. For the first few areas, there should be a pretty nice assortment of weapon racks for ammo that the player can access. Possibly a belt of thermal detonators on the lower difficulties. In the goodie room of the crane area, the player will likely be a bit low on health, so this area probably needs a shield and ammo generator. Some of the demp2s that are placed there will need to be replaced with bacta canisters. I can't think of how the rest of the level should play out, but there needs to be some secret areas for sure. There kind-of is one in the beginning area next to some pipes, but this area is not very fleshed out. I think another good spot for a secret area would be in the maze. Feel free to add any secret areas that you think would help. Probably more than one, but no more than 4 or 5. Maybe try playing it a few times from cairn_assembly to see where more pickups are needed.

 

I like what you did with the AI. I noticed that the AI seemed to take cover more often than they do in the original maps. Did you use some point_combats here?

[Jedi_Mediator]

Thanks for the feedback! The taking-cover behavior was easy to add--I just placed a few waypoint_navgoals in strategic spots, and gave the NPCs a "painscript" to run to those navgoals for a few seconds after taking damage.

 

I wasn't able to locate a few of the errors you mentioned. I turned on the game's FPS counter at the start of the level, and played through to the crane room without noticing any drops in FPS. Are you able to reproduce the FPS drop you experienced? Also, when you mentioned the broken waypoint links, did you mean the control room directly above the room with shadowtrooper armor? I couldn't find any red links in either of these rooms. Maybe a screenshot would help?

 

I didn't like the reborn starting in the shaft, either. Maybe he can appear in the red section of the maze, and the player has to defeat him to unlock the next area? And I wasn't sure about the maze ambush either. Should we get rid of that battle completely, or move it to a later section of the maze?

 

As for the shadowtroopers--are you referring to cairn_dock1? Because when I played through that level, there were two shadowtroopers in the pit at the beginning. Maybe this varies based on difficulty level? At any rate, we can modify the cairn_stockpile shadowtroopers if you think that would improve gameplay. Can their skills be modified through scripts?

 

I'll start seeing what I can do about pickups.

[SecretApprentice]

I hope I'm not spoiling myself when this map actually releases, but it's just so gosh darn exciting to watch the entire process unfold when restoring something that was once thought lost.

[eezstreet]

Thanks for the feedback! The taking-cover behavior was easy to add--I just placed a few waypoint_navgoals in strategic spots, and gave the NPCs a "painscript" to run to those navgoals for a few seconds after taking damage.

 

I wasn't able to locate a few of the errors you mentioned. I turned on the game's FPS counter at the start of the level, and played through to the crane room without noticing any drops in FPS. Are you able to reproduce the FPS drop you experienced? Also, when you mentioned the broken waypoint links, did you mean the control room directly above the room with shadowtrooper armor? I couldn't find any red links in either of these rooms. Maybe a screenshot would help?

 

I didn't like the reborn starting in the shaft, either. Maybe he can appear in the red section of the maze, and the player has to defeat him to unlock the next area? And I wasn't sure about the maze ambush either. Should we get rid of that battle completely, or move it to a later section of the maze?

 

As for the shadowtroopers--are you referring to cairn_dock1? Because when I played through that level, there were two shadowtroopers in the pit at the beginning. Maybe this varies based on difficulty level? At any rate, we can modify the cairn_stockpile shadowtroopers if you think that would improve gameplay. Can their skills be modified through scripts?

 

I'll start seeing what I can do about pickups.

The FPS drop might be because I was playing on a Debug build.

 

 

 

This is what I'm referring to with those broken waypoint links

 

 

 

I don't think it's necessary to make the reborn kill unlock an area. The maze is tight enough that the kill is basically mandatory.

 

You're right, I forgot that there were two shadowtroopers there on the higher difficulties. This would be a pretty nice way of handling it. There's also a cut bit of dialogue that could be played when Kyle defeats both of them. I don't have my dialogue sheet but I think it reads something like "That armor seemed to resist my lightsaber..."

[Jedi_Mediator]

Good point about the reborn fight. I'll make that change.

 

Strange about the waypoint links...when I play the map, I see those very same links as yellow, not red. I assumed they were yellow because they're kind of "conditional" links--the AI could take that path if the glass screens were already broken, but not if they're still intact. Does OpenJK calculate navigation differently, or something? I'll just remove those links, if you think it would make things work better.

 

The line of dialogue you mentioned is, "That armor seems to resist my lightsaber. I think I can guess how they're using the cortosis." It's found in 18kyk003.mp3. Currently, Kyle says this line immediately after he defeats the shadowtroopers in cairn_dock1. But there's a file just above it, 18kyk002.mp3, in which he says, "Black armor! Not again." I don't remember hearing that in the original game, do you? Would you like to use that instead for our shadowtrooper fight?

 

And if we want to have only one shadowtrooper in the pit on easier difficulties, I'll need some advice. I don't know how to make NPCs spawn or not spawn depending on difficulty settings.

[eezstreet]

Actually, the cut dialogue is dialogue that's not present in the PK3s. (I can explain on Discord) Both of those lines of dialogue are used in cairn_dock2.

 

The difficulty is one of their spawnflags i believe.

[Jedi_Mediator]

Sorry for the delay! I did my best to add pickups in strategic quantities and locations around the map. I also gave the map three different secret areas.

 

I'll PM you the files. Let me know if you're wondering where something is in the map, or if you think there's too many/too few of the pickups and secret areas.

[Jedi_Mediator]

Hey, how's it going? It's been a few weeks. Did my PM come through to you, @@eezstreet?

[eezstreet]

Hey, how's it going? It's been a few weeks. Did my PM come through to you, @@eezstreet?

Sorry, I haven't quite gotten to it yet, been busy with JKG.

I'm going to be out of town this week for Thanksgiving. But I will have a look at it probably after that.

[Jedi_Mediator]

Sounds great! Thanks for the update.

[eezstreet]

Hi! I sent you a PM, now that I've gotten around to this.

Overall, the mission feels solid now. The secrets weren't too difficult to find if you looked hard for them, but certainly could be missed by the casual player, so I think you've struck a good balance here.

In terms of difficulty, the earlier portions of the mission are definitely way too easy. There's too many pickups, and in particular there's a lot of shield generators which I think make the game too easy in the lower difficulties specifically (those difficulties have more shield from the generators). I never felt particularly strapped for ammo, but that could be that I was running with full ammo from the start. Also I'm having second thoughts about placing the rocket launcher in the map, as it could make the big fight towards the end a little bit trivial.

 

I did find some new bugs also. It looked like there was a shield generator floating above the ground in the big control area with the shadowtrooper armor. There was some z-fighting on the ceiling in the dark room at the bottom of the elevator shaft before the pit area. (You can only see it if you use the light amplification goggles, /give item_la_goggles) There's also minor texture alignment issues on the elevator leading up to the pit, on the walls. (I normally don't notice a lot of texture alignment issues, but this one was literally right in your face). There's a grate at the beginning of the maintenance maze that can be broken, but you can't actually walk through the grate (maybe this was a secret area?). It does give me an idea for a secret area that requires you flipping some minor/inconsequential switch that later opens up a section of the map, though.

 

Overall, I think we're about ready to wrap this up. I'm pretty pumped.

[LucyTheAlien]

Hi! I sent you a PM, now that I've gotten around to this.

Overall, the mission feels solid now. The secrets weren't too difficult to find if you looked hard for them, but certainly could be missed by the casual player, so I think you've struck a good balance here.

In terms of difficulty, the earlier portions of the mission are definitely way too easy. There's too many pickups, and in particular there's a lot of shield generators which I think make the game too easy in the lower difficulties specifically (those difficulties have more shield from the generators). I never felt particularly strapped for ammo, but that could be that I was running with full ammo from the start. Also I'm having second thoughts about placing the rocket launcher in the map, as it could make the big fight towards the end a little bit trivial.

 

I did find some new bugs also. It looked like there was a shield generator floating above the ground in the big control area with the shadowtrooper armor. There was some z-fighting on the ceiling in the dark room at the bottom of the elevator shaft before the pit area. (You can only see it if you use the light amplification goggles, /give item_la_goggles) There's also minor texture alignment issues on the elevator leading up to the pit, on the walls. (I normally don't notice a lot of texture alignment issues, but this one was literally right in your face). There's a grate at the beginning of the maintenance maze that can be broken, but you can't actually walk through the grate (maybe this was a secret area?). It does give me an idea for a secret area that requires you flipping some minor/inconsequential switch that later opens up a section of the map, though.

 

Overall, I think we're about ready to wrap this up. I'm pretty pumped.

 

How's this going?