Dusty's Patch: An SP mod for JA

[Dusty]

So I'm working on a mod. It includes my dueling mod, which still hasn't been posted on jk2files.org.

 

It compiles some mods together by different authors or steals bits from them (I take no credit for the original works, and plan to name each author whose work I borrowed one way or another.)

 

If start a sentence with (WIP), that means I may have already started working on that feature.

 

Features of my Dueling Mod (subject to change as it's a Beta/WIP):

1. Single saber is buffed vs. staff and duals

- default single sabers get a parrybonus "1" and breakparrybonus ".85"

- staff sabers are given breakparrybonus "-.75"

- medium style has better blaster fire deflection (the rebound animation is made quicker)

 

2. The medium flip attack is fixed to always play "FLIP_SLASH rather than FLIP_STABDOWN" or whatever it's called.

 

3. Staff and Duals saber twirls removed from the player

- NPCs can still use them (I made it that way on purpose)

- I just felt they were too dang cheap, no aim, no forcecost, etc.

- Staff gets a hilt bash (slight damage, stagger, can knock down running enemies), duals a plain front kick

- NPCs use these moves too but very rarely

 

4. Saber lengths increased

- default Single sabers have "41" length

- default Staff has "33" length

- Other random sabers NPCs use are increased to look more like sabers than daggers

 

5. Manual Block move integrated directly into the controls menu.

- I kind of stole this idea from Star Wars: Obi Wan

- Basically it works like this: you tap the button for your character to raise his saber for a brief moment, then he goes back to auto-blocking.

 

Other Features:

1. (WIP) Single Player levels from various authors integrated directly into the main SP menu as "bonus missions".

 

2. More interesting start-up, loading, main menu , and level select screens

- (WIP) I'm going to compile an interesting loop video for the main menu, and I'll post previews of it!

- I'll be using works from other authors possibly with slight modifications

- I'll add game music to some SP menus

 

3. (WIP) More skins and saber hilts added to the SP customization menus featuring the works of various authors

 

4. More options in the game and controls menu.

- cg_rendertotexturefx setting, dynamic glow intensity, over-the-shoulder camera, and more

 

5. (WIP) Some cool options for when you start a new single player game.

- The idea is to have a little further customization of game difficulty

- So I put in force hints on/off, health/shields level normal/75%/50%, and saber damage normal/heavy (uses the g_sabermorerealistic cvar)

- I can't get the saber damage to work, the game doesn't seem to like me altering that cvar

[therfiles]

Some very interesting features you are developing - can't wait to data mine and try it out!

[Inyri]

So wait, which part of this are you actually making yourself?

[minilogoguy18]

Why mod sp? Every sp based player I've ever dueled online was easier than the weakest cultist npc on padawan setting. Sp just spawns nub players.

[therfiles]

I personally think SP is the better half of JKA. With Icarus scripts and such, its really cool. Not to say that SP has more, better mods. There are many great MP mods, but I've always loved SP. Granted, I suck on MP because I have mainly played SP.

[minilogoguy18]

^I USED to be like that, but after playing online and realizing SP no matter how high you raise the difficutly can never compare to fighting a real person.

[Inyri]

Don't discourage people from making mods just because you don't personally enjoy the game type.

[Dusty]

So wait, which part of this are you actually making yourself?

 

I'm doing all the menu editing/ui coding. While I'm not making the parts, I'm mixing and mashing the stuff together (so obviously that makes me a l33t modder ).

I'm working on a nice little video for the main menu. The dueling mod stuff, while simplistic, is my work. I'm going to try to make very slight tweaks to the scripts for fan-made maps (mainly adding just a few basic objectives to them!).

 

 

 

^I USED to be like that, but after playing online and realizing SP no matter how high you raise the difficutly can never compare to fighting a real person.

 

I think SP is more for a player's enjoyment. I know what you mean though. The one thing I like about SP is with NPCs you can actually have cool saber duels.

 

In MP the strategy whittles down to running/dodging and swinging your saber as much as possible. You can't really block or focus on being precise as much, at least it's more difficult.

[Dusty]

So I'm putting "tips" in my mod. You see them during loading screens. Each time you leave the loading screen it cycles to another tip.

 

Screenshot of a loading screen:

 

 

 

 

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

 

Here's my archive of SP tips so far. Please give me suggestions as to what other tips I could put in, I don't want say more than 20 total though (you have to go through at least 1 loading screen just to see 1!). Right now I have like 12 tips.

 

(Just click the spoiler button to see.)

 

 

REFERENCE TIP1

LANG_ENGLISH "After the successful parry of an enemy lightsaber slash, hold down attack to automatically follow with a precise counter move!"

 

REFERENCE TIP2

LANG_ENGLISH "Having trouble defeating droid enemies? Don't be afraid to use the DEMP2 weapon! It can go through shields."

 

REFERENCE TIP3

LANG_ENGLISH "When facing an enemy with a sniper rifle, you have a slight chance to automatically dodge shots with Force Speed, as long as you have at least 50 force points."

 

REFERENCE TIP4

LANG_ENGLISH "Trying to be sneaky? Deactivate your lightsaber so enemies won't be alerted by the sound of it's hum."

 

REFERENCE TIP5

LANG_ENGLISH "Some force powers can be active at the same time without canceling out, like Force Protect and Absorb."

 

REFERENCE TIP7

LANG_ENGLISH "When fighting a Dark Jedi, don't let your force points drop too low. If you're caught in a Force Drain or Grip without any, you might be in a tough spot!"

 

REFERENCE TIP8

LANG_ENGLISH "You can use your lightsaber to block Force Lightning attacks, which greatly reduces their damage. Just make sure to face your attacker and stay in defensive stance."

 

REFERENCE TIP9

LANG_ENGLISH "Tired of being hit by saber throws? Try guarding them for a chance to knock the thrown saber to the ground!"

 

REFERENCE TIP10

LANG_ENGLISH "Force Push can be used to send some weapon attacks and explosives back to the attacker! Just aim your power and time it carefully."

 

REFERENCE TIP11

LANG_ENGLISH "Not sure what to do? Try checking your Datapad (Default: TAB key) to see your mission objectives as well as other useful info."

 

REFERENCE TIP12

LANG_ENGLISH "Having trouble finding what your looking for? Force Sense highlights objects related to your mission in a blue glow!"

 

[therfiles]

Ah...very nice! Looks very cool. And useful, too.

[Inyri]

Should be its, not it's, but other than minor grammatical errors it's an interesting concept.

[AradorasXeon]

Oh well, if you are adding some sp maps, I may make my siege_uwb in singleplayer, would be interesting.

[Dusty]

I could use it, however, I'm trying to keep the filesize from ballooning too much.

 

Here's the missions I was planning on using so far (if I didn't say the author its cause I can't remember off the top of my head):

- Sith Valley by Michael May

- Operation: Spaceport by Michael May

- Crash On Tatooine by Mercenary

- Eve of Redemption by Mercenary

- JK3 expanded missions (search JK3 Expanded 1.0 on jk2files.com)

 

Also some mini-campaigns possibly:

- Imperial Outpost parts 1-3

- Dash Rendar: Resurgence

- Deception

 

Some other things I considered: Escape from Yavin IV, the Nina mods, and some sort of SP ladder mod.

Problem is those two are full-blown campaigns and the ladder mod is something I might just not add for space saving. With the missions I just posted I'm probably looking at at least 300 mb for those alone, not to mention the other tidbits I'm adding.

[therfiles]

Hmmmm. I think Escape and Nina shouldn't be added. While the upper three could be considered bonus missions, as they are a 'one shot', the others like Escape and Nina are like a game inside itself. It just wouldn't fit as a bonus mission. Personally, I wouldn't add any bonus missions. I would create your own mission or work with someone who could. I think just packing someone else's mod in their is a bad idea. Plus, a lot of the missions changed the character and weapons, etc. It just wouldn't work. I just think you should stick with the 'patch' part right now, worry about the other parts later.

 

As to some of your other ideas mentioned above, some may be possible, but you need some srs scripting and cfg dark magic. Ask me if you need help. I'm actually making a mod (a long time ago) with some cool SP features.

[Dusty]

Personally, I wouldn't add any bonus missions. I would create your own mission or work with someone who could. I think just packing someone else's mod in their is a bad idea. Plus, a lot of the missions changed the character and weapons, etc.

 

That's part of the point of the mod, I feel like there are a lot of really good SP maps out there people miss out on. That stuff isn't really a problem, most of that stuff is connected directly to the map itself. And the stuff that isn't can mostly be done through clever scripting and uicoding.

 

As to some of your other ideas mentioned above, some may be possible, but you need some srs scripting and cfg dark magic.

 

Everything I've posted so far is doable exactly by those methods. That's how I got the ingame tips to work. It was very tedious figuring out how to script them.

 

Ask me if you need help. I'm actually making a mod (a long time ago) with some cool SP features.

 

Thank you. What were you putting in your mod? I honestly could use some help. Technically I can do almost all of the stuff my self, but it's a very time-consuming process.

 

Main things I could use help with is making that .roq video for the main SP menu.

 

Also I'm having trouble with something specific. I have a "saber damage:" option for starting a new game. This lets you choose "normal" or "heavy," and when I set it up, as I click the menu buttons, it will return the correct value I want for g_sabermorerealistic. However as soon as I actually start the new game it gets reset. I'm guessing I'll have to tie the menu button into some sort of seta g_sabermorerealistic command in a .cfg. But I'm too lazy right now to figure it out.

[therfiles]

Some of the cool features I wanted to add are as follows:

 

-Class support. This feature was inspired by KOTOR. At the beginning, you could choose Jedi Counsular, Jedi Guardian, and Jedi Sentinal. I would add this to the New Game menu. Basically, you would choose your class along with your saber and such. The JC class would give you a level two force power of your choice (light or dark, not neutral) to start the game with. JS a new saber style and a level 1 force power, and JG has the option of getting dual sabers and staffs. Up until recently, I had concluded that it was impossible to do this, but now that I am deeply immersed in CFG and Icarus dark magic, the features are quite plauible.

 

-Add inventory support to the game. Make it part of the weapon selection screen. Very useful and cool featues.

 

-Add more options to the setup menu.

 

-Maybe add a hud switcher? This would change the CG_Hudfiles (or something similar) to the desired hud I would make. I would then use secret haxes to make the hud change after a slight delay, not a map restart like it usually needs.

 

-Adding vendors to some of the original missions by modifying scripts and such.

 

-Use this: http://jkhub.org/files/file/585-sp-character-chooser/ to replace the default character cusomiser.

 

-Emotes? Special moves? All through Icarus.

 

And more as I think.

 

Would love how you are going to do the manual blocking.

[Dusty]

I don't know if I see much of a place for class support... hmm. Maybe, maybe not.

 

Adding inventory support to the game? Great idea. After I read that I was fixing up the inventory system a tad. I still need to fix the model for the seeker though. Making the inventory menu (yes, it will prolly need it's own menu just for efficiency and user-friendliness' sake.) is going to be a pain though imo, not in setting it up but making it connected to the other menus.

 

The force and weapon select menus are coded in weird ways. One thing I noticed is that the inventory select menu needs to come before the weapon select menu. The weapon select menu has all kinds of hard-code and ui code attached to it for starting missions and for the different parts of the campaign (like the hoth and vjun missions where you skip the force power screen and what not.)

 

 

And uh, what did you mean by vendors exactly? Like adding things like bacta tanks and inventory items to levels?

 

 

The character customizer is pretty cool that you made! However, I really don't see it fitting in with the SP campaign. If there were some mini games or missions where it'd be cool to have a "Select a character" with each character having different abilities, I could see it working.

 

 

About the emotes and special moves... might not work. Some things might be possible, but I'm not too familiar with icarus, the best I can do is randomly tinker with it. Like I said, most of the stuff I'm doing is through clever ui/menu coding and cvar manipulation using config files.

 

There is a runscript command though. This commands the game via cvar to run a script you pick from the scripts/ folder, which could work to your/my advantage slightly, as you don't need to have the script attached to a map I'd assume.

[eezstreet]

The datapad code for the inventory from JK2 still exists in full. Most of the inventory items work as well, except for the light amplification goggles (which may have been broken due to shaders? not really sure) and the bacta (which they mysteriously decided to start treating like a medpack for some reason. possibly to be used in the Hoth mission with all the bactas in it)

[therfiles]

Yeah. The Light Amps are missing all their gfx and don't actually do anything. And the bacta is just dumb. There is a fix to it (replacing the bacta code in JKA's item.dat with that of JK2's) and then it will show up in the inventory but won't work. I didn't know about the JK2 datapad code still working, that would be something really cool to have in there.

[Dusty]

^You see, I looked up that thing about the bacta tanks. And I got them to work ingame more or less like JK2 using that. However you couldn't seem to actually use them like the other inventory items by the "invuse" command. However, I found out they only respond to the "use_bacta" command, at least in SP anyway. Now that I think about it, didn't you need a separate button in JK2 just for bacta tanks? Or did they activate the same way as the other items?

 

About the LA goggles. When you use them you just get a "no-texture" gray and white box screen. However, if I stole the shader from jk2, they just might work! However, you don't really need them in JA's levels. Also, the electrobinoculars have a weird problem. When you use them, the game stays in 3rd person view, so you can see the character through the binoculars at some angles.

[therfiles]

Hmmm, nice find! I don't think the light amplification properties are shader related, though. I think that is coded in. I think I remember trying the same thing. And that stinks that 'use_bacta' has to be used in order to make the bacta tank work right. It would be confusing if, while scrolling through items, the player had to use one button for one, another for bacta. And I think that the Binocs are in a somewhat usable state, but don't work quite right (the problem you mentioned).

[eezstreet]

It seems they nerfed it in the engine though. The code for the electrobinoculars in jagamex86.dll is more or less exactly the same as the code in jk2gamex86.dll.

[Dusty]

Well, they work and zoom and everything, just while you're in third person view lol.

 

Anywhoo, time for an update I suppose:

 

Things I'm 95% done:

1. Loading screen tips

2. Saber combat tweaking (for now)

3. Modded control menus (now has inventory buttons and a few others)

 

Things I'm close to finishing:

1. Extra new game options

2. Added setup options (cg_rendertotexturefx, etc.)

3. Tweaked loading screens

 

Things I still want to do that I've not really started:

1. Port some stuff from JK2 (some sounds and stuff)

2. Edit more stuff like NPCs

3. Put in the bonus missions

4. Tweak some of the bonus missions to have objectives

5. Add a couple saber hilts and skins to SP

6. Add a menu for inventory selection

7. Make a cool video for the main menu with scenes from parts of the SP campaign

 

And,

-Make things work possibly through code hacks like electrobinoculars, cvar tweaks, screenshotted save games, saber offense mild revamp, and other things. Ideally I'd like the player to have a weakened version of full melee and some other cool stuff.

 

 

So honestly I'm kind of in over my head. Honestly, I could use some help. I could use some to with menus, icarus scripting (and possibly mapping), and possibly a coder at some point.

[therfiles]

PM with any Icarus questions, if you like.

[eezstreet]

mrwonko seems like he's looking into the screenshot stuff. He's currently working on his own version of a JA SP proxy DLL which should help you out.

Any plans for JK2 stuff?