Dusty

Been mostly working on code stuff and NPCs when I have time. So far: - Been working the kinks out of the saber system - Trying to improve Jedi AI, mainly as it pertains to JA-exclusive abilities: saberists should be a bit smarter with using kicks, now they only use them when they're very close to you and not just randomly all the timesaberists don't use Dark Rage when they have less than 50% HP, and kick it off if they get below 25% HP while it's active, also, they don't use it now unless they are not too far away from the player (or else they waste HP if they use it and can't even get to you)bosses and commander+ rank NPCs activate their saber instantly after breaking out of Grip or a Drain lock, other NPCs with a very short delaythings to do: more strategic kata usage, less spammy saber throwing, evasion and kicks used if they drop a saber throw, faster reaction to being knocked down- Some cvar edits: g_saberMoreRealistic can be changed ingame now (I can't help but wonder if you do this mid-game it could result in crashes if saber damage values are changed mid-calculation, i.e. while you're hitting an enemy, it's fine so far from my experiences though) Other things: - Having fun with NPCs, Jedi Masters pwn Reborn Masters now (might even make them stronger than Alora_dual), Luke (and Kyle?) eat Desann for breakfast. Kyle Boss is mostly unchanged, as I figure the point of that battle is mainly that Jaden gets lucky against Kyle and sees his chance to trap him? (I never played the DS ending yet lol). Saber staffs can and will be thrown now by players and NPCs. - Figured out how I want to do game difficulties: (not actually done yet mind you) Padawan/Jedi - Largely unchanged.Jedi Knight - Keep some of the blaster deflection ability you have on lower game difficulty, however saber deflections are no longer auto-aimed at enemies but towards the crosshair onlyJedi Master - Player movement speed is reduced slightly to be closer to NPCs, and the player starts with 80 force points instead of 100.General: Health and ammo can be toggled between full, 80% and 50% (locked to 50% for JM), Crosshair Forcehints can be toggled on and off, and saber damage will be able to be chosen, either normal, 125%, or "heavy" (g_saberMoreRealistic 1, not sure exactly what percentage we're talking there) EDIT: Added in one thing in the Jedi AI section I forgot about Dark Rage.

I'm not that illogical haha. All loading up brand new saves made in the testing game session. I get rid of all the old ones. Anyway, I haven't been able to repeat a savegame inheriting crashing from a checkpoint loaded off of it, and with some of my code edits loading games doesn't seem to crash as often now. I guess what I'll do is try to isolate the conditions in which crashes are happening if possible.

Any cut dialogue for Rosh? Out of any character in either game he needs it the most.

nooo. Themal dets are about the size of a baseball, maybe slightly bigger. But yeah, the world model's size for thermal dets is much bigger than they are in the "belt of thermal detonators" pick up item.

Was looking around on jk2files... and found some saber hilts that might be along the lines of what I've been looking for... any thoughts? 1. http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Custom_Lightsaber_Pack;45980 2. http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Dark_Forces_2_Saber_Pack;76927 (I figure hilts based on DF2 would fit well in JA) 3. http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Jedi_Master_Hilt;43521 (looks very detailed and movie-ish, but maybe it well fit well in game as a Jedi/Jedi master exclusive...) 4. Maybe one of these could be a Jedi Master or Reborn Master exclusive or something... http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Mark_IV_Staff_Hilt;38101 ; http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Mark_VII_Staff_Hilt;37789 5. Some nice generic hilts I think...: http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Slipstream;64663 ; http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Roshs_Lightsaber;93791 6. The hilts I was talking about before: http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Stinger_Remake;109215 ; http://jkhub.org/files/file/1921-misc-sabers-pack-rooxons-weaponshd/ (has the nice stinger reskin with the red pattern on it I liked)

^Would storing in gclient_t allow savegames to work correctly, as in, would those variables be the same as when the game is saved and when it is loaded, or will things "change"? Okay, so on the whole, things seem to be working now, but now load checkpoint causes crashes, and any save game that used the checkpoint seems to inherit those crashes...

^His hilts are nice but they're movie hilts which I don't think fit in too well with the NPCs...

Sort of a request for artistic contributions as well as suggestions. A lot of hilt models are repeated and overused in JA. A few more would liven things up. More skins of existing hilts, and slight variations while still keeping the generic Expanded Universe style. It makes sense for Reborn to use largely the same hilt as they're probably mass-produced, however, things don't make sense like Alora using the same hilts as the player, staff reborn using the same hilts the player can choose, etc. which makes the enemies a tad less visually interesting and the player's and enemy's hilts less unique. A few places where I think a new or slightly modded hilt would be appreciated: - Staff Reborn; their hilt should be a modified guardian, black or darker colored, with a slightly different model (maybe edgier and spikier?), to be more evil and sith like, while still having a slight "genericness" to it - Jedi Masters; they use a vindicator staff hilt because...? - Jedi and Jedi Trainers; they use the same hilts as Reborn, now where would they get those, the same factory the Reborn did? What I came up with so far: Some more skins and variations on the stinger hilt which is the game's generic hilt. For Jedi that use it, a silver skin, for the training saber, maybe a whitish-light gray skin and slightly modified model. For more specialized enemies, perhaps either this (http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Stinger_Remake;109215) or Roxoon's stinger reskin with the interesting red pattern on it.

Defeating Tavion without help is pretty irreconcilable I guess, and that was one fight he definitely didn't run from. Heck even the Reborn Masters seem like they would be tougher than Alora save the fact ingame they only have 200 HP. They would have more training anyway, but then maybe Tavion would teach Alora things she didn't teach all the reborn?

^Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly and forceRageRecoveryTime is always PS, I'd have to double-check... anyway, I'll try that. I believe NPC->health may be something similar. It's a local variable to NPCs that is updated on the fly or at least seems to be. I'm just wondering though, what's the purpose of the variables in PS? Is there some advantage that I'm missing out on if I don't modify it?

^Is it possible to add values that can be tracked via a specific entity in some other way than modifying the PS? The main reason I got into this is because I realized I was using general values in my code and then I realized that the things I was doing needed to be/should be localized to specific entities (i.e. the player or an NPC). Raven seems to go around this though sometimes from what I've already seen. For example, forceRageRecoveryTime is a PS value, however, it's not always used as ps.forceRageRecoveryTime, it exists in a general form in wp_saber... I'm also okay with save games being broken, the same thing is true for animation mods unfortunately so that's already a condition of my mod.

Would modifying the ext_data/MP/psf_overrides.txt work for SP coding? Also, I can't find those fields, are they in q_shared.h? Also, how do I know how many bits I need? Should I just look at the bit usage of the other values compared to what size number or value they hold and guess based on those? Actually, can't find those values anywhere in the SP source. Are they MP only? EDIT: So I tried adding my own values in msg.cpp with their own bit amounts to correspond to the new variables in q_shared.h, game loads up new files fine now, but any save game no matter whether I just made it or not, cannot be loaded without the game crashing.

So, I'm trying to make sense of Jaden's strength level. Canonically (according to Wookieepedia anyway) he seems to be considered a "skilled jedi". He's good but not some hack character like Starkiller. He takes a while to be offered the promotion to Jedi Master after Academy too IIRC. Now, assuming any NPC/boss you come across in JA is "defeated" by Jaden, unless you are officially or unofficially supposed to run from that NPC which is always an option, though Raven never made any NPC un-defeatable, that would mean he's stronger than all of them. So, Jaden is stronger/more skilled than, Alora, Tavion (w/scepter), Marka Ragnos possessing Tavion's body, Reborn Masters, and, if playing dark side, he's also more powerful than jedi masters, jedi trainers, and close to Kyle's level. Him being able to defeat Jedi Masters and Trainers honestly sounds like total bull to me. As for the others, this is my assumption, Tavion > Alora > Reborn Masters. And Jedi Masters > Tavion. So, assuming Tavion is fairly strong, but not quite master-material, that sounds about right and not too unrealistic for Jaden to be able to defeat her, but Marka Ragnos, as well as Jedi Masters, just seems irreconcilable to me.

Seemed to be simple enough at first glance, however, trying to load a game or devmap results in errors. After looking at the comments above playerstate_s, apparently msg.c needs to be modified whenever q_shared.h has new values/variables added to playerstate_s. I get a little lost after that, what needs to be modified exactly? Do I need to create more space for more variables somewhere? Do I need to modify some size limit on playerstate_s?

This section is a place for requests, and showing the work on those requests; OR for showcasing individual features, models, effects, menus or specific groupings of these I suppose. Similar to JK:E's WIPs section this is, except, I will make requests from time to time, to the JK Hub community at large. It may be for a model, a skin, a sound effect, an NPC, a bit of scripting, or who knows what.

^Interesting observations. Perhaps you could make a comment listing these on my NPC Class tutorial so others can see these special exceptions? So, Class_Jedi fights more passively and defensively, whereas Reborn are more aggressive? That makes sense. Still doesn't explain a difference between Class_Reborn and Class_Stormtrooper or other humanoid classes for Saber AI though... Class_Reborn has lots special effects for gunners of course (mainly that it activates saberist-style navigation and movement for gunners), but I want to know about it's effects on Jedi/Sabering AI I can't help but wonder, maybe Class_Reborn is just what non-saber humanoid AI classes default to when the NPC has a saber? Aside from a few small exceptions where there are differences? @@AshuraDX: You may be right about flips. IIRC in the thread I linked to, Class_Reborn and Class_Jedi may be more likely to use flipping animations when they jump at higher ranks, whereas a stormtrooper may never use flip animations in jumps. Purely stylistic most likely, but technically IS a difference I suppose hehe.

Looking back at this topic here: http://jkhub.org/topic/4092-npc-stats-what-do-they-do-exactly/ ; my conclusion seems to be that Class_Reborn and Jedi have a few subtle extremely situational effects on things like saber combat behavior, and that's it? No other purpose then? @@AshuraDX: I believe what affects Dark Force power usage is mainly the Aggression stat and team allegiance. Aggression increases the aggression counter or something for NPCs obviously, which makes them more apt to use Offensive force powers, and enemy NPCs have a higher cap on their aggression versus allied NPCs at least, per Eez's analysis of the code.

So, any chance of getting this working or naah? I can't figure it out, mainly seeing as I don't understand the operators used to set spawn flags in the code so I have no idea how it even works honestly.

I mean, giving an NPC a saber gives them the perks of reduced damage taken from saber attacks, auto sniper shot dodging, being able to force push and force jump out of Grip and knockdowns without even having those powers, no damage-staggering from idle sabers, etc. So is there any difference from me giving a saberist NPC Class_Reborn vs. Class_Stormtrooper? They seem to be by and large the same from my past experiments... I made an OpenJK issue about it too : https://github.com/JACoders/OpenJK/issues/588

I like those bits of interaction with NPCs in JK2 that I feel you miss out on in JA. Moreover I liked how NPCs would work with you in missions more too. I remember having to quickly hurry back and rescue Jan in the beginning of the Kejim Post mission, and when being teamed up with her I would try to do better than her taking out more stormtroopers but it was hard because her aim was so good. Other times I can think of are... Nar Shadaa with Lando, Bespin carrying those Bespin cops around with you (I felt responsible for them too, didn't want them all getting blasted to bits on my watch), protecting the R5 unit on Bespin, rescuing and fighting with the prisoners on Artus Prime, fighting with the Jedi on Yavin. In JA you get this in small bits which is nice, but nowhere near enough. Fighting alongside, competing with, and defending allies is fun. One thing that would've made Rosh more likeable in my opinion, is if you got to fight with him.

Katas are cool and roll stabs. Special moves do get a bit spammy and silly sometimes, but some of them are pretty cool and balanced (katas anyway, as they take 50 force). Kicks are good fun, and make the saber combat less stale IMO, especially when you get kicked over and retort with a somersaulting double-foot takedown on that smirking reborn. Not saying they NEED to be added to JK2, but they would make a nice addition. What about strong style though? I think it should be a bit faster but be a little blockable. Would you think that would be good for JK2 or no?

Maybe it's for the best...