Dusty

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...

Enemies do more damage and have more health. There are fewer pickups in the world. Enemies spawned may be of higher level (e.g. a Reborn Acrobat may turn into a Fencer or Boss). Enemies shoot and think faster. Enemies use push/pull much more aggressively. Puzzles are harder to solve. Crosshair changing to force use doesn't work. Enemies are much more accurate. Saber-wielding enemies gain aggression quicker and have a higher force regeneration rate. (just off the top of my head) Just wanted to set this straight. Looking in the assets1.pk3 in the menu files, Jedi Master in JA DOES use g_spskill 2, which is the same as Jedi Knight difficulty. Check it if you don't believe me. The only change is handicap is set to 50 instead of 100. I wouldn't be surprised if the same is so for JK2, however I don't have JK2 installed atm so I can't check.

Weequay, maybe I'll bump em up to 35-40 HP. They seem "rugged". Slower perhaps. Bowcaster is a big weapon, maybe some kind of gunwhack like you suggested before. Trandoshan, I imagine them being tougher than a Weequay, at least 50 HP, taller yes. Rodian mostly unchanged, IIRC I think the gunner Rodian only gets 20 HP in base. Gran is a special enemy yes, Human Merc is a generic powerhouse type wearing heavy armor (100 HP). Here's my skin for the Reborn Apprentice so far...: He's green and doesn't have the head piece on the back, so he's distinguishable from the more knight-like (like a Reborn Knight?) stronger Reborn.

So currently there are 3 Reborn Adept NPCs, one for single, staff, and duals. What I think I will do is this, make the single saber one a "Reborn apprentice" which would be the current Adept, basically a weaker version of the Reborn Warrior. Then the other two will be a Single-wielder and a Duals-wielder. They will be like alternate versions of the Warriors, which have more/different force powers and a slightly different strategy. EDIT: Rough draft - 1.) Reborn Apprentice is the same as the old adepts. He wields a single saber. He needs a new skin though... perhaps a new color of reborn? Red and blue are taken, that leaves, gray, green, brown/orange in my mind. 2.) Reborn Adepts - two variants, one that wields single saber and one with duals. Force powers: Doesn't have Rage or Grip, however he has Pull 3 (Warriors have Pull 2), Heal 2 (Heal 0), Absorb 2 (Absorb 0), Drain 3 (Drain 2), Lightning 2 (Lightning 1), and 125 force points instead of 100 Behavior/Other: Has commander rank, however all his stats have been lowered to "4" instead of "5", haven't tested yet, but the idea here is that he will be more crafty but less aggressive and slightly slower to react than his Warrior counterpart, HP lowered from 300 to 250.

No one agrees with my AI suggestions @@eezstreet, @@Asgarath83

Would anyone want any sabering changes for JK2? (Optional of course by cvar or something) I personally think JK2's system is good, but there are 2 things: 1. Should strong style be tweaked to be slightly faster and weaker like in JA? It could be a simpler version of what I'm doing in JA. Perhaps strong style slashes slightly faster but Saber Defense 3 can block it a bit? 2. Should JA expansions be brought into JK2? I wouldn't say JK2 needs them anymore than JA, but they are pretty awesome. Staff and Duals are being brought into JK2 right? They of course aren't necessary to make the saber duels "good" but are pretty interesting, just like the melee system in JA (you know, kicks, jump kicks, melee katas), the added attacks, and super breaks for saber locks.

^I think that's an overstatement, that it's a specific tactic. I think Drain is just their method of healing . Maybe that's what Raven was thinking though...

So, these are ideas for Force Power tweaks and Jedi AI related to them that I've thought of so far... please leave feedback if you have any: Force Jump - Slightly more height for each level. Maybe make it slightly more like MB2 where it drains lots of FP but you can go pretty high (but this could only be done in small amounts not to break SP levels by letting you jump to places that allow you to skip parts of the level) Force Pull - Maybe decrease strength of level 3 slightly, as I always send enemies barreling into me and they knock me down Force Sense - While active Sense 2 and up allows you to dodge more sniper shots. Perhaps a modified version of the perfect weapon accuracy the game gives you. Force Speed - Level 3 seems really unwieldy to me. Maybe this could be improved somehow? Should Jedi be able to use this independently (i.e. not wait for the player to use it)? I wanted level 2 to allow the random auto sniper dodge if you're at 100 fp and level 3 to decrease the cost of dodging sniper shots from 50 fp to 25-40 fp. Instead of making your attacks red strength now it gives you a power bonus based on level. +1 (half a saber offense level), +2 (a whole offense level, i.e. from yellow to red), and +3 for level 3. Force Protect - Wanted to make this a little less useful in saber duels... maybe only level 3 would give noticeable protection against saber damage? Also wondered about letting fp regen at half speed up to your max fp after using the power (if you had 100 fp when you used it, while it's active you'd be able to regen up to 70 fp, maybe this could be a difficulty option? Same for force absorb, speed, and sense?) Basically, I want it to be a power that emphasizes the strength of a Jedi, rather than seeming like a cop-out for a Jedi not being good at saber fighting and using the Force to protect themselves... Any ideas? Mine so far: - slightly less protection from saber damage - reduced movement speed - maybe lasers deflect off you in a random direction like with sabers? - the fp regen thing Mindtrick - Perhaps give it some use against Dark Jedi. Maybe level 3 allows you to cancel a dark jedi's Dark Rage? Prevent them from using force powers for 5 seconds? Currently it's more of a for-fun-only non-necessary power in JA, as you're never required to use it to solve puzzles and there are no stealth missions. Should Jedi AI be able to use it? Would be hilarious haha. Dark Rage - Currently gives you a power boost based on level, +2, +3, or +4. Jedi AI should be wiser about using Rage. Often especially with Rage 1 they drain a lot of their HP. I think before initiating rage they should check that they have at least 2/3 or 3/4 HP, if they are close to the player, and end the rage early if they get below half HP. Drain - I think Jedi AI should be better with this too. Unless they have drain 3 which has a wide arc, I feel like they shouldn't waste their time trying to drain you from a distance but should try to get close to you and do grab drains. Often reborn warriors just try to drain you from a distance like idiots with drain 2 after losing all their hp from rage.

Now, in JA and JK2, jedi opponents will never use Force Speed first, but wait for the player to use it. Why is this? I used to think the game mechanics or the AI perhaps weren't designed to be able to handle NPCs using Force Speed independently of the player, but I don't think this is the case, as sometimes when you end your Force Speed early, the AI doesn't keep up with you and they stay in Force Speed for a bit, so I don't think that's correct... Is it just a saber duel mechanic that Raven only wanted Speed to be mutually used to make saber duels "go to the next level"?

^I agree with you. Red should be strong. Just not too strong that it's unrealistic and has to be extra slow to make up for it and suck at non-saber dueling. I think what I'll do is make block recovery a hair slower from blocking red (mainly as a visual indication that your stagger counter is increasing but also maybe for slight strategic value), make red slashes a bit faster and spins, rebounds still slow but faster than they are now, and better blaster and saber defense.

^Interesting idea. I think the only NPC in either game that actually actively and strategically will use both modes of a weapon is Boba fett. Whereas the alt-fire map script forces an NPC to use only alt-fire, perhaps the altFire field in .npc files could allow them to use alt fire mode as they see fit like you're saying? Just an idea. Some suggestions I have: 1. Better multiple weapon support for NPCs - - giving NPCs multiple weapons has very little use currently - have them start with the first weapon in the file equipped, or the "highest" weapon (some weapons are considered "better" by the game aren't they?) - they then switch to the next weapon when they are disarmed by Force Pull or in certain special situations (like has a sniper rifle, switches to E11/sword when you're close) - have Melee/Lightsaber/Sword be the "lowest" weapon only because at that point they can't be disarmed 2. Better Melee AI - enemies with Melee just rush at you in a straight B-line, seems a bit unsmart considering you have a lightsaber and many other weapons... - perhaps they would only try to punch you if you're already somewhat close to them? Or else they just run away? Perhaps this could depend on certain factors like whether they had a weapon and were disarmed, their aggression, etc. 3.Better Surrender AI - more of an issue in JA than JK2 - guys that do decide to surrender should stay surrendered until the player is out of sight/far away instead of running around in front of you trying to grab weapons and then getting scared and stopping, that way they seem more sneaky and more intelligent - maybe surrender AI could check for: intelligence vs. aggression - how likely the NPC is to surrender, or just keep trying to attack you (with melee if they have it, or by running to gun racks/picking up nearby weapons), how many weapons nearby - if none or weapons are very far away more likely to surrender

Are you talking to me or Ping? Basically, Red you have to batter the opponent's guard a bit now (you can overwhelm it quickly though in most cases), but the defense will be a bit less slow and the slashes and rebounds a smidge faster. Not a huge change. Feedback will help it be perfected I suppose. Medium and fast will be pretty much unchanged, just depending on your attack power and defense of the opponent you won't always be doomed to have your attacks knocked away, just most of the time hehe. As per saber defense, that's what I (and MB2 people) called perfect blocking. The game seems to base your block radius around the physical location of your saber blade. Your blocking arc also seems to get a bit smaller as the game difficulty goes up, with Padawan having a huge autoblock arc, and Jedi Knight having a somewhat smaller one, meaning you have to make sure the attack hits close to where the blade would be to block correctly. Perhaps your backhand stances could use manual blocking to give the player a better angle? G_saberAutoBlocking and +block with a few modifications could probably be made to work specifically for those stances... Do you mean the attack strengths are different? Like in JK2 that slash does the most damage...?

^Icarus doesn't have any issues with hardcode conflicts though... Reason I'm making this topic, is that for JA, I would like to have this feature work. Not a huge deal, but it would save me some ent-modding trouble

So SET_ALT_FIRE, which comes from icarus scripts, activates the SCF_ALT_FIRE script flags, and so does altFire in an NPC file, or at least it's supposed to. Perhaps therein lies the problem. My expertise ends right there though. I'm unskilled enough to analyze the code further.

Perhaps you're right. I was going to make most saber wielding enemies run at 215 or 230, and limit the player speed on Jedi Master at 230. I figure this would make it a little tougher to run from enemies and force you to engage them a tad more. The default speed is 200 for almost all enemies. The only saber wielder exception I believe is Rosh_dark who gets 300 run speed. Force heal? Perhaps. Considering the red reborn are the strongest standard type of saber enemy, I wanted to make the reborn adepts (what I call the blue reborns, red ones I call warriors) and saber cultists have force heal or something unusual. Most enemies don't need/benefit from Force Heal compared to the player though, as enemy's have more HP, 200 + shadowtrooper damage reduction for reborn masters, 300+ hp and damage reduction for most bosses, 300 hp for reborn warriors. With that much HP it will take them longer to heal and drain more force points from them, but may still be a good idea, I'm just throwing stuff out there. One thing about NPCs, is many of them have Dark Rage which makes them an easy mark. What happens is they drain most of their HP sometimes down to 1 hp ) from constantly raging, and then they start using Force Drain incessantly to make up the difference. Perhaps this part of the AI could be improved for JA, as this is something that they don't suffer from in JK2 as they don't have rage.

After staring at the code for a while, I'm not able to understand it, but my hunch is that the if statement starting at line 3532 in NPC_stats.cpp doesn't apply the SCF_ALT_FIRE script flag correctly to the NPCs.

^I don't want to nerf red too much... I don't even necessarily want to nerf it really at all... I just want to make blocking a tad more prevalent/important in saber duels, and Red to seem more 'star-warzy'. Thing is, if a Jedi is proficient in defense with a lightsaber *cough* Defense 3 *cough* I don't see why they aren't capable of parrying attacks just because the attacker is swinging hard. And why did Raven make Red/Strong into a baseball bat stance? It would be more realistic in an awesome way if it was a bit faster, more combo-ish, and didn't have slow-motion defense. That's my opinion anyway. Sense? I mean, I guess I see that more as a Jedi reaching out to sense what's around him. I was thinking of making that tie into sniper shot dodging though. I was going to make saber deflections not auto-aim at enemies at higher difficulties but rather have to be manually aimed, perhaps Force sense would give you a bonus to this?

Two values for 'neutral' (neither male or female?) and 3 for 'shemale'... Go home Raven, ur drunk

^In JA (and JK2 I bet) alt-fire can't be given to NPCs in their files but must be scripted to them through the map. I don't understand why it doesn't work though. In NPC_stats.cpp the stat correctly refers back to a hardcoded define called SCF_ALT_FIRE or something.

Red has already been helping me for a while : https://github.com/DustysPatch/OpenJK

In JA's code: //sex if ( !Q_stricmp( token, "sex" ) ) { if ( COM_ParseString( &p, &value ) ) { SkipRestOfLine( &p ); continue; } if ( value[0] == 'm' ) {//male stats->sex = SEX_MALE; } else if ( value[0] == 'n' ) {//neutral stats->sex = SEX_NEUTRAL; } else if ( value[0] == 'a' ) {//asexual? stats->sex = SEX_NEUTRAL; } else if ( value[0] == 'f' ) {//female stats->sex = SEX_FEMALE; } else if ( value[0] == 's' ) {//shemale? stats->sex = SEX_SHEMALE; } else if ( value[0] == 'h' ) {//hermaphrodite? stats->sex = SEX_SHEMALE; } else if ( value[0] == 't' ) {//transsexual/transvestite? stats->sex = SEX_SHEMALE; } continue; }

Talking about JA mostly even though I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case in JK2 as well... Why doesn't the alt-fire stat in .npc files work? All the proper code seems to be in place...