Dusty

Right now I'm working on the JA side of things, but I feel like I'm getting no love *cries himself to sleep* Could anyone check out the Dusty's Patch forums just to see some of the stuff I've posted? I have my own ideas and ones that are similar to other's and Eezstreet's ideas? I want my mod ideally to become a part of this Jedi Knight: Enhanced business rather than some separate competing mod.

^I don't think you should be able to edit this on the fly, but maybe between missions. Perhaps saber crystals could affect these attributes: 1. Saber length 2. Saber width (only slightly, however this also affects saber damage too, thicker sabers deal more damage the way hit detection works, at least Raven takes note of it in the code) 2. Saber damage 3. Maybe adds extra effects to the saber such as; electrical damage (makes you do more damage to droid types), other special abilities... I don't think a saber crystal should affect the player's saber skills though.

^Could we get that for the JA weapons.dat? (I seem to recall you saying that in OpenJK you implemented some sort of code-side support for taking this information from the .dat file a while back...) It would make for much easier editing in JA. Would anyone like a 10-20% projectile speed increase for all weapons? I always felt gun combat compared to mb2 felt a tad on the slow side in base SP and MP (especially MP when I had a pistol duel with someone once, was impossible for either person to hit the other ).

^You sound like you're getting too hung up on the details like me haha. Anyway, how are you going to do all this stuff? Heavy ent-modding? I'm curious...

Actually, just had an idea for the DEMP2. In MBII EMP grenades empty your currently equipped weapon's clip stealing ammo from you and also forcing you to wait a short time before you can fire again because you have to reload. What if the weapon caused NPCs/the player to be unable to fire their blaster type weapons for a second or two? Drained some ammo from the player's currently equipped weapon? Shorted out your lightsaber? (Last one might be a little ridiculous )

Were you planning on splitting the Bryar pistol and DL-44 into separate weapons? Anyway, I always felt the "power" part of the weapon came from the charge shot... Maybe the Bryar pistol would have the uber primary fire with a higher ammo drain and slightly slower ROF, but have a weak charge? And the DL-44 would be more like the current? Also, it's so beat that the weapon when used by NPCs is meant only to be a "weak" weapon. It would be cool if NPCs could use alt-fire where they would fire the weapon at say... half speed, but they would fire charge shots at you. Blaster: - Increased damage for primary - Reasoning: Primary is less ammo consuming, yes, but there's basically no reason to use it aside from this. Primary also has better accuracy. IIRC in JK2 SP in the first few levels I would use it to fight stormtroopers and other enemies at longer distances because it had better aim and ammo consumption especially considering half the secondary shots would miss. But I might agree about the damage. Disruptor: - Add charging for primary - Increase base damage for primary - Reasoning: Primary is totally useless (three hits to kill anything) and it makes little sense to restrict charging to secondary, so... Would be interesting if NPCs could use primary fire sometimes... Bowcaster: - Cut ammo usage for primary - Add multiple charge types to primary (press secondary while charging to switch) - Reasoning: Secondary can already kill things with one shot, and it's bloody hard to hit anything with a charged primary (which also uses lots of ammo) Cut ammo usage? Sure. Primary is good for one thing though. It can't be deflected back at you by pesky Jediz, whereas the secondary can (and is a good way to take a lot of damage quickly!). Repeater: - Increase primary damage by 4x - Decrease primary firing rate to match MP - Increase ammo usage of secondary - Reasoning: How does it make any sense that the secondary is actually -more- ammo efficient -and- more powerful than the primary (!) 4x damage is a bit much I would say. But I would say at least 2x would be great if not 3x-4x. A slightly decreased primary fire rate would actually benefit it I think because it fires so dam fast and half the shots miss anyway at longer distances so it would make it easier not to waste shots I think. Increase ammo usage a bit for secondary? Sure. It's pretty strong anyway. DEMP2: - Secondary invokes knockdown - Electricity damage flows through water - Lower ammo usage for primary - Slight AoE to primary - Reasoning: The DEMP is meant to be a utility weapon, but unfortunately it is only really useful for killing ATSTs. It does a pretty good job, but it drains all its ammo to kill one ATST and it doesn't have any use outside of that. It ought to be stronger, dang it. I found the demp 2 useful. Secondary has a very long range and perfectly accurate splash damage shot! It is also good for taking out Assassin droids (and saber droids?). Too bad AT-STs, saber droids, and assassin droids appear somewhat infrequently... Flechette: - Lower ammo use for primary - Increased alt fire damage - Reasoning: It's really bad at using up ammo quickly. The Repeater's alt fire does a much better job (1 x 20 vs ~3 x 8). Sure.

^The MP saber system is a bit different anyway, plus NPCs even then might not use it correctly as saber NPCs are very weird (I would even say broken) from what I recall in Base MP.

Huh? Red has unbreakable offense pretty much no matter what. If you touch the enemy's saber with your slash, or even just during a transition their guard is completely broken and red slashes never get interrupted in anyway unless JK2 is vastly different from JA which I don't think it is. NPCs that have good stats will dodge and try to hit you during the parts that red leaves you open, but they cannot block it normally in any way, not to mention if it touches their saber instead of just breaking their guard it may knock them down. Red is bad against blasters in JA but is pretty uber vs. saber wielders. Also, red is even more powerful in JK2 than JA, because only in JA does your saber style affect your parry/deflection speed, so in JK2 Red had just as good defense as other stances too vs. blasters and probably vs. sabers. Red style also does more base damage per slash than other styles I believe regardless of how long the saber is touching the enemy. In general, Red (and Staff in JA because of twoHanded 1 being on all the staff hilts) throw any sort of blocking out the window. What I wanted to do, is with making Red have slightly less uber/unstoppable offense, I wanted to make rebounds from attack and blaster/saber deflection slightly faster (as far as JA goes). I figured the stance would be more realistic if it was faster in most ways but could actually be blocked a little bit. Currently I feel NPCs are kind of cheap with it because they often skip rebounds and recoveries with Red which the player can't do.

So, while largely similar, there are a few things different in JA vs. JK2 saber duels and mechanics. Some are little details, mainly like more special moves in JA, kicks, super breaks in saber locks, slightly easier/better player saber blocking and blaster deflection in JK2. My main issue with JA for a while now has been that Saber Offense and Defense seem to have little use in the game. In JK2, Saber Offense at least was specifically for giving you new saber styles, and Defense was it's own power that affected how fast your blocking was and several other things. In JA though the saber styles function of Saber Offense is lost/unused mostly, as the game never makes it clear that Saber Offense is what's "giving" you the new styles you learn, and Saber Offense itself doesn't actually grant styles but only affects your saber lock strength, even though the game erroneously documents it as affecting your attack power. So, I feel in JA a nice change from JK2 to go with the fleshing out of the saber system would be to allow Saber Offense to increase attack power, and Defense to increase defense power. Of course, there are other things I'm doing/planning too, like allowing that Medium style isn't always knocked away by Saber Defense 3 depending on your Offense and other factors making it more offensively viable, or Strong style can be blocked (that way you have to "batter" through defenses like the game's description says). However I am also worried about changing the game too much (also all these mods are cvar-enabled). Another mechanic is blaster deflection. In JK2 your blaster deflection abilities are very high, whereas in JA you have a long cooldown so you can't just stand there and block, but enemies don't use as many sneaky tactics on you. An idea I had, would be to remove the deflect auto-aim from Saber Defense in JA at higher difficulty levels (you would have to aim the shots with the crosshair), but in exchange your blaster deflection would be better.

Hmm, I don't get it.

^Say you made the character model 80-90% transparent, then it would be easy to see in 1st person even if the character model is in the way sometimes. That would be model-independent too.

I don't get why there just can't be a cvar to cause the model textures/surface to just be transparent...

So, I've written a lot of new and modified code for the saber system. How it works right now (tested it and it seems to work as planned down to the letter): Saber Offense and Defense - - Saber offense gives you an attack power number level of 2 * your offense (2 for level 1, then 4, then 6) - ^same for saber defense except for defense strength - attacks below your defense power are knocked away if your saber defense is high enough (100% / very high chance for Saber Defense 3, 50% chance for Saber Defense 2) - attacks that are equal to your defense strength or below when your saber defense isn't high enough for a knockaway are just blocked and interrupted without the attacker being stunned like a knockaway - attacks that are above your defense level are blocked but your defense power is subtracted from the opponent's attack power, and the remaining number is added to your stagger counter (1 for defense 1, 2 for defense 2, 3 for def 3) - once your stagger counter reaches the limit your guard starts breaking and you stagger and the opponent's attack continues uninterrupted, stagger counters decreases by 1 every 1.5 seconds Other Stuff - - breakparry and parry bonuses boost offense and defense by their respective numbers (so +1 would be like half a level, +2 would be like a whole saber offense/defense level) - saber styles give you an attack power modifier; -2 for Fast style, -1 for Tavion/Duals, 0 / no effect for medium style, +1 for staff, and +2 for strong/desann style - a -1 attack penalty if you're in a transition (transitions are only counted as attacking though with Staff style or anything stronger anyway) - slight tweaks to how Force Speed and Dark Rage affect attack power - g_saberLocksEnabled now allows you to control whether saber locks are even possible - g_saberNewCombat if non-zero turns on the new saber combat mechanics otherwise the old saber system is used - saber offense 1 or lower causes you to be disarmed randomly by being blocked by saber defense 3 users instead of defense 1 which didn't make sense to me Bugs/Glitches - - saber locks seem to happen much less frequently now even when enabled (not sure why, unintended side effect I believe) - special attacks are always blocked now (I think because they force your attack power to be a flat 2 instead of whatever your power level is +2) I'll post a vid later, but I can't right now. It still needs tweaks (like having the stagger counter reset after a guard break, maybe slower blocking to show when strong attacks are being blocked, saber locks need fixing, and I want to have Saber Offense levels affect how fast you recover from knockaways), but what do you guys think of how it sounds?

The Aqualish are gangster enemies in Star Wars: Obi-Wan

I got it. Here's what I found: for rageRecoveryTime or whatever it's called, the moment Dark Rage ends for someone that's used it, rageRecoveryTime is set to "level.time + 10000" or whatever the current time is +10 seconds. And then other parts of the code keep the weakness period going until level.time is greater than rageRecoveryTime. Using this knowledge, I put some code in the function that is responsible for Force point regeneration, and that checks the timers in the same way as for Dark Rage. And I resolved the crash

Good idea, I think the standard version of the stun baton may be more up their alley. Now that I think about it I think I tried giving them one once and when you got within like 2 feet of them they basically killed you instantly, so I may have to tweak that. Either it's just too powerful or NPCs can fire it like 4x as fast as the player can which may be some oversight due to NPCs not being able to use it normally.

^It should either be on OpenJK's page or Eez's tutorial on setting up OpenJK methinks. Thanks for helping me out very much! I'll try it out later and let you guys know if I got it working.

^I think I want to do that. Fighting 2 Reborn Masters at once outside Tavion's tomb? Yes. But then again, I can't help but feel cannonically Jaden wouldn't be capable of such a thing, unless he is considered to be at Kyle's level who could probably take 2 masters at once... Also the shadowtroopers on t3_hevil would be kind of cool... swamptroopers too. Maybe they would be trying to get the jump on the Noghri by attacking from the water

^Yeah the level.time thing seems to be used a lot. Raven seems to be really simple about it, for example they use an if statement that says something like "if ( ps.forceRageRecoveryTime < level.time )" to check if an entity is still in the cooldown after Force Rage to have weaker saber attacks, but that seems overly simple... as that's literally all it says in most instances where level.time is used. Perhaps forceRageRecoveryTime does some of it's own calculations to figure when the entity first used Rage and when it ended? How do I know what things are frame-by-frame operations, or how do I know just in general the interval at which a function is called or a piece of code is used besides just guessing? Is there some somewhat clear way to tell in C/C++? Or it's all purely studying the code? I feel like that sort of thing would be useful to have an understanding of. That's my main stumbling block right now, and also my game crashes on saber clashes, which maybe some simple error, but if I caused some sort of update/timing conflict somewhere I wouldn't know it yet. I was splitting parts of the saber combat code into two: one old, one that checks for a cvar to run a modified version, and I have the slight feeling I could've messed up something that all needs to run without conflict in a single frame or something like that without branching off into pieces...

How2 setup debug build for testingz?

So, I want to use timers for certain features. Just about all I know is that the game measures time in milliseconds 1000 of which equals 1 whole second. How do I use timers in code though, as in, how do I reference a timer that gets updated every frame or millisecond or whatever? I've been looking through Raven's code a bit but I'm not sure how timers are programmed to update so I'm therefore not sure how to make my own...

Here's a list of what the previous version of the mod did to NPCs: Some thoughts I had: Stormtroopers - good but randomized accuracy. They have rank ensign and aim 5, so they aim well, but they also have a slight random error. Skilled yet slightly unrefined. They also have some of the fastest alert times of any gunner NPC now with Class_Swamptrooper. 30 HP --> 40 HP. Human Mercs - Slightly less terrible accuracy. More aggressive. Maybe lower HP from 100 to 90? (On Jedi Knight and up they'll still have 100+ hp because difficulty increases it) Grans - may change or remove the Granboxer and shooter. Oddballs they are. Granshooter is not really any different from other gunner NPCs save perfect aim and 50 HP, Granboxer is just kind of weird that they charge at you unarmed... Trandoshans - More HP (40 --> 50-60), they're supposed to be really strong and tough, moreso than the average human! 5% taller. Maybe uses melee if they lose their weapon and they're really close? Maybe slower speed. Weequays - 40 HP but slower speed. Assassin Droids - They can fire with shields up now hehe. Saboteurs - pretty sure they can't fire while cloaked, what's the point of that? Should fix... Maybe give the pistol wielder one alt-fire by default? Enemy saberists - 100 yawspeed for less skilled, 140 for more skilled, 160 for top saberists (this affects how rapidly they can use backslash attacks). Better AI for using Dark Rage, recovering from Grip/Drain break outs, using kicks and katas. Increased runspeed possibly for the best saberists (Reborn Master or boss level saberists). Less cheap Reborn Masters, take away some of their AI exploits but give them some combination of things like Tavion style, more HP, more runspeed, etc. Reborn Adepts (blue new reborn) are made into a full fleshed out enemy with different force powers and abilities from Warriors, Reborn Apprentice fills the former role of adepts. Jedi (students) - they should be tough but not too tough... They hold their own well in 1v1 duels with red reborn warriors (which is a feat considering the reborn have; more hp, better stats, modded sabers, and lots of force powers), but seem so easy to defeat as the player... a light buff Jedi (masters) - they should be very powerful, better than a Reborn Master really. The Reborn Master should have a bit more raw power due to being powered up originally by Desann and maybe even more by Tavion, but the Jedi Master should have more true skill as they would have more training and discipline. Why do they have staff sabers? Seems odd to me. Perhaps a single-wielding and a staff variant, to complement the Jedi Trainer which has dual sabers, and maybe should have a single-wielding variant. Imp workers - may give one of them the DEMP2. They aim slightly better, but still terrible . If impworker3 is used at all in JA, maybe we can give him the stun baton. Swamptroopers - perhaps they can be added in some spots... I'll add more later. Any suggestions or thoughts?

Everything is working now so I'm finally able to start modding the SP saber system hehehehe.... Already testing out some mods. They don't quite work the way I intended but I'm starting to understand all those boulders of code if wp_saber.