I've been doing a semi-secret project: A 'patch' for allowing folks to play JO SP in JA with no problems. It's only an update, and so it only updates the JO assets YOU have. Anyways, I've been updating the character.menu to have the ability to select different outfits for Kyle in SP. My only problem is this: How do I make it so that Kyle comes up in the window via the .menu file, and how do I make it so he's selected as the player character? (I believe I need to put playerchoice.txt in the /kyle folder, but don't know if that's a must) Anyways, at this time, if I had the species button, it would scroll through the standard 5 species. What I want is Kyle only. Here's a screenie of the current work:

http://blargh.mine.nu/test/189/2.jpg)

Just in the way of letting everyone know what else is going on:

-I've fixed quite a few scripts, such as cutscenes, and other things affecting the player.

-I've made it so that whatever outfit the player chooses on the selection screen will be what the player wears in the cutscenes.

-I'm in the process of updating all menus to look JO-ish

-The mission select menu will be JA-esque. As a mission is beat, the next is unlocked, and the player can return to previous missions at any time

-There will also be a 'custom levels' level select screen. This will require a second patch so that each JO level will work with the JA engine, but will allow for the favorites of old SP to be played.

Sounds awesome - I've heard of this kind of project in 3 separate places - are you all working together on this?

Currently I'm only on my own. I've been working on this for about 2 months in my spare time, switching between other projects. I currently have the character menu hacked by manually changing the model in the mod's jaconfig file. Hopefully someone can help me to get around that. I think it would take a new uix86.dll.

Regarding maps, I'll have to save those for last, since I don't know much past moving/selecting in GtKRadiant. I did manage to find a way to get the JO maps to decompile w/o losing any entity or texture info, which is good. But--the point is, all maps that have serious waypoint issues will need to be fixed. And then, that will be released as a BSP only pack, so those without JO can't cheat to get it.

The only other issue is decompiling Icarus IBI's. I have the uncompiled scripts for the standard JO levels, but some user levels are missing the orignal text files, and some authors have lost the original scripts. Since I'm planning for user level support in the future, that will be one thing I'll have to tackle eventually.

Wudan, I know you're busy, but if you ever get time, could you help out with the character menu problem? I'd still like to use the head/torso/legs thing, but I need it to only select Kyle, not the normal species models.

Hmmm - so why have the choice at all? I'm afraid I'm a bit lost - from what I can see from the MP SDK, the character models that are customizable look hard-coded, but other developers are able to get new ones, so I *know* I'm mistaken.

I remember when I showed some of my work to a Raven Employee they remarked I was insane, but al remarked that there was a guy who wrote a decompiler for the compiled Icarus Script files. I imagine that it could be done, it just might not pay off as easy as we'd all like it to.

Well, it's probably possible that you could just hardcode the character.menu to just display the kyle model and automatically make the player model be Kyle's.

Is your mod going to use the existing JKO assets files so we don't have to download some monster file?

Yeah, he said that.

"It's only an update, and so it only updates the JO assets YOU have."

Originally posted by razorace
Well, it's probably possible that you could just hardcode the character.menu to just display the kyle model and automatically make the player model be Kyle's.

I tried just changing "UI_Char_Model" to the directory of Kyle, (copy/pasted from one of the briefing screens then modified) but it seems the game didn't like that. The other thing it doesn't like is the spinning JO logo. It doesn't appear at all. I wonder if you have to precache them. I was thinking of just running something like charmenusetup.cfg along with the action to open the menu. That way, it selects Kyle, sets the RGB to 255, and sets up his skin. I'll try it and report back.

Originally posted by razorace
Is your mod going to use the existing JKO assets files so we don't have to download some monster file?

Yes, the update will contain updated Icarus scripts, updated menus, Kyle customization, etc. Down the road there will be a BSP only patch that contains the corrected AI waypoints for the levels that need them.

Does forcing a Kyle model only involve setting cvars in a controlled manner?

Well, here's my autoexec.cfg

seta name "Kyle"
seta sex "m"
seta snd "kyle"
seta g_char_model "kyle"
seta g_char_skin_head "head"
seta g_char_skin_torso "torso_a1"
seta g_char_skin_legs "null"
seta g_char_color_red "255"
seta g_char_color_green "255"
seta g_char_color_blue "255"

If you wanted just a regular Kyle, you would put "model_default" for head, torso, and legs, then skip the character screen.

I think I may have found a solution to the JK logo not spinning unless backing out of a game. The precachemodels command only caches GLM's that are classified as a species. Since Kyle will be the only selectable character, it will be easy to hack the logo as a new 'species'... export to GLM, add playerchoice.txt, etc. At least it should work in theory. Will post about the success/failure when I have time.

Perhaps you already know this, but you can set cvars from inside the UI like this:

action
{
setcvar name "Kyle"
setcvar g_char_color_red 255
}

Placed in the right locations, you should be able to control all you want to.

Interesting... If that works then it's much better than the autoexec.cfg idea. I'll check it out when I'm done with my OJP stuff.