Aaron Halcyon Posted September 18, 2003 Share Posted September 18, 2003 I have messed around with trying to add new lightsabers to JA but can not figure it out how do i add them to the gaem so i can use them in single player and multiplayer Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 I'm playing around with it right now. I'm trying to figure out though, where the names of the sabers come from. I know how to set them up as dual and single, but I'm unsure where to find the names. I'll post more as I progress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Halcyon Posted September 19, 2003 Author Share Posted September 19, 2003 thanks man i will be watching Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChangKhan Posted September 20, 2003 Share Posted September 20, 2003 Okay, I'll write a tutorial, but here's a quick overview: Every saber must have a .sab file. Look in our pk3 files (with WinZip) and you'll see all of ours in ext_data/sabers. There's a lot of fields and it can be confusing, but look at one of our .sab files for an example. Now, you'll notice that you specify the model of the saber in that .sab file. You'll find all our models in models/weapons/... (whatver the actual saber directory is). You can view our saber models with ModView, which I think James already released. The important things to have in the model are: 1) proper scale - so it's not too big or too small 2) proper orientation - so that it sits in the hand correctly 3) proper tags - there is a tag named "*blade#" (where the number is 1-8) for each blade. If you have one blade, you just need a *blade1. If you have two, you need a *blade1 and a *blade2. If you have six, well... you get the idea. If you plan on making your own saber hilts (or modding ours), I recommend MilkShape (which has a GLM importer you can download) as it's very easy to use (even I have made new weapon models with it and I'm just a programmer!) Once all this is done, you should automatically be able to use it in MP (it'll appear in the menu). In SP, it won't automatically appear in the menu, but you can modify the list of sabers in the .menu file for the saber menu. But you can also just use the "saber" console command. Like I said, I'll be writing an actual tutorial on all of this, but, for now, this should get you modders a good start! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prime Posted September 20, 2003 Share Posted September 20, 2003 Thanks for the help, and I look forward to the tutorial Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tFighterPilot Posted September 20, 2003 Share Posted September 20, 2003 Isn't it the wrong forum? I mean, there are all those new JA forums, isn't that belong to them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted September 21, 2003 Share Posted September 21, 2003 ChangKhan[RAVEN]: I was just about to post a tutorial myself...but you beat me to it. But now that you're here, could you answer a couple of questions for me? Question 1: I made a saber claw (see showcase forum) with 3 blades and set 2 of them to a different color from the first, but the bladeColor doesn't seem to work. I noticed a note in the saber.sab file about setting saberColor will set all blades to the same color, but I have entered saberColor2 and saberColor 3 as distinct colors, but each time I select my custom saber, the blades are all the same color. Second question: How can one make such sabers that aren't going to be exploited as damage cheats? I mean....8 blades of maximum radius? All one has to do is have all 8 blades sticking out all over the place in variable distances from the point of standard blade 1 origin to do insane amounts of damage. Please comment on these 'extreme edits'; like preventing force powers too...some users are concerned about unbalanced gameplay. P.S. I'm finishing the claw reguardless; The models look cool with a pair glowing claws coming from each hand. P.S.#2 Maybe I'll write a tutorial anyway and post it quickly...that way mr raven programmer guy can kick back after all the hard work. Seriously though, is there a need for a Raven programmer to write a tutorial when the mod community is capable of such things? You gave us all we needed to know in the saber.sab file. as for imyourfather: Take a chill pill man. The only messages I've read from you involve telling people where their messages belong. This thread does belong here because it's a general editing question. If it were, "how do I make a JA lightsaber using gmax?" or something more specific to either modelling or skinning then I could see a need to move it. There is no JA general question area, so here seems a logical choice for such a question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted September 21, 2003 Share Posted September 21, 2003 Just wanted to post that since I was thinking of doing this since last night anyway, I might as well still go through with it. I've begun typing up a tutorial to better explain JA saber editing. I'll be working on it for the better portion of the day so I should have it posted this evening some time (EST). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 Tutorial is up If you have any problems: see errors, or are confused let me know. I'll update this as necessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChangKhan Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 Originally posted by Psynex Tutorial is up If you have any problems: see errors, or are confused let me know. I'll update this as necessary. Cool! Nice job on the tutorial. I haven't read it through all the way, but I'll do so at work. I'm sure I can help with some of the issues you describe in the tutorial (making tags that are aligned correctly is a pain in the butt... one of our designers here has made something like 25 new weapon models and he can attest to the problems of getting tags right...) I'll also release a sample mod that shows what you can do with the different fields. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 Yeah, I know all too well about lining tags correctly. In fact, in my custom mod, the tags aren't aligned anything like how I have them described in the tutorial, so I could have made a big mistake. I was working from a saber MD3 file that was left over in the Pak. I understand all of the great options you've allowed us with saber mods...but the saberColor command doesn't seem to work at all. Can you better define this option? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Halcyon Posted September 25, 2003 Author Share Posted September 25, 2003 I have gotten the sabers to appear in the game but on the menue and in my hand the colors are gone and are either black or solid gray what do i need to do to get the correct textures for my JO sabers that i want to use Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoAnalysis Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 ok ... i feel like a goof now .. I got in some extra saber hilts this way http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=112595 they're not custom jobs or anything .. but just trying to get these in felt like a pain. It's quick .. it's dirty .. it's all raven resources .. and i only take credit for my patients looking through line after line of variables with some trial and error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChangKhan Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 Originally posted by Psynex Yeah, I know all too well about lining tags correctly. In fact, in my custom mod, the tags aren't aligned anything like how I have them described in the tutorial, so I could have made a big mistake. I was working from a saber MD3 file that was left over in the Pak. I understand all of the great options you've allowed us with saber mods...but the saberColor command doesn't seem to work at all. Can you better define this option? How are you setting the color? Can you send me your mod and I'll debug it. mgummelt@ravensoft.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 Originally posted by Aaron Halcyon I have gotten the sabers to appear in the game but on the menue and in my hand the colors are gone and are either black or solid gray what do i need to do to get the correct textures for my JO sabers that i want to use Thanks That's because either the skin file doesn't point to correct directory, the skin is missing from the correct directory, or you didn't import the .skin file in MD3View before making it a GLM. The skin file must point to \models\weapons2\my_saber\ directory and imported to MD3View to work. You will get an error in MD3View, but the skin file will be tied to the mesh correctly and tell it where the texture is. Aaron Halcyon: I don't agree with your method because it replaces existing sabers. You should create your own .sab files so your custom sabers can be added to the list of existing sabers. You can even just make saber mods of the sabers that are already there without providing a new mesh. Just make a .sab file and set a whole bunch of different attributes and give it a new name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoAnalysis Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 Originally posted by Psynex That's because either the skin file doesn't point to correct directory, the skin is missing from the correct directory, or you didn't import the .skin file in MD3View before making it a GLM. The skin file must point to \models\weapons2\my_saber\ directory and imported to MD3View to work. You will get an error in MD3View, but the skin file will be tied to the mesh correctly and tell it where the texture is. Aaron Halcyon: I don't agree with your method because it replaces existing sabers. You should create your own .sab files so your custom sabers can be added to the list of existing sabers. You can even just make saber mods of the sabers that are already there without providing a new mesh. Just make a .sab file and set a whole bunch of different attributes and give it a new name. hmmmm .. do you mean NeoAnalysis by chance? If so, you'll find that i use existing files only as templates. When saved i instruct that they should be "saved as : NEW NAME.sab" in the example i posted you'll see that single_1 was used as a template and then saved as single_10. If i simply replaced an existing .sab, then there'd be no reason to edit saber.menu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Halcyon Posted September 25, 2003 Author Share Posted September 25, 2003 No you have me al wrong i did not create these sabers these are sabers that i have downloaded for JO and am trying to get to work in JA and i have not over written any sabers i have new .sab files for each one but the colors won't show on the hilt and i don't know what to do i do not want to go into milkshape and start tinkering with someone elses saber design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laghima Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 this may be a bit off topic, but has anyone found a way of enableing the saber_sith_sword class in mp? it's easy enough to remove the "notinmp" line from the .sab file, but they still spawn a blade (i'm guessing it's attached to a flash tag they used for the lightning effect). it seems to work well enough in the selection window, but thats probably because the .menu dosent specify gfx (again only a guess ) granted, there's a good chance they hard coded it into sp, but here's hopeing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mccartney Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 someone is gonna have to add all the tested 3rd party hilts to an official "gotta have it to play" patch, because it doesn't do a whole lot of good if the servers don't have them, same goes for models and skins, maps download to the client, need to make everything else do so as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 Originally posted by laghima this may be a bit off topic, but has anyone found a way of enableing the saber_sith_sword class in mp? it's easy enough to remove the "notinmp" line from the .sab file, but they still spawn a blade (i'm guessing it's attached to a flash tag they used for the lightning effect). it seems to work well enough in the selection window, but thats probably because the .menu dosent specify gfx (again only a guess ) granted, there's a good chance they hard coded it into sp, but here's hopeing. Blades are certainly tied to a tag...in the event of there being no tag, the blade is emitted from world origin (0,0,0). The blade can still be removed, though I'm unsure how. I found that out at the end of my tutorial. I plan on amending that this weekend as I'm noticing more and more problems with the approach I wrote that with. Importing the saber MD3 was a bad idea; GLM should be decompiled and then imported. One day while editing, I forgot to follow one of the steps and ended up having a saber hilt with no blade (no matter what color I picked). There was no need to edit all of the saber blade graphics. I can try and recreate that scenario and see if I can get you your answer. . I don't know why you would need to edit the saber.menu at all. The saber hilts are displayed on screen as models, not an image as in Jedi Outcast. If the model is missing, you'll see 3 axis in its place in the selection menu...don't follow through on starting a game without a saber model cause it will crash (lesson 2 I learned). NeoAnalysis and Halcyon: I did mix your names up...sorry about that. ChangKhan[Raven]: I'm currently at work (mixing business and pleasure) and can't send a copy of my hilt. I can post here how I have entered the attribute: saberColor blue saberColor2 red saberColor3 red I have noticed something last night that may be the reason why, but didn't get a chance to test it in game yet. I was going by an already extracted saber MD3 that was in the \models\weapons2\saber folder....this model is the cause of many problems. Via your post above and since looking at a decompiled saber_1, I noted my blade tags were improperly named as tag_blade# instead of *blade#. This COULD be the source of my issues. The blades appeared fine reguardless, but the color wouldn't work. I'm guessing it defauted the tags in some fashion. If this isn't the case however, I can send a copy as soon as I return home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChangKhan Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 Originally posted by Psynex ChangKhan[Raven]: I'm currently at work (mixing business and pleasure) and can't send a copy of my hilt. I can post here how I have entered the attribute: saberColor blue saberColor2 red saberColor3 red Hmm, that should be right. Is this in MP or SP? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cayqel Posted September 26, 2003 Share Posted September 26, 2003 Psynex, you tutorial is awesome. I've never done any customization before but really wanted to make my own saber hilt. Since I'm a beginer I wanted to work from a current model, but there is only one MD3 file i could find in assests1.pk3 is the one in the tutorial. I was hoping to work of one of the other sabers, how do I import the model for the other sabers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted September 26, 2003 Share Posted September 26, 2003 I use Milkshape 3d to import the GLM models. The GLM importer has a simple interface; choose LOD 0(zero), and also check the options to import materials and tags. I hope no one hangs me for using the MD3 while they work through that tutorial...I really can't make any changes until about Saturday. :\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cayqel Posted September 26, 2003 Share Posted September 26, 2003 is there a way to get GLM's into gmax? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoAnalysis Posted September 26, 2003 Share Posted September 26, 2003 installing new saber hilts in sp seems to demand editing the saber.menu file. I tried many different approaches including just dropping a .sab into ext_data/sabers as the tag line in saber.sab indicated. I could only seem to get them in if i amended saber.menu with the addtional entries. I mean even ChangKhan mentions editing saber.menu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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