First Person Perspective

[PaulB_318]

I am actually quite peeved and disappointed.

 

I want to play the entire game of JK: JA in first person perspective! Yet, while wielding my Lightsaber I cannot. If I do not have any other weapons other than the Lightsaber, I am also forced into third person view. In JK II: Jedi Outcast you had the "option" of either first or third person perspective. Why in the world would they take this out!?? If anyone knows how to play Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy while wielding the Lightsaber in first person perceptive or has already created a MOD, please let me know! For me, this game is simply unplayable at present state!!

[Tyler_Durden]

Dude, i feel your pain. When first i played the demo, i was furious to the point where i was losing sleep over it, and the ideas i had for a mod was all but dead. But after some doing some thinking, i am presently working on a solution. I and hopefully some other guys with the same problem are trying to come up with a way to play in true first person. But for now do this:

 

hit Shift + ~ in the game, type devmap and then type these commands:

 

cg_thirdPersonCameraDamp 1

 

cg_thirdPersonTargetDamp 1

 

cg_thirdPersonVertOffset 4

 

cg_thirdpersonrange 0

 

These will give you a pretty good perspective, while not totally first person, it's a temporary solution until we can come up with a mod or if raven makes a patch. You can then bind these to a key with the ja config file. The only thing about using these commands is that if you use force speed, the camera will speed up ahead of you so you see your face and the controls are backwards.

[PaulB_318]

Thanks man. If you or others you know create a MOD or find information concerning maybe a patch, defiantly let me know!! I'm very computer literate, save for coding. That's just beyond me at this point. (Or I'm just not in the mood to learn it right now. Either way.)

 

Thanks again.

[JaledDur]

what, that cg_fpls command doesnt work anymore? I havent tried.

[Tyler_Durden]

CG_FPLS 1 is for MP, the commands i gave him are a temp solution for sp. Hopefully we don;t have to wait too long....

[PaulB_318]

Hopefully.

[Rocketman]

yeah, i'm one of those who wanted to play in first person.

 

hopefully someone will make a mod, or better the JA team will pull their heads out of their asses and add it to a patch. i can't understand why they are forcing us to play "the easy way" when its always been there before.

 

i think they just wanted to make sure we could all see the new animations and stuff with the new sabers and all, but i mean come on! at least give us the OPTION to play how we want like we've ALWAYS had.

[Nemios]

So does CG_FPLS in MP work? And what is G_FPLS, which seems to be a new CVAR?

 

Last evening I did some more experiments in JO and JA demo. I tried to change those CVARS in JO MP and while they are cheat protected I found that apart for cg_thirdPersonVertOffset, which has to be set to 0, they do exactly what cg_fpls does, i.e. the camera goes in the exact same position.

 

I tried these workarounds also in JA demo. The problem here is we havn't a trasparent skin. I could import it from JO but demo don't support modified or changed PK3s. Anyway, I wanted to know if, supporting PK3s, would be possible to change skin, finally I found a way. I noticed your player is the product of a model and 3 skins.

 

The model is set by cg_char_model and the 3 skins by cg_char_skin_head, cg_char_skin_torso and cg_char_skin_legs. You can alway change on the fly the appearance of your charachter. You could, for example, enter the command:

cg_char_skin_head "head_a1"

to load head_a1 for the skin of the head. To apply your changes you have to reload your charachter. Enter this command:

playerModel player

 

So, if we could quite easily import or create a trasparent skin where's the problem? What worries me is MP. To import a trasparent skin, if not included, you have to use another PK3. But how can you play with others in pure servers? Plus, if I manually change my charachter to have it trasparent the others will see me trasparent: almost a cheater! Obviously a more standardized workaround is needed from Raven, like for JO, where the skin change is only visible by the client.

 

But those CVARS are changable in JA. To me it means that 1st person perspective would have been possible if only Raven guys wanted.

 

I'm not whining, I'm asking politely. Please, when the first patch will be done (I'm sure it will be done, not to change gameplay but at least to fix SP bugs that apparently prevent to continue with the game) include a way to change your perspective and a trasparent skin. Can you please reply, Chang[KHAN]?

[Tyler_Durden]

I think the best way to go about getting these features in game would be to e-mail lucasarts and then try to PM Chang[KHAN] and see what he has to say, if he answers you, that is.

[Kurgan]

G_FPLS 1 works in MP, however your character's head is in the way.

 

This is because (unlike JK2 1.04) they didn't give you the option to use a skin with a transparent head or a transparent (arms only) body.

 

Hopefully someone can mod this in, or better yet, Raven will add it in a patch as a cvar option. It's client side only after all...

[PaulB_318]

Don't know if anyone is still reading this post, but I did e-mail Raven Software. Here is the e-mail I sent ,along with their response. I think they're full of it, but then again I don't know coding or creating a MOD.

 

-Sent-->

{{To whom it may concern,

 

On behalf of JK gamers everywhere, I want to bring to your attention that we need and desperately want a "First Person Perspective" in Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy while wielding the lightsaber, or any other circumstance in which the game throws you into "third person" view. This option was available in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and was a godsend! Why in the world would you remove this?? Most of the hard work was already completed years ago. The game is even sold as a "First Person" game.

 

We request that the "option" be replaced! For myself, this game is simply unplayable at present time. We would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

 

Sincerely,

Slightly peeved and disappointed}}

 

--Response-->

{{{In Jedi Outcast, we were able to put in a first person view because there was only one character model (Kyle) using the saber in that view. Custom code and transparency and animations were needed to pull it off, but since it was one guy, we were able to make it work.

 

Once we added the "create your own character" functions, we would have had to put in 3000 specific instances where the saber could be used in first person and there was just no way to make it work.

 

Multiply those 3000 character combinations by two lightsaber and dual lightsaber styles and you've got about 9000 or so possible combinations. It just couldn't be done.

 

However, despite that fact, I will pass along your suggestion to the team.

 

--Kenn

 

Kenn Hoekstra

Project Administrator/

Director of Support Services

Raven Software Corporation

http://www.ravensoft.com/

http://www.kennhoekstra.com/}}}

[Tyler_Durden]

Instances? Exactly what instances is he referring to? You can already do the moves and such but IMO all you really need is the transparent skin. It works already in the sense that i already tried the key cvars but jaden's head gets in the way.

 

Well, here's hoping the team does something. Personally i really don't care if there's just one default transparent skin, as it is not about the look of the skin, it is about the gameplay option.

[PaulB_318]

I agree. Well, here's to you Tyler. Keep me in mind when you complete your MOD or find out any good news concerning this subject. Peace.

[Kurgan]

I see the logic of Kenn's response, however why couldn't the fix simply be to make it one generic pair of arms for the first person saber (like it was in JK2?).

 

Obviously the character is the focus, so people wouldn't use it very often, but it would not have to be as customized as before.

 

Besides, wouldn't the first person saber simply be placing a transparent texture over the body?

 

In MP it's even less important to have it "exactly right" and they could simply use the default "kyle's floating arms holding the saber" model.

 

Just my opinion.

[Nemios]

Exactly! Who needs many and many trasparent skins, all the same except the color of the gloves/hands? One is enough! I suggest to reply to Kenn and suggest this solution, as I suggested to ChangKhan.