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A COMPREHENSIVE review of OJP E, Feb. '06


Kyle Kelasheski

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Razorace,

 

RE point 2: I guess my main concern is that different saber mods do different things, and placing them in the wrong directory can cause a good deal of havoc on game performance and confusion. If several variants were supplied via cvar, then odds are all of these potential negative outcomes could be altogether avoided. This leads to happier players, and happier players means more people playing the mod. At least that's what I hope it means.

; )

 

RE point 4: I am, of course, very eager to see how the "saber trail lengths reflect fatigue level" works out. I hope that it's a feature that the community members appreciate and enjoy!

 

RE point 9: "Shorter saber trails in the next release?" Yay! :lips1: This is one new visual feature I can NOT wait to see in action! Thank you for putting work into it and thus allowing us to give it a try!

 

RE point 12: If you're going to incorporate a downward attack on knocked down opponents by the bots, is it possible to replace the downward stab with a SWEEP of the floor with the lightsaber's tip? As I mentioned earlier, I believe that it's a far more believable action to see put into use.

 

RE point 19: Is it possible to code the bots so that they can look for and react to the direction of an incoming saber swing? I couldn't imagine how cool it would be to conduct a TFFA or FFA with a slew of saber users smartly reacting to their opponents' attacks! DROOL!

 

Razorace, I really commend everything that you're putting into this modding endeavor. In my opinion, the overhaul of Raven's crappy saber system is so complete that I feel it'd be more accurate to say that this mod is actually a total conversion . In my opinion, the number of players that this mod is going to totally convert to using the OJP E system is going to be sizeable. And "Yes," the use of the bad pun was intentional. One person's definition of "bad" is another person's definition of "creative."

 

I vote for the latter.

 

Good night!

 

Kyle

March 1, 2006

 

:)

 

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2. I think it's outside the mod's madate to account for human error on the part of the users. We can try to make things better, but there's a little to what I can do without it just being annoying for me.

 

12. At the moment I have no plans for adding an additional down attack to the moves list. However, if I decide to do one in the future, I'll try to make one like you suggested.

 

19. It's possible, but it really comes down to CPU usage and being able to come up with an algorithm that can handle such behavior, which is tough to do for something like you suggested. Unfortunately, predicting saber movement/positioning is tuff. I think I've finally come up with one that works (which is used for the bound box blocking) but I'm not sure how I could use it to make the bots react more intelligently around sabers.

 

And thank you. :)

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Razorace,

 

Here's some more feedback. :)

 

 

Bugs

 

I. The rocket launcher's rocket isn't visible midair. All I see are the rocket's model's X, Y, and Z axis lines. I'd also consider toning down a bit the amount of shrapnel that's generated by the rocket's detonation.

 

 

Suggestions

I. Remove the "shield hit" visual effect. This would immediately make having Force Sense a real bonus, as one could see whether or not an individual has any shield energy left, and it would also simultaneously make the game look more cinematic, as the only time I can think of seeing a shield bubble forming in any of the films is when a droideka is attacked. If the shield effect must be kept, then I advocate making it look very similar to the kind of shield bubble the droideka produces, as it could then be justified that portable shields are based on droideka technologies. Or one could do what ForceMod did, allow an option to have shields visible/invisible.

 

II. I feel that there should be a greater penalty for those who are either recovering their battle stance and/or lightsaber. Too often I see individauls recover their hilts and they can then immediately use it without suffering any kind of performance penalty. It seems to me that it makes more sense that it would take half a second for a duelist to get a sound grip on his saber hilt once it's been recovered. If the duelist is attacked before this half a second has elapsed, then the duelist is unable to defend himself with his lightsaber because it has yet to be readied. The same goes for getting up from knockdowns.

 

 

 

New Force Powers

 

I. Force Jump-Recovery from Kicks:

After watching my newly purchased Revenge of the Sith DVD for what must be the fifth time in two weeks (my baby girl is currently very sick with RSV, a severe bronchial infection; about the only way she can nap is if she's on top of my chest, so I pass some of that time watching TV) I noticed a combat move that I thought was pretty sharp and smart. After being kicked by Vader on Mustafar's landing pad, in mid-knockback, Obi-Wan did a "Force-jump" to spin his way out of the nastier consequences of crashing to the landing pad's hard deck, and instead he landed several meters away on his feet, facing his former brother in arms. Perhaps the player/bot would have a fraction of a second to try and recover in this fashion from a kick. In my opinion, this option should only be offered while the kicked individual has a relatively high amount of defensive and Force energy left, and it would be moderately expensive move to make. I wouldn't charge too high a price for it, because even in the best of circumstances, timing is everyting.

 

II. Contest of Force Push-Lockups:

This is a feature that I'm confident would blow away players' minds. If two opponents utilize their Push powers against each other at/nearly at the same moment, then a "Contest of Force Push-Lockups" occur. We saw this event occur when Obi-Wan and Vader were dueling each other inside a Mustafarian control room. This works very much like saberlocks do. When a Push-Lockup occurs, for several seconds, the opponents have to try and outpace the other opponent's efforts to out-Push their enemy. The individual who hits his/her mouspad's primary attack button the most will win the contest and send their enemy flying a great distance and deliver enough physical damage to stun them for 5-7 seconds. A tied outcome would send both opponents flying in opposite directions, delivering only a small degree of physical harm, but both indivduals would suffer from being stunned for a short period of time. The more points invested in Push, the farther/more damaged/longer stunned the loser of the contest will be. Seeing this contest from a 4th. person view would be a very exciting experience.

 

III. Force Batter:

This would be a Dark Side power, and it would reproduce what we've seen Vader do in the Original Trilogy. The user of this power would pick up numerous small objects and pieces of debris and hurl them at his/her target, causing them to expend defensive energy/physical health. Dark Forces II, Jedi Knight had a great version of this power, and I've always missed it in Raven's Jedi series. It would be quite the feat if this power returned.

 

That's it for now. I'll be looking forward to the responses to these ideas.

 

Yours,

 

Kyle

March 2, 2006

 

:)

 

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The rocket issue has got to be something with a conflicting mod or something since I haven't touched the rocket models.

 

Suggestions

I. Remove the "shield hit" visual effect.

I agree that it's not very realistic. However, I'm not sure that if we should completely remove the effect or not. If we remove the effect, we're also probably going to have to remove the shield points as well.

 

II. I feel that there should be a greater penalty for those who are either recovering their battle stance and/or lightsaber. Too often I see individauls recover their hilts and they can then immediately use it without suffering any kind of performance penalty. It seems to me that it makes more sense that it would take half a second for a duelist to get a sound grip on his saber hilt once it's been recovered. If the duelist is attacked before this half a second has elapsed, then the duelist is unable to defend himself with his lightsaber because it has yet to be readied. The same goes for getting up from knockdowns.

Well, the movies seem to indicate that jedi have no problem using their sabers immediately after recovering them. Changing that would lessen the effect of a last minute retrieve by a player. Plus, I think players without sabers or that have been knockdowned have it hard enough as is. Making it possible to have multiple casading knockdowns/disarms wouldn't seem fair.

 

New Force Powers

I. Force Jump-Recovery from Kicks:

We've already thought of that. I just haven't implimented it yet. :)

 

II. Contest of Force Push-Lockups:

III. Force Batter:

There's a lot of technical issues involved in adding competely new and wildly different force powers like that. Ideally, I'd have the time and resources to impliment every new idea, but more are simply more practical than others. These are good ideas, they'd just be really hard to do.

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It just occurred to me that there might be a problem with the having the saber not auto activate when it returns to a player's hand. I think that some players might find that to be TOO realistic and annoying. I think I might. What do you guys think?

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I would not like this at all for it is truely useless. Might as well give us control over finger movements on the model somehow as that is more realistic. Jedi always ignite their sabers as soon as they retrieve them, why does this need to be changed? If you get disarmed against a dual saberist already its hard to recover without losing dp especially depending on enviroment, all it would do is insure these mishaps meant the end of you.

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It just occurred to me that there might be a problem with the having the saber not auto activate when it returns to a player's hand. I think that some players might find that to be TOO realistic and annoying. I think I might. What do you guys think?

 

Yeah, I think that would be more frustrating than anything.

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Agreed, it's not as if Jedi are useless enough to be weaker just after they have turned their on, we have all seen Obi-Wan deal killing blows immediately after igniting his saber and then turning it off again with little difficulty.

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