Two major questions about two weapons and two scripts

[Forceboat]

Hey, I have two major questions regarding some stuff that I needed to ask about, mainly two weapons and two scripts. First, the weapons. It appears that the assault cannon replacement for the Merr Sonn was left untextured, just in mesh mode with numbers on the parts; same for the turret gun. About the turret gun, was this meant to replace the one you mount, or the Eweb, or the ceiling mounted one that shoots at you? Anyway, here's the textures to show you what I mean:

 

The inview texture:

 

The third person gun texture:

 

And finally, the turret gun texture:

 

Does anyone have the actual finished textures to complete these two guns? If someone does, would you be willing to part with them? I hate it that they were left like this, it's a shame.

 

Okay, now my other question. Two of the cinematic scripts involving Darth Vader and General Mohc were fine, except for one small problem. Darth Vader's breathing is missing!! There is a sound file under sounds/ambient called vader_breath.wav that could be used, it just needs to be added to the script. I am guessing that CHAN_AMBIENT could be used for that, maybe? If someone could tell me where to add that, or could submit two fixed scripts, that would be great. Here's the links to the two scripts in question in text form:

 

df_cinematic2.txt - 6.6 Kb

 

scene_intro.txt - 3.5 Kb

 

Thanks, any help or assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for a great mod.

[DarkStarMojo]

Doing some work on the mod, I see.

 

I never remember seeing finished textures for the assault cannon. Near as I can tell, none were ever made which is odd considering all the other weapons are finished. It shouldn't be too hard to create new textures, though. As for that turret gun. I have absolutely no idea what that is but I know it doesn't replace the eweb or the emplaced gun turrets (the ones in testbase and dtention center).

 

As for the cutscenes, it sounds like that would work. I never even noticed that problem when I played through the game. Good catch!

[Sir Vougalot]

If someone could make Vader's breathing as a patch that will make it happen in the game, and make that patch downloadable, that would be great.

[Darth_Linux]

in order to add the breathing sounds you'd have to completely retime the script calls that align the wave files to the model moving their mouth at the correct time as well as trigger the other cutscene events. If you understand the way the timing of tieing a model movement to a sound file then you could do this, but when I tried it, I totally hosed the script and nothing aligned correctly any more, so I pulled out the breathing sounds. I was trying to add the breath to the final version, but the more I worked on it the worse the cutscene got, so I just bailed on the whole idea. Good luck to you if you get it working.

 

The Assault Cannon was never textured because we never got to a level where it was needed, so I never committed the resources to having it done. Same for the cannon thing. I don't even remember where that was going to be used . . .

[Forceboat]

Okay, to Linux, Mojo and everyone, I have created a pretty good workaround that should work. I took the Vader breath sound that was left in the mod, and did two things with two programs: Sound Recorder and GoldWave. With Sound Recorder, I matched up the length of the breathing depending on the length of the dialogue files, for all of them, Mohc's and Vader's, except for Mohc's last line from the first cutscene, which was one second. Then, I used GoldWave to copy those different length Vader breaths and mixed them in with the dialogue. Presto. Now Vader breathes in the background of the dialogue. Try it out and see if this works:

 

Vader and Mohc dialogue with Vader breathing.

 

Oh, by the way, take the files in the two folders and replace the originals, for those of you who download this patch. Forgot to mention that.

[Darth_Linux]

that's a good fix, in as much as you've got the breath sounds into the dialogue. Only one problem - you cannot physically speak while you inhale (at least with your normal speaking voice) - therefore, all Vader speech must exclude the breathing sounds, and there should be an inhale before each sentence and an exhale after the end of each sentence, in order to mimic actual breath and speech patterns . . . think of all the interviews with Christopher Reeves (Superman) after his horse accident when he was paralyzed and listen closely to how his speech and "iron lung" interact with each other . . .

[Forceboat]

Hmmm. Good point there, Linux. I might try playing around with the Vader ones. I may or may not be able to do the inhale, sentence, and then exhale. I'll give it a try

[Sir Vougalot]

Can't you simply insert the breathing noise as an outside sound effect, not necessarily tied to the Vader model, but simply playing as an extra sound effect from out-of-the-blue for the entirety of the time that he is in the scene?

 

EDIT: If you'll notice in the films, Darth Vader continues to breathe in and out even as he speaks. This tells me that he is not actually breathing from his mouth but from some sort of automated windpipe, probably tapped directly in to his throat, that the computer in his suit takes care of for him.

 

Still, my suggestion regarding the breathing noise being an external sound effect stands.

[Forceboat]

Well, I tell you what. I will make a second patch so that both camps will be okay. I am still attempting to find a very brief Vader inhale/exhale breathing sound. I ripped one from Return Of The Jedi when he gets out of breath, and it was perfect, less than a second, the only problem is that it has music and a lightsaber sound mixed into it, so I can't use it. I had one that was a second, but every time I pasted in the inhale and exhale before and after the dialogue, it went a lousy two seconds over the length of the dialogue. I even tried changing the timing in the cutscene script. It didn't work so well. I found out what Linux meant. I sat there tapping the Enter button over and over to skip the Kyle/Mon Mothma cutscene because of the change I made in it; originally, you could tap it one or two times, but because of what I did, it was at least five times. So, script time change is OUT. I'm not giving up-it'll just take me a while to get it done. So for those who want the Vader dialogue sounds with continuous breathing in the background, go ahead and download what I have. For those who would prefer it the other way, just hang tight. I'll try to get it done as soon as I can.

[Darth_Linux]

Can't you simply insert the breathing noise as an outside sound effect, not necessarily tied to the Vader model, but simply playing as an extra sound effect from out-of-the-blue for the entirety of the time that he is in the scene?

 

EDIT: If you'll notice in the films, Darth Vader continues to breathe in and out even as he speaks. This tells me that he is not actually breathing from his mouth but from some sort of automated windpipe, probably tapped directly in to his throat, that the computer in his suit takes care of for him.

 

Still, my suggestion regarding the breathing noise being an external sound effect stands.

 

The simple answer is, no you cannot just have the sound play. The game engine uses multiple sound channels to play the different voices, plus there is an interspersion of ROQ video and in-game cinematic that rely upon different sound channels. The answer is no.

 

Also, regardless of what we saw in the movie, you cannot inhale and speak at the same time. Putting a tube into your throat doesn't change the mechanism of your vocal folds . . . Star Wars is wrong and Christopher Reeves is correct . . . anyhow, arguing about it doesn't change anything. See the above post for the suggestion by the person who was working on the patch.

[Sir Vougalot]

Since when has Star Wars been realistic? I say that the way it appears in the movies is the way if must appear in all other media as the films are the highest form of Star Wars canon. If Vader breathed while talking in the movies, as unrealistic as that may be, it is canon that he breathed while talking.

[Forceboat]

Well Linux, I have tried and tried to sneak in an inhale and exhale before and after the dialogue; no dice- the first one I tried to do (over and over for quite some time, I must say ) kept being one second longer than the original file. So, let me ask this: would mixing in the inhale at the beginning of the dialogue file and the exhale at the end approximate what you're talking about? I just don't see any other way to do it. I do have a decent 1 second Vader breath wav without sound effects that I could split (it has the inhale and exhale together) and mix in at the beginning and ends of the dialogue. Let me know if you think that would be workable for a more accurate thing.

[Darth_Linux]

Well Linux, I have tried and tried to sneak in an inhale and exhale before and after the dialogue; no dice- the first one I tried to do (over and over for quite some time, I must say ) kept being one second longer than the original file. So, let me ask this: would mixing in the inhale at the beginning of the dialogue file and the exhale at the end approximate what you're talking about? I just don't see any other way to do it. I do have a decent 1 second Vader breath wav without sound effects that I could split (it has the inhale and exhale together) and mix in at the beginning and ends of the dialogue. Let me know if you think that would be workable for a more accurate thing.

 

Well, Zerimar is right about things being aligned with the movie. At this point I don't really have an opinion on this. I spent hours trying to fix it and gave up, as you have also. Your patch will satisfy the one other person on the forum that cares, so I think you have succeeded with what you already released. Good job and thank you!

[Sir Vougalot]

Okay, question for Forceboat: how do I install this patch?

[Forceboat]

take the files in the two folders and replace the originals

 

As simple as that.

[Sir Vougalot]

I don't mean to sound like a noob here, but I don't see any ambience, DETENTION or SECBASE folders anywhere, neither in my Dark Forces mod files nor my Jedi Academy files.

[Forceboat]

Are you sure? There should be a folder called sound in your .pk3 (this applies to base JA assets0.pk3 as well), and then you have all the subfolders in there. The first folder in there should be called ambience, and then the names of the subfolders in there, as well as sounds that don't go in a folder in there as well. Beyond that, I don't know what to tell you. Do you have a copy of PakScape? If not, here's where you can download it, it makes things a whole lot easier:

 

PakScape

[Sir Vougalot]

Oh, okay. My bad. I didn't know they were in one of those .pk3 files. (Things like this should be made more clear for us casual, non-modder gamers.)

 

So I looked in the assets0.pk3 in Jedi Academy's GameData > Base folder. So do I just simply take the DETENTION and SECBASE folders from your patch and paste them into assets.pk3 > sound > ambiance?

[Forceboat]

NO!! Don't do that at all!! That'll permanently change the assets0.pk3. Sorry, I should have specified. Replace them in the build.pk3 file, not assets. Sorry. My apologies.

[Sir Vougalot]

Okay, I think I got it now. Thanks.