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NPC Mod Pack 1 released.


-Chrono_MOT-

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ok

1. damn u have a nice system, mine looks like crap and would prolly crash if i spawned 10 npcs. The colors and fps is great.

 

2. wow, thats alot of good guys

3. Psylocke with a lightsaber turns me on(x-men fan)

4. i wanna do that!

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Originally posted by Emon

Well, you can use NPC spawn xxxx for the new NPC, but they won't appear in the entities menu, and it's impossible to spawn them using ICARUS, so new entries are useless, you gotta replace old ones for it to be really useful. :(

 

what about maybe editing the def files for radiant? maybe then you could spawn it within radiant and talk to it with scripts. or am i shooting in the dark here...

 

:D

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OK some quick details about it:

 

The mod itself includes all the necessary skinpacks/models for you to use this, as they include edited directorys that the new npc file points to. The NPC file is called jedipack1.npc and all concurrent versions after the first one will have an updated npc packfile with the models listed in it. I did it this way to make it easier to download, and also to make it easier to upgrade.

 

I also did it this way because I want people to download all of them and have all of them, not just one of them. I may still do it to where each upgrade contains a separate packfile for the NPCs but that would be downright pointless to calling it an NPC mod if each one could be downloaded individually. Tell me what you guys think:

 

1. Make it so that each version requires the one before it

2. Make it so that each version is stand-alone

 

Oh yes and I would currently like to make an NPC team where we can release these sorts of things so I don't have to be the only one doing it ^_^.

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Originally posted by pud1

ok

1. damn u have a nice system, mine looks like crap and would prolly crash if i spawned 10 npcs. The colors and fps is great.

 

2. wow, thats alot of good guys

3. Psylocke with a lightsaber turns me on(x-men fan)

4. i wanna do that!

 

Hardly... PIII800 with a 32 Mb GeForce 1 and set to high detail.... don't ask me how it works... :cool:

 

Chrono, a few things,

 

By #2, each version standing alone, do you mean each pack containing all of the npcs in previous versions as well? How would any version "require" other versions, other than in the sense that you'd be missing out on some characters?

 

Either way, the only reasonable way to do it seems to be to release individual packs with different characters. If you just kept adding more and more characters to the same pack it would balloon in size real quickly, and people would always have to re-download a whole huge mod each time a new release is made. My ~50 character mod is about 10Mb and that's with linking all of the textures. If I had packed the textures as well, it would probably be around 35-40 Mb.

 

In this light, I have to say that forming a team to create an ongoing slew of custom npcs WILL constitute an endless project, and result in a lot of huge mods. Not to be a downer, but I think releasing a couple cool modpacks initially, and developing the practice and ultimately creating a comprehensive tutorial (including all the prefixes and the effects of known variables) should be the goal. That way, with the released modpacks people will be able to see if they like custom npcs, and hopefully use that as an example in conjuction with the tutorial to create their own custom npcs with skins and models they already have - thereby saving a lot of space.

 

Maybe once this becomes an understood practice, skinners and modelers will even include their own custom npc using texture linking with their releases. After all, they if anyone, should have the most license to determine the character's traits, just as in botfiles. As to the little debate in general editing about who deserves credit for these modpacks, I'd say studman and chang deserve a shout for proposing the "st" prefix idea, as do others in that first thread for getting it working and immediately figuring out some other prefixes. New tricks and prefixes will definitely be discovered, so kudos to those who take the time to try stuff out. However, I'm kind of uncomfortable with the idea of one or two people "holding the rights" to the custom npc practice. Ultimately, it pretty much amounts to MP-SP character conversion with a few more variables - as far as artistry goes, most of the credit should go to the skinners/modelers IMHO. Of course, if someone wants to take the time to assemble and release a custom npc pack, they of course deserve credit for their efforts and time spent :)

 

Just my (long) two cents...

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No, by #1 being requiring previous versions I mean if you download chrono.zip and unzip 5 jedi with the jedipack.npc file, and you want to use the 10 jedi that are in the new version, you will have needed to download the first version to spawn them. So no, I don't mean including all of them in one pack. I'm not that crazy.

 

by #2 I mean just adding a separate NPC file for each version released, rather than having one NPC (which is more streamlined) file you have a separate control file for each pack. Which means you could have a JEDI pack, a BOUNTY HUNTER pack, a WOOKIE pack, etc.

 

I personally would like to use a combination of both. Rather than have mixed NPCs in one file I want to release each one as a separate add-on, with different control files. BUT if you want to have all the ones in a particular category (like all the bounty hunters) you would need to have downloaded all the BHPACKS for example, for that particular group.

 

So in short, next release will contain 5 more jedi than the first one (to preserve file size). If you want to be able to spawn Plo, Windu, Anakin, and Obi in addition to the next 5, you need to download the mod for them first. But when the next release comes out with Bounty Hunters and such, they will have their own stand alone file and the same goes for everything else.

 

Jimmy, how about we form a team for this? I could take care of adding NPC Jedi and everyone who joins could take on adding particular NPCs. My eventual hope is to spawn NPCs with their own weapons, rather than using the weapon of the NPC they are based on.

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Chrono, your efforts to make this into a workable project are admirable indeed.

 

I think I agree with you (if I understand right) in terms of the format to release these things in. Since you can have multiple .npc files, I'd say release each one as a self-contained pack, with its own file. That should result in the least confusion.

 

As for joining the team, like I said above, I'd be happy to put together a custom pack or two, but in the long run it's an ongoing committment I don't think I have time for. Besides, I personally wouldn't download such a pack, because I can make my own, with my own npc settings and using .skin linking to avoid taking up space. Which is why I still think coming up with a seriously detailed comprehensive guide when we're ready and a few good sample npc packs might ultimately be a better goal. People are going to want npcs with their own settings (who's to say which characters use sabers and what their stats and fighting styles are like?), so I'd be reluctant to make anything without getting some public input first.

 

Anyways, I'll keep playing around with the stuff...

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I'm using skin linking I believe ^_^.

 

Ultimately what I'm going to do is gather up a guide as to which NPCs use what. Right now we have yet to really make any kind of packs that depict classes, so once that is decided (and we can make our own class, along with force powers and sabers and what not) we can easily update the pack to match that.

 

Right now we don't really have any models to work with, let alone any files that depict class...so this will have to do for now :(

 

Eventually, I'll get enough knowledge to write up a tutorial that will help people give NPCs their own force powers and weapons through scripting (which, without class definitions, is utterly useless).

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well my definition of skinlinking may be different from yours. I have to go into the SKIN file and edit the directories because you have to alter the directory to say "jediBLAHBLAH" when you pk3 it up. this creates some skinning problems, because in some folders I guess it calls for a skin that doesn't exist. either way, the only way I know how to do it right now is to edit the skinfile to point to the correct directory :(

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Gotcha, Chrono. Yeah I guess I did pull the term out of nowhere. :rolleyes:

 

What I meant, and what I use for my own mod, is creating a new models/players folder for each character with the desired prefix, and including in that folder the sounds, .glm, .skin, and .surf files - basically everything but the textures. This way the .skin file can remain unaltered and "links" instead to the existing textures in the original skinpack in your base folder. For personal npc packs it's easier than changing each line of the .skin file (just extract the skin pk3 to the npc pack folder, rename this and delete the .jpgs). Though obviously it doesn't work if you don't already have the original skinpack installed to link to... so for ready-to-go npc mod packs, it's not really applicable.

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