The
Taunts Project
Brought
to you by: Ramon Galvan
aka Newbie Thrawn
Let's face it, Jedi Knight should have had audio taunts built
in. I loved sending these types of taunts in Duke Nukem and looked
forward to doing the same in JK -- obviously Lucasarts had other ideas.
This patch seeks to correct the crime of not having audio taunts in JK.
1. What does the
patch do?
The JK TAUNT patch will let you have 10 audio taunts in any JK multiplayer
game.
2. How to use it?
-
You use the patch like you would any other. I recommend using Patch
Commander available from JediKnight.net.
The first time you run the patch you can assign Taunts #1, #2 and #3 to
a hot key just like any item you would use in the game [Note:
this patch is not compatible with other item
patches -- e.g. jetpack, graphook, etc. -- this patch could be combined
with these other item patches if someone was inclined to to so.].
Taunts #4 through #7 can be played by selecting them as an "item"
from your inventory. For the Taunts I used the datadisk
icon (don't know how to add my own yet). Taunts 2-10 will actually
have a number next to it so you know which one it is.
-
The reason you only get 3 hot keys is that JK will not let you bind more
than 3 more additional items -- or at least I haven't figured out how to
let me do it yet.
-
-
Recommendations:
Try not to use the taunts immediately after someone has joined the game--their
computer is catching up with the host and using taunts too soon slows things
down at the start--at least that what happened on my p100 w/ 16 MB ram
:(
3. Can I make a taunt
pack using my own sounds?
-
Absolutely!!!! I designed the format of the
patch sounds so that anyone can add new sounds without having to modify
the COG script. All you need to do is get your 10 favorite wav files
and rename them taunt01.wav
through taunt10.wav
and then substitute your sounds in the sound folder within the gob file
[Use conman or gobex both available from Jediknight.net].
Once you have replaced the default sounds with your sounds test it out
to make sure all the sounds work. I think the format that works is
22 mhz 8-bit mono. Then rename the gob to your liking and distribute
freely.
-
The beauty of doing it this way is that you can use sound pack X and your
enemy can use sound pack Y so that when you play Taunt #1 you will hear
taunt01.wav from pack X but your friend will hear taunt01.wav from pack
Y--the bonus being that you can each personalize the taunts the other one
hears :) Of course if you all have the same sound pack that would
make the coordination easier and once you get beyond 2 players remembering
who hears what gets a little complicated but the concept still works then
too.
-
Recommendations:
Keep the wav files to a reasonable size--I think anything under 100 kb
is safe.
4. How the hell did
you think of this?
-
This is actually a funny (if long) story. One
day I was playing MOTS with my buddy BOOKEZ.
And he was losing bad -- he thought he could win against a mouse user by
playing with a gamepad -- hehe I think he knows better now :) Anyway,
in frustration he began suiciding by jumping off a cliff the second I would
fire upon him. The challenge became to kill him before he killed
himself. Once when I was close to nailing him he jumped off the cliff
and as he was falling to his death he used the bacta and I heard the bacta
sound. His antics gave me quite a laugh and the incident stuck in
my head.
-
Then weeks later on a long drive to L.A. [almost as long as this story]
I was daydreaming about life and JK and it hit me that I might be able
to make an item that played a sound that EVERYONE heard and if that sounds
happened to be a taunt then the taunt problem would be solved. I
remembered that there was an article at Darkness
Falls that showed you how to add an item so that it could be bound
to a key. [The article is Assigning
COG to keys and is great--thanks to the author Brian
Taylor]. So I knew it was possible to bind an item to a key.
-
The next step was to create this taunt item. I looked at the "Watch
Buffy" demo file from the Darkness
Falls article and changed it it so that when you used the item instead
of seeing the printed message "Watch Buffy" you saw "Taunt #1", #2, etc.
when the item is used. The next step was to get the item to play
a sound that everyone heard.
-
There were two options that I thought of. (1) Make the sound play
like the bacta sound but make the radius of the sound ridiculously huge
so that anyone in a reasonably sized level would hear it. This seem
a bit convoluted and I knew there must be a better way. (2) Then
I tried to think of a sound in JK that everyone hears and then it hit me---THE
CAPTURE THE FLAG ANNOUNCEMENTS IN CTF!!!!!! So I went digging through
the main ctf cog and found the command that makes the sound play globally
so everyone hears it--EUREKA!!! Then I just cut and paste the CTF
sound line into my cog and then rest is history. If you've read this
far thanks for indulging me--now go use this great patch :)
5. What I have and have
not yet figured out--technically speaking.
What I know:
a. Getting the Taunt #1-10 messages to play when taunt is used.
b. How to get the sound to play globally -- this was borrowed from the
CTF cog
so if I or someone else figures out a better way to do it then I will revise
the cog
script.
c. Getting the Taunt#1-10 option to appear under the control setup screen.
Since, JK only lets you bind the first 3 I disabled options #4-10.
What I don't know:
a. I can't get JK to let me bind more than 3 taunts to a key. If
any one knows how
to get around this without replacing any of the items/force powers then
let me
know.
6. Bugs????
-
I don't know of any specific bugs. Once when I was testing the patch
all the sound in JK went dead, but it only happened once and I could not
make it recur. If anyone has problems send me a note describing the
circumstances and I'll look into it.
-
This
patch is basically an experiment to help add a nice feature to MP games.
When more is known about the JK specs hopefully it can be improved.