Questions and Suggestions Thread - Jade Empire in Style mod for Jade Empire

Hey, great mod though being somewhat new to the game I can't tell well what is new or not, just curious however if you're continuing development. Will 0.4 still be coming out?

I thought a cool idea would be to have increase the impact of morality dialogue choices. For example making (that girl, I dont know her name) kill the slave trader should have a pretty huge effect. I played as a "open palm" character for most of the game and was curious to see what effect it would have. Compared to how desperately DS was protesting, the morality hit was really low. She was begging you not to do it and if you still did the effect was negligible. I should have atleast dropped down to neutral, but didn't even come close.

The other thing that would be neat, is if styles effected your morality. For example, every time you use Toad Demon (a being that would favor closed fist probably) you might get a slight shift toward closed fist. This make sense, (cause it's evil and you're mimicking it) and would make style choices even more specific. The basic styles could be neutral, and Tempest/Stone *could* have no effect (since they rely on your status for damage anyway) but White Demon, Viper, Hidden Fist, because of their nature might be "Closed Fist" effecting styles, where Heavenly Wave, Iron Palm, Paralyzing Palm no so much. It's up to you, just that would be neat.

Judging from the Stats part of the UI, the game keeps track of what you like to use so perhaps that feature could be modded to allow the morality impact.

Just out of curiosity, how hard is it to make new areas?

Hi! Sorry for the late reply! I was a bit out of the game - so to speak - due to a long New Year's vacation.

I have no idea how much work it would be, but I thought for a while it would be interesting to make the impact of moral choices inverse proportional to your morality. The more extreme your alignment becomes, the more extreme the impact of not following your path becomes. For example: A completely OP character that makes a CF decision should drop at least half way back to neutral again. On the other hand: Making decisions that *do* correspond to your alignment should yield diminishing returns the more extreme your alignment becomes.

Tying styles other than Stone Immortal and Tempest to the PCs morality is an interesting idea. I'm against handing out CF or OP points though. The model of Stone Immortal and Tempest is quite nice, I think. You *can* use both styles but the more OP you become the more damage you will do with Stone Immortal and the less damage you will do with Tempest - and vice versa for CF characters. For support styles there could be an increase/decrease of duration and for transformations there could be an increase/decrease in Chi cost...

The martial styles are the fundament of the game however. I strongly feel that they must be open to any character build. As such I'm against tying them to morality. I might be willing to make an exception for Viper - or maybe just for Cobra. Hidden Fist and Paralyzing Palm *should* indeed be tied to your morality. In the original game only CF characters can acquire HF and only OP characters can acquire PP. Of the transformations I think Toad, Horse and Bull could be CF; Elephant, Rhino, Golem and Ogre could be neutral; and Fox could be OP.

Making new areas is impossible, I'm afraid. There is neither an importer/exporter for Jade Empire's 3d-models that would allow them to be edited/created in a 3d-program, nor a toolset that would allow to compose a new area with these models. Somebody with 3d programming skills would have to look into it...

Edited by: pecoes

Your mod has got me interested in trying to mod Jade Empire, at least to make relatively simple chances, such as changing the choice of starting styles and adding permanent focus or chi regeneration, or changing how the save files are sorted. Maybe even try and make some simple changes to your mod. The problem is I've never modded a game in my life and JE isn't exactly an easy place to begin. I've looked at the modding thread on lucasforums but I figured I'd also post here so you have a greater chance of seeing this.

Basically I want to know if you know of any other resources, or could steer me in the right direction here. Right now I have no idea how to begin other than reading through the posts on lucasforums. I seem to recall you mentioning a similarity to KotOR and NWN - both of which I have versions of - so perhaps that would be a better place for me to start?

I've graduated from a programming course so I have some knowledge of coding and won't be too dumbstruck in terms of the code aspect. Thanks for the help.