In Dark Forces, Kyle Katarn, a young mercenary successfully infiltrated the Empire. Jedi Knight continues the story of Katarn as he embarks on a quest into his past and learns the mysterious ways of the Jedi. With this knowledge, he must stop seven Dark Jedi from unlocking the powers of a hidden Jedi burial ground. This task forces Katarn to decide his destiny. If he chooses the Dark side, he will come into enormous power. If he chooses the Light side, he faces seemingly insurmountable evil. Whatever path Katarn chooses will change the face of the galaxy forever.

Post tutorial Report RSS Cutscenes: MotS Style

Everyone wanting to do an SP level no doubt would like some nifty cutscenes to spice things up. Pele gives us part one of a tutorial on just this....

Posted by on - Advanced Mapping/Technical

Tutorial originally posted on Jediknight.net. Mirrored here for archival purposes. Note I've mirrored the example files here on moddb. Moddb.com

Make Your Own CutScene: Part 1

So you want to write a cutscene mots style? That is what I said after I finished playing mots the first time.

Required for this course: Decent Cog Knowledge, Jed Knowledge, ConMan , and a lot of patience.

Step 1: Learn what mots cutscenes are

First , lets take a peak at what mots cutscenes consist of. Load up your mots CD and browse the /resource/video directory. You will stumble upon a file entitled ‘cutscenes.zip’ Unzip this file to your hardrive. Contained should be cutscenes.goo (The files used for mots cutscenes) . Lets extract of all this goo’s contents to a directory of your choice . I have a directory for all cogs, so I used that one. Once extracted, you will find a mess of cogs and jkl’s. These are what Lucarts used to create their scenes. Study these cogs for a few minutes to get the idea of how camera’s work. Once you are ready to continue, download the sample cog and open it up with a text editor such as wordpad.

Step 2: Implement a cutscene in your level

This cog is a simple one scene cutscene made exclusively for Darkness Falls =)

So how do you get this cog to work with your level? Simple. Decide on the room you want your cutscene to take place within your level. Next, place ghost items wherever you want your cameras to be. Adjust the Yaw, Pitch(PCH) , and roll of the ghost to affect what the camera shoots. Now, for scene one, we want to place a stormtrooper for the patrol. Place him wherever you want him to be. Next , place a ghost item where you want him to walk to . Take note of the thing numbers of both of these items. Now, add the cog to your list (Make sure it is in your project directory!!!!!!!). Assign the trooper’s number to the ‘patroler’ line, and assign the ghost item to ‘ghost target’ Assign the camera ghosts number to the ‘camera0’ box. And don’t forget to assign the sector you want to trigger the cutscene. That is the ‘Studio’ box.

Scene one is now set up and ready for filming! =)

Step 3: Modify the cog

In this step we will learn how to modify the cog to do what YOU want it to. So load it up, let's take a closer look. Examine the symbols area . The reference to camera0 is the camera itself. Add a camera1 to add a second camera. If you would like to switch to that camera add this syntax in the startup code after the first scene has taken place:

SetCameraFocus(0, camera1); // This will change to the next camera .

Remember to use sleep commands or else it will switch too fast for you to see!!!!!!!

This is the sleep syntax:

Sleep(sleeptime);

To add text to your scene, add the line:

Print("AddTextHere");

This is pretty much self explanatory. Sounds are just as easy. Add this line to your symbols code replacing mysound.wav with the actual name . (you can do this is JED or in the code itself):

sound scenesound=mysound.wav local

And this line to where you want it displayed in the cutscene:

PlaySoundThing(scenesound, 1, 0.0, 0);

Here is how to make your frame move. Add this line to the area where you want it to move. (Remember to treat the ghost item as an elevator when setting it up in JED/FB.) :

MoveToFrame(Camera0,1,20.0);

The 20.0 is the speed of movement. The 1 is the frame number. So basically, you are saying. "Camera, go to frame one at speed 20." To add multiple frames, simply copy the above line changing the 1 to a 2 , and so on.

There are boundless options with cutscenes , cog style. Any cog you see in a game can be used in a cutscene. Be Creative! Next month we will have more complex cutscene examples. But in the meantime, make your own! Good Luck!!!!!!

Step 4: Test your CutScene

Finally, save your *.jed and *jkl, gob or goo your level. Load it up and enjoy your homemade cutscene!

(c)1998 Mark Jones. Many thanks to Tom SmallWood for his help.

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GeneralTantor
GeneralTantor

So how do you load up a goo file in game?

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LithTechGuru Author
LithTechGuru

Goo files are the MotS version of GOB files. They're a package file you can run in game by placing in the "Episodes" folder. After that it'll appear when you hit new game.

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