About me, CJ Mod Additions and Tutorial Requests.txt

[Copy-Cat]

DISCLAIMER: By no means what-so-ever am I (Còpy-Cát) or is the DnC community claiming ownership of any of the files used, compiled, and/or editied from within the Cod Jumper MOD. Credit will be given where credit is due. I apologize in advanced if any of what you are about to read is offensive to you, and I also apologize for such a long post.

My Personal Capabilities:
Create basic CJ maps
Create/Edit Skins, Textures, and ui images
Create/Edit/Import/Export COD4 Models
Basic knowledge on how to use the Modbuilder.
Scipting
a. basic knowledge of how to read the language.
a. Basic knowledge of how to read/write/edit scv, gsc, menu, and str files.
c. Strings, use of the @ and & symbols and creating the files to include in the scv files for compiling.


As you can see from the list above the basic most important aspect of modding I am missing is how to create the mod.
According to my research, I have found that scripting is the most difficult to learn, time consuming(trial and error) and in my case controversial. Allow me to elaborate; In order for me to add or modify the CJ mod in a way other than the obvious and basic tweeking of textures and files within the distributed mod itself, I would need the source files used to compile the mod to re-compile. I have always respected other peoples' work and never try to "claim as my own", as written on some of the files I extracted from the mod.ff. After reading numerous topics here on the forums about modifying the mod, I agree with the CJ Team 100% in leaving the majority of the mod intact, including banners, CJ logos, and other materials used to identify the mod, it's creators and origins.

Thus brings me to my 2 topics.

CJ MOD ADDITIONS
Admin menu -
Models -The current admin menu is awesome as-is, to make it more complete; it has been suggested that admins be given a menu to choose which model they would like to use, to identify themselves as admins of the server. This is similar to the BTZ_x15 mod, but added to the admin UI within the CJ mod.

Enable/Disable Map Vote - During Game-play several CJ's tend to call a map vote to change the map early, wether it be because the map is too hard, or they have finished the map faster than others, or even becaue they don't like the map, it is not fair to others who are trying to complete the map and the server is 15 minutes into the map. Adding a feature(button) on the CJ Admin menu to "cancel" any current voting and "disable" the map-voting for 10 minutes would be awesome. If it can be done combine both of the buttons so that after the admin presses the button: the voting is forfeited or won(no map change), the map-voting gets disabled for 10 min and a message will appear on the bottom left stating "map voting disabled for 10 min's"

Tutorial Requests
After looking thru and trying to recreate the CodJumper Mod as a personal tutorial for creating mods, I realized why there aren't alot of scripting tutorials on the internet, and why there are alot of help topics from people seeking help with scripting for their mod. One reason is, if one was really good at scripting and has made mods with alot of scripts (of course), they would be able to decompile and recompile any mod to work just as good as the original, he/she will have to recreate some files, and would not have the characters or sounds of course because they would not be able to decompile(extract) those from the mod.ff., but those could be made/export/edited seperately. Another reason would be because the mod tools were released just as Cod4 modern warefare 2 came out and the majority of the modders went on to bigger and better projects, that use slighly problematic differences between scripting, when trying to use COD5 scipting for COD4.

This is why I would love for someone to make a few good tutorials, and or good links to existing tutorials specifically for COD4, with the following Objectives used in different mod applications.
1. Creating, Implementing, Using, and compiling mod specific .str files referenced with the characters "@" and "&" used in GSC and menu files.
2. Creating, Implementing, Using, and compiling menus to give players guns, change players model, a special (mod specific) command menu that can include quick statements such as "Please move and let me try this bounce"(with sound)
3. How to Use, create and edit scv files with a complete list of scv inlcudes such as rawfile, menufile, and stringtable for the different moddable files in the raw directory.

I have tinkered a bit with the CodJumper mod trying to figure stuff out without any prior knowledge of the mod and its scripts. Let me tell ya, my head is about to explode. I have managed to get the load and reload to work, but the strings are not being referenced I get a CJ_NOPOS instead of the usual "No Previous position to load". In addition to not having the .str files, most of the mod doesn't work, because of course I do not have the remaining files located in the ui_mp directory.

This is my view for anyone going to get into modding for cod4, you basically need to quit your day job, tell your wife or girlfriend I will bb in a few months, tell your kids to leave you alone for a while everyday for god knows how long and give modding COD4 all of your attention.

[F |Madness| U]

I think the fact that you have already decompiled the mod.ff and are using the scripts within is going to get you off on the wrong foot..

[Copy-Cat]

I agree.

Out of all the mods that the source code has been released that I could have used to learn about scripting and making mods, CodJumper is the only one I prefer to learn from and learn from its creators; unfortunately, it's source code is not released.

I hope the CJ Team understands. I have much respect for what they do and what they stand for.

In addition, It makes it easier for me to talk about scripting, without having to hide what I have done and also what I have accomplished to do thus far will hopefully bring to the table my capabilities, experience, excitement about learning scripting from a reputable source and drive about learning to make mods. Somehow this eliminate the stress of having to learn scripting from scratch.

Let me take an excerpt from my original post and post it here, you might have missed it.

"Tutorial Requests
After looking thru and trying to recreate the CodJumper Mod as a personal tutorial for creating mods, I realized why there aren't alot of scripting tutorials"

[Pedsdude]

I think the fact that you have already decompiled the mod.ff and are using the scripts within is going to get you off on the wrong foot..

I think having a name like Copy-Cat when making a post about editing the CJ Mod is likely to cause more of an issue!

[Copy-Cat]

Here is my 1rst post (introduce yourself)
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=13897

I agree, Copy-Cat sounds a bit 2faced. It's a name I have been using for years now. Please don't look too far into my name it's merly a misjudment of character.

[Drofder2004]

I think people really would've needed a TL;DR in there, because I think a few people jumped the gun.


Firstly, the decompiling of the mod. I am not completely against it, the problem is the 'stealing' and calling it their own which is more concerning to me.

Secondly, the mod ideas will be taken in to consideration. Maybe more on that another day.

Finally, in regards to tutorials, as much as I honestly would like to make some indepth tutorials, I just simply don't have the time.
Maybe I will, after I have completed a few more important projects.

If you want an open source mod to look at, I would suggest openwarfaremod.com, although some of their coding is complex.