Unofficial Patches

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Violet = idea
Orange = under construction
Yellow = implemented and tested

Team Chat:
Yesterday, I changed the jk-extension.dll to show the "Send to team:" prompt second rather than first, due to many people requesting it. I decided it would be better to keep the first prompt "Send to all:" because that is what unmodified JK does.

New Cog Verbs and Checksum:
When Sige added new cog verbs, we found out that a jk.exe using them would checksum if the other player were using an unpatched jk.exe. This eventually led to my implementing the -z command-line param. Today, I realized a potential cause* for it, and solved the problem. This means, the next release will not have the -z anymore; a patched JK can play with an unpatched JK, even with new cog verbs. (Of course, the unpatched JK won't be able to use the new cog verbs, but that's the player's problem.)

* New Cog Verbs Checksum Error Cause:
There are several places in the code that cog verbs are added to an internal list, presumably assigning an index number to each verb as it is added. I was adding new cog verbs at the same place that Sige had done it, which happened to be after the first set of original verbs. Thus, to stop the checksum problem, I added the new verbs after all of the original verbs were added.

PlayerAction and Hotkey cog messages:
I have not finished these, but they are still near the top of my todo list. There are some tricky steps that need working out for disabling any keys pressed.

Checksum and Cheating:
With my knowledge of the checksum system's coding, I will be making a better one for JK. This will mean that players can avoid (cog, items.dat, etc.) cheats by having all players use a patched jk.exe. (A player using an unpatched jk.exe or an old patched version will get a checksum error.)

JK-Extension.dll changing to JK.dll:
I think changing the jk-extension.dll file name to jk.dll will make it easier to keep the jk.exe and the jk.dll files together, as well as making it easier to talk about. I need to test to make sure the new file name does not cause any naming conflicts with the jk.exe file.



Last edited by ZeqMacaw on 22-Apr-2008 21:47; edited 4 times in total

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Yes, I plan on putting in a verb that will give some indication whether the new verbs are enabled. It will probably be some type of version number. So, in cog, it would look something like:

version = GetJkVersion(); if (version >= 1.01) {    // New verbs are available. } else {    // Can only use original verbs. }

Notice I didn't use, if (GetJkVersion() >= 1.01). In unpatched JK, that line would be ignored (because the verb in the line would not exist for that JK), and the first block would be executed. Actually, JK might ignore the whole cog, because without the 'if' statement, the 'else' would cause a syntax error. I will have to test.

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I plan to release the next JK Unofficial Patch on April 30, 2008.

This next release (and future releases) will only be available via JKLauncher. Why? Because so many people messed up installing the older patches, even when the included txt file clearly stated how to patch JK properly. Also, with JKLauncher, there will be options to automatically check for, and to automatically install, new patch releases.

(NOTE: The next release of JKLauncher will also be on April 30.)

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Not via an executable patch, but it can be done without one.

The main problem is the ammo display which hopefully Zeq can add a COG verb to allow us to explicitly set the ammo bin for the display.

QM

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The way I've used for multiple weapons on a hotkey is to use, for example, weapon 2's hotkey to equip a weapon on, let's say, bin 116; then if you hit 2 again, equip weapon 117, then if 2 again, weapon 116. The trick is to never actually equip the weapon bin for that specific hotkey.

Then you need some tricky coding in the autoselect section (or weapon bins 2, 116 and 117) to handle pressing the next/prev weapon hotkeys.

For example code, my Tool Kit's weapon 6 hotkey uses this to let you select weapon 116, then weapon 6 (pressing 6 again once on weapon 6 won't go back to weapon 116 however) and weapon 10 (a modified lightsaber) cycles between 3 stances when you keep pressing the weapon 10 hotkey (0).

QM

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Interesting stuff, Quib Mask. Thanks for the info.

Tazz, no one has broken the hotkey limit in JK, and I have tried several times. There are many places in the exe that need to be changed, and I have not found them all. By the way, MotS does have a limited amount of additional hotkeys it can handle; it can handle more than JK's 3 additional ones -- something like 12 more.

For now, I expect the new hotkey and playeraction event messages to help work around hotkey limits.