I've tried that but I can't seem to get it to heat... unless I'm doing it wrong. I'll give it another shot and report back.

hmm... I HOPED that the CanDeflect only worked for the Lightsaber - when it HIT the Lightsaber...

hmm... I'm gonna find a way, so it only ceflects when it hits the lightsaber

dont think it's possible. Cuz heat only generates when u swing/fire a weapon... at least that's wat i think...

Well when you hold down the button it can be considered attacking, just take out the animation and the damage. If there is no way around it i guess you'll just have to time your deflects lol

so

what does it mean?

at least I revealed the secret for y'a lol

hey, I'm back (had to work yesterday).

I've been thinking about this for a day and a half and going through all the documentation that lucas arts provided us and here's a short summation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CanDeflect as a percentage *tested*
CanDeflect is and int type, in other words, things like 0.9999 will register as 0.

Adding heat to the lightsaber *tested*
Yes, you're right. Weapons can only generate heat when it's shot. Apparently swinging doesn't count.

"I've got lightsaber, I've got CanDeflect, who could ask for anything more?" *tested*
Because I couldn't find the damage value for the lightsaber, I made the range of teh swing to be 0 and 0. Which, of course, still can hurt things if you're right next to that thing. I've counteracted this by making the swing time ridiculously large. However... with can deflect on, you don't even need to fight. just stand there and eventually, the deflected shots will wear down the droideka's enough to a point where they die. This has been proven when I left my jedi wookie in a pit of droidekas whilst I go make lunch. Came back, he was fine, droidekas were down 5 from when I left.

CanDeflect... sealed *theory*
CanDeflect is wonderful, but it's also like a pandora's box. Once you open it, there's no stopping it. Jedi's are too powerful with it. That's probably the reason why Gam's are specifically CanDelfect=0. They must have once made them able to deflect shots just like the jedi's and then found out they were too powerful with it. What god giveth, god can taketh away, right?

Melee weapons have surprisingly little properties *tested*
Each object class has a limited amount of properties and cannot use any properties besides the ones assigned to it (Diet Dr. Pepper). In short, AddHealth=-10 didn't work for the lightsaber.

Overloading lightsabers? *untested*
In a fit of frustration, the thought of making the lightsaber exploded after a certain amount of time crossed my mind (i.e. making it a grenade class), but I've abandoned that for obvious reasons. (might pursue it later if it sounds funny enough.)

shield vs. reflecting shield *tested*
Shields cannot deflect shots (I've tried) although you can fake the protection with the shield by making the model the light saber, it can't deflect shots. I might go with this option if the next one doesn't pan out.

To the core of things *untested*
In the documentation, it says that the game engine reads C++ code. Me being more a programmer than a game modder, I might start to tinker with this to see what I can get. Either add my own fx, module, or... if I'm lucky, the compiling (munging) might let people create an new object class (don't hold your breath for this one though >.<, it's just theory now)

invincibilty is relative, right? *untested*
A new thought is to mod the droideka's rather than the jedi's. Can deflect can deflect shots, but *not* explosions. Add an explosion to droideka's repeaters that does small damage but has no push. Of course, you would still want to block it if you don't want to take repeater damage + explosion. Haven't tested this out yet. *note* a wookie with 1000 health dies in about 1.2 secs without CanDeflect against 4 droidekas. A huge difference, isn't it?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As always, any new advice/suggestion/insight is welcome.

That's where I'm at now. I've got to goto siggraph now and got work tomorrow. I'll pick back up on thursday when I have some time.

so the CanDeflect added to the Lightsaber just make him immortanl...? what animations does it then use to block?

the Lightsaber animation?

When u munge, sometimes u can see it looking for something called the lightsabre.zaftbin....

Excellent work sleepingkirby, it's such a refreshing change to see someone else ACTUALLY testing stuff and then posting their results. And if you want to post anything good from siggraph in Anything Goes, that'd be nice

I agree with Saturn

you did a GREAT job

here's some more tests you could do - especially because you're so ood at it

What will happen if you move the CanDeflect to another place in the .odf? maybe under the AnimationName?

or maybe another place under [Properties] in the .odf?

Hey, just a quick report from siggraph. Sorry for the delay, I ended up spending the whole day at Siggraph. They had a Final Fantasy 12 demo and tips from lead animatior (scene and character) and modeler (character, props and scenery) on how to do what they do in maya. Cool stuff. ^^ I missed the star wars battlefront tournament that last time I went. This time, I entered, I won the last tournament despite the cheaters (was the spotlight player and the winner. *overjoyed* I usually never win anything.). XD Didnt' get much though. Just a mini-mouse, 64mb flash thumb drive and like 4 amd t-shirts.

I'll do some tests with that what Qdin suggested now. From my understanding of the documentation and of programming it *shouldn't* matter where the CanDeflect property is placed. But given that the documentation isn't 100% accurate... I'll give it a shot anyways.

so the CanDeflect added to the Lightsaber just make him immortanl...? what animations does it then use to block?

Aye, it does make my jedi wookie invincible. It doesnt' matter how many shots there are, he will never get hurt (short of explosions, that is). Animation? I'm not sure where they store the animation, but I imagine it's where -_- said it is.

Okie, off to do some testing. Oh, btw, jedi's were killable at the siggraph battlefront tournament. I thought they modded the game but... could that be the 1.3 beta patch? That's what my boss things.

Oh, now that had some time to rattle all those ideas in my head. What I well end up doing is editting the droideka (I was avoiding to have to do that). See if I can add an explosion to their repeaters to do small damage. So the jedi's will have 2 lightsabers. One with Candeflect and you can't swing. One without but you can swing. Droideka's will have the same repeaters but will small explosions (no push, minimal damage). Again, I'm aiming for a 2 droideka = 1 jedi ratio. 2 jedi's will can kill 2 droidekas and 3 droideka can kill 1 jedi. Okay, I'm off!


update: Okay, I've tried to place it different places with the .odf file. Nothing changed. When I placed it out of the [properties] tag, CanDeflect is considered off.

IT WORKS!!! XD

I've added an explosion to the repeater and the wookie died XD (not immediately, of course. Slow, just like it should.). I've posted the source files here. I'll leave it to you to munge it and test it out (be gentle, my webserver doesn't have huge bandwith). Meanwhile, I'm going to take my wookie jedi and run around different maps to fine tune the strength of the "force in him". Of course, any feed back (damage ratios, any fine tuning adjustments) is welcomed. ^^

WEEEEE!
Gut stuff.

hey dont know wether its still intresting but i found a solution how to make the jdis not to hard but still deflecting shots!i just gave my jedi a second weapon a light saber again then i deleted some things and then by pressen the 3rd mouse button u deflects shots but cant beat.Only with the first weapon he can beat.Here the contain of my secon light saber:


[WeaponClass]

ClassLabel = "melee"

[Properties]
IconTexture = "HUD_all_rifle_icon"


GeometryName = "all_weap_inf_lightsabre"

MuzzleFlash = "med_muzzle_flash"
Discharge = "med_smoke_effect"

FirePointName = "hp_fire_lightsabre"


HitSound = "imp_weap_lightsabre_hit"
DeflectSound = "imp_weap_lightsabre_deflect"
CanDeflect = 1
Texture = "bluelightsabre"