The Taunts Project
Brought to you by: Ramon Galvan aka Newbie Thrawn  
        Let's face it, Jedi Knight should have had audio taunts built in.  I loved sending these types of taunts in Duke Nukem and looked forward to doing the same in JK -- obviously Lucasarts had other ideas.  This patch seeks to correct the crime of not having audio taunts in JK.

1. What does the patch do?

       The JK TAUNT patch will let you have 10 audio taunts in any JK multiplayer game. 

2. How to use it?

  1.         You use the patch like you would any other.  I recommend using Patch Commander available from JediKnight.net.  The first time you run the patch you can assign Taunts #1, #2 and #3 to a hot key just like any item you would use in the game [Note: this patch is not compatible with other item patches -- e.g. jetpack, graphook, etc. -- this patch could be combined with these other item patches if someone was inclined to to so.].  Taunts #4  through #7 can be played by selecting them as an "item" from your inventory.  For the Taunts I used the datadisk icon (don't know how to add my own yet).  Taunts 2-10 will actually have a number next to it so you know which one it is.
  2.         The reason you only get 3 hot keys is that JK will not let you bind more than 3 more additional items -- or at least I haven't figured out how to let me do it yet.
  3. Recommendations: Try not to use the taunts immediately after someone has joined the game--their computer is catching up with the host and using taunts too soon slows things down at the start--at least that what happened on my p100 w/ 16 MB ram :(
3. Can I make a taunt pack using my own sounds?
  1.         Absolutely!!!!  I designed the format of the patch sounds so that anyone can add new sounds without having to modify the COG script.  All you need to do is get your 10 favorite wav files and rename them taunt01.wav  through taunt10.wav and then substitute your sounds in the sound folder within the gob file [Use conman or gobex both available from Jediknight.net].  Once you have replaced the default sounds with your sounds test it out to make sure all the sounds work.  I think the format that works is 22 mhz 8-bit mono.  Then rename the gob to your liking and distribute freely.
  1.         The beauty of doing it this way is that you can use sound pack X and your enemy can use sound pack Y so that when you play Taunt #1 you will hear taunt01.wav from pack X but your friend will hear taunt01.wav from pack Y--the bonus being that you can each personalize the taunts the other one hears :)  Of course if you all have the same sound pack that would make the coordination easier and once you get beyond 2 players remembering who hears what gets a little complicated but the concept still works then too.
  2. Recommendations: Keep the wav files to a reasonable size--I think anything under 100 kb is safe.
4. How the hell did you think of this?
  1.         This is actually a funny (if long) story.  One day I was playing MOTS with my buddy BOOKEZ.  And he was losing bad -- he thought he could win against a mouse user by playing with a gamepad -- hehe I think he knows better now :)  Anyway, in frustration he began suiciding by jumping off a cliff the second I would fire upon him.  The challenge became to kill him before he killed himself.  Once when I was close to nailing him he jumped off the cliff and as he was falling to his death he used the bacta and I heard the bacta sound.  His antics gave me quite a laugh and the incident stuck in my head.
  1.         Then weeks later on a long drive to L.A. [almost as long as this story] I was daydreaming about life and JK and it hit me that I might be able to make an item that played a sound that EVERYONE heard and if that sounds happened to be a taunt then the taunt problem would be solved.  I remembered that there was an article at Darkness Falls that showed you how to add an item so that it could be bound to a key.  [The article is Assigning COG to keys and is great--thanks to the author Brian Taylor].  So I knew it was possible to bind an item to a key.
  1.         The next step was to create this taunt item.  I looked at the "Watch Buffy" demo file from the Darkness Falls article and changed it it so that when you used the item instead of seeing the printed message "Watch Buffy" you saw "Taunt #1", #2, etc. when the item is used.  The next step was to get the item to play a sound that everyone heard.
  1.         There were two options that I thought of.  (1) Make the sound play like the bacta sound but make the radius of the sound ridiculously huge so that anyone in a reasonably sized level would hear it.  This seem a bit convoluted and I knew there must be a better way.  (2) Then I tried to think of a sound in JK that everyone hears and then it hit me---THE CAPTURE THE FLAG ANNOUNCEMENTS IN CTF!!!!!!  So I went digging through the main ctf cog and found the command that makes the sound play globally so everyone hears it--EUREKA!!!  Then I just cut and paste the CTF sound line into my cog and then rest is history.  If you've read this far thanks for indulging me--now go use this great patch :)
5. What I have and have not yet figured out--technically speaking.
 
What I know:
        a. Getting the Taunt #1-10 messages to play when taunt is used.
        b. How to get the sound to play globally -- this was borrowed from the CTF cog
            so if I or someone else figures out a better way to do it then I will revise the cog
            script.
        c. Getting the Taunt#1-10 option to appear under the control setup screen.
            Since, JK only lets you bind the first 3 I disabled options #4-10.

What I don't know:
        a. I can't get JK to let me bind more than 3 taunts to a key.  If any one knows how
            to get around this without replacing any of the items/force powers then let me
            know.

6. Bugs????

  1.         I don't know of any specific bugs.  Once when I was testing the patch all the sound in JK went dead, but it only happened once and I could not make it recur.  If anyone has problems send me a note describing the circumstances and I'll look into it.
  2.     This patch is basically an experiment to help add a nice feature to MP games.  When more is known about the JK specs hopefully it can be improved.