Alrite.
Figured I would go ahead and let the cat out of the bag and give everyone a status report on my efforts to decompile the lua scripts in Bully.
I have managed to convert every script into Lua bytecode which is similar to assembly in the way it looks and while these bytecode scripts can be totally rewritten to be finally used in Bully, I will hold off on rewriting them because until they are rewritten, they are totally useless in their current form to everyone here.
However,
I managed to get hold of NTAuthority due to a helpful hint on where to find him by BullyImod123 and managed to not only explain things to him but also got a nice reply back from him.
He will be looking to see if he still has the modified sources to his decompiler and if he has them, he will be sending them to me which will allow me to fully decompile the Lua scripts Bully uses. This will mean we can finally mod the game fully and there will be no further need to do much hex editing for fighting styles or modifying the mission scripts becasue we will have a way to work around all of that the proper way, since I am fluent in Lua scripting and I do know exactly how the scripts work now and how they were coded to begin with due to the bytecode I was able to convert everything to.
If he finds the decompiler and sends it to me, while I won't release the decompiler unless he gives me permission to do otherwise with credits to him for that....I WILL however release every script in decompiled form already packaged back up as a brand new scripts.img with its scripts.dir file present. These Lua scripts do not need to be compiled in order for the game to run them because the game has a Lua interpreter built into its code like any game that uses the Lua scripting language. They only need to be renamed from script.lua to script.lur - only using that as a example....and packed back into a new .img file which the game will then load as if it was the original.
This will allow us to make custom missions, change fighting styles and peds around a little bit better, enable the debugging system fully, basicly customize every part of the game since it is all controlled via scripts.
Can even edit the weapons and ammo counters too and make infinite ammo or somthing like that. Whatever you want to do.
On the note that IF NTAuthority no longer has the modified decompiler sources, I will see if he will be willing to take a little time away from his rather busy schedule and render a little bit of assistance to us in getting things taken care of real fast since he is the only one to have actually decompiled any part of the scripts where all I have done was just get the bytecode from them which while a lot more readable, is totally useless to everyone here except to someone like myself that knows how to convert bytecode into Lua scripting (very hard task) .
I will update this topic as things unfold and cannot give any eta on anything yet as it is too early.
If anyone wants to take a look at the bytecode I have gotten,I will be making a seperate topic also a sticky with all of the scripts in its own post as a way to keep them in a safe place and also to see if anyone here would be willing to assist me in rewriting things if NTAuthority cannot locate his modified decompiler sources.
I am making this topic a sticky for the time being.
*UPDATE - 3/25/2012*
All of the bully scripts are in LUA source format atm and are in the process of being rewritten due to portions of the scripts missing or being a little bit bugged up on the syntax. Credit to this goes to Fred Tetra who gave me a very big headstart in providing some script sources to work with that I have been since working on rewriting and repairing so we can use them.
