Locked Nodes

[DarkHero]

Figured I would go ahead and put this up since atm I am working to figure out how to go about unlocking the styles in the game.. etc .. and I have figured out where most the scripting is for them and how it works

There is a way to make the fighting styles and other similar character mods much easier by editing a single file and without any hex editing....and that would be default.idb which is located inside ide.img. That file is actually a encoded version of default.ide which is a plaintext version of the same file but the plaintext version is somehow overridden by the .idb version which atm I am trying to figure out how to decompile that back to the plaintext .ide using a few methods I used to use during my gta san andreas modding days in the beginning since Bully uses a lot of the same file formats and from what I can tell...the same game engine.

Anyways, cool to finally get off my butt and register here after being a lurker forever, and cool to meet all of ya!

[DaBOSS54320]

Default.ide (yes the "source" of default.idb) has info about the default settings of each ped model. This has the styles of each ped (like /Global/G_Striker_A and Act/Anim/G_Striker_A.act for example) but the actual styles themselves are held in Act.img (see /Bully/Act/Act.img). There are .cat files in there, not exactly sure how they work... I've looked into them a bit before and got a lil info on them but I forgot most of it. Anyways in those .cat files there are action nodes, these are basically the actions that a ped can perform (including fighting moves). Action nodes mostly control the animation of a ped and their interaction with the world. An action tree is basically the root of all action nodes for a particular style (for example all G_Striker_A nodes would be in /Global/G_Striker_A/..., the /Global/G_Striker_A is the action tree/root, and the G_Striker_A.act is the file they are in). The cat files are actually originally act files I guess but when released put into cat files somehow? Not sure how this file system works but most NPC action trees are in Act/Anim. For example in LUA if you wanted to set a ped's action tree, you'd use Act/Anim/G_Striker_A.act if you wanted G_Striker_A.act, and that's also why you see Act/Anim in the default.ide. Oh and lastly the actual animations themselves are in .agr files, located in /Bully/Stream/World.img.

Sorry for lack of real neatness there I kind of just rambled about everything that came to mind about what I know about nodes... lol.

I'm glad to see someone is actually wanting to do some research on this instead of just look at hex and guess what they need. Most people just look at the .cat files in hex and guess what the action nodes are so they can set them on the player in lua scripting.

I see you're new btw, welcome to the board. I'll always be happy to help you with stuff but scripting is really my expertise with modding this game, I only know so much about how the actions thing works.

About the same file formats... Bully uses gamebryo if I recall correctly and yes you can even open the IMG files with the same tools used for GTA3 modding, but I do heavily suggest you use one actually made for Bully. You can find some in the downloads section, I prefer madman's IMG toolkit.

Good luck buddy, be sure to post what you find!

[DarkHero]

Glad to be a part of the community so thanks for welcoming me.

I promise I'll post here what I find out.

[Bully_Lover13]

i think you are the first to do this, am i wrong?

[DarkHero]

Ok...here is the one post I promised above.

What I am currently working on regarding the styles is editing the files inside Act.img

Each of those files can be edited with a text editor, I suggest very highly notepad++ due to it being opensource and very versatile.

Here is a example of what the files contain and a rundown of what I have figured out:

Code: [Select]

/Actions/Offense/RunningAttacks/RunningAttacksDirect..Just a quick edit here since I forgot to mention this. Authority.cat

This small sample of code is from Authority.cat which is in the Act.img file. Every file inside that archive is a act file thats human readable.

this part of the code from the above section:

Code: [Select]

/Actions/Offense/RunningAttacks/RunningAttacksDirectis pretty easy to understand. You just need to add / Global / Act / Anim

You just need to add / Global / Act / Anim
Example:

Code: [Select]

"/Global/Actions/Offense/RunningAttacks/RunningAttacksDirect","/Act/Anim/Authority.act"

[Unknownsoldier]

no,

[Shrimp]

no,

no.*

[DaBOSS54320]

Mostly known that those "nodes" are found in the .cat files and that .cat files are .act files, but keep going! Or well actually you say that the .cat files aren't some different version of the .act files but instead an archive of .act files, hmm that actually does make some sense I suppose...

Not all nodes as they are written in those .cat files can be set on peds and work perfectly as we expect by the way, sometimes they are different, and thus that is why people have to take guesses on what other parts of the node there are that they need. For example people will have to guess that some node that looks like a grapple attack has /Grapples/ (or something like that) before it. I hope your research finds a better more efficient way to finding nodes rather than just guessing from what text we see in the .cat files... you'd be a true hero to the BB community as nodes are pretty important to people here, more than I think they should be even... my main complaint really is that people obsess about them without putting any effort into figuring out the files and just guess. But oh well, you're doing it now, so great.

Also notepad++ does work for this but HxD might work better for you. Just in my opinion it looks a bit more readable there as the file, while it has parts in plain text, still isn't really formatted to be viewed as plain text like in something like notepad/notepad++. Also the numeric values you can find using HxD may be helpful. For example I found a while ago that one of the first parts of a .cat files has how many characters in the nodes (the readable stuff) start. In notepad++, I don't think you'll be able to see that value as easily since it may just be represented as text characters instead of as a number.

Actually while I'm online... I guess I could try to find that information again. Nothing huge but still might help? See here, notice that µ. actually holds an integer value. Look on the left and you can see that B5 08.  Because of how integers are stored, you actually will want to flip that so it's 08B5. Go to 08B5 in the file, and notice that's where all the readable text starts.

[DarkHero]

Well, all I can do is simply try...and besides....I am a serious believer in the fact that anything is possible and that nothing is impossible  since I personally have gone thru a lot of experiences in life that most ppl would call simply impossible...but thats a topic for a diff discussion 

I am just glad to you try to help since I see potential here and really...as long as everyone works together...shares ideas....share work...etc then we all can succeed. When someone makes a mod and refuses to share or just tells ppl to figure it out themselves with no help....then thats very counterproductive and gets everyone nowhere really fast.

[DaBOSS54320]

^ Posts like that make me wish I could like posts somehow lol. Guess that's not really a forum thing though.... maybe because I can just tell you I like it in a reply. Well, I like your post, buddy. ...I've made this more complicated than it needs to be haven't I?

[Unknownsoldier]

Well, all I can do is simply try...and besides....I am a serious believer in the fact that anything is possible and that nothing is impossible  since I personally have gone thru a lot of experiences in life that most ppl would call simply impossible...but thats a topic for a diff discussion 

I am just glad to you try to help since I see potential here and really...as long as everyone works together...shares ideas....share work...etc then we all can succeed. When someone makes a mod and refuses to share or just tells ppl to figure it out themselves with no help....then thats very counterproductive and gets everyone nowhere really fast.

Wait a sec. You copied that entire post from one of MadmaN's old posts!

Well, all I can do is simply try...and besides....I am a serious believer in the fact that anything is possible and that nothing is impossible  since I personally have gone thru a lot of experiences in life that most ppl would call simply impossible...but thats a topic for a diff discussion 

Far as the help...I am just glad to have a chance to try to help since I see potential here and really...as long as everyone works together...shares ideas....share work...etc then we all can succeed. When someone makes a mod and refuses to share or just tells ppl to figure it out themselves with no help....then thats very counterproductive and gets everyone nowhere really fast.

[BloodChuckZ]

Shades of Plagiarism (GASP) !!
 

[DahCobra33]

What kind of Sorcery is this??

[Unknownsoldier]

hahahhahhahahhahaaa

[DarkHero]

Here is a small list of what I have discovered so far regarding the Nodes themselves.

Code: [Select]

"/Global/Player","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Default_KEY/Default","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Default_KEY/Locomotion/Idle"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_BUS_Detective","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_BUS_Drugs","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_BUS_Jacket","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_BUS_PhotoCash","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_IND_PACKGET","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_IND_PackMon","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_IND_Package","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_RIC_Crab","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_RIC_LostBear","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_RIC_Mailman","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_SCH_ADMIRE1","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_SCH_ADMIRE2","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_SCH_Tutorial","Act/Player.act"
"/Global/Player/Gifts/Errand_SCH_Tutorial2","Act/Player.act"
I'll be updating this list as I am finding more Nodes.