Ultimate Stunters Main SCM

[Dannye]

I may be completely off base with what you guys are talking about exactly, but a standard ps4 gamepad works on SA for me. Plug n play with SA and V and probably VC.

My question was more specifically regarding the use of the USCM while gamepad stunting. Early on in development I was told the USCM did not adapt well to gamepad stunters so I made one which had less features and different key mappings, to try and help. I never liked the 'less features' aspect so later I built and included an additional version in my (VC-engine) USCM releases - also intended for gamepad stunters, but which did support all features. I was curious about was which of those versions of the USCMs were used by any still-stunting gamepad users, and if they were still using the older/less-features one, then why - was there anything I could improve in the newer/full-featured one to let them move onto that?
(All that said, I am happy to hear that at least for Amaluna it sounds like using the original/keyboard-designed USCM on a gamepad worked fine, and thus got access to all the features that way, nice!)

Random appreciation for Dannye:
Honestly, this might be a bit off-topic in some way, but I feel like I should thank you for this tool. If it weren't for the main.scm, I doubt many people would even be stunting. Figured I should let you know this as it feels to me like you do not get the recognition you deserve. Just kinda wish the spawner would include a MTB

Thanks! I know I certainly wouldn't have stunted for as long as I did without it. By "MTB" I am guessing you mean Mountan Bike? And so the SA-engine USCM? Looks like I had BMX instead, sorry about that. If you would like a quick/custom fix where I replace one of the other vehicles in the spawner with the MTB, let me know and I could (hopefully) do that.

Wow, this place is tripping me out lol

Haha, hi Nitz!

[VenomX]

Hi Dannye! Have you open sourced the code for USCM at any point? I'm interested in fiddling with some bits.

[Dannye]

Hi Dannye! Have you open sourced the code for USCM at any point? I'm interested in fiddling with some bits.

I kinda assumed I had bundled the source with the releases, like I ended up doing for Freeplay, but looking back now I guess it doesn't look like it, sorry about that. I am absolutely happy to provide the source now.

For all variants (keyboard-standard, keyboard-mine, gamepad-old and gamepad-new) of the Vice City and Liberty City USCMs, I currently have access to the source as I wrote it, using the older syntax of BW's Vice City Mission Builder (version 0.22). In addition, for just the Vice City USCMs, I also have a copy of the source I recently converted to the syntax of Seemann's Sanny Builder (admittedly still based off an old-ish version, v3.03). For the San Andreas USCMs, I currently only have the original source written in BW's San Andreas Mission Builder (v0.33). If you also need to know which version of the opcode-list (vicescm.ini) I was using for each at the time, let me know and I can try to look into it, but it may be a bit of a guess at this point.

If any of that is useful, let me know and I should be able to upload what you need. Otherwise I can try and convert into something else for you if I can (though it looks like Sanny Builder might have good back-compat/conversion support, so it may not matter too much?). In addition, let me know if it is okay just to provide the portion of the source file that contains the primary USCM logic, or if you would like the entire plaintext scm so it sits in context.

[VenomX]

I'm specifically interested in the VC keyboard USCM. The older format is fine, I'm going to use it as a reference more than anything else, so I'm not too worried if I can build it or not.

Just provide the USCM stuff, I'll figure out the rest. You are most helpful, thanks Dannye! 

[Dannye]

I'm specifically interested in the VC keyboard USCM. The older format is fine, I'm going to use it as a reference more than anything else, so I'm not too worried if I can build it or not.

Just provide the USCM stuff, I'll figure out the rest. You are most helpful, thanks Dannye! 

Cheers VenomX, happy to be able to help! If you have any questions about it let me know.

Source code file: https://easyupload.io/7wby44
(Of note: years ago I made a couple minor additions I never got around to fully releasing, which are present in this source code, and they include: two more vehicle spawners [using up and down keys where the original ones used left and right], and the ability to use the original two spawners while jetpacking [and they'll spawn water/air vehicles instead of the usual stuff])

[VenomX]

Thanks again Dannye!

This was failing to load in the latest version of Sanny Builder due to some updated syntax and slight changes in opcodes (like you mentioned would be problemmatic).

I wrote a small shell script to convert it to work with the latest version (3.5.1 at the time of writing) and now it is fine!

If you're interested, converter is here https://pastebin.com/dypC8U1h and the converted version of the SCM is here: https://pastebin.com/raw/1bqzXem6.  I haven't fully tested every feature but the main stuff at least works for now.

Cheers for your help .

[Dannye]

Cheers, and thank you for sharing those notes on how to make it compatible for Sanny Builder!

When I first looked at a decompiled USCM via Sanny Builder I found the differences quite daunting - heaps of lines of code replaced with versions that more resembled calling functions on classes/objects, and excluding the opcode prefix completely. While nice in theory (it looking more like a normal programming language), it seemed too inconsistent to be worth it for me, as so many other lines of code still remained in the older format.

From the looks of what you've shared, it seems likely that while Sanny Builder supports that sort of advanced format for some opcodes, it is also cool with the older approach for them too. That's great, as then the only MB->SB differences are minor ones, and it looks like all very nice/convenient too (loving the removal of data-type suffixes, and double-slash comments being reversed). I've been considering making a few changes to the USCM, and I think this seals it - if I do it, it'd definitely be worth me doing it via Sanny Builder.

[Dannye]

So I have ended up doing some more work on the (Vice City engine) USCM project. Not only were a few old bugs, strange behviours, and missing features bothering me, but also the source code was horrible and I really wanted to make it better. I'm still in the middle of it, but being excited for the improvements I thought I'd share some of the user-facing changes coming soon:

• Ghost-town setting will be correctly remembered on save/load.
• Weather changing now cycles sequentially through each weather type. Is not random anymore. Also there is an option to let the game take control back of the weather instead of having it locked-in.
• More spawners (looking at 8 sets of them - the usual two, which use left/right keys, now include two more on up/down - and now you can use spawners while jetpack is enabled, and it spawns different vehicles [including boats/skimmer] and that should mean 4 more sets).
• ALL functions work while in/under-water. It used to be that you could use the teleport functions but nothing else. Not anymore! When on foot, you can even enable jetpack and fly out of the water (and thus I have removed the on-foot 'water respawn' function, because jetpacking out is so much more useful).
• If trigger jetpack during certain player animations (eg. crashing off a bike), you previously might not have been able to use the mouse to turn - now you can. Jetpacking will also include strafe-left/right and move-backwards, as well as a button which if held will decrease jetpack speed.
• With the on-foot functions that interact with your last car (teleport into vehicle, bring vehicle to player, bring player to vehicle), there will now be a separate setting that can be toggled to affect which vehicle these functions interact with, your last one OR your second last one.
• (and maybe some more, not sure yet)

Also included will be the significant behind-the-scenes improvements, and as such with the source I'll include on release, it would be much simpler for anyone who desires to jump-in and make any changes and/or copy it into the scm of a different map mod, or whatever.

But an important note, anyone who is using the really old gamepad version, the one with most features excluded, I am currently not thinking of making any changes to that (it is too much trouble to maintain such a significantly different version), so hopefully you are happy to stick with what you have already, or consider trying one of the other fully-featured variants (which includes another one designed with gamepads in mind) that will come with the new release and hopefully will work okay for you.

Cheers all, stay tuned!

[Jason]

The big dawg!!

[Blaze]

Always gave me a chuckle

[Dannye]

Always gave me a chuckle

Haha yes, that silly mistake has done well to stick around all these years, but I think perhaps now it is time to finally say goodbye to it.

[Dannye]

All the new features/fixes I wanted have now been implemented, yay! The next steps for me will be trying to setup all the variants for the different control layouts, and for each of the main games/mods (VC, LC and probably SAiVC if I can). Other than that just some changes to american.gxt and getting the documentation up to scratch, and that should be about it hopefully!

Regarding gamepad stuff I am now thinking I will include *both* gamepad variants: the fully-featured one (previously called version B ) plus the original less-features one. The latter will continue to have many features turned off, but I will include ALL the features in the code, just without the button combinations to trigger them. This makes it easier for me to maintain the codebase with all variants intact, plus now anyone who prefers that version also has the option to jump into the code and activate any of the disabled features with (relative) ease - they just gotta decide what game actions to map them to (and be keen to dabble in some scm coding).

Now for the fun part, here's some more new stuff I've been able to add to the project (in addition to bug fixes and code simplification):

• (the stuff from my earlier post https://www.gtastunting.net/index.php?topic=9046.msg1369708#msg1369708), plus...
• While jetpacking, you'll now be able to use any other (on-foot) feature, including teleporting. Also you can now jetpack along multiple axes at once (eg. you can now hold left + forward to go diagonally; this also acts as a way of going faster).
• Along with the 8 sets of 8-vehicle spawners, there is one additional 'random vehicle spawner'. In case you want the game to help you decide your next stunt!
• You can now also save your game at any time, while on foot    (yep, even while jetpacking, if you desire). Just press the button combination and up pops the save screen, no more needing to head to a safehouse.

[Aries]

Great work, Dannye  That save feature is awesome!

[Dannye]

Thanks Aries!

Things have progressed well, and now the main thing left is documentation. But while I work on that, I was wondering if I could get a little help from anyone here regarding the potential SAiVC version I am making.

It seems there are a number of different proper/customised versions of 'SA map in VC'-type map mods out there, and multiple different base main.scm files floating around for each. So in my attempt to build the v7 USCM with support for SAiVC, there are some unknowns there. The one I have built thus far seems to work great for me in the two different such map mods I have tried it on, but I don't want to assume that will be the case for everyone.

So, here's a link to my current/potential v7 USCM for SAiVC: https://easyupload.io/bywpq6

If anyone wants to have a quick try of this on their SAiVC installation, and see whether it works okay, let me know how it goes. If it seems to have decent compatibility then I will incorporate it into my upcoming proper v7 USCM release (along with the VC and LC versions), otherwise I might just keep it a separate thing.

Thanks!

[Amaluna]

Am I allowed to suggest things to add to the SCM? There's something I'm sure a lot of stunters would LOVE to have. And if it's possible to make, it'd be freaking fantastic.

I'd love to see save warps and load warps, where in your runup you can save location somewhere and upon loading, it keeps the speed you had at the time. It'd make stunt testing significantly easier. Not sure if it's realistic to make. But I know this works on MTA. You know better than I if it's a possibility or not.

I'm sorry if you don't accept suggestions, I'm just opportunistic right now.