DS2 Mod development

I found I was highjacking my own thread with a discussion on ornaments etc., so I'm splitting that off here.

There are currently three types of equippable items, ones that replace parts of the character mesh (body armor, helms, boots, gloves), ones that attach to the mesh via "grips" (weapons and shields), and those that are invisible (rings and amulets).

The grips provide for articulation between the hand and the weapon (especially needed for staves), and essentially allow the meshes attached to be independent ones (with their own animations - whips and rotating gun barrels).

The effects stuff was completely re-written for DS2, and now it confuses me!

For DS1 there was a mod UI that had a micro-map with a character and a barrel that let you test effects on the character's weapon, the character himself, or the barrel and once you had it the way you wanted, you could save the effect in a gas file.

Messing around with elfhair and am wondering about the hasalpha variable in the gas-files, e.g.

[t:tsd,n:b_c_gah_ef_hair_sol77_01_01]
{
  b dither = false;
  b hasalpha = false;
	layer1texture1 = b_c_gah_ef_hair_sol77_01_01;
  i texturedetail = 0;
}

Anyone know if GPG came up with their own compression technique for tanks, or if they are using a thirdparty compression technique?

1. I can't get "on_enemy_entered_ocz_flee" to work. I'm trying to get a pair of invincible gladiators (secutor/retarius) to put on a show, but the retarius won't run away. Flee_count is 9999, so that's not exhausted. I have to write a new brain skrit later, so that when the secutor is entangled in the net, the retarius switches to melee and jabs with the trident, but I'm trying to do one step at a time.

2. Invisible boots. My Lara character wears her own boots without problems, but most others become invisible. All the meshes are copied and renamed from the working one, so there should not be a mesh weighting problem, and the templates for the boots are untouched.

Is it just me? I don't have a drop-down list of node sets to select textures for generic nodes in SE2, nor can I find a way to edit the individual texture maps a node uses. (I mean which ones it uses, not editing the images themselves). I'm sure I could do this in SE1 by just overtyping values, but it doesn't work now.

So far I've resorted to opening the gas file for the region and changing the "texsetabbr" parameter s but tracking the individual nodes down is a pain - I have to copy the node guids and then search in the text editor - and that doesn't help when I want to change one texture for a node rather than the whole set.

I'm having some problems with NIS flicks.

There seems to be a problem (bug?) that makes latent commands sometimes fail to end. In my case I keep getting stuck in animations, but swapping them for a simple Sleep makes no difference. I've used "flick info" to determine that the threads are indeed waiting for the latent commands to end, but there's no indications I can find of why they haven't, just confirmation that the event Cue'd at the end of each never happens. It also doesn't seem to matter whether it's a duration on -1 iterations, or a loop count and wait. Apparently similar commands earlier in the flick worked, but I can't see a pattern.