RepCom Shotgun

I'm looking to try and build the Trandoshan shotgun from Republic Commando and I was wondering if anybody had any good reference pics. I think the technical name is the Accelerated Charged Particle Array Gun so that might help. I've looked on google and I have the three basic shots you can get of any repcom weapon (promotional shot, multiplayer shot where it's on the ground, shot of the player holding the weapon) but I would really appreciate any more you guys might have

That's the one. I wouldn't mind having more pics of this puppy.

yea those are the three shots I have. I could go off of just those shots, but i found when I built my bowcaster that the in game models and those three pics all vary on some details. As fun as custom building is, I'm going for accuracy here. There used to be a guy on ct.n who played around with the game engine a lot (or something like that, I don't know how it works) and he could go right into the files and grab shots from every angle.

Skip, I'm a little confused, are you looking for pics of the repeater?

I scoured the internet and those three shots is all I could find. There was an interesting Youtube with a guy using one and it showed the cocking action, but it didn't show any other views.

for a base i would suggest using an air soft shotgun like a SPAS-12


I would say trim it off where the silver begins and add the custom barrels (pvc maybe?) onto it

nah I'll go completely from scratch. That gun would work as a nice base, but none of it is as accurate as I could get with wood.

Duck, I'll check that video out. I've got the game, but the only views it gives are the ones we've got here already and the pump action. Does anybody know how to either take screenshots or get into the game's files and look at the model of the gun?

yeah you could get it a lot more accurate with wood

Originally Posted by Apollo

Skip, I'm a little confused, are you looking for pics of the repeater?

Nah mate, I got it wrong in my first post here. I didn't see that "ACP" and "Accelerated Charged Particle" were one and the same. D'oh! My bad.

I liked the repeater but I prefer the array gun. I wouldn't mind having more pics of that myself.

I actually have a ton of reference of the repeater. I might make that sometime too since really, all the RC guns are pretty cool

I wouldn't mind seeing that too? I'll PM ya later.

I have tutorial for viewing the high-poly game assets. You can't rip them out (believe me I've tried), but it's the best reference. Better yet, you're looking at them in the "animation browser" so your seeing the weapons in action.

Appolo asked me for this, and I e-mailed it to him, but since there seem to be interest, I'llj ust post it right here for ya'll:

Step 1: Get the one and only patch for the game

Step 2: Follow this file structure:
C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars Republic Commando\GameData\System
Find and open the file named "UnrealEd" (you will want to make a short cut on your desktop, the program tends to crash from time to time). It will take a little while to start the editor.

Step 3: When the editor is open, you should see a "tip of the day". Feel free to turn that on or off. If you odn't see it, don't bother. You should also see a window pop up that says "Textures", has several tabs up top, and specificly, a large texture that looks like warped and broken glass. With this browser, you can view all the texures of the game, but using the drop down menus, and the "open file" button. Each tab as an "open file" button, each that go directly to the correct fodler, and onyl opens the files within those specified folders.
Go to the "Animations" tab.

Note:This is called the "assets browser". You can access this browser at any time b using the top menu button in the main editor window (tenth button over).

Step: 4 In the "Package" drop down menu, go to "HudArms". This brings up all animations that the players sees as his/her HUD. This is not limited to the health bar, shield bar, graphics, ect.... Hence the name "HudArms" this package has only to do with the arms, and guns the player uses, whether in single player or mutiplayer.

In the "Animation Set" drpo down menu, go to "HudArmsHelmetSet".
In the "Mesh" drop down menu, go to "HudArmsHelmet". In the viewport, you'll see the meshs displyed, change texture, as well as the high poly helmet will appear. This is the helmet that you see youself inspecting during the intro seen at Kamino.

Controls for the viewport are strange, to say the least. I will try to explain them as best I can:

1. click/hold left mouse button, and drag to move foreward/back, and rotate your view.
2. click and hold both mouse buttons, and drag fore/and back to go up and down.
3. click/hold right mouse button to rotate view from that point.
4. click/hold right muse button and alt to rotate the viewport (not reccomended unless you need too)

If you go up to the view menu, and select "HudArms View", you'll immediatly go into "first-person view" (as if you were playing the game), to reset your view/orientation in the viewport. This comesin handy when you look 360 degress, and find yourself lost in the dark grey.

Step 5: Once you'd gotten used to the controls, go to the aforementioned "HudArms View".You will now see nothing for lines and dark grey. you ahven't selected an animation yet. In the left window pane, select the "LOAD [300]" slot. Again, nothing appears (excet maybe the tip of thehelmet...don't move our view to see it just yet). Click the play button at the lower left corner to view the animaton (you may or may not hear the sound fx, dpending on the settings of your editor...if it doesn't don't freak. If it does, squeel with joy)

Step 6: Now that you can navigate through the viewpart, select the package, select the corresponding animation set, select the associated mesh, and play the animations, and view whatever high-poly model you wish. Long winded explaination for something you pick up very quickly, hope it helps XD Use the play and pause button to get any specific angle that you need, in association with the position of the arms and hands (they do get in the way).

NOTE: Now you can zoom all around, and get the view you like. What the bueaty of this is, you can see where the light reflections screw up your peseption of depth.

NOTE: Using similar methods with the other browsers, you can view almost any game asset you wish.

TEXTURE/Models/Game_Suck! Info:
This is game mechanics. In real life, yea hefty detail, depth, ect would be there. Where else would it go? Fact is, though game designers would love to make games look like real life movies, or get as close as they can, adding every detail, every real time shadow, ect....computers can only do so much at one time. Several tricks have been made to get the game to run faster, and get to add more detail, but even then, the programmers can only do so much with the technology available. Business speaking, what a customer's $300 computer can handle, vs what another customer's $50,000 computer can handle. They have to be open to a broad range of customers, and a customer's budget. This game was built around old-gen computer gaming. New-gen computer tech would allow for alot for detail, because games, like UnReal, Team Fortress 2, ect, can now handle TONS of more polygons, and new and better tricks ahve popped up. But we're stuck with an old-gen game, so deal with it XD

So, since not every seam is modeled in, a texture is flat. All the scratches, seams, bevels, ect...it's all flat. You will have to figure out what is a raised detail, an insetted detail, a curved edge vs a square edge...a rounded corner vs a square corner. The high-poly helmet is awesome, bt it still lacks alot of detail. It would be perfect, though, for pepakura, then jst carving those details in.

I have already included screent shots of this "anihelmet" (textured and wifre framed), and the "lowpoly-helmet" (textured only).

The texutres included are of the inside of the helmet, the armor itself (for the helmt met texture...saved space/time for the game developers to do it this way), as well as the textures for the arms.

I hope this helps, let me know if you have any more questions. I will be putting up detailed instructions for ripping models yourselves as well, but that'll be a while. I wrote this up some few months ago, and I have several other things going on right now.

My email is ghwildfire@hotmail.com.

Good luck

P.S. The high poly weapons can't be pulled off the game. I've already tried several hundred times, and in several different ways. But if you can figure it out, I would very much appreciate the know-how.

Thanks a million for this!! I've also tried to rip the 3D data from that game with no success. I wanted to put the helmet through Pepakura, I ended up modelling my own. It's good to know we can at least get better reference shots using this method!!

I really appreciate it!! I look forward to trying this out later!!

Apollo, if you happen to try this before me, I'd really appreciate seeing what shots you have?? Good luck!!

Hey Skip, my desktop is in the process of crashing and it's the computer that has the necessary graphics and all that for RepCom so I can't get any shots. If you do take the time to go find the model and all that could you take some screenshots while you're looking at it? Would that work?

Yeah, no worries mate. I just need some time to try out Toragh's tips bro.

yeah there's no rush. I just wanted to let you know that I'm not going to be able to access the files and that if you can get some nice shots then I'd be much obliged if you let me see them

I had a little look at it yesterday, it's a little tricky to use. I was looking at the weapon animations. Thing is, it show the weapons with the RC's arms holding the weapon which kind of blocks the view a little.

I still need to read through more of Toragh's notes and see if I can view the static meshes and got shots of those.

If not, I'll do my best with the animations.

Yea, the arms are annoying, even if you can move the animations around. If you soom in, you can see through the hands and arms. The static meshes(SM) are extremely low poly though. I beleive they use the same textures as the high poly SM's in the animations, but low poly is still low poly. Have a look, but it's limited in giving tells IMO.

For the SM browser, just click the open file button and clcik on whatever package you want to view. Click the call button, or use the down arrow to select from the sub-category drop down menu. And just because some packages look empty, doesn't mean you should delete them. Lucas Arts really broke this game engine, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did it on purpose for copyright protection.

One of these days I'll get around to writing up a tutorial for exporting objects from the animation browser. There's not much that can be, but people are more than welcome to try.

Thanks for that buddy! I appreciate you taking the time to do this for us. I know this thread isn't mine but this is something I'm deeply interested in. Anything RC based is something that I have time for.

Pity about the statics being low poly, still we can at least get better reference material using the animations than we can currently find online eh?

Cheers.

I'm the same way, Skip. I love pretty much all of the RC weapons

Here's a few for ya Apollo. I have more and am still getting more for you. Hope these will be Ok.

I'm having fun looking around the various weapons now!! This will be great for my DC-17 build!!

I've gathered around 40 images for reference material. I got screen grabs of the load and reload sequence too. That reload sequence is interesting. The gun twists during the sequence to access the chamber. Would be really cool if that were incorperated into a prop.

Anywy, I've zipped up the pics and uploaded them here for you.
Shotgun.zip
Hope they come in handy.

Skip

Thanks a ton, Skip. I always thought that is was just the pump handle that flipped up for reloading, never knew the whole barrel assembly did. I'm itching to work on this now

No sweat bro. I'm happy to have helped. Looking forward to your build pics!!