"Playable Characters Mod" (PCM) for Vengeance-1.13 Reloaded (English Test-File composed by Scheinworld)

(last updated 08.03.2015)

Original idea and concept by Smilingassassin aka "The_Scorpion"



Features:

Converted the non-playable JA2 characters: Perko, Carmen, Maria, Skyrider, Fred, John, Mary, Matt, Oswald, Calvin, Carl and Darrell into playable characters.


All new playable characters have faces, speech and battle sounds. They also have character skills and their personal equipment. All of them are free.
Changes are very nonintrusive to keep the integrity of the vanilla story, setting, maps etc. intact.



Notes:

Skyrider has his speech limited due to an overlapping issue from his function as a pilot. 
If the player prefers to have Skyrider as the pilot only (same as in the vanilla game), 
then you need to react quickly. After Skyrider is escorted to his chopper, 
he'll do his usual speech, after that Skyrider will walk towards his chopper.
If you want to avoid Skyrider to join the squad but want him as a pilot only as usual, 
go to the strategic map before Skyrider has reached his chopper. Then everything will be as in the Vanilla game.
If you want him to join, wait for him to reach his chopper, after that he will become playable.
(His 'twin brother' will be piloting the heli then, so you do not lose any functionality on recruiting Skyrider)

John and Mary* will be automatically added to the player's squad after he is escorted to the airport.
If you don't want them, you can just dismiss them.
(* Mary is a civilian only (!) and can not be used for fighting but for other duties you will surely find out yourself ;-))

Perko can be easily recruited, but requires user input (just click on "recruit").

Maria, automatically joins the squad after having met Angel. 
Like Skryider, there's some time between the end of the quest and her joining the squad. 
After having talked to Angel, Maria will leave the leather shop and, once standing on the road, join the player's squad. 
In that time between the end of the quest (history log beeps) and her joining, the player can go to the strategic screen if he doesn't want Maria to join the squad. 

Darrell will only join if a specific gender is talking with him ;)

Fred Morris as a head miner can only be recruited after the mine he leads has started to produce income for the player. 
Upon recruiting, he loses parts of his head miner function, parts might still be active and overlap.
For convenience reason, it is advised to minimize the chances that the mining income is interrupted 
(either the bug quest is already over, or sci-fi mode is unselected) in order not to cause glitches.
For testing, he can however join as soon as the mine has started to produce income.

Carmen can be recruited as soon as you have brought him the fourth head and the game log output a message that "all terrorists have been caught". 
He keeps the complete money for the fourth head though. That's his prize but I think he is worth it.
(Btw it's possible to have Slay and Carmen together! You must recruit Slay shortly before you gave Carmen the fourth head and the terrorists quest is done.) 

Matt can only be recruited by his brother Dynamo (this happens automatically if Dynamo talks with him).

Let the escorted persons go off on their own upon completion of their quest, they will then join if your leadership is good. 



Known Bugs / personal experience:

Try to avoid using the characters Perko or TNT for interactions with NPCs, as certain actions like NPC's handing over an item (like Carmen's disk) cause the game to crash.

Don't try to use the new RPC Maria DaSilva to assist Dick for the recruitment of Babyface or you'll get an endless stop watch.

No more bugs are known, if you find them - report them!



Credits:

Most content is taken from JA2 and JA2.5 UB
The speech and faces of character 78 (Carmen) was designed by Sucho *
The speech of character 84 (Darrel) was designed and recorded by Khor1255 *
The speech and script of character 119 (Mary) was designed and cut by Will Gates *
(* edited and changed for V:R purposes)
The speech of character 158 (Carl) was taken from Scorpion's mod "Renegade Republic" (there as "Butch")

- Fan for testing reports and numerous proposals for the Prof.dat and MercStartingGear.xml
- Cagemonkey & Anv for the improved Bigfaces
- Will Gates for several PCM additions and improvements for the English version
- Dieter for the correction of this "Readme.txt" file
- Kermi for hosting

...and of course @ "The_Scorpion" for (in my opinion) one of the most innovative JA2 mods ever!

Have fun! 

Schein... ;-)