Switching player DataBlock with a Keybind

Hey Everyone, Michael here and I've got a question for you.

How do I implement a key bind to Switch the player from one data block to another while in game.

I also wanted to know if i could play an animation before the data block switch to create a more dramatic effect 8-)

thanks in advance,

Michael Roberts ;)

Switching the datablock would mean you'd need to call from the client to the server to let the server know it needs to be changed.

So you'd have your keybind function for it, and that would have a commandToServer call in it that calls to a function on the server side. This function would call the client's player object to play an animation, and then, maybe with a schedule for a delay, switch the datablocks.

That function would look something like this then:

function serverCmdChangePlayer(%client)
{
   //the variables you would have to set up yourself, whereever you feel is best organized.
   //They can be stored in the client object,
   //%client.changeAnimationLength
   //Or as a global if it's going to happen a lot
   //$changeAnimationLength
 
   schedule(%changeAnimationLength, 0, "finishedChangePlayerAnim", %client);
 
   %client.player.playThread(%changeAnimation);
}
 
//Our animation should be finished now
function finishedChangePlayerAnim(%client)
{
   %client.player.datablock = myNewDatablock;
}

I was trying to help on the other forum and was just trying to get the datablock switch to occur on key press.

I set up a new GideonPlayerData with Gideon's animations and dts and tried in a fresh 3.7

in scripts/server/commands.cs, I put at the bottom.

function serverCmdChangePlayer(%client)  
{  
   %client.player.setDatablock(GideonPlayerData);  
   echo("you are gideon");      
}

and tried to do :

moveMap.bindCmd(keyboard, "p","commandToServer(\'changePlayer'\);", "");

in default.bind.cs, but it just doesn't work. I made sure that "p" is removed from all other commands.

When I place:

moveMap.bindCmd(keyboard, "p","commandToServer(\'changePlayer'\);", "");

in config.cs manually it then works.

Any idea why it won't work in default.bind.cs?

If you have used the in-game Options dialog to change key settings you must remember to remove the game/scripts/client/config.cs file or those settings will override your changes. Just as a reminder - I forget this one occasionally...

Also, not sure if it's a direct cut/paste or a typo - look at the difference between first (original) and second (corrected) lines:

// hint - in this line the second ' is not escaped correctly
moveMap.bindCmd(keyboard, "p","commandToServer(\'changePlayer'\);", "");
// in this line it is correct
moveMap.bindCmd(keyboard, "p","commandToServer(\'changePlayer\');", "");

The default.bind.cs vehicle flip command for reference:

// The key command for flipping the car
vehicleMap.bindCmd(keyboard, "ctrl x", "commandToServer(\'flipCar\');", "");

FYI the config.cs file is auto-generated when you run the engine if it doesn't exist - but if it DOES exist then it's sometimes used in preference to default.bind.cs, which is annoying. It stores any changes you've made to keybinds in the options GUI.