"Playable Characters Mod" (PCM+) for Ed Mortimer's "Arulco Vacations" Mod (composed by Scheinworld 21.11.15)

Original idea and concept by Smilingassassin aka "the Scorpion"


Features of the PLUS version:

Converted the non-playable JA2 characters: Darrel (#73), Perko (#74), Maria (#88), Joey (#90), Skyrider (#97), Fred (#106), Matt (#148), Oswald (#156), Calvin (#157) and Carl (#158) into playable characters.
Added Rude Dog (#206) (from Urban Chaos Mod) and Jerry Melo (#207) (from JA2.5 UB) as new M.E.R.C. characters.

(NOTE: New Arulco Vacations character, Rachel Thorne, took the spot originally allocated to Selina "Jubilee" Kyle of Urban Chaos)


All new playable characters have faces, speech and battle sounds. They also have character skills.
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 (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 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.

Darrell will only join if a female character is married to the Hicks. There might still be issues with this action related to 1.13's messed pathing. Make sure your female character has a path to the place where Darrell is walking to.
If she doesn't move, break the deadlock using alt-enter and make her walk into that direction, the pathing might still catch her and continue her script.

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.

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. Please report any glitches that appear in this situation.

Let the escorted persons go off on their own upon completion of their quest, they will then join if your leadership is good (I'm thinking Joey here, don't let Martha see one of your mercs or her thankyou speech will interrupt Joey joining as RPC).



Known Bugs / personal experience:

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

Don't try to marry the new RPC Maria DaSilva with Daryl Hick for the recruitment of Darrel 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, JA2.5 UB and Mod Squad's Urban Chaos
The speech of character 73 (Darrel) was designed and recorded by Khor 1255
The speech of character 90 (Joey) was designed and recorded by Thor
The speech of character 158 (Carl) was taken from Scorpion's mod "Renegade Republic" (there as "Butch")

- Will Gates for Jerry Melo RPC and several PCM additions and improvements for the English version
- Wil473 for his Urban Chaos-1.13 (UC-1.13) project
- Cagemonkey for the improved Bigfaces

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

Have fun! :-)


Best regards,

Schein...