Just Cause Enhanced: ToDo list

Just Cause (1) Enhanced (Working title)
Windows/PC release
By KabutoKun
Last Update: 2024-Nov-20

ToDo list:
+ Fully/mostly done
* Partially done/WIP research
- No significant work done

QualityOfLife tweaks
+ Higher quality PDA map by using ingame mini map textures; tweak zoom-in limits
+ User can set marker/objective on PDA map to any arbitrary location, optionally request extraction to it
+ Differentiate safehouse types (guerrilla, rioja or agency) on the map menus (change icon texture and/or its color)
+ Random time of day at game start
+ Tweak ladder animation and player position
+ Traffic vehicle AI can pass road obstacles (they just wait indefinitely by default)
- Enhance/tweak AI for pedestrians
+ Avoid GTA-like damage to flipped cars
+ Allow more camera movement while inside flipped cars
+ Allow player to physically interact with his own thrown grenades
+ Birds bleed when shot/killed
+ Remove animation interpolation when characters are far from the camera
+ Fix bug in mission 14 ("Quadalicano Choo Choo") where CAAGun stay static and get behind of the moving train after being destroyed
+ Avoid annoying tutorial prompts
- Show coordinates for current cursor position while using the PDA map
+ Allow the use of freeflying (debug)
* Add more particles that enhance world interaction (water splashes at collisions, tree leaves on the jungle, etc)
- Add random objects/rubbish on the map
- Fix dynamic objects that are floating on air as their initial position when spawned
+ Add a working flashlight object or an addon to weapons
+ Fix front/back lights to all default cars so they turn on at night (MOST of them have invalid data on the DMF files)
+ All vehicles can turn on their frontlights even if they are not being used by the player
* Allow vehicles to keep their frontlights turned on when its driver gets out (this should probably be limited to the player only)
* Vehicle lights reduce their intensity when only 1 of their 2 headlights is damaged
- Vehicle lights turn on/off automatically when driving on closed locations (e.g., under bridges, inside tunnels)
* Vehicle dynamic light and headlight glow/halo have both the same color
* Vehicle lights can be seen turned on from longer distances
- Vehicle lights turn on/off gradually, not instantly
* Automatically use emissive material for vehicle front/back lights
+ When a vehicle is going to explode, make it gradually change its body color to a darker shade of its original color, instead of instantly turning totally black
+ Allow any vehicle dynamic part to get damaged/break from collisions
* Broken dynamic parts can physically interact with its vehicle owner
- Vehicle wheels can get dettached because of hard crashes or after explosion
* Add support for vehicle exhaust, with particles
* Player can always perform melee attacks regardless of having a target NPC in front or not
- Fix NPCs driving bikes appearing in T-pose until they are very close to the camera
+ Increase/remove object despawn timers
+ Implement gradual rotor spin up/down for helicopters/planes
+ Fix bug where helicopter rotors spin up when these get off the ground, even with their engine off or without a driver on them
+ Prevent the use of blurred rotors for helicopters/planes
+ Remove air vehicles instant despawn/disappear when they blow up
+ Tweak visibility checks for terrain on water reflection so they are not culled when still in view
+ Add option to force all regular models to have water reflections (expensive on performance)
* Randomly spawn mission exclusive trains in regular free roam
* Tweak vehicle handling in order to allow vehicles to do a burnout
* Tweak bike handling so you can do wheelies/stoppies
+ Relax dropoff/extraction requirements
+ Fix grapple bug where it fails to shoot the first time after switching from another weapon
+ Extraction and faction map menu lists have rollover, so you can get instantly from last item to first item or vice versa
+ Allow use of binoculars (unused code)
+ Re-implement cableway/transport
* Randomize rain intensity
+ Make grass movement faster depending on rain intensity
+ Only allow heat haze postFx at day
+ Allow motion blur postFx while on foot (it only works while on vehicles by default)
+ Allow bulletholes to be created on any surface
* Allow bullets to get through windows/glass and still continue trajectory (mainly for vehicles)
- Lightning bolts can cause a flash of light on all surrounding terrain
- Fix bug where NPCs driving vehicles with built-in weapons also use their on-foot weapons at the same time
- Fix bug when landing at high speed in water player stays underwater without being in diving mode
+ Fix bug in which the player stutters while swimming at the surface on high depth water
+ Fix bug where player stutters for a few secs when touching a surface with a recently opened parachute
- Fix bug which causes vehicle wheels to move up/down erratically even while standing still on a flat surface

Gameplay tweaks
+ Player can grapple to any surface/object, not only vehicles
* Grapple rapidly pulls the player closer to the grappled object instead of just teleporting it
* Player can climb over small obstacles and walls
+ Player can change direction in mid-air after jumping on the ground
+ Tweak plane handling and thrust calculation at collisions
* Can request for dropoff of any ingame vehicle (like a spawner, but it might be limited in some way, like depending in the number of missions completed)
+ Reduce time limit for throwing grenades
- Can perform stunt jumps to nearby vehicles even when the player is not on their driver seat (like in JC2+)
* First person camera while on foot/driving
* Player can freely use more animations (crouch, side rolling, diving, climbing)
* Use unused crouch walk animations when crouched
- Player can drive-by like NPCs can (shoot while driving, like in GTASA)
* Player can shoot while swimming (might be done only while on the water surface, not while diving/underwater)
- Player can shoot while in stunt position (at least for cars)

Technical engine changes
+ Implement a "dropzone" directory for easier file modding (mimics JC2 behavior, plus enhancements)
* Allow corona lights to be scaled based on distance from camera so they are visible at very long distances (like Project2DFX for GTA games)
- Tweak halo/corona light objects rendering priority so they are rendered over other objects when facing directly to the camera (to avoid clipping)
* Custom rendering shader replacements
- Make the game lighting look more similar to Xbox360 version
+ Increase file streaming memory limits (allows the engine to support bigger files, original engine limit is 2MB)
* Increase D3D9 dynamic light limit (3 by default for most shaders)
+ Fix shadow casting for unused "DiffuseNoTex" rendering material
+ Implement better management of D3D9 dynamic lights count limits based on camera distance and direction from them
- Implement widescreen (use ThirteenAG's patch as reference, or at least avoid conflicts so it can be used along with this plugin)
- Controller/gamepad support
+ Replace default rand function with a better implementation (e.g., PCG)
- Frame limiter (engine starts to have problems around 190 FPS)
+ Creatures (birds/insects) can cast shadows and/or project reflections on water
+ Implement gradual light intensity for "AdditiveAlpha" material instead of the default day/night only
+ Implement custom properties for the PropertyContainer used by object files (DMF/EPE files for vehicles, locations)
* Implement DMF front/back lights support for non-cars vehicles (motorcycles)
* Implement individual part movement for vehicles (especially planes, like wind flaps)
+ Implement vehicle steering wheel, which rotates based on player input
+ Print engine internal logging to external text file (debug)
* Increase pedestrian and vehicle density
+ Tweak player collision capsule to make it more accurate
- Fix collision penetration interaction between characters and vehicles (objects can get inside vehicle collisions but a character can't)
+ Use game relative time for vegetation movement instead of code which uses absolute system time (avoid WINMM.timeGetTime)
+ Swap main ambient light source direction at night so it uses the moon instead of always the sun (enhances lighting at night)
- Fix rendering materials that are not affected by dynamic lights (all bump materials, roads, etc)
- Fix rendering materials that are not affected by shadows (all bump materials)
- Fix issue where shadows are very low resolution when rotating the camera to angles away from the light source
+ Fix objects that do not cast shadows or only do when in broken/damaged state (example: streetlights)
+ Allow user to set shadow resolution
+ Proper fix for black shadow rendering for some GPUs
+ Allow user to disable back face culling for shadow rendering (fixes incomplete shadows for many models)
+ Allow user to set water reflection resolution
+ Allow user to set environment reflection resolution (carpaint, chrome)
+ Allow user to disable back-face culling for model rendering (fixes invisible parts on some models)
+ Fix rendering priority of transparent materials for underwater models (by default they appear on top of everything)
- Restore vehicle dirt (cut from PC, available on XB360)
- Restore fish creature on water (cut from PC, available on XB360)
+ Game should also despawn the pilot character when the extraction/dropoff transport is despawned at distance
+ Force all tree leaves/finns to be affected by wind

Performance optimizations
* Too many to list

External modding research/tools
+ Main game file extraction tools (.TAB/.ARC files)
* rbm/model conversion tools (import/export)
* pfx/collision conversion tools (import/export)
* Decrypt as many property hashes as possible