Is it possible to have a method for ACS to interrogate the player's skin and return the skin name (or some other variable that could be used to identify the skin)?
Why? Because "scripted marines" are ideal for using as player replacements during cutscenes because they can easily be given targets and patrol paths etc whereas the player cannot. It is already possible to transfer the player's colours to the scripted marine to make him look like the player but if the player is also using a custom skin, the illusion breaks down.
One of the times that this was discussed before, Chris explained what seems like the main problem behind this...
Chris wrote:You can't retrieve strings in an ACS script. It has to be a number, and there's no meaning way to get a skin name by number.
However.. I do kind of have an idea. If the last string table entry (255?) is reserved solely for the game engine to modify, then that could allow for ACS functions to "return" strings (though it'd actually just modifying the last string table entry). However, it would be limited by the fact that the "returned" string won't stay around. Of course, we'd also need string compare functions(strcmp, stricmp, ect, maybe even strchr and strstr; those those last two would only be able to return true or false).
However, if there is a way around this, it would be a really nice feature to have.
Thanks.
