A) check out
http://social.biowar...bient_behaviour, I suspect that's the system you'll want to tinker with for that.

I was probably the guy that mentioned light ray models. I'm not a level artist so I don't know the model names offhand either, but I'm pretty sure that's how it's done.
C) not really sure either, but I _think_ the star-jump pose doesn't happen if the player object has had any other animation done to him before the game proper starts - eg, in an introductory cutscene. There might be other ways to work around this but I seem to recall that working for me when I put together the demo module.