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Today is the 49th anniversary of the moon landing, July 20 1969. Kind of lame how far behind we are in space travel. When I was a kid growing up with the early days of the Shuttle program, having models of it hanging from the ceiling of my bedroom, I figured we'd well and truly have giant space stations and moon/Mars colonies by this point.

Here you go: https://www.darthparametric.com/files/kotor/k1/[K1]_Player_Head_TSL_PMHC06_For_K1.7z I completely forgot until making this post that @ndix UR had already fixed this model previously for TSL, so I ended up reinventing the wheel a bit there (I didn't look at the hair mesh verts though, so I might need to go back and check those). I also hex edited the TPCs, adding the blending punchthrough TXI semantic, which seems to be necessary in K1 to get a clean hair alpha. The vanilla version of the textures was inducing a lot of haloing.

This blog post is actually for my own reference so I don't have to seek out which of the many posts I've mentioned it in. When folks mention their "big modding project" or their "huge overhaul" of either KotOR1 or KotOR2, here's what I used to quote... If you actually wish to see if a large scale project will make it to release, see if they follow this advice. If they don't, that project likely won't make it. You may use the above quote to remind folks when "the next big thing" rolls around.

Hey Kotorians (yes I want to make that a thing) – I am excited to be announcing a big update to the Kotor community. The short version is Deadlystream and /r/Kotor are moving forward with a merger of our communities. So what is happening? Immediately we will begin co-moderating Deadlystream and /r/Kotor. I am being added as mod to /r/Kotor and Snigaroo is joining Deadlystream as an admin, while Goat is joining as a moderator. We will be expanding staff cooperation in the coming months. Moderation of the /r/Kotor Discord will be shared and modding channels have already been added to the discord. This will become the official discord for Deadlystream going forward. Additionally, wee will also be cross-posting content across communities to encourage /r/Kotor subscriber engagement on Deadlystream and working on increasing modder participation on /r/Kotor. We hope these actions lead towards growth for both communities. What about rules? Each community will still have a unique set of rules, processes and procedures to follow. Deadlystream’s forum based community and the reddit community are very different beasts, each with a different need we fill for the community, our rules will never be 100% aligned but we will align where it makes sense. We will have more information announced over the coming weeks while Sniggles and I work on our integration ideas and planning. Speaking of rule updates, we do have two changes that will be implemented beginning today and they are as follows; · Our rule around porting of content being banned This rule is being replaced by the following rule: · Mods and Assets that are of the same game series (ie KoTOR 1, KoTOR2 and SWTOR) can be ported between games and uploaded to Deadlystream. Porting from other copyright game assets is not allowed, although any fan created content (even from other games) can be hosted at Deadlystream as long as there is no copyright on said mods, files and/or assets. You will still need to abide by all other mod hosting rules. -All mods submitted going forward will require all modder's to fill out 1 additional field, this field is called "Contains Port Content", it is filled out by selecting either yes or no from the drop down menu. -Any modder that has ported content will also be required to fill out a second field called, "Source of Ported Content", this will be a free text field that the modder can describe where his ported content is from. · Rule 19: "All content on Deadlystream must be uploaded by the original creator/owners of the content. Uploading content that is owned by someone else is strictly prohibited, unless explicit permission can be demonstrated by the uploader. If you are found to upload content that is owned by another person without explicit evidence of permission, the first offense will result in a warning via PM and removal of said content. Any additional infractions will result in a permanent ban. Deadlystream Staff will from time to time reach out to authors of content not currently hosted on Deadlystream to see if there is an interest in having their content uploaded to Deadlystream. This activity should only be performed by Deadlystream staff members." This rule is being changed/updated to: · "All content you upload must have been created by you or given permission for use in your mod by the original author. In the event that there is a mod (which you did not create) that needs to be uploaded for preservation to Deadlystream, the following will occur; - The community member will message a moderator via PM with the mod attached and any other information about the mod and about where you downloaded it from. - The admin will follow the “Guidelines for Re-uploading Abandonware Mods” (look for this in the coming days). - If admin sees that the mods meets the guidelines, admin shall upload said mod. - The uploaded mod will have a disclaimer stating “it is not actively supported and that responses to support requests should not be expected.” Please note: Removal of a mod upon request from verified mod authors will be honored, please reach out to an admin for assistance.” Snigaroo, myself and the rest of the staff are very excited about what the future holds for Kotor and our communities. This is only the beginning, there is much more to come. May the force be with all of us! -Tyvokka

This baby right here Sith Holocron made a video and shared some info about this mod on the r/kotor subreddit a few days back, so I decided to try it out. I did both a DS and LS playthrough and have quite a few thoughts on this and things I'd personally like to see changed Before that, though, I'll point out that Sikon has given permission for anyone to take this mod and further modify it, with a couple conditions. From the readme: As for my thoughts - this mod is great for players who want more Vash but don't really care for M4-78. It involves finding Kaah dead in the cage instead of her, with a datapad mentioning Vash was captured and taken into the cave for some ritual. Once in the secret tomb, you'll find her after completing the trials within and speak to her to either ask your questions or kill her. If you yourself don't kill her, Sion finds his way in and does the deed for you, so no conflicts with the enclave sequence later on. It's a great way to turn the tomb from an optional side quest into something woven into the main story, which I think it certainly deserves to be. It also clears a small gripe of mine - if you're running for your life from Sion out of the academy, going into the mysterious cave you were told houses a dark power hardly seems like the ideal thing to do. Now, you've got no choice if you wanna get to Vash Now, as for the things I think this mod needs if it's to find a permanent home in a player's mod list: Full TSLRCM compatibility. This won't cause the game to break or lock up at any point, but it will basically revert Korriban to vanilla. This mostly amounts to no HK-50 squad, the return of the infinite Hssiss bug, and losing some restored lines - most notably "Apathy is death" from the full party, but that's still an unfortunate loss. An installer would also be nice A G-wing was added to the valley right in front of the Hawk. I guess it's supposed to show that it was what Vash and Kaah arrived in, but I never questioned it beforehand, and it really just gets in the way As for Vash herself, she has a few oddities which may be related to lack of restorable content. The conversation with her is a bit awkward. For one, the questions you ask the other masters are mostly all the same, while what you ask Vash is worded differently. At least some uniformity in dialogue options would do well. She also for some reason knows Kreia's name without you ever mentioning it when discussing Force bonds. The weirdest thing, however, is if you decide to fight her - for whatever reason, she has a -100 modifier to all her saves, so no matter what effect you try to apply to her, it'll always hit. And again, this might also be related to lack of restorable content, but you will not learn a saber/Force form from her if you fight or let her go. Also, when you kill her, she just drops dead and you walk away, no Force draining. Even if lines for her saber/Force form can't be restored, it should be simple enough to add in a scene of draining her Force and having your own FP increased So anyways, bit of a long post. This is sort of half review, half suggestions for improving the mod, among whatever other changes might bring it up to the high standards we have now, but after trying this out, I find myself a pretty big fan!

That waist scares me...

Well this game does not play by the rules regarding it's NPCs and it's intentional, just analyze their attributes and you'll see that they use different point buy pools for them, that is certainly not an oversight. Even if some people (like me) dislike the fact that NPCs don't play by the rules and tend think that mods like NPC Stat Fixes Mod are must haves, you cannot, however, by any means consider them true fixes.

But if you ported just about everything else from K1 to K2, then those would be available.... All these things are possible and apart from the animation and sounds not even technically "porting". There have been a few mods that copied K2 Force powers before, though I don't recall any that did the specific ones you mentioned. There are some compatibility concerns with Force power mods, particularly older ones, primarily because all the Force powers in the game are executed through the same script and partly because TSLPatcher's functionality with dialog.tlk used to be more limited. The robes aren't quite so easy because they require new or edited supermodels for the cape and skirts to animate. I'm working on it, though.

Since it's open season on porting, why not go the whole hog? The "same series" argument is complete BS and has no basis in any sort of legal context. If you are fine about porting from TOR (which, by the way, I find hilarious was prompted by a merger with /r/kotor given how much they hate it), then why not Battlefront (original or new), JKO/JKA, Force Unleashed, etc.? Hell, why not Mass Effect, or Fallout, or any other game? And what about the other way? Can we make our own "proper" version of stuff like Aperion, porting KOTOR content into Unreal Engine?

We discussed this in the back room - incidentally, I didn't realize that was a staff-only topic before because I forgot I'm "staff" so I'll repeat most of what I said there - and I don't think it's that serious a concern. All the MMO assets are accessible without paying a cent, even the expansion ones. That's not a license to do whatever you want with it, but it does mean it would be really difficult for EA to control what happens to it once they release it onto the internet for free. There are sites that host extracted assets - legal or otherwise - and I've even seen some mods with ported MMO content on the Steam Workshop. It's a madhouse already and so far EA doesn't seem to be doing anything to stop it. Maybe because they're unaware, maybe because they couldn't stop it if they tried, maybe because they don't care? Though this is all my personal naive optimism and I wasn't involved in any decision-making. Yeah, that was my reaction as well. And now for the other stuff I thought was public before (this isn't about porting): I feel like this is a case of history not repeating itself. A few years ago, LucasForums was in a similar state. It didn't actually host mods, but It was the center of discussion for KOTOR modding, having survived a chain of file hosting site deaths - LucasFiles, PC Game Mods, and even FileFront. After they were all gone, there were still modders on LucasForums, posting new links in the Taris Upper City Emporium in whatever manner they could manage to host them. But the site was old and community activity was dwindling. Part of that was due to the loss of a hosting site. The death of FileFront was a huge blow that led to a general reduction of new content, and with fewer new things to talk about, there were fewer reasons to go to the forums. That created a feedback loop that made the problem keep getting worse. But another part of it was that elements of the site design didn't age well. The Network was divided by game series - there was more than just KOTOR, though that I've only been talking about KOTOR is a sign of the problem. In all my years I never posted outside of the KOTOR forums. I'd certainly played many of the other games, and I'd used mods for some of them. I was active on FileFront's Jedi Knight forums, but not the ones for it on LucasForums. The way LucasForums was divided created isolated communities. They each had their own modding forums, of course, but there was also a lot of overlap - they each had their own Star Wars discussion forums, their own off-topic forums, and so on. They might as well have been different websites. There was other stuff, but there's no point in criticizing the site design after it's gone. The point is that part of the problem had a clear technical solution. The site needed an overhaul to address these issues and certain members, notably Lynk Former, were working on it. But instead, LucasForums went down without notice. I don't know what transpired, but I think ultimately the right people weren't in the right place to make things happen. So I'm glad to see that's not happening with Deadly Stream. The site is getting the overhaul it needs and with that out of the way, perhaps we can focus on keeping the community alive after 15 years. The right people are in the right place this time.

Before you go through all that trouble, I can try my hand at it