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This turned out better than I expected: The video shows a test for an animated Malachor skybox and surprisingly it actually looks good. What you see are basically three layers: A skybox that has only terrain. A second skybox that shows the closest clouds including the "ceiling" and rotates around its axis. And a cylinder that has the distant clouds and rotates slower than the close clouds. And the video also shows my new lightning animation. The skybox is still not done though. I want to have more cloud contrast (all attempts for that were unsuccessful so far) which should also help with distinguishing the two cloud layers, the terrain color is not quite right and it needs to be lowered a bit as well. And then there are the lightning strikes coming directly from mountains that I need to move somewhere else. Oh and there's a rendering error where part of the terrain is cut off for some reason. Also not quite sure about the animation speed. I might have to make that faster. I might work on another skybox first though just to get a fresh perspective on Malachor afterwards.

I think this is the best skybox you have ever created, Kexikus. So astonishing that will make me look at all those other ones being sad that they won't all be as beautifully animated as this one.

.2da files are a very common and important file type in both KotOR games and are also very common to be edited in mods. That's why this tutorial aims to bring you a list with detailed explanations on what they do. Introduction You can find all .2da files in the 2da.bif file, where they can be accessed using KotOR Tool. KotOR Tool also provides a 2da-editor to modify them as you want. Basically, .2da files are 2d arrays or put simply: tables, just like you know them from programs like Excel. The one difference here would be that in a .2da file, each column has a specific and pre-defined (hardcoded) function. Each .2da file collects a set of "objects" that differ in details. Thus every column in the .2da file represents a certain characteristic of such an object while each row represents one specific instance of this type of object. As a simple example, you could have a file called trees.2da that contains information on different types of trees. The columns would then include details like height, age, etc and every row would stand for one tree species with details entered in each entry of this row. This tutorial will consist of two parts: First a (currently incomplete) list of all .2da files used in both games with detailed information on what they do and what each column stands for. The second part will be a list of .2da files that exist in KotOR but that aren't actually used since they're only remnants from Never Winter Nights (an older game by Bioware based on the same engine). This second part is only for reference, so that you know these files are useless. Now, this tutorial is currently far from being complete. There are many .2da files that are still missing and even for those that are already listed there may be missing information or maybe even incorrect information. If you notice a mistake or know things that are still missing, please post them to this thread so that I can add them to improve on this ressource. Thank you very much A big thanks already goes to Fair Strides, who provided most of the information currently listed. Thank you! Used .2da files In this section I will (eventually) list all .2da files used by both KotOR and its sequel TSL. Most of these appear in both games and are identical or have only very minor differences. Those are marked with (K1/TSL) after their names and possible differences will be explained in the proper place. Some .2da files however differ on a bigger scale between the two games or exist only in one of them. Those are then marked by either (K1) or (TSL) depending on which game they are from. Each listed file has a short introduction that describes what these files are used for, followed by a list of their columns with descriptions. If there is no description for a certain column, then that's just because I don't know what it does, while descriptions written in red are unconfirmed and might be wrong. And as a final note: When you open a .2da file in KotOR Tool, you will notice the first column labeled (Row Label). This column exists in every .2da file and labels the rows numerically from 0 upwards. This label can then be used by other .2da files to reference specific lines from this file. But since this column is the same in every .2da file, I won't list it everytime. And here we go: acbonus.2da (K1/TSL) aiscripts.2da (K1/TSL) aliensound.2da (K1/TSL) ambientmusic.2da (K1/TSL) ambientsound.2da (K1/TSL) ammunitiontypes.2da (K1/TSL) animations.2da (K1/TSL) appearance.2da (K1) appearance.2da (TSL) appearancesndset.2da (K1/TSL) baseitems.2da (K1/TSL) bindablekeys.2da (K1/TSL) bodybag.2da (K1/TSL) camerastyle.2da (K1/TSL) chemicalcreate.2da (TSL) classes.2da (K1/TSL) comptypes.2da (K1/TSL) footstepsounds.2da (K1/TSL) globalcat.2da (K1/TSL) heads.2da (K1/TSL) itemcreate.2da & itemcreatemira.2da (TSL) portraits.2da (K1/TSL) regeneration.2da (K1) subrace.2da (K1/TSL) upcrystals.2da (K1/TSL) videoeffects.2da (K1/TSL) Unused .2da files This section will simply list files that are not used by the KotOR games. Many of these only exist in the KotOR 1 files and were removed for TSL. actions.2da areaeffects.2da caarmorclass.2da capart.2da categories.2da catype.2da chargenclothes.2da Changelog