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Only mesh alpha, not texture alpha. So mostly just for holograms. No, do not adjust the bone positions. You should look at the vanilla models for hierarchy clues. But the basic gist is skinned meshes are always direct children of the base. Only trimeshes (i.e. static meshes) need to be children of bones if they need to inherit movement. So hair meshes (typically) will be children of the head bone, lower teeth are children of the jaw bone, etc. Note that because Odyssey uses meshes as bones, a given mesh can be both a bone and a rendered object in the game. The eyeball and eyelid meshes are the most obvious head model examples of this (other examples are droids, which are mostly all rendered bones). Although you can create your own custom skinned eyeball/eyelash meshes, or assign weights to those sections of a face mesh. Just be aware that Odyssey has a maximum bone count of 17 bones per mesh (MDLEdit will probably bitch at you that the max is 16, unless @bead-v has fixed it in the most recent version). That means that a typical head mesh - assuming you split out the tongue, eyes, and teeth to separate meshes - will have one bone too many if you try skin the eyelashes (18 bones total). Since only the very bottom ring of verts on the neck typically need to be weighted to necklwr_g, splitting off the bottom ring of polys to a separate mesh before export might be one option, since smoothing across meshes should be fixed in MDLEdit.

Easy - I didn't do it. Those are the original TOR weights, just mapped to the KOTOR rig, merged from multiple source bones as required. Yes, you can adjust the hooks if needed. As I said above, skinned meshes can just be parented directly to the OdysseyBase. Most of the vanilla KOTOR head models that have separate hair meshes use danglymeshes (i.e. static meshes that use vertex buffer animation), so those are parented to the head bone.

It bitches if there are more than 18 (though the error message still says 16, fixed now for next release). Since there is space in the mdl it can be safely compiled and decompiled with 18 bones, but tests have shown that 17 is the effective maximum. IIRC, the issue JC had with Handmaiden's shoulder (right handed vs left handed UVs) still persists, but I think it should work in most more general cases.

I do not know exactly, but somehow you're supposed to mark edges as sharp/hard (ie. there will be no smoothing across these). Kotorblender should then translate this to smoothing groups on export. The _g meshes are the bones yes. I don't think you need to move them, but then I've never done something like this. I'd say don't moved them if possible. In most cases the animations are on the supermodels (s_male01, s_male02, s_female01, s_female02, s_female03), the bones are matched based both on their hierarchy and their names, so do not change that. The hierarchy matters for some things like alpha transparency (DarthParametric could tell you more about that), but I don't see any problem with having the hair as the child of the head. Although as far as I know, vanilla models are not structured this way, so maybe just stick to the usual design unless you actually need to change it. I do not have an answer to this one, sorry!

At this point I feel like Star Wars is a car I used to love and still do, but I had to sell that car, and I have to let the new owner do whatever they want with it. So rather than stress over what stupid senseless thing they do to it, I can still remember the good times I had with it. In other words, there is nothing we can do since they own it and technically have every right to drive it into the ground on fire while everyone fights over whatever is left. A bit bleak, perhaps, but that is the reality we live in. Alternatively, we can hope that by some chance there are enough fans of actual skilled writing left (That have nothing to do with pointless love triangles, obscure prophesies, or Mary Sues jammed in for no reason; seriously, do these guys even realize how much Horrible Writing Advice has them pegged?) can create something unique and genuinely fun to watch and play. Maybe anomalies like Mandalorian and Jedi Fallen Order can fall through the cracks.

I don't know, as a Disney Star Wars critic, I happened to really love Director Orson Krennic and to a degree like Kylo Ren. But I agree on that Disney really has no idea what makes their IP or legacy characters resonate so much. Honestly, I think BioWare should do a license game first (i.e. Star Wars) before diving back into their own franchises, given that at least some effort needs to be made to please its target market.

They can't leave it alone. Too much a cash flow. Disney makes the crappiest villains and they will not understand Revan or Malak. Haven't they screwed over Revan enough? "integrate elements from the first two games in order to bring certain things into the current Star Wars canon." They will completely trash Tales of the Jedi lore just as this Sith Empire business did.

There are probably a few bits and pieces discussed here. You'll need to go to Xentax and read the big TOR threads which discuss what tools you need and how to use them.

The dumb A.I. for starters, especially in the first game when firing at targets that are out of range, I'd burn the whole thing down just to ensure that my party members don't run up to point blank/melee range before attempting to fire their again. Terrible design. I'd also ensure that queued actions no longer reset when swapping characters and I'd be looking to add some type of movement command system to replace toggling solo mode for tactical positioning. As it stands, there is no way to simultaneously command everyone to escape a grenade blast radius which again is terrible. D20 is fine, in fact I'd be against anything else, however the guns in K1 need a complete overhaul for damage. The game needs to be harder, or at least an option to be. Yes, the PC dialog needs work, a lot of work, so does the romance dialog options and outcomes. For example, I can scarcely understand why there is no option to help Bastila with paying for treatment for her dying mother. Perfect way to provide for the love interest and gain LS points and it's nowhere to be found. Carth leaving Mission to die on Lehon when DS also needs a rewrite since his cowardice there goes completely against his character. The Sith need some work too, Darth Bandon is a complete joke of a character with his timid voice and generic, nonthreatening appearance. The Boss encounters, if they can be called that, in the first game need to be spruced up in general. A lot of them are very underwhelming.

Realistically, having players choices from previous games actually matter is impossible for practical reasons. I think KotOR 2 does a good job of referencing the choices without wasting resources accommodating all the different options. Having said that, if we are going to continue on as the exile, as I think they should have, you would have to implement some sort of time skip to give time for all your companions to disperse, and have the sith invasion occur without it feeling contrived that it happens exactly as K2 ends. You can have the exile ditch everyone and go off with T3, HK, and maybe Atton (he can't die without restored content, so he can be included). Mandalore has Mandalore stuff to do. Disciple/Handmaiden, Visas, Mira have Jedi/Sith training to do. You can then say the exile was screwing around looking for Revan for a few years (good excuse to lower the players level and alignment scores). I think that's a decent enough setup that lets old companions show up, but be easily replaceable, sort of like how mass effect worked. I think the sith invasion does need to occur at some point, for the story to have any stakes, but I'm not sure if it should be at the beginning or the end (for some K4 setup). The story really starts to just turn into mass effect/new Jedi order at this point so I'll stop.