Leaderboard

Which other mods are you using?

The Bioware Developers? Just watch this video and judge for yourself, that's exactly how Bioware left it and what we modders are left to start with. That is entirely up to the individual modder to decide. For example, TSLRP restored Kaevee and the GenoHaradan and used custom content to restore them. TSLRCM didn't restore the GenoHaradan as it was custom content but restored Kaevee anyway with custom content. K1R optimized cut content, dare I say the Pazaak Tournament was mostly costume content as the only evidence of it existing was that old Pazaak player in the Cantina having lines to reference it. The K1R Vulkar Sublevel bar had an additional mechanic, some added food placeables, and an entirely custom Duro waiter. The Duro waiter adds no bearing to the level, you wouldn't even know it's custom... but it IS custom and thus deviates from the developer's original vision. In the original Vulkar Sublevel which you can see in the video above, there is an asian woman with a man's voice and a man with an old man's voice. If a modder changes these NPC appearances, is that deviating from developer intent? We will never know. The bartender encounter in K1R has it so that he speaks for a little bit, then he performs a "talk_forceful" animation, then pulls out a short sword which he then drops. Since that was done by a modder, is that deviating from developer intent? And even worse, the cut dialogue in the game files uses Duro VO even though an english spoken line is in the game files... so what was the Developers intent? To use the English VO or to have the Bartender be a Duro and use Duro VO? There are three versions of the Vulkar Coward exist in the dialog.tlk, the Twi'lek we have in the final game, the english voiced version we see in K1R, and a version in the tlk which has VO labelled but the text in the TLK does not match the recorded VO - this text is what suggests that the terminal should be in the Vulkar Coward's room and that the Barracks should have a footlocker with the passcard. Which one do I use? Which one do I use as to not deviate from developer intent. The matter of the fact is this, we modders decide where to draw the line, and sometimes picking things and improving cut content is the only way to restore cut content in a way that is enjoyable. Trust me, no one wants to play the HK Factory in K2 the way Obsidian left it on the Xbox disk. Are you talking from the perspective of a Bioware developer or from Salk's as a modder? If it's Salk's, he is under no obligation to release his private work and can do what he likes with the Vulkar Sublevel (Nothing's stopping him from turning it into an Iriaz Zoo after all). If it's from a Bioware developer, the developers don't get a choice. They have shareholders to appease, publishers aka LucasArts to appease and they have to publish something if they want to get paid. If that means shortening the Vulkar Base to get it finish than that's what they had to do, trust me - cutting the Vulkar Base sublevel was done better than how Obsidian dealt with cut content. It's entire purpose is a roleplaying game, of course we can say this with hindsight but from the perspective of someone from 2003 who just bought the game for the Xbox it's a traditional Star Wars story of a character going on a roleplaying adventure who becomes a Jedi Knight just like the Star Wars traditional heroes like Luke Skywalker from the movies. That's the problem, no one can do that. They are gone without a trace, it's as if they passed away years ago and no one has found out about it. And yet those same people still play Republic Commando and love Clone Troopers and the Andor television show, elements of Star Wars without the Jedi and everything associated with it. On Peragus you were literally the only person alive on an isolated asteroid with an army of droids and your three companions. Taris, on the other hand, had six party members, had interesting level designs like the Upper City which was full of life and was similar to Coruscant, the Lower City which was full of gangsters reminiscent of the criminal elements of the movies, the Under City was literally a unique take on Zombies, the Sewers were interesting as they had Gamorreans and Rancors from Episode 6 appear, you had Swoop Racing which was similar to Pod Racing in Episode One (I do agree that Swoop Racing is a letdown in these games), you had diverse enemies which diverse loot, you had merchants on Taris to buy better loot, you had unique quests like bounty hunting, the cure quest, and the duel arena, you had Hutts appear, you could steal Sith Armor like Luke and Han did in the movies, you got to play as a Wookiee, a Twi'lek, and an Astromech droid. In short, Taris has that appeal if you're a fan from 2003 who only just got the game and has no other context of what to expect whilst Peragus will always be that slow, dull, drag. The shareholders say otherwise, the same is still true today as people love to hate on newly released video games like Jedi Survivor who claim that the devs for that game released it early even though it wasn't fully optimized for medium-end PCs and current gen consoles - it would be great for developers to really bug test and add everything that they want in their game, but the unholy trinity of publisher, shareholder, and dollar says otherwise. I was more so being sarcastic, but the mod I changed I only changes the main character into a Jedi.

Hello KotOR modding community. It has certainly been a long time since I've posted here. While life has been busy and can get in the way of modding, I have been working on a big project in secret. For the past few years I have been chipping away at my own version of an A.I. Upscale 4x mod for most of the default character files in both games. Because it has been slow going, I didn't want to get distracted by constantly responding to "when is it going to be ready?" prompts when I could be spending time on the files. I also didn't want to get anyone's hopes up about it, only to then keep delaying because I'm often too much of a perfectionist. But after so much time has elapsed, I keep thinking that I need to put something out, even if it is incomplete in my books. To give you an idea of how big a project this is, I have completed 329/475 textures that are common to both games, 71/214 textures for K1, and 184/419 textures for TSL. That makes for a grand total of 584/1108 textures or 52.71%. I'm using the textures as the basis for completion, but there are also 459 models for K1 and 648 models for TSL completed so far. I've attached a spreadsheet with a list of all the files involved. The reason why it is so slow going is that this mod is more than just a simple process of running all the character textures through an A.I. upscaling program. The purpose is to increase the size and fidelity of the character textures while maintaining the painterly style of the original game artists. I have also been attempting to fix many of the UVW mapping errors, lighting errors, and some XYZ errors that the original model .mdl & .mdx files may have had. One problem of upscaling textures that I've found is that the model seams become glaringly obvious at higher resolution, so I've been painstakingly painting those to look seamless. Anyone who is familiar with my previously released mods will know how much I try to fix those pesky model errors. The other thing about A.I. upscaling software, is that I haven't found one that gives perfect results. Instead of relying on one result, I usually run texture files through an A.I. upscaling program multiple times using different settings. Some settings result in "crunchy" textures (high contrast, sharp edges). Some result in "soft" textures (smooth gradients, lower contrast, blurry edges). Some result in better straight/parallel lines. Early tests used Vance AI; Deep Image; ImageUpscaler; or Let's Enhance. Eventually Topaz Labs' Gigapixel AI was chosen and used on the majority of textures. Then I combine textures in a multi layered Photoshop file, using layer masks to isolate the best parts of each upscaled image. This allows for some portions to be smooth (like skin, glass, metal or tubing), others to be sharp (like burlap, skin folds, hair, scratches, etc). Then I manually paint away errors, fix seams, and make additional changes. At any rate, the reason for this WIP post is that I've been out of the loop for so long, that I don't know the best way to package and upload the mod. I usually use 7zip, so that's not the problem. I currently have 378 tga, tpc, & txi files (4.09 GB) that are common to both games; 459 mdl, mdx, tga, tpc, & txi files (1.07 GB) specifically for K1; 648 mdl, mdx, tga, & txi files (2.90 GB) specifically for TSL. I was originally planning on packaging them up all together and letting the user to put them into their respective override folders, making the common files only needing to be downloaded once. The other option is to make two download packages, one for each game, where the common files are included in both packs. This would result in having to download the largest batch of files twice, but it would be easier for installation. To complicate it further, I would also make download packages for a tpc only installation (for smaller file sizes and easier to run in-game). The other questions I have are: which upload method do users prefer: single download for both games (smaller size overall), or two files (one for each game makes installation easier)? how many screenshot images can be uploaded to showcase the contents of the mod? I currently have 197 pngs for a total of 561 MB, and would like to make more. I've attached a few to sample a range of the types of changes the mod tackles. are there any samples for the Read Me file regarding Permissions and Credits? I want to make the tga version into a modder's resource. Where is the best place to put a link to my "Buy me a Coffee" tip jar? I'm hoping to use any funds towards software upgrades for future modding. I don't know if I'll ever actually finish this mod, but I need to share what I've got before the universe jumps in again and makes something impossible for me. Anyway, happy New Year. I hope to continue more of this work in 2025. Screenshot samples: KotOR upscale completed list v0_52.xlsx

Here's something that reaches the criteria: https://www.gamefront.com/games/knights-of-the-old-republic/file/female-pfhc01-head-reskins