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Hello, my username is DarthErdan, and I feel like it would be nice to explain how and why I came here, why I love KOTOR, (specifically KOTOR II: The Sith Lords), and why I have specific goals for my modding projects currently. (I feel like this would be a nice starting entry to my blog.) Ever since I was 7 years old, Star Wars was a fascinating curiosity to me. I can't even explain why, it just...sparked within me. Within a whole year, I have watched all Star Wars films and it really clicked in me so much, I became a hardcore fan. Long story short, I gradually, yet rapidly began exploring the lore, knowledge, and timeline of the Star Wars world, from 7 years old to 10 years old, I have learned so much, and around at the age of 10 or 11, I already knew too much about Star Wars...that looking back it is kind of scary to think about how fast my pacing was on learning about Star Wars. I already knew the difference between Legends/EU from the current "Disney Canon" Star Wars , the basics of the timeline from Phantom Menace to the current film(s), etc. The first time I learned about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or the Old Republic Era in general, was through a lightsaber app. I cannot remember what the app was, but basically you download it on your phone, swing it around, and it makes lightsaber noises, with the screen showing different handles of lightsabers from different characters. One handle was Darth Nihilus's lightsaber, and it was hard to tell if it was a legit Sith Lord back then or if it was a fan-made character. (Why I didn't even bother to look up Nihilus back then, I don't really know or remember, haha.) One night, in a birthday party for my grandfather, my great uncle wanted to show me a video game he was playing related to Star Wars which I recall was a modded Jedi Academy game, and there, for the first time, I saw Darth Nihilus. He looked...super creepy, cool, and totally my style flavor for a villain. Ever since than, I began looking deeper into Star Wars lore, and learned that there was a whole era unexplored for the Star Wars timeline that barely has to do with the movies timeline and era at all. It took me a while to learn more about the Old Republic Era and stories than with the movie era ones, but I got the hang of it eventually, learning of characters like Revan, Ajunta Pall, etc. The first time I learned of KOTOR was through the second game, (because that is where Darth Nihilus first appeared in obviously), and how I learned of the second game was an old video by YouTuber Shem L. For the next four years, I started going through some sort of "Cambrian Explosion" involving learning knowledge on the Old Republic Era, KOTOR, and all of those things. One big thing that helped me learn of the plot of KOTOR I and KOTOR II was through the films by Darth Varkor, DarthYcey, and Kevin Smet's KOTOR fan-films. This all culminated with me playing KOTOR II, and I loved it. Later, I lost KOTOR II, (for numerous reasons I prefer not to explain). I continued to watch the KOTOR movie projects by the same creators and even joined their community sometime in the early 2020s. By that point in time, I learned so much about the Old Republic Era in extensive and hardcore details, but there was still a lot more to learn. I was also aware that the KOTOR games had a community of modders with various mods, mostly on this site or GameFront, but I wasn't motivated until last year to finally outline some cool ideas for mods, whether redesigns or story ideas. Thus, I registered on DeadlyStream on August 2025, but it wasn't until the first month of 2026 that I finally got not only KOTOR II again, but KOTOR I for the first time. I was working up torwards buying a new laptop, as my old one was bad and not enough to handle games, so that is why I didn't buy the games until early 2026. My modding projects began, and I started experimenting on the tools and how things work. From that month to this day, I am still learning more, and more things about the modding tools, how to mod certain aspects, as well as scripting & dialogue editors. I am still very new to all of this, much to learn I still have, but I hope and am trying to encourage myself to progress and continue moving forward, as this is something I really want to get good at. Alright, this is my story related to me learning about KOTOR, the Old Republic, modding, etc. I am still new to learning more about things, (like cut content or modding tools themselves), but this is where I am at so far.

This might be considered a sequel of sorts to another blog I've made (found here) but you needn't read it to understand this one. (It is there so you could read afterwards but that's up to you, of course.) I've been around this community for some time. I've seen a lot of projects announced. I have seen very few of them to make it to a point of release. So I'm going to make a hot-take which is: Work first on everything that could feasibly be released separately if you don't finish the project. Let's be honest with ourselves: real-life happens. Sometimes, an author might lose interest in a project before it is done. And sometimes, the spirit is there but time requirements must be given elsewhere: work, family, school, etc. And even if these folks do manage to grab back some of that free time, that doesn't mean the passion for the old project is going to return. If work on large scale projects (such as a planet mod or a total conversion, for example) is doled out with possible smaller mods in mind, then at least the modder can at least release the parts they have completed. Net gain: the end user who could at least appreciate what did get uploaded to the community. If the modders does return to work on a project, they even have the added advantage of their materials being safe on a website without it being accidentally deleted or suffer being lost to a hard drive failure.

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.