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Yavin IV by jenkeee: maintenanced We have not updated the VEH post for quite a while. This is our core mod about Revan’s mask, based on the old Yavin mod. From the outside, it may have looked like the mod was abandoned. In reality, everything is very simple: while working on the previous mod, we had to study the KOTOR and Odyssey systems in much greater detail, and we came to the conclusion that the previous result was not enough. At first, the plan was smaller. But the deeper we got into it, the more obvious it became that a mod about the mask should not be just an item, a dialogue, and a few events. It should be a full modification. This time, the modification is planned to be much larger: new locations, scripted cutscenes, separate scenes, and a more complex technical foundation. Work is moving slowly. Most likely, we will not finish the main modification earlier than in 3–5 months. At the same time, there is another mod I would like to discuss with all the Jedi in the comments. Right now, less than 10% of the main work is done: mostly prepared dialogues, assets, and the technical base. But, as always, there is a BUT. During development, we accumulated enough files to assemble a separate modification. In the mask mod, we planned a level on a swoop bike. The original mini-game was not suitable for full movement, so in the end we wrote a workaround controller. It turned out pretty fun, and we decided to assemble it into a separate modification and share it with everyone. We hope to see our scripts in your own modifications someday. This mod was made by the darthMouse creative team for two categories of people. The first category is players who have already seen almost everything in KOTOR, but still return to this game from time to time for personal reasons that nobody else can really understand. In our mod, you will be able to visit levels that are not available during normal gameplay, but that you still know. These are the swoop-racing levels from the mini-games. The second category is modders. This is a ready-made package with tested scripts. You can look at jenkeee’s elegant solutions, inspired by the work of Master Zionosis and MotOR Squad. In every module, the logic described in OnRoomEnter can be moved to a helper, and we can implement mount / dismount tools almost like in any MMO from the 2000s, but inside KOTOR. This publication is exactly that: a demo. Not the final version of the big mod, but a set of materials you can touch, test, and possibly use in other modifications. What is included in the demo The archive includes a custom swoop-race package for KOTOR1. Currently available: Tatooine 2026 Manaan 2026 Yavin 2026 preview / raw Taris 2026 Nar Shaddaa 2026 The races can be launched through Yavin Station. The idea is that KOTOR can be used not only as a set of corridors, dialogues, and battles. With careful work on scripts, modules, and player states, it is possible to plan larger locations — almost in a GTA-style logic, as far as that is even possible inside Odyssey. Of course, this is not “GTA in KOTOR” and not a finished universal framework. It is more of a demonstration of direction: how we can think about transport, movement, separate player states, and larger zones within the limits of an old engine. If you have questions, ideas, strange scenarios, or even comments that may look silly at first glance — write them. This is exactly the kind of case where a “stupid question” can save several weeks of development. A small author’s digression I often say obvious things, but sometimes it is useful for someone to read them. Maybe this will be the first source of obviousness in someone’s life. At one point, I used to read Habr and admire how smart and complicated the people there seemed. Today, many things written there look either obvious to me or like an eternal holy war. And the obvious thing I want to write about is this: the importance of your questions. The stupidest question, according to someone, is still the first step toward solving a problem. Very often, a person cannot ask the right question simply because other topics have not been discussed before. When you approach something complex without knowledge, you do not only lack the answer — you do not even understand what question needs to be asked. And the question is the most important thing. Without a question, there will be no answer. When will salaries become decent? When will the war end? Where is true love? Why, why exactly — Kathleen Kennedy? As you can see, I am not trying to answer such difficult questions. But many of you are probably ready to answer them. Usually, people just do not answer such things for the public. They talk about them with friends. And if you do not have situations like that, maybe you are a lonely person. Almost like Terry Davis. This man spoke with God through a keyboard, starting somewhere around 2005. He was inspired by systems like the Commodore 64, and even back then he could see meaning in the generated answers of his TempleOS. Of course, he was not the first person like that in history. There is an even more famous figure — Alan Turing. But can you imagine Alan today? And Terry? I feel like Terry died too early. His knowledge would have complemented today’s world very well. Today, every second person communicates with a computer almost as naturally: writes a question, receives an answer, argues, clarifies, gets angry, formulates the question again. What once looked like a strange personal obsession has now become a normal part of life. I am not sure I have perfectly formulated what I wanted to express in this text. But maybe that is the point. Do not be afraid to ask. Sometimes you will receive an answer before you even manage to say the question out loud. And if you formulate the question well enough, it often turns out that the answer is already somewhere nearby — or that you already know where to look for the source of truth. This mod is a tech demo, a technical snapshot, and an invitation to discussion. Download it, test it, break it, ask questions, and write comments. It is important for us to understand what scenarios we need to take into account next — especially if you make KOTOR mods yourself or want to use some of these solutions in your own projects.

Hi everyone, Working on this mod has been a really exciting experience. I’ve said before — probably everywhere I’ve posted about it — that this project started simply as a result of my curiosity, and eventually I decided to share it with everyone. Game modding tutorials I’d like to thank all the people who left the first comments and showed interest in the mod. Your reactions were the exact push I needed to want to bring this project into a more complete state. Since then, the project has grown a lot, and the number of files involved has increased significantly. The mod is now in a working state and is still actively being developed, so I’ll be updating the description to reflect the project as it currently stands. Updated Overview of the Project Files 1. Original requirement You need the original Yavin 4 mod by MotOR Squad + Master Zionosis. 2. Yavin by jenkeee EN - installer.zip This is my fix package for the mod. It repairs several quests so the mod works properly on the modern Steam version of the game. I also changed the final fight with Trask and added Revan’s Mask as a loot drop. 3. Yavin Trask Head Universal Hotfix.zip During development, I encountered a bug where Trask could lose his head model. This installer is meant to overwrite Trask-related files in the Override folder and fix that issue. 4. kotor_stability01.zip This is a small legacy safe-mode launcher. Inside the package there is a text file where you need to specify the path to your kotor.exe. 5. Yavin Yav_93 Leviathan Terminal Hotfix.zip Thanks to the players who reported this bug. The terminal on level 93 uses two Leviathan terminal entries from the vanilla game. While restoring the terminal for the mod, my Override files unintentionally affected the Leviathan level as well. This hotfix corrects that problem. 6. veh1.1 - installer.zip This is the version of the mask with baked animations. The cloak is no longer static, and now moves slightly, as if it were fluttering in the wind. Savegame Reminder A quick reminder about how the KOTOR save system works: if an object with an error has already been written into your save, that error may remain stored in the save file itself. Because of that, when applying fixes, it is strongly recommended to load a save made before entering the location where the problem was found. Ideally, you should load a save from before your first visit to that location. That is the best way to ensure your installation remains valid. Why I Started Making These Posts I started making these posts because I wanted to talk to the Jedi still out there. The saga is going through difficult times, and the disturbances in the Force are stronger than ever. More than anything, I’m interested in what players think: is there really a need for a remake like the one Gothic 1 is getting? With KOTOR II, my opinion is absolutely clear — that game deserves a full remake. But KOTOR I is a different case. It is a complete and finished work, and in many ways it is still beautiful exactly as it is. KOTOR has always been a game for enthusiasts, and even today I still play it on the highest difficulty. For those who have read this far, from this point on I want to describe the technical side of the project. Technical Side of the Project BioWare removed the cloak and the mask from the release version of the game, leaving them only in cutscenes. Why? And more importantly — for what reason? Trying to answer that question is exactly why I began all these experiments with KOTOR resources, as a level-capped Jedi Consular digging into the game’s internals. I did not try to add more polygons to the cloak model. My goal was to preserve its original state as much as possible. I still had to redefine a few vertices, but I tried to stay as close to the original as I could. You can see the result of this work either by downloading the mod or by watching the short video below. The Main Question And that is really why I wrote this wall of text — to ask one question. Jedi friends, and Sith class enemies alike: should I continue this mod? DarthMouse and I have a lot of ideas. There is also a huge amount of work ahead, and this is not development in Unity or Unreal. I want to use my mod as an example and explain how I made the cloak move — and the reaction to this post will show whether this project deserves to live on. About the Technical Process First, we have to understand what is actually possible in the KOTOR environment. KOTOR is a true legacy dinosaur, and any developer understands that movement can, in theory, be handled either on the CPU or on the GPU. I do not want to turn this into a lecture — I’m only giving a broad overview of the technical process. In the end, the entire approach depends on that core decision: do we simulate cloak movement on the GPU, or on the CPU? After studying the engine — Aurora, Odyssey, KOTOR — I decided to stay with the kind of technology that would have been available to the original developers at the time. That means rigging the mesh and creating animations for the beautiful and terrible state mixer that KOTOR uses. To the modders who will keep experimenting with KOTOR after me: please study my work before you try to make cloth movement with bones and animation. I still hope that one day I will see a proper GPU-based solution, maybe even with a full ReShade-style injection. Why BioWare Probably Cut the Cloak I’ll answer the original question briefly: for anyone who has actually tried animating this cloak, the reason BioWare cut it from the release becomes obvious. First, without increasing the polygon count, it is extremely difficult to make the cloth look truly presentable. Second, the state mixer makes debugging much harder. Third, development time. I spent more than 36 hours just on the walking animation alone. And where I spent 36 hours today, twenty years ago I would have spent at least 300. That, more than anything else, is why the cloak and Revan’s mask were never fully completed for gameplay in the original release. Final Note In many ways, this entire reconstruction was made for this look. Media boss fight: short with new mask: Original walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcvhjSGpTnE&t=1s