sELFiNDUCEDcOMA

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Everything posted by sELFiNDUCEDcOMA

  1. First off, this ain't your thread. And going back to what I originally posted, I was talking about those subsystems. You are reimplementing these when you do not have to. The whole approach is wrong, a waste of time, that will likely only end up with an engine that is slightly better looking graphics wise to the original that work perfectly fine right now. Yet, they will have most of the same modding limitations. Because of instead of approaching things from today, like you would in an engine like Unity, you have decided to use a framework and then recreate the same subsystems as they are found in the original games. Now this ain't my thread, and I don't want to hijack it in order to talk apparently about YOUR work.
  2. As someone with 20 years in game development, some of it commercial, I disagree. Any argument you make in supporting building an engine on top of a framework over using an existing mature engine with tools, etc. Is going to be weak to me and nothing more than justifications to do the things you want to do: making your own engine as a hobby project that could very well end up like all the rest, unfinished and mostly unusable.
  3. An (overdue) update for those that want to know: Have I ceased work on the "mod": no, not exactly. Will I release anything new anytime soon: probably not, I have other priorities. I gotta say that having a look at some of the development tool-wise that there's a lot to be positive about. For a long time it seemed that tools were stagnant, and all that we had were old ones made in Perl that did only half the job. Then we had new people come into the community that changed all that. Anyway, to explain with the state of the mod, I just don't have the time to spare to spend on it, or even the motivation. Usually what brings me back to the project, is some new Star Wars thing to get me excited. And I don't want to get into it, but I just haven't had anything get me excited enough about Star Wars of late to do that. I guess The Mandalorian kinda did, but then that kinda changed recently. That said, I have other projects that I spend my time on as these have a commercial intent -- meaning: I can potentially make money from them unlike modding. And this other project: I'm looking to release something on Steam by the end of the year. Regarding the mod, I stopped working on it early 2018 when I was forced to buy a new dev laptop. I installed the games, but didn't install the mod along with my saves -- just backed these up. If I play TSL again I may be compelled to do work on new areas. Also, I may take a completed area and make it available as a standalone. These would just be the edited models and textures. Probably Korriban. I hope that is enough explanation for those that are curious about this mod.
  4. This is very interesting. Finally someone using an existing battle tested modern engine for the basis of tools and a game engine update rather than creating one effectively from scratch. Not to disparage those other projects, some of those are interesting too due to what they add to the knowledge base. Just seems like those are more about writing a game engine from scratch and less about making something that's useful for the long-term. Really hope that with the implementation of the replacement "engine" that it doesn't just stick with the limitations of old. With Unity you could add a lot of features that the games just don't have, along with bypassing arbitrary limitations imposed by the original developers -- likely due to Xbox hardware limitations. Otherwise all you're doing is re-implementing the game "engine" and not adding anything new to modders or players of the games. Anyway, thought I'd chime in with my appreciation.
  5. More news on the situation at Lucasfilm...
  6. I think that the situation is not entirely the same. I'm not a reddit user/fan, but, they don't seem to be in the entertainment business having spent 4 billion on an IP that came with an existing established fan-base they needed to sell future products to -- the SW franchise. Then allowed that fan-base to be vilified because they saw that The Last Jedi, and though being a good looking film, thought it was an utter turd that shat on The Force Awakens and the original trilogy, so as to push an agenda at all costs -- even story. These fans no longer trust critic reviews, because they went to see The Last Jedi because critics said it was the best Star Wars film ever. This resulted in the film doing less at the box office compared to The Force Awakens, as these fans did not return to the cinema for repeat viewings. Then when Solo came out, they opted to send a message to Lucasfilm (Disney) by not spending their money to see it. And no I actually don't think this was due to an organised boycott -- lots of fans came to this conclusion on their own, and those that aren't fans, simply decided that a SW film was no longer an indicator of money well spent and best use of their leisure time. Money talks, and a loss of money (revenue) to Disney makes things like Kathleen Kennedy being fired for her role in all this as the head of Lucasfilm, a reality -- even if at the moment they are having a hard time finding someone to take the job after KK made it toxic. It may not make much of a difference, but it is a first (critical) step. Personally, I think the deciding factor will be the performance of SW IX, that will clarify the impact Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi has had on the profitability of Star Wars.
  7. Yeah, really not a great must see film. I think if you were to ask yourself, "if this wasn't a Star Wars film, would I pay money to see it?", the answer would be no but you might stream it if you are bored and looking to watch anything sci-fi related. I also think that the writing in particular was something I'd expect from a made for TV film. It feels like it was written for television as part of some expanded universe, made for fan service but not good enough for a cinema release. I wonder with all their current issues -- Kathleen Kennedy rumored to already having been fired -- whether this may be a better strategy for them regarding Star Wars anthology films. Make them streaming only releases, like you find on NetFlix but instead for Disney's own streaming service. Which I've heard about. And for cinema releases, trilogy films that come out every other year. Oh, and non-EA Star Wars games... books... comics... if they can fix their problem before Star Wars is dead to the majority of fans. And yes, I have seen the film and no I didn't watch it at the cinema -- and I'll leave it at that.
  8. Any model changes will have to wait until I add the features to my tool to support it. Any additional work will have to likely wait until near the end of May; and that still depends on various factors.
  9. You'd have to be specific with when this happens, as the most recent part of the game I have played is the last part of the game commencing with the Telos station attack. It depends upon the models they are using, typically when it cuts to some other part of a place, it doesn't use that place as you would see it as the player moving through the environment. It's actually a fake enclosed set that is in the same level "scene." So it you are on Telos, and it cuts to the "Ebon Hawk" it doesn't load the Ebon Hawk level and models it just jumps to a small little enclosed interior model that is way off to one part of the level. Anyway, depends upon the model in that you could replace the textures with ones that look a better fit, and if that doesn't work or isn't an option, you can replace the models used themselves. However, I have yet to do any of that so far; my focus has been on other things and it has been so long since I played various parts of the game, that I am just unaware of them. Also, I can't help but end up playing a dark-side character, so conceivably, there are parts of the game I have actually NOT seen as they are restricted to light-side players.
  10. I can't directly quote figures and the sources for such figures, but from what I've seen from what appear to be well informed commentators, TLJ has well under-performed to what Disney was expecting. They reportedly paid 4 billion for the IP -- or the deal was worth that to Lucas -- just because a movie makes a billion (or 2) doesn't mean that is a billion in profit for Disney. The movie cost something to make -- hundreds of millions -- then it cost something to market -- from other mediums, I know it can cost just as much to market the product as it cost to make. Then there is everyone who is getting a slice of the income coming in from the cinemas. Then there is the cost of merchandising, which sales for appear to be nonexistent. The poor user ratings for the film aren't "bots" or a minority with an agenda. The movie looks good but is actually utter rubbish. The main demographic for the film can easily see that, why TLJ is not performing as well as TFA as they are not opting to see the film multiple times -- again, based on what has been said by informed commentators; can't be sure on their sources. Disney wants to make a lot of money from Star Wars, not just break even or generate what is comparatively a small profit compared to what they paid for the IP. To think that Disney is not paying attention to all this, is rather naive. An example of what appears to me to be an informed commentator: https://youtu.be/-Xpm5LZaxZ0 https://youtu.be/i_PLxzm6uJQ As for contacting Disney to air my complaints, I won't be doing that but rather not paying to see either the Solo flick or episode IX. Not saying don't, as doing so stating you won't be seeing the next SW film because of TLJ, along with doing that. Could make it rather clear to disney the impact of TLJ. I'm just someone who prefers to allow actions to speak for themselves. BTW: how do you embed YouTube videos into a post -- I can't get it to work.
  11. As far as I can tell, this is a general question not a WIP post/thread. This thread doesn't belong here.
  12. If you mean the installation files, at the moment I have a lot of things in sub-folders, however, my original intent was just to copy all that into a single folder. But, with the issues with the lightsabers, I thought I would at least separate those out as though they fix issues, they come with a trade-off. I may also do the same with things like armor / robes. Not everyone is going to like the changes I made to models or, the changes I made to the UTI files themselves -- I made certain robes for example, to be light / dark side limited along with a few that are class limited. Regardless, the bulk of the mod files are actually all organised into the one sub-folder at the moment.
  13. So far Korriban hasn't had any .mdl edits so won't require updated models to be install but, most other areas end up having model edits to at least change textures used. I in particular like to change any texture from another texture set to the area I'm working on that I find. It's hard enough when its textures within this set that get used all over the place for all manner of purposes, but it's even more of a pain to find that the area is using a texture from somewhere else that I've long stopped work on. It's easier to switch it to have a clean canvas to work on than it is to try and adapt your direction to work with what has been done for another area.
  14. So continued due to images per post limitation... I also went and did the textures for the secret tomb as well: And that's all of Korriban done.
  15. So, I was working on a few things during Sunday, first was the Saber issue. Sadly, I cannot do much at the present to fix this other then address the black explosion decal from grenades and such: On looking at the Korriban pink cave wall issue, I realised that the cave largely made use of only 3 textures, so, I just replaced them: This resulted in me looking at the other areas of Korriban, and noticed that some of the outside textures were being used in the Academy: I was going to edit the models so that they used different models to the outside but, then I just started replacing textures using a specific texture used on the outside as the basis for much of the ones on the inside:
  16. No there have been a number of posts by different people that have mentioned it.
  17. The argument that TLJ is art and therefore its all subjective and therefore matters little if we like the film or not, in my opinion, is a nice superficial argument to dismiss how bad the film is and why we "haters" of the film and our opinions of it are unimportant. Sure, 1 person's opinion is subjective and (largely) is inconsequential. But a lot of people's "subjective" opinions matters a great deal. I think Disney are worried about how bad the user (not critic) scores of the film are. They bought this IP for a lot of money, not so as to simply break even or generate a short-term profit from it -- where it stands at the moment, to be honest, I have no idea. It was part of a long-term sustained revenue for them generating 100x (if not way more) on what they paid for it. Publicly they aren't worried, internally I am certain they are looking at this seriously as to how viable the SW licence is now to them and what they can do about it going forward -- like hiring a new writer/director team to entrust the future of SW with. I'd like to also share another "subjective" observation with you. When I saw TLJ at the cinema, it was the first time in a long time that I saw people start getting up and leaving half-way through a film. They never returned. Mind you, this is a Star Wars film. On the film (finally) ending, only 1 person -- a young man -- was clapping and cheering like you normally expect at the end of a Star Wars film. He abruptly quit when he released he was alone, and not even his companions were clapping with him. Most, were sitting there in silence. Sure, the film made money, but that was due to many people being mislead about how good the film was. How many went back for multiple viewings as SW fans tend to do? How many are going to bother to see the next SW film at the cinema, instead of waiting to see it later digitally and potentially for free? How many are going to buy the merchandise for a film they do not like? How many are going to want to buy media based on the expanded universe of TLJ or future SW films? I think that these are all questions Disney would be asking.
  18. So, I fixed my melee weapons problem: Turns out it was a conversion problem of sorts. When I wrote the code, I stuffed up the file header .mdl byte length entry correction. Essentially it didn't update at all, which I fixed, however, I had already exported a bunch of models. I decided to manually fix this for them. It just so happens that for the vibroswords, I got one of the entries wrong, it was 164999 instead of 16499. Funny thing is that this is actually important. I initially realised that I had stuffed up the correction of these entries when I realised certain models were not being rendered in-game. Oddly some were, however, I hadn't played long enough for these to cause a game crash. I found that out with the vibroswords later. So far it seems like it was only the vibroswords that were affected; all of them, as Toasty made a different style of model for each, and I opted to use the one style for all variants. So, they were all copies of the same model file with the bad entry. I think it won't be an issue for any of the rest, so, I should be able to release with updated models / textures for the sword melee weapons. However, on my numerous playtests of the Dxun Tomb to test for the above issue, I got very used to playing this part of the game so much so that I started to notice things I hadn't before. Like this issue with the fixed lightsaber models: So the problem is that particle effects -- those with blending mode additive -- are blending over the top (as it were) with the lightsabers particle effect -- the blades. I'll need to test some things, including seeing if this was an issue with the original saber models. But hopefully I can fix this or at least modify some of the particle effects (that use dark textures) so that this won't be an issue -- though, there will likely be a trade off. I also need to load and check each area of the game, as I found I had some left over temp textures used for finding out how certain textures were being used in areas: Can't release a mod with such a glaring oversight. Not sure what this means for time-frame...
  19. I'd write a reply regarding your misaligned naive love of TLJ, but, why bother when this video series is reply enough: https://youtu.be/vw7pcCj0ORk
  20. Actually got that wrong, KK fired the director for IX not TLJ -- JJA was the original director for TLJ. But I have to wonder why, in that if I were the director for that film and had to make a follow up to a bloated mess of a film in a trilogy, I'd probably be "difficult" to work with too. I still think KK is inept though, in that she actually doesn't understand what Star Wars is and what is important to fans -- not really being one herself beyond its potential to generate revenue.
  21. I think the damage has been done with TLJ; I can't unsee TLJ. I'm not at all positive about this news which seems to me to be Disney (Kathleen Kennedy) trying to repair the damage from not actually understanding what Star Wars is beyond its capability to generate revenue for Disney. It wouldn't surprise me if RJ's "trilogy" never happens. They seem to me to have been hired to replace who KK thought was the new "Star Wars" guy and the future of the franchise, but, who clearly isn't based on the reaction to TLJ. It's probably yet another inept decision on KK's part after firing the original director for TLJ to replace him with RJ.