sELFiNDUCEDcOMA

3 minutes ago, seedhartha said:

This may very well be true if we're talking about creating a new game, but with recreations, you're forced to do things in a very particular way, and to reimplement a lot of stuff, including the scripting subsystem, resource formats and etc. Because of that the benefit of using a third-party engine is much less than it could be, while the costs are still there.

As I've said, the hardest part is reimplementing the game logic. I fail to see how a Unity-based project has more chances at being finished and usable than its custom counterparts, which already have the low-level subsytems covered (reone and KotOR.js already do).

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.

1 hour ago, seedhartha said:

@sELFiNDUCEDcOMA

I think you're misunderstading the idea behind engine reimplementations. None of those are trying to recreate the vanilla engine in a sense of replicating the old technology - they are always based on newer frameworks (e.g. they use modern OpenGL with proper shaders), and they do add a *lot* of value to modders. Being open source, these projects allow modifications (gameplay and graphics wise) that were never possible with the vanilla engine.

As the person who have effectively recreated the KotOR engine, I can tell you that using a third-party (proprietary) game engine is actually more of a detriment to such projects - it *hurts* their long-term viability. Recreating graphics, audio and miscellaneous subsystems are least of your worries as the engine developer, since you're going to spend most of your time reimplementing the game logic - this is just as true for Unity-based projects.

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.

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.

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.

More news on the situation at Lucasfilm...

58 minutes ago, 1Leonard said:

Thinking firing KK will change anything is like thinking firing Ellen Pao changed anything at Reddit.

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.

The horror... 

22 hours ago, Sith Holocron said:

Saw Solo tonight.  It bored me. Walked out twice for smoke breaks and didn't hurry back to the theatre.

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.

Mainly I'm referring to Atton contacting you whilst you're on Dxun and the scene on Nar Shaddaa where Kreia gives you a lesson on kindnesses and cruelties.

 

Those are the only two "fake enclosed sets" I can think of.

 

But they'd need model changing IMO so the textures correspond with the actual Ebon Hawk modules.

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.

I'm curious about something, how are you managing the scenes where a PM contacts you through the force/comlink inside the Ebon Hawk but the EH is obviously using the textures from said module you're currently in. 

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.

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.

As far as I can tell, this is a general question not a WIP post/thread.

This thread doesn't belong here.

Looking forward to this.

"Dooku Voice."

 

How's the functionality going to be divided up?

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.

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.

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.

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:

 

(I'm assuming this is in response to my earlier post about all film being subjective. Apologies if I've misread this.)

No there have been a number of posts by different people that have mentioned it.

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.

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...

What's important to fans shouldn't really matter. GL never really cared, and that's why I love I-VI - and why I'm happy enough with TFA and loooove TLJ. Rian didn't really consider "Will the fans like this?" and seemed to mostly operate on a basis of "This is a story I want to tell and this is how I want to do it". TFA played it a bit too safe for my liking, but I was still very pleased with it and think it felt SW enough

 

There's obviously no way to tell yet whether these movies will go for what they think fans want vs. what they want to create, but eh

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

Apologies for going off topic but who was the original director for TLJ? I was always under the assumption it was Rian Johnson from the beginning.

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.

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.

I've done a TSL Toasty Fresh weapon set for personal use that I used for a long time (and still use parts of). The problem with your crashing is likely from the shadow casting. The only way to make models not exhibit what I call 'the infinite shadow issue' is to make the meshes not have any overlapping parts within themselves. You can think of it as no hidden/internal/trapped faces ... here's an example:

 

 

 

 

shadow_trapped_surface_isolate.jpg

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, this issue just shows up as "weird" elongated shadows that seem to distort towards a point in the distance (when viewed from certain angles), at other times it causes crashing. I assume which behavior you get depends on lots of different factors.

 

So I don't know if you'll want to fix TF's meshes, but you can always just turn off the shadow flag if you're looking for something quick and dirty. I think I just left them alone because there are only a couple that are bad and for me they don't crash, just have messed up shadows (also I only recently figured out what the problem is and how to fix it).

It's a possibility that it is something to do with the issue, but if you are referring to the shadow-flag (byte) in the mesh node, then I already tried turning them off. However, I've found that the dirt-texture entries (both Int16) also affect whether shadows get rendered or not. I set them bot to zero but haven't gotten around to testing them yet -- it doesn't crash immediately, but something like 15-25 minutes into play.

Again, could be part of the issue, but, I need to audit the edited model files to make sure that the changes made when converting to TSL haven't been stuffed up anywhere. It may also be a case that switching to a different model type will solve the issue -- as not all of them cast shadows. Hopefully it is something easy that doesn't require model mesh editing, as I'm not set up for that or have the time for it -- my modelling experience (especially for 3DSMax) is limited. Which could be the case if it is actually something to do with the scale controller which resizes the meshes to look right in the game.

My feeling is that it could be this, as that is likely what the game is doing when it crashes. It's resizing the models based on read in mdx data that may have issues or it is just not expecting the models to needing to be scaled -- I'd have to check the vanilla models, but, I think they don't use this controller and its presence could be causing the issue.

Well, I thought I'd clarify some things.

I've been working on my tool quite a bit, in that I wanted to get certain features done before I left it alone for I don't know how long. One of the things I wanted to do was support K1 models, which it hadn't up until that point. That was relatively easy. Then I wanted to support the conversion of K1 models to K2; that was a bit more involving considering the way the tool reads the models. I also had to write a feature that removed orphan controller header data that I think an old version of MDLOps would put into the model files.

Having done this I put it to the test, in that I gained permission (quite some time ago) from Toasty Fresh to use his weapon work within my mod. My plan back then was to replace all the models and create new ones for all the uniques, never got a round to it. Since then Sithspecter released a weapon mod for TSL for all the ranged weapons that looks great -- haven't gotten around to using it myself as I wanted to keep my install primarily just to my own mod files for clarity. So, I focused on the melee weapons.

I converted the models, got them working, and updated the textures so that each had their own variant to (more or less) match those found in TSL. I also created some new model variants to use in special cases from model variants that Toasty supplied. However, I also used some weapon models done by Oldflash who I also got permission years ago to use his work -- though, I think he has since stated that anyone can use his work.

However, on playing a section of the game repeatedly -- the tomb -- I found that the game would crash when one of the NPCs would switch to a vibrosword. I've determined that it is the new models, however, haven't found what issue with them is causing this. It could be a model mesh setting that I set that doesn't need to be set, it could be a setting that isn't set that needs to be set, it could be the base model type I'm using for the weapon -- weapons can be any number of model types -- or it could be something to do with the conversion process that got stuffed up that I haven't catched yet.

I'll give it some more work, however, I will likely remove the new models and textures for the release and just leave the new UI icons in place for weapons. When the game loads a model based on the UTI and finds the model variant is not present, it defaults to the first model variant for that weapon type. So, it won't look great in a few cases, however, the game will still be playable with the vanilla melee weapon models or with someone else's that replaces them.

The main thing I would like to do, is complete the dxun tomb animated computer screens, for which I am still testing out colour schemes to use:

It's the main thing I want to get done. I'd also like to do the Telos RZ grass texture, however, I currently have it as a simple transparent texture so, it won't look as great but it is still playable.

I've simply run out of time on this, I really want to get some kind of release done as I don't know when or if I will ever return to this again. But I have devoted too much time to it already due to my stubbornness and puzzling interest in this game, considering the future of (and vision for) Star Wars based on the last film released by Disney. I can only think of this video series as to why TSL (over KotOR) as a story holds such interest for me, and why I wanted to tell my own story within it via a planet mod.

My intent currently is to complete a few things and the try a few things for the sword models to see if I can get them to work without crashing the game. Then I need to playtest the start of the game to ensure that I don't have any testing stuff still appearing at the start. Once that is done, I will then compile a list of all the things this mod does (to the best of my recollection) and then zip up my mod files to release them.

When I have more to post, I will. 

Some miscellaneous stuff... [had to post this separate as I hit my max images per post limit]