sELFiNDUCEDcOMA

Peragus continued...

Well, it's been a while, longer than I had intended. So, without further delay here are some screens of my latest work retexturing the Peragus mining facility...

If you mean the mod a teaser version is up already via Deadly Stream and it can be downloaded here. If you mean when will I update this, well... Ah, maybe by the end of May -- this month. Maybe.

Yes, it is a Hotmail account but only because I couldn't use my Gmail account. I've been trying to migrate away from Hotmail to Gmail for a while now. Basically, I rarely check Hotmail now. If anyone knows why it won't take my Gmail account, would like to know as it didn't seem to think it was valid for some perplexing reason and I have a feeling that it's just some gmail emails not all of them that it doesn't like :/

Well I'll be going back to do Peragus, then the Harbinger. Then probably the Ebon Hawk if I actually don't do that first considering that you appear their first for the tutorial segment. Anyway, the idea being that people can then play from the start all the way through to Telos -- which sill has a few odds and ends for me to finish off. Also, I've played those and have save games for them, which makes it easier for me to test as I don't have to play anything first. BTW: is there any reason why I can't set my account to notify me via my Gmail account. It's the one I generally check for notifications about stuff, like forum posts, yet the site doesn't like it for some reason...

Personally, I don't see why they can't release the tools as in world building and editing tools. They don't have to release an SDK / code for the engine or anything. Anyway, I think people aren't signing your petition and the reason why it will fail are one and the same -- beyond what InSidious has pointed out. You need to rewrite your petition. It reads juvenile. You need to rework the tone of the text to be especially more respectful of Bioware -- its clear you like Obsidian and very clear you don't like Bioware. And while your at it, try and be more professional in your writing and use some CAPITALS. Not just once in a while for when you start a sentence but for ALL of our sentences. And when you finish a paragraph, leave a line of white space before you start another. This aids readability along with making it look far more professional. Like you care about what you have written because you've taken the time to make it read well, so therefore, others reading it will take it more seriously and take the time to actually read it.

K2TSLR - The Sith Lords Remastered View File FYI: To discuss this mod and to post bug reports, please use this forum WIP thread, thanks. This is a teaser release of what will be a much larger mod to replace all the textures of Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords. This initial release focuses on Telos as a WIP teaser. You will either have to start from the start again and work your way up to Telos to see all the textures changed, or, use an old save game to replay the areas once more. You have a number of folders here to install, some are optional. FOLDER "TELOS_TEX" These are all the current environment textures that have been made available for Telos: Telos Citadel Station, Restoration Zone and Secret Base. FYI: some are not only for Telos in that some of the textures are from other sets, such as Dantooine. To install the files just copy into your override folder. FYI: you may wish to backup your override folder first . FOLDER "HK_TEX" These are the HK series -- 47, 50 and 51 -- of droid textures. FYI: there are background droids in the HK facility on Telos that I have not updated the look of yet. Again, copy to your override folder. FOLDER "Items_UTI" These have been removed for the a1-1 update due to a report problem with them; the below text is there if the earlier version of the mod is being used: USAGE Pretty simple, my texture and model edits along with new creations, are mine to redistribute and modify. If you want to use any of my stuff, you need to get my permission to do so, even if it is a modification of an existing texture or model from the game or of someone else's -- in that case, you will need to get their permission too. If I find that my work has been used without my permission within another mod, depending upon what it is and the extent of it, I will have the site admins remove it along with pursuing other actions available to me via the site. Submitter sELFiNDUCEDcOMA Submitted 03/19/2013 Category Mods TSLRCM Compatible

Didn't actually get to do any extra work on the TSL Remastered Telos teaser, but I did manage to squeeze in uploading it to the site here. I'm tired, got stuff to do and still need to get some sleep before heading off to catch a plane. Will have notebook with me so as long as I can find decent free WiFi, then I will check in from time to time if I'm not busy having fun .

I am and most likely will replace that horrible cantina music. Not sure about the other music as I'm not much of a composer, but, I figure that I can get a bunch of free open-source samples and put something together in Audacity that is 10x better than what is present. Honestly, I am really getting sick of having to listen to that crap they have in-game . I do experience a lot of "crack" sounds when sound begins to play or ends play. Not sure if there is a better sound download patch that I missed or something, but if there isn't one then I at least wanted to have a look at it some as I think that it might have something to do with the game being first optimized for Xbox -- as I don't recall the problem at all for KOTOR. The problem with music is finding stuff that will match everything else, otherwise you have to replace ALL the music -- which is probably not possible as some of it will be part of a movie file. I think I came across 2 or 3 music sound mods but apart from listening to a few tracks, I never actually installed them. They didn't seem to support the atmosphere of the game nor was it totally Star Wars in style -- orchestral. As I said, I'm also not much of a composer myself. So beyond simply improving the files so they don't crack every so often, I'm not sure how much I can do on my own in this department.

I'll have to check, but there is at least 2 if not more versions of the Ebon Hawk -- damaged in space, and normal which may have a hyperspace variant and others for each time it is docked. So, some of these problems may not be applicable to all of them as some may have differing meshes. I've noticed this one in particular on the version of the Ebon Hawk on route to Telos. A great big old plane of black as your screens capture as well. Not sure why it would be there either. If I can find what texture is supposedly being used there and as long as it is not being used by anything else. Then it should be easily fixed by replacing it with a blank texture if any other solution as to how to fix it doesn't present itself. Though more than likely, it is simply an erroneous mesh that once had a purpose but now needs to be deleted. Anyway, there are probably a number of factors beyond which "version" of the Ebon Hawk that has been loaded up for that part of the game. Like whether people had been alt-tabbing out of the game in order to do something, like check email, before tabbing back into the game. This will introduce graphical problems, as will updating too many graphic files of the game whilst out of the game whilst its still running. Another is what mods people have installed, especially those to do with the Ebon Hawk. These can create "false" reports of problems when there really isn't a problem, in that closing and starting the game and/or uninstalling a mod, will fix these. nd then there is what graphics card and drivers people are using, which means that they and others may experience them but I and others, may not. I can't fix something like that as I have no way of testing it on my own. Not impossible to fix on your own, just very time consuming and somewhat frustrating -- I had a Fallout 3 script bug that has taken me a long while to discover what the problem with it was, as I and others with newer computers, simply never experienced it. There are a lot of animated textures in use as well -- or more likely, there is one animated texture used all over the place. These in particular look bad and may also be the reason why certain panels have areas that look like they aren't there -- these are usually where the animated textures appear. So replacing these with better ones and a custom TXI file may do the trick -- especially if it turns out that a particular animated texture for that version of the Ebon Hawk is simply missing from the game. However, this is a real pain as when you export animated textures from KOTOR Tool, they come out garbled. Basically, you have to rebuild them using elements of the original image before you can do any work on them. it also doesn't help that these "areas" are actually different meshes or parts of a mesh that have a completely different texture applied to them. It would have been better if these, especially animated screens, had multiple layers. A static background, an animated texture layer, and possibly, an effect layer -- like adding the look of an interlaced monitor over the top of these. There are probably problems with this to do with rendering, but, I think if they had used say "additive" for the animated layer and "decal" for the effect layer. Well, I think they wouldn't have any issues and the end result would have looked way better -- plus, if the animated layer wasn't rendered you'd still have the static background to fall back on. The "cracks" that are especially visible in Hyper space, appear all over the place, especially around console panels. If it is a case of the texture having a great big old transparent area around the parts that aren't used. Then that is solved by filling them with black -- at its most basic. However, I doubt that is the case and this is more than likely the result of the mesh -- not actually the UV mapping at all. One mesh end that is butted up against the end of another. No matter what, there is a gap between the two that some engines will allow what is seen behind to bleed through -- especially if the mesh has no "depth" to its edges but is basically a plane. The best way to fix this is to edit the mesh so that one actually intersects the other, or, by adding an edge to these meshes so that they have something to but up against -- though, simply adding another simple mesh behind these with a black texture applied would probably also work. However, that means learning more 3D modelling that I have experience with currently, which is compounded by the fact that exporting and importing them into a game format is problematic as the tools are old and fairly basic. A quicker short-term fix is to replace the hyperspace texture with something less bright and hideous along with a custom TXI file -- make it have an additive blend render so that the "black" of nothingness behind it will come through and mute it down some so that the bleed through isn't as bad. And that would be my first step as any mesh editing would have to wait until later .

Wanted to see if there is any interest in me releasing just the Telos textures as a teaser... ? You'd have to play from all the way from the start or have a prior save game just at the beginning of Telos to appreciate it all. That is if you want to see all of the Telos textures and not just those pertaining to the station -- as you can come back to it later once you get back the Ebon Hawk. It's pretty much all the Telos environment textures plus some additional odds and ends that are used in Telos -- like one of the tree texture sets from Dantooine along with one dirt texture, and a generic grass texture. I'll spend some time completing a draft of a monitor texture along with maybe finishing off an animated texture that I started on but didn't finish. But apart from that and some other quick tweaks, that's all you'd get for now. Chances are that I won't do any further work on this for a while -- perhaps a long while -- as other things will demand my attention; why I ask. @ Deathtoheaven: Thanks for the comment as it also helps explain why I personally like how it looks and why beyond some tweaks I'm not changing the color tone of the station textures .

My hunch about how to get the lit windows of the cutout buildings to appear brighter was right... I think that might be my last post up on this for a while. Still stuff to do with Telos like redo some signage, recreate animated textures, etc. But realistically I think I need to also go back and do a pass of the Ebon Hawk, Peragus and Harbinger in order to release it as a teaser. As you would need to play up until Telos first before seeing the new textures -- unless you have old save games. And I don't think I'll get that done any time soon as I'm about to head off on a trip for a couple of weeks. Should have my notebook so if I get bored, I might do some additional work on this. But I don't really see myself doing that as there will be plenty of other things that I can do instead .

Probably not, though I think a lot of the TSL textures are from KOTOR. It would have to wait for TSL to be done, anyways, but I picked TSL as I figured it has the more interesting mods that have been developed for it or are being developed for it on account of its better -- if more buggy -- game systems. It's interesting that there is still so much active modding going on for it, too bad the same can't be said of tools to support such modding -- or even someone whipping up a new modified (1.0b) game exe that provides better widescreen support among other things. It uses the same texture as the snow on the outside. To improve it you have to make the snow outside look worse. It's one of the cases where being able to just change what texture is being used, would be a big help. Actually, there is one texture used in the academy that is used all over the place. Makes it real hard to improve it without making something else look bad. Not to mention all of the misaligned horribly stretched textures in this area that are easy enough to spot. Anyway, it's all a trade off in the end. Plus, it was never clear to me before that it was meant to be snow resting on top of a force field before. When you're out side there is a depressed area to the surface you can walk on; you're actually walking on top of the snow that has fallen on top of this hangar force field.

Well, a lot of these textures are used all of the place on Telos. So, not just on the station but also the underground military facility and even the polar academy. Some of it needs to work for multiple purposes. Also, this is a used and lived-in commercial space station. It's going to get grungy after a while even if they keep it as clean and maintained as possible. I quite like how it is now, as it is visually different from the old without being radically so, and think that it is an improvement over the old textures. So, I won't be changing them but I may tweak them a bit. But, you're more than welcome to create your own if you don't like .

Some more of Telos station with before and after comparative shots... It's a bit hard to see some of the changes unless you see them in-game. Think I can improve some things a bit, like the cutout buildings in the distance; pretty sure I can make those lit windows shine brighter with some additional work. Should make them look less 2D by matching the 3D buildings in front of them. @ Malkior: No, I haven't been editing lightmaps. What you're noticing is the use of environment maps for the textures as a way of adding more definition and "depth" in the way of dynamic highlights to the game textures. It needs a bit more tweaking, as the "shine" can be a bit too much and feel a bit plasticky or artificial; for lack of a better way of putting it as I'm kind of tired .

Some more...

Screens of the "Jedi" Academy in the Telos polar region... I've gone for a darker, colder and somewhat harsher color scheme this time to reflect the emptiness and darkness of the place.

It will probably end up being that for some I think. Means learning another program and I'm not sure how much you can do or get with the free version. There are some pretty good panoramic (sphere map) textures out there. High def ones. I also found this program -- CubeTheSphere -- that allows you to take those and turn them into cube (skybox) maps. You'd still need to do more work on layering in elements and the like to suit the game setting. But it beats using one of those free low-rez skyboxes you can find that look like they were make for games like Unreal Tournament 2004. Anyway It can wait I think, as people tend not to focus too much on the skybox as its more of a backdrop to everything else.

Some more screens, this time of the external station sprawl outside a Telos window along with the polar region. Before and after. The cut out buildings seen outside of the station took a bit of work to update. Had to recreate the buildings as it was the only way to add detail and improve them. Tweaked the skyboxes but will probably do more tests to see whether I can replace them or at least improve them some as they don't upscale that well. Basically you can increase the size but you still end up with a pixelated image, its just the "pixels" are now larger as they're made up of more pixels. Haven't found a way to smooth these edges that works well.

When I said "wasting my time" I meant that any suggestion that it works would result in me spending an obsessive couple of hours researching, often re-reading threads I've already read, and doing a lot of trial and error work to test that it works. I also find that doing this research, that no one has actually bothered to document this stuff in a central place and most of it is dated and half-wrong if not blatantly incorrect. I don't mean to be degrading or anything -- and apologize for anything that offends; which can be easy to do with plain-text posts. If there is a way of getting DDS to work, I'm all for using it as TGA is not the format to be using. But my gut feeling is that there is a reason why all the mods I've come across have all their KOTOR and TSL images saved in TGA format. If DDS worked then there is no reason not to be using it and just about every mod out there would be using it. I've attached screens below to show that I have tried to use DDS files, generated by Paint.NET that natively supports opening and saving in that format -- DX1, DX3 and DX5. Along with the NWN tool generated version that at least appears in-game. If someone knows how to get them to work consistently. I would like to know .

I've read ALL those threads. The DDS converter tool was made for NWN and does not work properly for TSL. I've tried it -- the texture ends up with a lot of ugly artifacts. I never mentioned bump maps in my post, just DDS support. I think bump maps are supported, but, I think you and others may have your facts wrong about how to do that -- I think it works with a greyscale height map not a pink/purple normal-map. Your comments are misleading and somewhat self-aggrandizing not to mention patronizing -- you can simply add a link to the post thread, you don't need to use the "Let me Google that for you" method. You also DO NOT bother to post up how to do any of this if it is possible. You simply suggest and link to stuff. I'm sorry, that is not concrete proof that it works. I suggest that you grow up or no one is going to help you with your mod development .

As I said in my prior post, DDS is not a supported file format by the TSL game engine. Using DDS files with a .dds extension has no effect, nor does renaming the extension to .tga or . tpc -- actually, what happens is that the game appears to be missing this texture and that part of the world is see through. The TPC file format may be very similar to the DDS file format but that does not mean that DDS can be utilised in anyway unless you have a way of converting DDS to TPC format. Unless you have a process where an actual DDS file, compression and mip-maps and all can be read by the TSL game engine, then all you're doing by suggesting this is wasting my time as your comment is simply misleading. Misleading in it implies that using DDS files in some way is a possibility and that you know how. As far as I can tell, no one here does, nor does the modder Xarwarz referenced in that thread, as he clearly states that the DDS files must ALL be converted to TGA before they will be utilized in game. Therefore all benefit that DDS provides beyond a smaller download file, is actually lost.

The normal maps created by the Gimp plugin are actually very good. You can get a few plugins for Paint.NET but they range from crap, to basic to good as long as you want to do a lot of manual tweaking. Personally I am sticking with Paint.NET and Gimp. I don't see any need to switch over to any other programs and won't be . Anyway, the problem is not the program I suspect, but the file format that KOTOR reads them in. Like how it will read TPC or TGA files but won't read DDS files. It may actually read DDS files but, you may need to do something like rename them to TPC -- as an example of what I what to know. With normals I've tried to get it to load them in-game saved as TGA files, but I suspect, that they need to be in the TPC mip-mapped format. Declaring them via a TXI file is not enough but the file itself needs to have a proper header recognized by the game engine. Perhaps as you say, DDS files can actually be used, then maybe, this is the way of getting normal maps to work... Maybe.