Mephiles550

@N-DReW25I really like most of these ideas. Keep in mind tho with the idea of a hologram assuming Tatooine is still a green world, this would contradict the dantooine temple listing this map as one of the three barren worlds, somehow the maps are able to relate updated data back and forth to each other. I guess you could edit the puzzle on dantooine but that might just get confusing at that point. I would also prefer the map to be in the temple as well but I think that should be something saved for a very last version of the mod and focus on everything else first, it’s a small change in theory but adds a lot of work. Im pretty sure the Calo Nord appearance at least is triggered by the star map activation, the camera angle shows him spawning into the bike once the star map is activated and not just running forward from what I tested. I think Bandon is different but with Calo this is what I think is the case. Not impossible things to remedy, but I think the work associated with simply moving a single placeable while being consistent and not incredibly buggy would warrant it being considered at a later date. Otherwise I’d agree that the temple would be a much better location. Finally, any additional dialogue with sand people will likely require HK47 to translate to be consistent with the rest of Tatooines plot but we don’t have any English dialogue for HK47 to help with that. I think our hopes for how much we can do with the sand people might need to be lowered for right now. maybe you could have HK translate another non-basic speaking aliens dialogue to the Tuskens explaining what the player did/wants, but idk at that point. Maybe you could have HK serve as an intermediary between Jawas and Sand People and you can tell HK which side to lean towards. You won’t need a translator for Jawas so the Jawa can tell you what’s going on in their language. Really rough idea tho, the language thing is tough to work around If you want HK to speak some “new” lines, I myself and others are not the biggest fan of AI voice replication so you may have to consider some pretty precise audio splicing work with current dialogue .

I love this mod, I still can't believe someone even made this after all these years. I do have a few rough ideas I brainstormed after replaying it a few times just cause I'm so excited so see where this mod can go. To answer your last 2 questions, I think it should be a mandatory part of the star map quest while expanding both the lore of the Rakata AND the sand people's predecessor species in a way you were already alluding to in the mod currently! While I would prefer the Star Map be inside the temple, the vision shows it clearly in the cave where you find it in-game. All of the other visions are 100% accurate with their locations so this would break consistency. Plus moving the star map could break a few triggers I think, best to just leave it as is. Maybe what could be done is have the player be required to activate some mechanism/terminal inside the temple to grant access to the Star Map in the cave in the first place? That would still remain consistent with the story, triggers and vision. I think all the important stuff only happens once you activate the Star Map in that module, such as Calo/Bandon spawning or the game acknowledging you got another map in the first place. Dantooine and Kashyyyk make the player go through a bunch of (easy) puzzles/trials to have the player activate the map. Maybe instead of the terminals just immediatlely allowing you to lower the barriers, you have to solve a lore-question about the the history of the Rakatan and/or the Tuskens and you have to get it correct. The Tusken Storyteller you give the Krayt Pearl to can help you get the info you need to solve these questions. If you get the questions wrong, you'll have to fight constatnly self-repairing Rakatan Droids just like the Dantooine temple. The one Rakatan droid who you can't understand could have an expanded role to help explain all this to you. Rakatan lore is one of the coolest things of Kotors story. I really like the story in the mod, but also again think consistency with the main story and established EU lore should be considered. The temple has the same exact decals as the temple on Dantooine and Lehon so there should be an explanation for why. Maybe along with saying that the Rakata took the temple from the Sand People as their own, have the archeologist records say that the Builders added their own designs or murals and overhauled/expanded the temple through slave labor of the Tuskens. I think your mod kind of implies this is already the case, but maybe it could go in more detail about the process of how this was done, such as how the Rakatan forced the Tuskens to remove their old designs in favor of new ones that show the Rakatan subjugating the Tuskens. The Tusken lore should also be expanded on here to refer back what the Tusken storyteller would tell the player, how the planet was once green and lush. The builders came, make the Tusken/Jawa predecessor species slaves and forces them to build machines, but the storyteller also references the Rakatan plague, saying that the natives sabotaged Rakatan machines to fight back to seize the opportunity. As a result, the Rakatan glassed the planet. Really the temple's lore and records should both compliment or expand what the storyteller describes, but from Rakatan perspective. I think the barrier system progression is a great idea, the only change I would recommend is removing the barrier currently in place for the central chamber and placing it directly at the entrance of the cave area where the Rakata enemy is so the player is allowed to go through that little shortcut between the room with the Jawa and the area right infront of the Sarlaac chamber. There's a lot of backtracking throughout the entire module that could be prevented with that shortcut. The Rakatan also should probably be a ghost of some kind, similar to how Ajunta Pall with his shield effect (or translucency with the right mods). The lightsaber is a good idea, but in lore they used giant Force Sabers that definitely look a little different from modern sabers. If this saber pike mod from TSL could be ported to K1, it would be a near perfect fit for a type of Force Saber as an non-upgradable weapon. IDK if we should be able to understand the Rakatan language he speaks at this point, neither. I mean, we can't understand it from the droid on Dantooine and we can't understand the same droid on Tatooine here. On Kashyyyk the Rakatan hologram had to speak basic after it's "primary neuro-recognition" was done. The Rakatan might have to speak another language for lore consistency, I think the story implication was that Revan only suddenly understood the Rakatan language after he got his memories back. I know the player can understand the Rakatan in the Mysterious Box, that quite frankly that makes no sense considering you can get that right after Dantooine and I always attributed that to the box kinda being a wonky "world" where thoughts were likely transmitted in different ways. I like the dialogue you gave to the Rakatan, a lot of neat ideas to interpret here. I think he's referring to how the Rakatan would get the plague and ruin each other and he and a love interest were caught in the crossfire. But hey that's just my interpretation, it's well written and can be interpreted one way or another. If I had one think I would change, him referencing the "Dune" Sea might be problematic, as back in his time it wouldn't have been a dune but still an oceanic/green world. But I guess maybe he could've been around to see the glassing of the planet and maybe he is the one who coined the original term "Dune Sea"? Again, really cool dialogue, lots of implications. Only other thing I would do with him besides changing his appearance and maybe language would be placing him directly in the central chamber and not the entrance in front of it, especially if you move the barrier like I suggested earlier. That way you won't be able to see him before lowering the barrier. That just leaves the Jawa and the Tusken NPCs. Maybe the Tusken can give you a reward for fixing her bike? Maybe something that you use to either fix or activate a hypothetical terminal activating the Star Map? That way you will have to do multiple quests within the module to get your ultimate goal. The bike could also need multiple parts to fix it scattered throughout the temple, not just one and the Jawa could provide one of them. Maybe 3-4 parts scattered throughout? Maybe the Tusken could also have hints dropped that she is here to pay homage to the temple's Sarlacc or something and it wants you to find a way to lower the barrier so she can go to the main chamber to do so. Maybe this could include a reference to the cut Sand People Messiah quest but heavily revised, something like how the Tusken legends speak of an evil spirit guarding the Sarlacc and only the Sand People's messiah can defeat it to grant the tuskens acess to the pit. Once you fulfill this quest, the Tusken here will refer to you as their messiah. It's nowhere near what the original quest was like but I think it's a neat reference. Speaking of the Sarlaac, I don't think it should be the Great pit of Carkoon. The Rakatan ruins are already at least 10k years old, an additional 3500 years wouldn't completely get rid of literally everything around the pit and change the setting to the point it looks like in Return of the Jedi's Carkoon. Tatooine probably has multiple Sarlaacs. Maybe call it the "Great Pit of the Rak" in reference to the Rakata, idk. This mod is the start of something really fantastic, these are all rough ideas and I'm looking forward to seeing where it all goes. I'd love to help contribute to elements of a revised story if you'd like, I love the lore of the Infinite Empire. For stuff like the walkmeshes, geometry issues and party members being stuck, that's beyond my scope. It only was in issue with me once in multiple playthroughs thankfully so I don't think it's a real big deal. Honestly just replacing the white void with a dark yellow one solved the modules biggest visual issue in my opinion, amazing what a small change like that can do Only thing I could think of is either placing a lot of Rakatan ruin placeables in the rough areas like in the open cave areas so the player can't walk there anyway, or have the player only be able to enter the cave by themself without party members in a manner similar to the TSL Korriban cave.

I remember seeing the previews for the Nar Shaddaa street modules and thought they looked really cool, glad to hear that they might get patched up and released here as a modders resource soon. They have great potential for a Nar Shaddaa expansion or other ideas.

I like how you meshed the hard armor with what looks like fabric or leather for the Mandalorian. I always just kind of thought it was all solid metal, you've got a good eye for detail.

All that drip just to give you this Damage Resistance: Resist 10/- vs. Fire Skills: Stealth +2 It's a shame such a baller mask has the Kotor ingame stat equivalent of slightly increasing resistance to spicy food

I was more focused on how not a single one of those turbo lasers from the Leviathan apparently hit the stationary Ebon Hawk and could've easily crippled the ship before departure while the party was busy fighting Davik and Calo. As for the boasting of the security system from Davik, I'm pretty sure it was just Davik underestimating the ability of the PC to disable everything from a random computer. This security system probably included more than the door, likely a forcefield and alarm as well, but it was all combined as just the "disable hangar security" option in the terminal's commands section. Assuming that the computer terminal option to disable the security system was only referring to the door and not an alarm or hangar forcefield, well that would all likely be conveniently disabled by space lasers firing on the building the second the PC enters the hangar. If it's a forcefield, that thing is well disabled by now. If it's an alarm that could somehow work during the bombardment... pretty sure nobody cares at that particular moment, more pressing matters at the moment for the average Exchange mook.

A point of interest, in the two videos you linked one version is the PC version and the other is the Xbox version. The Xbox version shows Nihilus have a proper fade away while the PC one you showed has a jank one. You mentioned TSLRCM, but the PC version gameplay you showed is from a playthrough not using TSLRCM, judging by other parts the uploader showed of that playthrough on their channel. Maybe TSLRCM fixed this issue on PC? Not sure. Fun fact, the Switch version from what I saw from 2 playthoughs on Youtube also has a broken fade effect for Nihilus. I think the Xbox version is just more refined in many areas compared to the PC version, considering it's an old 2004 game. I saw a TSLRCM playthrough with fixed fades, maybe the mod fixed it for good? ngl the fade out effect is kinda wonky in my experience in both Kotor 1 and 2. It sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Mods using "ghosts" like Brotherhood of Shadow or even vanilla characters like Ajunta Pall in or the TSL Korriban tomb visions all are supposed utilize fade aways upon death, but sometimes this works and sometimes this doesn't. I don't know much about scripting but my game settings are as max as max can be and my PC components aren't the issue, Kotor loves Nvidia. When it comes to fading in this game engine, I think it might be you and your luck if the engine wants to cooperate with the script that actually allows it. Sometimes there might just be too much happening in the engine for it to register correctly. I'm hardly an expert on this though, this is just what I'm assuming from multiple inconsistent playthroughs.

Actually nevermind about my question regarding Ludo's tomb, I rewatched your video for it. What you did with that is beyond impressive. I thought you just ported the TSL version of the Shyrak cave, the one that has the exit to the surface blocked off, into Kotor 1. I thought that meant it was basically an empty module. I think what you actually did was merge the portion of the TSL cave that has the Ludos Tomb (the tomb entrance on the far edge of the cave) with the rest of the Kotor 1 module. That means all the content from the original Kotor 1 cave, like the students and the Terentatek, is still the same. That's amazing. I've seen people merge hallways and doors, I didn't think anyone would be able to merge all that rough geometry in the cave. Well done! For your question about how the Tatooine cave has some illuminated parts... tbh I really can't tell what they were going for. Keep in mind while the cave seems to be underground, it doesn't look that deeply submerged at all. The Krayt Dragons cave wasn't exactly buried in the first place, it felt more like a raised mound with a wide entrance. The walkway you can see right next to the star map seems to be just going straight forward instead of descending downward. I always got the impression from the large naturally formed parts of the cave that light was illuminated from the surface because it was probably hardly submerged at all. I think what they were going for is that the entire thing was below the surface, but with plenty of cracks in the ceiling to allow for natural light to enter. Basically, imagine the background for the Dantooine ruins but much brighter. The only slight exception I can think of is the large chamber where the Sarlacc was supposed to be. I always imagined this room had no ceiling and was exposed to the surface. Keep in mind though this entire module seems to be a rough draft. They probably didn't really know what they were doing with it and scrapped it for several reasons, not just for story. They might have had the same thought you had right now regarding the inconsistency of the lighting based on how this structure is supposed to have been incorporated into both the cave and the dune sea in general. They probably just gave up when trying to figure out how to make it work and just decided to plop the star map into the cave entrance, leaving the cave's transition right next to it still fully visible. Kotor 1 has a bunch of areas like that. A silly thought I had one day while looking at this module was it would've worked great as an underwater area in Manaan. Add the Manaan surface animated background in place of the white void, darken the lighting and have the character slowly explore in an environment suit. The giant Shark could've been in the sarlacc chamber instead. I feel like that would've been much cooler, but that's a pretty radical idea.

Regarding the Tatooine Temple, a neat work around I saw in the edge of darkness mod which reused this module was that the module had a much darker ambient lighting effect around the player, so the area would only get lighter if you walked in that direction. It wasn’t really possible to see the white void beyond because of this. This is in TSL however and idk if this effect would be doable in KOTOR 1 I feel like if this effect can be replicated you might be able to get away with how the outside part of the map looks. I think they were trying to replicate the Dantooine Ruins which you can see has a very vast and spacious detailed area outside of the bounds. It looks like they didn’t even start that part in the cut module. I feel like the biggest problem with the cut temple module is definitely its messed up walk meshes. Some places you need to find just the right spot to go around the hallway. I always thought this could be fixed by just placing junk objects or rakatan ruins objects in the areas that you can’t go on, kind of giving the player a makeshift pathway of sorts. btw beyond restoring the Korriban module, you did a really cool job with even adding a custom transition room to the original module, working door and all! Great stuff btw for your Korriban Ludo Kressh mod, how did you plan to add the TSL version of the cave module to the game? Were you able to essentially remake the rogue students quest and port all the dialogue and scripts from the original cave into the new one with the tomb?