Jorak Uln

When i played Kotor the first time - actually i first played TSL and then K1 - it was an amazing experience. But when i, due to my modding activities, go through several dialogues now, some of them sound very childish and un-mature.. So i think Bioware originally developed the game for kids, not adults - and changed that over the years. Everybody says that Bioware has its strength in storytelling - well i m not so sure. Their main strength is (was) the cinematic presentation like in Mass Effect 2 or Dragon age Origins. But what i miss in K1 story is the awareness of the little details - everythings way too much "in your face", bombastic, epic, but not subtle. The second Kotor however, is totally different. The world design/ cinematics are somewhat worse than the original game, but: I enjoyed the storytelling a lot more: every word -> especially Kreia! , every dialogue had its right place in the bigger context; in general there were a lot of very subtle twists and turns and change of pace that i miss in K1. The immediate feel of danger lurking somewhere and the fact, not to oversee the whole situation was fascinating..

Glad you like it. But i think the Sapiens baremetal shader gives a lot of flair on the walls, tables in the ship. I wouldnt remove it. The better way would be just to download a Taris Trooper reskin - that way you wont see the shine on them at all and have still the full graphical experience off my mod. About the screen - its a great idea! Honestly there r a lot of things i would love to see ingame, but its still a matter of ressources and time. The big screen already has a Resolution of 5400x5400 and the animation lasts only few sec, so for a proper cinematic space battle i need at least 15 sec. but ideally up to 40 sec. The REAL epicness would be some things like shown in this trailer (the western music is really crazy, actually...) http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Mass-Effect-Andromeda-PC-256389/Specials/Gameplay-Release-Trailer-1163218/ but currently thats only wishful thinking...

The lightmaps work perfectly. (via txi with the usual lines cycle, numx y etc). The only downside is that stupid timing error...

No the lights dont flicker by default. Heres how i did it: First i created the lights retexture LHR_lit01. I modified the brightness with a flickering animation with 25 pics at 10 fps. Then i took the surrounding lightmaps, recolored them and simply gave each of them the same brightness animation also with 25pics and 10 fps. About the timing: I modified m01aa_03a in that scene, and as long as i stay in that corridor, the animation will be synchronous - that means also if i turn/walk around. BUT: At the point when i left the room to e.g. m01aa_02a, then the animations become asynchronous - each one differently. EDIT: SS, your a genius! I tested it and your right - the lightmaps dont render, but only when i a) left the room m01aa_03a and b turn away the camera from them. That means: if i leave m01aa_03a to 02a but without turning the camera from the animated corridor, then the animations are displayed correctly. So the solution seems to be to tell Kotor not to affect neighbored areas Lightmaps when turning the camera away.. I have no idea how to script that unfortunately..

Nice to hear. And the HowToInstall file is now fixed. But the mod would be even a step ahead if i could use my custom animated lightmaps...

View File ENDAR SPIRE Complete Overhaul This is the first part of an ongoing series. The purpose of this mod is to bring the much more up-to-date design choices from SWTOR to Kotor. All textures have been made from scratch; the big animated screen on the bridge comes with whooping 81 pics and 5k resolution for maximum quality. Update 2.0 brings brand new lighting to the ship, utilising warmer colors like in SWTOR, as well as new polished window frames & a new Planet retexture. Update 3.1 out now! It brings a lot of visual improvements over previous versions - new doors, animated consoles & more.... Video covering mod Showcase (Ver. 1.0) / Installation Process: Installation: Download the file, extract its contents with an archive extraction tool such as WinRAR or 7zip, and move the contents to your game's Override directory Compatibility: This mod uses cubemaps, so there could be minor incompatibilites with mods that uses custom cubemaps too. ( but i actually dont know any mod that does that) Just to be on the safe side, i recommend to install my mod last. Beside that it should be compatible with everything that doesnt retexture the Endar Spire or the Stars/ Planet Taris outside. Credits: I want to thank Darth Sapiens for his wonderful Cubemap-Ressource pack, which enabled me to do a lot of things that would otherwise been not possible. Also a big thanks goes to Xuul for making one of his fantastic videos for this mod. Enjoy! Submitter Jorak Uln Submitted 07/03/2015 Category Skins K1R Compatible No  

Hi, this question goes to all of you guys who are experienced with lightmaps. I also talked to FS about it and as more eyes see more, i really want to find a way to solve this: The general idea is to animate the long lightline at the Endar Spire and the LM around it with the same flickering motion: As you can see, animating them was possible; the only error i got is the "timer" reset after exiting and reentering the cell. Note: the long lightline has no timing reset. supreme kotor from LF also mentioned this: Funny that you should mention that . I have been doing some experimenting and I believe (extra emphasis on the word "believe") we should be able to add custom lightmaps as invisable placeables.. I really would appreciate any idea to make this possible!

Sensational job on the models! Will there be a K1 version?

Thanks my friend. The lines were a relict from a NASA satellite, where i used an imported image to get the night lights on the planet Ive thought about videos in HD quality for Kotor, but im no expert. It would require a lot of rendering and video expertise. Btw, all cutscenes are drastically different atm, simply because they are totally pixelated and low quality. To get them at the same quality as the texture packs it would require a complete makeover from scratch, something that some guys here could do if they team up... What do you mean by some other parts of the texture? Beside the lines in the upper hemisphere?

Hah! for a second i really was checking if... but then i saw your jk...

Thanks. The main textures of different planets are already covered, but the important part is the fine-tuning. That takes its time...and i hope the releases go parallel to the Skybox project. You right about my textures, like the pic shows, my texturing approach on the Endar Spire isnt 1:1 Vanilla Kotor; also because gaming has improved a lot since Kotor - especially graphically. More and more i feel that Bioware would have changed certain designs if developing the game now - i remember when i did some Telos retextures trying to be 100% exact on the original layout the final product just looks like hi res Textures with outdated, eyesore vanilla designs... not really convicing. Edit: have an update for the starfield/galaxy but cant seem to upload it...?

Good news folks, the ENDAR SPIRE Complete Overhaul is closing in very quickly for release but i wont reveal the textures yet It will be the first part of an ongoing series that overhauls the different planet textures of K1. In terms of quality its the best i can do right now, ulitlising cubemap shine, animations and world textures in SWTOR style with influences from Mass Effect. Here you can see the new planet texture of Taris - in the evening when lights are on but suns`still on sky:

have you tried out my program?

They look well done - one suggestion though, would it be possible to make the floating cape of the padawan robe completely invisible/transparent, that the robe only covers the body? That way we have more variety.

You like the music? I really think someone should make a music overhaul where the areas with the same music assigned are scripted to use different tracks... its not so cool to have the Tatooine dunes track used at suvams ship as well. ----------------------------------------------------- Here a little teaser to my yavin screen animation workflow - it uses ~ 450 nodes and is still unfinished

Very nice! I like the white one most.. I really would like to see them in K1 as well - would be a much nicer approach on the jedi robes...im not quite sure, but do you know if the robe model already exists in K1?

@Loki: Havent seen you in the forum for a while! Glad your back! Your tweaks look great - the brown color scheme makes them immediately look more Star Wars like.. will they be included in Kaidons pack or as a separate download? @Kaidon Jorn: the stripes look better now - and what i meant with the KOFE pic was just a change of the color scheme - similar to Lokis tweak.

YESS, that looks way more realistic. I like the blueish, cold steel look just so much better than the boring grey vanilla look! One question, thats not ingame screenshots, right? Are you able to maintain that quality ingame?

They look promising. The stripes on the side look a bit low res though - would it be possible to do them in higher resolution? But i really like the overall look - somehow the black/grey one reminds me of these: would be extremely cool to see one variant in these colors too...

@Kate: Its nice to see another Oblivion fella here... very atmospheric pics from you of Fallout & Skyrim/Morrowind too! Some time ago me - and some friends - were really into that Oblivion mod thing...Do you know OblivionModGods.com? Another cool mod that you surely know is OWC New Dimension from Eddy Kaschinski. Neat stuff - but what i really love about the game were the missions. They were so unpredictable and different and i think thats the key ingredience for an intense, memorable gaming experience - much like the Witcher series... Btw, the last gif at your post 93 at page 5 - is that midas? But the texturing seems different??

I dont know how good your texturing skills are, but in some cases "conventional" texturing is not enough to get the desired effect. First: A cubemap is a texture, that is under your desired texture - imagine it as a layer with very dominant colors and brightness. So if you do a retexturing say from LMA_wall01.tga and put it into Override, then Kotor by default doesnt recognize that you want to use a cubemap. Because of this, you always need a .txi file to assign the desired CM - in this case LMA_wall01.txi If you dont know how to make a txi just download one from any other animated mod like Deadmans Cyber Sabers etc. Then open it with Notepad and add following line: envmaptexture CM_ after that, look into Sapiens Cubemap pack and pick one you like add the name that you have sth. like this in your txi: envmaptexture CM_Exotic1 Save it. Done! Now if you want to see the cubemap ingame, make the test and assign a completely transparent texture to LMA_wall01.tga. -> ingame its way too glowing and dominant. So if you want to capitalize on that, its good to have your cubemap only "shine through" certain parts of your texture - and then also not with full strength. Because of this there are different situations where cubemaps are very helpful: a) if you want to make the whole texture or parts of it reflective: Depending on the reflectiveness i usually set the opacity of the desired shiny part to ~ 85 % (the rest to 100%) Example: to see it ingame heres the tga: ( the txi you have to do yourself;) and use Cubemap Exotic1) you see the texture when you get off the Ebon Hawk at Manaan immediately at the beginning when you take the long floor to Atho City. when you turn around then the middle part of it changes the color but very subtle - it looks much more metallic... http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=61401184266720538442 another very useful effect of CM is when you want to assign lights to textures where Kotor doesnt have one by default -> with normal retexturing they look very dull and boring no matter how much brightness you use e.g. in Photoshop. To prevent this, open one of Sapiens Cubemaps with a simple program like Paint.net, select the texture and paste white color over it so that it turns completely white (or any other color) , then save and name it CM_test then download this example texture: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=59136743864853493906 and make the adequate txi for it: LMA_wall11.txi add the CM_test line. Voila. The black texture is immediately under the former. Now watch the 2 different effects ingame and the impressive impact that Cubemaps can have on your textures!

@Malkior: I'm glad to see you modding again! About the clouds, I will be honest: the intention is good, but they look a bit low res to me - so may I ask which version of Terragen do you use? Kexikus had that problem as well but seemed to get his hands on a more advanced version of the program - and also with the possibility to add 3d objects... So what do you think? Could you guys share some knowledge/opinions about it?

Believe me, i know Dragon Age very well too - do you remember the epic intro cutscene from Origins at the battle of Ostagar? Its these moments that make the game great - but Witcher 3? Oh Lord, its in a different league... Even a simple sidequest gives you the feeling - hey wow, what was that? I cant believe... Just imagine: take the visual effects from Inquisition, the fighting system from Dark Souls, the character design/cinematic presentation from Mass Effect 2, a mission design of Baldur's Gate 2 & Oblivion, the handpicked loot system from Gothic 2, the open world of Skyrim and on top of that, an unparalleled consequence system where almost every word you say has consequences like 20 hours later and merge that into one game - then you have a comparable product to Witcher 3. I only can encourage you to play it, the best game I've ever played - by far! Edit: Sorry for off-Topic.