DarthParametric

If you can contact the original authors and find out the specific additions they made, that should make it fairly straightforward. The question for old mods always comes down to, assuming you can contact the authors in the first place, do they still have the source material/records of what they did? Edit: Here's one brute force way you could tackle it. Grab the Xoreos Tools Windows binaries. Put the vanilla TLK and the mod TLKs (renamed appropriately) in the same folder. Via a command prompt, use tlk2xml.exe to convert the TLK files to XML. For example: tlk2xml dialog.tlk k1.xml tlk2xml salk.tlk salk.xml Use a comparison tool to find the changes between each mod's TLK and the vanilla one. You could use something like Beyond Compare. For example, comparing Salk's TLK to the vanilla gives the following summary: 53259 same line(s) 194 unimportant difference line(s) 1 important right orphan line(s) 301 important difference line(s) 433 difference section(s) You can then export the actual differences, but it would be a bunch of manual work to then merge all that into an append TLK for TSL Patcher. A hell of a lot easier than trying to do it manually line-by-line though.

Yeah, unless the authors provided/can provide a list of all the lines they changed/added, I would think it would be fairly excruciating. I would think the reason that Stoffe didn't provide a comparison functionality for TLKs was becasue of memory, or lack thereof, back in the day. TalkEd provides a warning about memory use based on number of entries loaded. It probably wouldn't be an issue with a 64bit program on modern systems.

Valve move at a glacial pace. I wouldn't be expecting some sort of instant response. I doubt anything will happen until business hours Mon-Fri, unless they have palmed off responsibility for it to volunteer staff.

Well that's the thing, isn't it? If people start harassing this guy or others, it's probably going to have the opposite effect, including having moderators come out in his favour. I would suggest not engaging with them at all, and sticking to reporting all reposted mods. There may be other official channels to pursue beyond that if it doesn't bring any action.

I would advise against any sort of "retaliation". That includes posting insults or the like on the Steam forums. All you are going to do is give modders a bad name. Stick to reporting the mod via the official channels.

It's pretty simple:

Pretty much the only way to make Valve do anything about it is by lodging a DMCA takedown notice, but you can only do that if it concerns copyrighted material and you are the copyright holder. Otherwise, as with basically everything else about Steam, they will most probably never lift a finger.

Gotta love that attitude. I reported it as well, for whatever it is worth. There are plenty of potential reasons, not least of which is the Workshop is a poorly implemented repository for mods. But it's irrelevant. The wishes of the author should be respected, regardless of the motivation/reason.

In the case of direct overwrites, you'll need to find the additional entries and strip them out as an append TLK file. For other types of files TSLPatcher has the compare functionality, that finds the differences between two files, but it doesn't seem it can do that for TLK files.

Whoops, missed that one. Easy Swoop Racing for TSL by Darth333 (original link) - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486015787

Current (presumably) unauthorised reposts that are still on the Workshop: Canonical Jedi Exile by michaelfung2000 (original DS link) - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486299564 Choose Choose Mira or Hanharr by Hassat Hunter (original DS link) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=488427853 Dantooine Retexture by "unknown" (original link?) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=488427947 Korriban Retexture by "unknown" (original link?) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=488428058 Pretty Atris by Antinate (original LF link) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=488437812 TSL Hak Pad (Ultimate) by ChAiNz.2da (original LF link) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=487562912 Sith Assassins With Lightsabers by Shem - (original LF link) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=488437920 Workbench Crystal Attunement by Markus Ramikin (original DS link) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=491338358 Easy Swoop Racing for TSL by Darth333 (original link) - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486015787

Using TalkEd would be to create an append TLK file, that TSLPatcher then adds to whatever existing TLK file you want to merge with. You should read the instruction PDF that comes with TSLPatcher. As far as merging files rather than overwriting goes, yes, you can do that to some extent, but it depends on what it is exactly you want to do. If you want to merge/edit 2DAs, GFF files (UTCs, UTIs, etc.), that's possible. It is, after all, TSLPatcher's entire raison d'être. If you want to play around with binary files, like textures and models, then all TSLPatcher can do is overwrite. It's all covered in the instruction PDF.

From the material's main tab, choose Show in Editor. Again, tutorials will explain all this.

Sounds like you need to read/watch some basic Max tutorials before going any further. Google is your friend. For textures, create a new material, add a texture in the diffuse slot, apply it to the mesh.

TSLPatcher can do TLK appends. It comes with a TLK editor, TalkEd. I've never done it though. The official link is still on the now defunct SWKnights domain though. There is a mirror on the K1 Nexus site, albeit mostly likely unsanctioned by Stoffe.

I assume you can at least manage to copy and paste and figure out a simple text substitution.

They are just a plain text defintion file that uses a simple scripting language (stands for Valve Data Format). Open/create in Notepad.

Yeah based on the way the games work with body models and texture variants, the most (or only?) practical option would be to have multiple textures for all variants that use the same body model. The only other option would be to try adding a new body type column in appearance.2da, which I did contemplate at one point, but I don't even know if that would work.

The problem is that the implementation of the Workshop is fundamentally broken when it comes to KOTOR modding. I'm sure most authors would be willing to upload their mods to the Workshop if it actually worked properly.

They do, but I don't think they actually work.

Not to mention that while the author might be MIA at the time you try to contact them, that doesn't mean they will never return to modding. People have differing life circumstances, and it's presumptuous to declare that an author's rights are null and void just because some arbitary amount of time has passed.

Yeah I don't deny it, I was just remarking that his not-so-subtle approach in someone else's backyard wasn't rallying a lot of support to his cause. Not that I, of all people, should be lecturing others about subtlety.

I see Darth InSidious has had a run-in with /r/kotor over this matter. Judging by the downvotes, they are big on preservation of mods on dead hosting by inactive authors. Which I can see some merit in, but I'm not a big fan of their attitude regarding it (although I guess DI did kind of get their back up with his post about being a representative of the modding community).

LucasForums goes offline for a week or two about once every month or two now. I beleieve the issue is they are still using a physical server (their own hardware colocated). It's a combination of it being hardware presumably operating at the edge of, and beyond, its limitations, and the fact that it needs someone to physically go and restart it when it keels over. They really should have switched to a virtual server setup years ago, but I'm not sure how active the admins are these days.

You could try reinstalling KOTOR Tool. Are you running 64 bit Windows? If so, the key should be under Wow6432Node instead, i.e.: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SCM\Kotor Tool