CarthOnasty

On 6/12/2018 at 10:35 AM, Kexikus said:

If I may suggest another design, there's this:

I think it's from some old roleplaying game but I was unable to find the source. But I'd love to see that one ingame.

Also, keep in mind that there's also a different texture for the Pazaak cards lying around in the game world that will need changing too.

This reminds me, I did have the idea of doing a purely Aurebesh deck for the hardcore fans. And good point about the other cards in game.

On 6/13/2018 at 8:11 AM, Sith Holocron said:

The design you refer can be seen here. It can also be purchased here. 

I could reach out and see if they'd let me make these in game, could be fun.

2 minutes ago, Sith Holocron said:

I don't know  . . . I kinda like the Uno card look!  As long as you can add in the green cards, I'd say make two packs and see what everyone thinks when both are out?  (I mean, you've already done most of the work, right?)  Perhaps folks will gravitate towards the Uno version more than you think.

I made a green version actually, knowing people would want the K2 version. 😉

9 hours ago, ebmar said:

Holy moly I woke up to this awesomeness. Yes! And I believe that the board could be altered too, wow. But anyways- looking forward to this one CO! And don't forget the Star Map! 😂

You're always my biggest fan, haha, I appreciate it. I hit a little snag last night as someone pointed out these look like Uno cards:

So what I'll think I'll do in the meantime is create a revamp of the current design and work on another design at some other point. (Needless to say, this was a punch in the stomach!)

P.S. I'll PM you about star map.

7 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

Before you get too carried away, you may want to look at @ndix UR's GUI mod and see what that does to all your values.

This looks like it'll save me a hell of a lot of work. Thanks!

///// 00. Disclaimer /////

Yeah, another side-project. Get over it.

///// 01. Background /////

Pazaak! The game whose name I misspell nearly every time I type it. Anyway, the cards are looking pretty dated these days and I've always had a small niche admiration for playing card design. Not to mention, this is a good way to practice with .guis. (Noticing a trend?) Here's the basic layout:

///// 02. Planning /////

I grabbed every pazaak thing I could find in KotOR Tool, including the boards, cards, their variants, etc.

I then was able to locate the .gui for the board itself and holy flarksnorzen is that complicated. Everything you see has a height, width, x, and y. The names, the icons, the cards, the numbers on the cards, the scoring, EVERYTHING. Layers of .tgas and a font. I started mapping out the location of everything, and well, if you can decipher this, here's my rough translation of component locations and well as their dimensions:

Note: The npc name game the with the save download. 😛

///// 03. Work Thus Far /////

Here's what I have thus far. I'm happy at this point with the card design. There are some touch ups to be done here and there for sure.

///// 04. Next Steps /////

I need to build out the rest of the assets of course. There's the back of the cards, revamp the icons and the board, and a few other things. One thing I noted while grabbing all of these assets, is that there are boards for different screen sizes AND there's the side deck selection and wager windows as well. At the very least though, new cards.

P.S. I can make green cards too for those who want them.

///// 05. Future Plans /////

Play around with the positioning, size, and color of the numbers. Some really cool things in general can be done with the whole board, but that'll take a lot of time and a lot of work. (I mean, I have to finish the star maps at some point, yeah?)

///// 06. Final Remarks /////

I'm always open to comments, critiques, and suggestions. Thanks for taking a look.

12 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

So a cursory glance at the vanilla files suggests that there are just the two placeables for the bases. The actual band member images must be scripted in? That's an unexpected approach. Also a painful one given K1's placeable limitations.

Yeah the instruments are just dummy blasters. I think they are rifles, check the last few model variations.

Right, the images are scripted in.

The instruments were indeed blasters. Seems there's a trombone, clarinet, guitar, and accordion. It'd be pretty funny actually to make these usable blasters that shoot musical notes at people. Or maybe even cuts "swords".

5 hours ago, JCarter426 said:

Interesting idea. Not much impact, as you say, but why not? I do that silly puzzle every time I play the game, so it's an improvement I'd see every time I played the game.

It looks to me like the closest match for the body would be PFBAL. The shirt with the midriff would just need a little retexture, but the legs would need a bit of a model edit to turn the shorts into pants. I was actually working on a similar model before, so if you want to use this I could look to see what progress I made.

Not a problem, I think. It looks like there are two placeables, one for the Biths and one for the twins, and for the on animation there's an emitter that creates the hologram. I believe that, rather than simple on/off, the placeables could be scripted to use the 10 looping animation slots. That should be just enough to have 4 different Bith characters since they need 2 animations each at most (turning on, and on). Then it would be a matter of animating the alpha values for every single mesh or something easier like sending the characters down into the floor when they're off.

I'd also suggest taking a look at G0-T0's holoprojector, v_holo_dur. A visual effect like that would help the hologram objects blend in more. You'd have to fiddle with the settings to reposition it and probably decrease the size, but it doesn't require any assets that aren't already in K1 already.

Exactly! Player sees it every playthrough, and it just seemed like a good small project to practice with.

Thanks for the heads up on PFBAL. I was thinking along the same ideas of using a female starter. And I'd be happy to take a look at the model!

Novel way of approaching the holograms and the animations. That's so far beyond my capabilities as of now, but again, this is a practice project.

And then isn't G0-T0 a K2 npc? Or we it ported into K1 via K1R?

2 hours ago, ebmar said:

Great things often comes from the smallest details. Good luck with this one, CO!

Edit: Is it possible to put background music to the Holograms playing? I mean, just assume that those device down there has built-in speakers there 😂

Yeah, I was thinking that as well. I mean, it just seems to logical.

On another note---and this makes sense---the instruments are a separate model. I'll have to grab those and make them translucent as well.

///// 00. Disclaimer /////

I haven't given up on Star Map Revamp 2.0, just messing around with a little side project.

///// 01. Background /////

This is about .01% of the game, but I thought the Twisted Rancor Trio puzzle in Taris could look better. This was also a good opportunity for me to branch out from skins to editing .utcs, .utps, .gits, etc. So here's the original:

The models are pretty pixelated, and the animations are very choppy. These are holograms, thousands of years from now, surely they can be displayed better and in a 3d space.

///// 02. Planning /////

I started digging around in the files, bugged @A Future Pilot for who knows how long and got an idea of what I wanted to do. It turned out the holograms were an animated .tpc that consisted of 8 frames, hence the choppiness. There were already Bith musicians in the game, so that was an easy replacement and I could bring the Twilek dancers over as well, but Elinda and Ashana are not Twilek, so there's still some thought to go into that.

///// 03. Work Thus Far /////

Here's a basic proof-of-concept.

Through some alpha channels and .txi entries, I maintained the hologram look. I think these look so much better now and much more "realistic" holograms.

///// 04. Next Steps /////

There's still a good bit to be done, mostly scripting.

• These new models show versus the old animations.
• They are placed above the hologram base versus behind it as they are now. (for proof-of-concept)
• Any interactivity with them is disabled.
• They are customized to their respective names, (editing .utcs and such) and then clothing.
• They all face the right direction.
• Find models to replace the Twileks. Apparently Elinda and Ashana were human (hard to tell from the hologram), so it'd be a matter of finding a female human model that I think would work.

///// 05. Future Plans /////

This is silly, but creating an item that would activate these holograms wherever. I'm on Dantoonie, I want to hear some music. Fire up the hologram and watch these guys perform (music included of course!).

///// 06. Final Remarks /////

Thanks for taking a look and by all means holler with any comments, questions, or suggestions.

24 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

The key with DeNCS is using the correct game nwscript.nss.

K1_tar_m03ad_holo_scripts.7z

You the best. I owe you a beer.

I've been having a hell of a time attempting to get scripts decompiled. I've tried DeNCS (keeps failing), KotOR Scipting Tool (errors out and crashes), and xoreos-tools (I can't read bytes). If anyone would be so kind, I'm attempting to get the holo scripts from the Rancor Trio room on Taris. (I believe the mod is tar_m03ad.) There are some scripts in there named holoon, holooff, holoboom, etc. I've tried to find the source, but couldn't find anything that matched up. So if anyone would be so kind as to attempt a decompile on their end, I'd be much obliged. TYIA.

17 hours ago, Hunters Run said:

With your star map model is it in the same folder as the original model when you try to compile?

Tried within and outside, same result.

1 hour ago, Purifier said:

Well probably so in the case of this one particular model, for right now, but that's up to you. Although you could still use KB for say maybe some other model projects you have in mind? And if you just so happen to find any more new bugs, we'd really like to hear about it and you post them here. Because the more people who help us find new bugs the better the next version will be, see?

For sure, if I come across anything, I'll shoot your way. Thanks!

1 hour ago, ndix UR said:

Sure, if this is what's important for you. Or just make this change in nvb/nvb_node.py:

@@ -1619,11 +1619,9 @@ class Emitter(GeometryNode):
                     value = value.title()
             elif attrname == 'render':
                 attrname = 'render_emitter'
-                if value.title() not in ['Normal', 'Billboard_to_Local_Z', 'Billboard_to_World_Z',
-                                         'Aligned_to_World_Z', 'Aligned_to_Particle_Dir', 'Motion']:
+                if value not in ['Normal', 'Billboard_to_Local_Z', 'Billboard_to_World_Z',
+                                 'Aligned_to_World_Z', 'Aligned_to_Particle_Dir', 'Motion']:
                     value = 'NONE'
-                else:
-                    value = value.title()
             elif attrname == 'blend':
                 if value.lower() == 'punchthrough':
                     value = 'Punch-Through'

You might have to look up how to read a unified diff (it shows the before and after in one document) if it's not clear--notice the line number reference in the header line also.

Oh nice, yeah, I can make this change then. I'll give it a shot with the updated code. Thanks fam.

I'm still getting the reading ascii model lockup in MDLOps. Here's what the code reads:

Sorry if I being a pain in the ass.

Should I just hold off using this until the next patch comes out then?

4 minutes ago, Purifier said:

Hang on, CarthOnasty. We're looking at the file. Might be a while before we get back to you.

Not a problem at all. Let me know if you need anything else.

3 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

Your problem will be a malformed ASCII. The easiest solution is just to post a copy for someone to look at.

plc_starmap_from-Blender.mdl

1 minute ago, Purifier said:

You mean it freezes like that for over a minute or two?

Yeah, I went and had dinner and it was till like that. Tried a couple times, same thing.

7 minutes ago, Purifier said:

What does it say in the black dos window when you do that?

Also are using any processed files that were edited and exported out of the old KB version(0.1), then imported into the new KB version(1.0) and then exported from the new version?

Just says reading ascii model and freezes up.

And I've only used 1.0 with this model.

2 hours ago, ndix UR said:

Uncheck 'Export TXI Files' on the Export Odyssey MDL settings and/or don't use relative paths, I believe. Probably one of those places I should look at making paths more OS-neutral, and also probably find /look for the Blender API relative path methods...

That did the trick, thanks fam.

Not to be a pain again... but once I exported an .mdl, it locks up when I try to Read/Write in MDLOps. Could be user error of course.

When I try to export a model to an .mdl, I get the attached error. How might I remedy this or is this user error?

1 hour ago, JCarter426 said:

Right, but what about before? I don't think there's anything you can do in Blender to get it to work, because it's most likely the KOTORBlender export script that needs to be fixed. But if the UVW map is the only thing you've edited - if you haven't changed the geometry, most importantly the number of vertices - it should be easy enough to copy the new map onto the original geometry (export through KOTORBlender -> import both versions in 3ds/Gmax -> Unwrap UVW -> copy from one to the other -> export via KOTORMax).

Hmmmm, I'm going to try this, excellent idea.

44 minutes ago, JCarter426 said:

Yeah, although ironically you're not losing smoothing - you're getting smoothing where there shouldn't be, because the real smoothing data is gone. It looks like whatever Blender is doing, it's making the whole model have the same smoothing group and then MDLEdit is applying smoothing based on that.

Is the UVW map the only thing you've changed?

In the above screen caps, I changed nothing. Just a direct import/export.

So I tried doing this with leaving Compute smoothgroup numbers unchecked, and it's even smoother.

3 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

You could always do the smoothing in GMax if necessary. Or get someone else to run it through Max/GMax for you.

The first image is the model with just a white skin, and then the model imported then exported from Blender.

12 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

You've lost all the smoothing information by the looks. I gather the Blender script doesn't export that data.

I guess I hadn't really noticed that. I think what I'll do is a straight unedited export/import to see if Blender is indeed stripping that info out. That'd be a damn shame if it was.

2 hours ago, ebmar said:

I like that idea too- to make it a sphere? Yes!

Actually, here's an idea- but do not know if it's possible and plot-legitimate or not.

IF- you decided to make it a sphere; then could it be possible to make it a "CM_Baremetal"-ed golden sphere? [Attached is a rough-visualization of how the idea looks like].

Note: So far, I am impressed with how the Star Map Revamp 1.1 looked like. And I can't thank you more if you decided to give it more lift.

May the Force be with you CO!

It could be possible, sure. I'd have to see what it looks like in-game. We were just talking about this on Discord last night and the difficulty of getting cm_baremetal to not look like "it was coated in Vaseline". 😝

Thanks for the support as always. 🤜🤛

Testing out the new UVs. They seem to be lining up just fine. 😀

///// 01. Two-Point-Oh /////

First off, thanks to everyone who’s downloaded and offered support through this process. I appreciate all of your comments, critiques and suggestions. Through the creative process, the gears started turning for future plans. Here’s loosely what I’m planning thus far:

///// 02. Planned Improvements /////

• Remap the UVs. A lot of the patterns repeat, e.g. details on arms are also on feet, or also on base, etc. I know I wanted to remedy those first and foremost. I wanted the arms to have their own textures, the feet their own, etc. etc. etc.
  • Progressive: Create a UV for each arm and leg, which would increase the work significantly because then we go from 2 pieces to 6. Overkill?
• Planet rotations. When the map opens and you see the location of each planet, they slowly (and very choppily(?) rotate. I’d really like to smooth that out a bit, as it’s just a hacked together animation. I think it has 9 frames right now? At a minimum, I’d go up to… 18 frames?
  • Progressive: Each planet has its own custom shape and visual identifier. Right now, it’s random Aurebesh numbers (which technically didn’t exist as it does now, same with planet names), but we’ll see. Does it even need those I guess? Maybe it’s actually the type of planet referenced by the terminal, i.e. barren, arboreal, etc.
• More “Builder-esque”. Until ebmar pointed this out (and it should have seemed so obvious), this is a Rakata structure. I got the Aurebesh (see comment above) in there, but what else can I do to make this more “Builder”? I started looking around at a lot of source photos and ran around the Unknown World location a bit. I think I can change the rock? metal? country? to be a bit more… just “of that world”. Perhaps I made it too sleek in 1.0. While I have the texture itself pretty roughed it, it’d also make sense that some parts got chipped/rotted off here and there.
  • Progressive: ebmar and I have been chatting about having a new sound for the opening of the maps.
• Dodecahedron. I really hate that thing. I want to make it a sphere or I dunno, just something different. I was so difficult to figure out how to reskin it before. There would be so much more I could do with a different shape. At the very least it’s been given a new UV map.
  • Progressive: Play around with some transparency ideas.

///// 03. Planet Customizations /////

Let’s just go ahead and mark this whole section as “Progressive”. The idea would be to create a star map for every location, customized to that planet. The thing with that is there would need to be at least 4 more placeables created or they’d have to be built into the room itself. Hard to say what the route would be at this point, I mean, there are a limited number of placeables in the game. Anyway, the custom ideas:

• Dantooine
  • This would just be the base model.
  • Similar to what it is now, though with a violet glow.
• Tatooine
  • Yellow glow.
  • Sand-blown, sand in crevices and piled around base.
  • Maybe throw some krayt scales in there? Like the dude was using it as a scratching post.
• Kashyyyk
  • Green glow.
  • This thing has been in a jungle for what, 10k years? Let’s thrown some moss, vines, etc. on there. It’d only make sense that the jungle would start taking it back.
  • Moisture stains.
  • Rust? I’m iffy on that one.
• Manaan
  • Blue glow.
  • Heavy algae growth.
  • Coral, barnacles growing on it?
• Korriban
  • Red glow. (durrr)
  • I’m a little stuck on this one because it’s unexposed to the elements basically.
  • I was thinking along the lines of blood splatters and saber burns. Thinking maybe someone fought in that room at some point.

///// 04. Recent Dev /////

• The model has a completely new UV map. Every part has its own map to avoid pattern repetition. While I don’t know if I’ll recreate all 3 arms and all 3 legs still remains to be seen.
• Lots of reading about creating placeables and modding rooms.

///// 05. Future Dev /////

I really don’t care for the end animation of when you open the final star map. It seems so lackluster and very anticlimactic to me. I envision once the final map opens and the coordinates triangulate, you now have a large hud of the starforge. As of now there are just blue streaks and dinky animations (no offense Bioware). All of this really gets into some hardcore modeling and animation and that’s way, way, WAY over my head. I’m using Blender too, and well, it doesn’t like KotOR animations that much.

///// 06. Final /////

So that’s what’s going on at this point. Thanks again to everyone who’s download the mod, given their opinions and suggestions and more. This has been a fun project and I’m hoping it will continue to be so! If there’s anything you’d like to add to the above list or have anything else you’d like to share, by all means. Feel free to follow this post for updated now and then. Cheers, -CO

10 hours ago, ndix UR said:

The currently released version of KotORBlender lacks a lot of support for emitters. And animation. Definitely animation of emitter properties. It's really hard to tell what you are trying to point out in the low resolution image, but I'm guessing it's the middle portion, which is probably all generated by emitters, and all brought online during maybe an off2on animation or something. If you want to modify this model, or any other with animated emitter properties, you just have to wait for the new KotORBlender version or use 3DSMax/Gmax/KotorMax if you can't wait.

Oh, or cut and paste the animations (from the first 'newanim' line to the last ... 'endanim'? line) from plc_starmap-ascii.mdl into plc_starmap_v2.mdl (delete all the animations present in plc_starmap_v2.mdl before pasting in the new ones). They're just text files. That happens after you export from Blender but before you recompile using MDLOps.

Also, in MDLOps you should be using weld/minimize vertices when you do 'compute smoothgroup numbers' on the Binary=>ASCII decompile. Otherwise the smoothgroup stuff won't really do anything, as KotORBlender converts that information into 'sharp edge' info, but it won't do it across edges that are 'split' (which is how they come out if you don't use weld/minimize, due to how the MDL/MDX format works).

You are correct, I was pointing out the middle portion. And yeah, I did the copy/paste thing it totally works now! Thanks soooo much for this advice. And thanks for the MDLOps tip as well!

You're awesome, thanks for this.