Sithspecter

Alright, what you're running into here are limitations from the tools we use. The issue is that the tools we use are essentially a one-way-flow. Meaning, you can create areas in 3DSMax with lightmaps and everything, and export them to binary files through a modified NWMax and KAurora, but the tools can't take the binary files and produce a complete ASCII file. Likely, there are important properties of these meshes that are being lost as soon as they touch MDLOps. You can try importing it with MDLOps 0.6a, which retains a few more properties. But I suspect there may be lightmaps involved, which none of our tools can successfully import from the game. The sanity check basically determines if a mesh has 2 vertexes occupying the same location, but shouldn't have a large negative effect on the game.

How are you supposed to prove that?

A very simple search reveals there is a patch for compatibility right here: http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/208-tslrcm-compatibility-patch-for-jingers-admiralty-mod/

Well, I certainly am open to any help that will make the mod better. That being said, I don't exactly know of an excellent and well-versed writer to call on, so in the mean time I'm stuck with just me, and a few people to check and make sure I'm not creating any bonehead plot holes. But if anyone knows of one, I'm more than happy to talk with them to try and better the mod. I could definitely use a good dialog writer though, I struggle a bit when it comes to that, and so does Fair Strides. It would be good to have someone that can bridge the gap. Also, I am looking for a few Hutt names, if anyone has suggestions.

Thanks Jorak! I've been writing most of the quests and storylines myself, over a long period with quite a few revisions as well as calling on a few unbiased opinions to critique them. There are a few larger quests, which have been thoroughly written for the most part. I don't play SWtoR, so I'm not quite sure what big decisions you refer to. But I am trying to keep things more streamlined and less complex. Good eye, N-DReW25, those are in fact spice bricks, ready to be packaged and shipped.

Let me send you Quanon's. It has an updated technique that allows multiple meshes to be assigned the same lightmap. Disbeliever's does not, resulting in hundreds or even thousands of separate lightmaps.

JC, PM me your email address and I'll get you the one that Quanon wrote. It's still relevant today, though I can provide you a few more tips that will be helpful. I intend to write a more up to date and comprehensive version. People can, but we rely on volunteers to write new tutorials, as we can't very well order people to write new tutorials. Unfortunately, many people have to balance working on mods and sharing their knowledge, and the former generally takes precedence over the latter.

Hey Buddy! Good to see you back at it again. Looks like the problem you're running into is that you aren't putting the eye texture in the right spot, I think it should go here: That other part gets applied sort of to the eye socket/eyelids, I think.

Do you have a link to this? Their Twitter doesn't say anything, and it was updated only 6 hours ago.

Well, I suppose that 2 of the main quests really count as secondary quests, since they are not necessary for Star Map retrieval. I've outlined both of those well so far, with necessary areas planned. As far as smaller quests go (ie Sharina Fizark or A Wookiee Lost), I haven't done much planning at all. Fortunately, those type of quests can be implemented almost anywhere without too much hassle.

Today I have a special treat for you. I don't normally showcase this much of the areas, but this one is pretty unique. It may not appear groundbreaking at first glance, but it is. This is the first area I have designed from the ground up in the same way that KotOR areas are structured. It may sound pretty idiotic, but previously I didn't have much of a plan before jumping in 3DSMax and modeling. Sure, I had some ideas in my head of what it would look like, but this approach was lengthy and tiresome. I would get stuck partway through, unsure what to do or what to work on next. It would eventually all work out, but was a more grueling process. Not this time. The first item on the agenda was a floor plan. I checked around a few similar KotOR areas, and discovered that a 3.75 or 7.5 meter square is typically used as a base size that rooms are constructed in. With this in mind, I decided a few things like wall thickness, doorway width, etc that I had previously been eyeballing. I also checked in-game to see what similar areas contained. I thought things through. For instance, if you have guards, they have to have a place to sleep, eat, and store their equipment. For this area, I knew I needed bunks, a kitchen/dining area, and store-rooms. With all of this in mind, I took to graph paper to lay out the floor plan. It was a bit more difficult than I thought, but after a few hours I came up with a good floor plan with dimensions. Satisfied, I turned to the second part of the plan: creating pre-made assets. Ironically, some of the inspiration for this came from an Apeiron livestream, of all places. I guess you can learn things by studying the apes. Anyways, it was interesting to see how easily (note that I say easy, not that it's done well) the TheDigitalCowboy put areas together. And he hardly models a single thing! He takes a bunch of pre-created things like walls and chairs and tables and fixtures and places them. I decided to do the same. I modeled beds, tables, chairs, crates, wall cross sections, light fixtures, doorways, and panels. Previously, it was annoying to go back and detail an area after it had been created. With this approach, it was drop-dead easy. Now can the actual modeling of the area itself. With dimensioned drawings, it was simple. I laid out a big circle, and went from there. Walls were quick to construct, since I already had calculated cross sections for them, and doorways were simple drag-and-drop affairs (a little more like calculate and rotate, but it was still very easy all the same). The planning really paid off, and the area went together quickly. The next thing that I did that I don't normally do is slice the area into sections. Well, sections that make sense anyways. Previously I was selecting ~20 meshes randomly, lightmapping them, and exporting. This time, I divvied up the meshes into their respective rooms, and combined all meshes in the room with the same texture. This makes lightmapping way way easier. The lightmapping went off without a hitch, and it's normally a bit more difficult. With the area all in-game, it was time to do the walkmeshes. My walkmesh tutorial details that further, but this is the first area that I've done with multiple walkmeshes, i.e. one per room. Finally, I added the camerameshes, which can now block the camera from going through walls (thanks to Dastardly!) Soooo...that's it. A lot of kinda technical things that added up to really smooth and beautiful area creation. Expect more of this in the near future!

Hey, does anyone know exactly what links a path file to a module? I've confirmed that I can edit path files using the path editor and changing paths in existing areas, but I seem to be unable to link new path files to new areas. I've tried using the KotOR naming convention (m-digit-digit-letter-letter) to name it, and I've tried including it in the override or the .mod for the area, but it still refuses to work. Any help is appreciated.

This post is quick and dirty, but I will try to have a more expanded one in the future. I just got finished creating a walkmesh with multiple parts for a large area, and wanted to write down everything that I learned in the process.

A KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC TUTORIAL Words of Wisdom for Harmonious Walkmeshes By Sithspecter Overview: In this tutorial I will explain what walkmeshes do and how to create and modify them. What are walkmeshes? Walkmeshes, sometimes called a height map or mesh, covers the surface of an area, determining where a character can actually walk. The walkmesh is really a 2.5 dimension height mesh. It covers the whole area, but it can never be at two different heights at the same point (I’ve done tests to attempt this, it does not work, the engine does not support it). So, for instance, it’s impossible to make a bridge that you can walk over with a walkable path under it. The primary purpose of the walkmesh is to determine where a creature can walk and where it cannot. It also has secondary purposes, such as determining what sound a creature makes when moving over the surface, if there should be grass growing on the surface, and if two creatures can see each other (line of sight). It will also add visual effects on some surfaces, such as water and puddles, when something is moving through it. Use: Walkmeshes are primarily used in areas, but also have use in doors and placeables. Structure: KotOR Walkmeshes are typically split up into hallway sections and individual rooms. After studying several areas, I have determined that individual walkmesh sections usually need to be ~100 polies or less. If it ends up being larger than this, it’s a good idea to split it into two sections. Unless you have a small, simple room as your entire area, it is highly recommended that your walkmesh be split up into sections. This brings up another important point. Walkmeshes aren’t just flat, they have walls that go up on the side. These walls always use the Non-Walk/#7 multimaterial. This blocks line of sight and prevents the player from “sticking” along the edge of the walkmesh. When you run into the walkmesh, you will be able to keep moving parallel to the wall’s face in that particular area. The only portion of the walkmesh hat does not need a “wall” is the place where two sections will join in the game. If you have a walkmesh that has a “donut” shape with a large hole in the middle, it’s best to split it into two or more sections. I’m not sure why this is, but KotOR does not seem to like donut shaped walkmeshes. You can attempt it, but it will likely be less trouble to split it up. Note the following example of a circular hallway: I have created an example of a circular hallway. Note that it is donut shaped, and has been split into sections (Sections have been spaced out for illustrative purposes, if this was an actual export they would need to be touching in a continuous circle). Note also that the walls have been extruded, but the portions where the walkmesh connects do not have walls. The walkmesh has the NWMax Multimaterial applied (happens automatically when you add the walkmesh modifier) and the walls have been changed to the Non-Walk sub-material (#7, appears purple). Creation: KotOR walkmeshes can be very frustrating to get correct. However, I hope I can provide some insight for smooth creation. First, you’ll need your modeled area. In my areas, I usually have the base floor height to ~5 meters, with the whole area raised up that much. This will come in handy when we test our walkmeshes (also KotOR does not render shadows below -1 or -2 meters on the z-coordinate). Usually I get my area in game an test it using a massive plane for the walkmesh. When you are happy with the geometry and lightmaps (another tutorial for a different day), it’s time to sit down and do the walkmeshes. You’ll want to have a 3DS scene open with all your geometry for the whole area. I find it is best to create the base walkmesh for the whole area, and then split it up. How I do this is I convert all the geometry to an editable poly, and then I use the slice modifier at about 250 cm above the floor height, with the “Remove Top” setting checked. This gets all the ceilings and junk we don’t care about out of the way. Next, I hide everything except the floor pieces. If you’ve done a good job of modeling, this will be fairly easy. But I attach all the floor pieces together, and get rid of the textures by selecting the large pices and typing $.mat=nul in the Max Script mini listenter. Next, I weld all the vertexes to ~5-10 cm, and go around simplifiying the mesh. For instance, if you have a circular room with 96 sides, you really only need a 16-24 sided walkmesh. The goal is to eliminate uncessary meshes. Another thing to strive for is to try to make sure all your polygons are quads or triangles. This can help you out a lot. One tip for fast cleanup is to press CTRL+BACKSPACE when deleting edges, as this gets rid of any unecessary vertices too. Once basic cleanup is done, you can unhide the remaining geometry. Go back in your floor mesh and clean up the edges, move the vertexes to the actual wall locations, etc. Once you are satisfied with the placement and that all your polygons are quads and triagles, you can break the mesh up into the different sections. When editing your walkmesh, always do so in Editable Poly. When it’s time to put it in the game, then convert to mesh, and then add the AuroraWalkmesh modifier. What I do to test is I take one basic section at a time and put it in the game with no walls. I delete all the other walkmeshes from my Override (or .mod, whichever way you want to set it up), and adjust the spawn point in the .ifo accordingly. I run around all parts of the mesh, checking for issues. If you’ve positioned your area a few meters up in the z-coordinate, you’ll fall down to 0 when there is an issue. If there’s a problem, go back and check to make sure you don’t have overlapping edges, hidden polygons, or isolated vertexes. Also if there are blatant polygons that have more than 4 sides, that can be an issue. If you used the cut tool, it can often create polygons that are sort of hidden and it becomes and issue. I’ll often use the click and drag select tool to select three or four polygons that I can see. If you select those, and the number of selected polygons is more than you can visually see, you’ve got one hidden in there that needs to be deleted and edges that need to be cleaned up. Once you are sure there are no issues with the flat part, now it’s time to raise the walls. Convert to Editable Polygon, then hit the “3” key to select.borders. Hit an edge on the border of your walkmesh. It should select all the edges around your walkmesh. Hit the “2” key, and extrude the edges, set to 0.0 height and 0.0 width. Then, move those edges 400-500cm straight up. Now you have your walls! Delete the extra polygons where your rooms are supposed to connect. Make sure to weld vertexes once again to 0.1 cm! Convert to an editable mesh, ResetXForm, and add the Walkmesh modifier. Test again in the game. If it works, great! If it doesn’t, troubleshoot some more. Remember, any time you’re going through the floor or getting stuck in weird ways, you need to go back into 3DSMax. If it’s working, now is the time to link the edges for this particular mesh. Go into KAurora\Walkmesh\Load From Binary File and open the one you just created. Hit render. You should see your mesh. Now press the up and down arrows until where the edge that you want to link is outlined in black. Double click on this. A box will come up where you can enter a number. You put in the number of the line in the layout file of the area you want to link to. Except that the layout file is base 0, meaning the first line is 0, second line is 1, etc. So basically you put in which room line minus one. So if you’re linking to the third line under roomcount, you’d put 2. Now hit apply. Your edge should turn red. Also you need to link the two adjacent edges to the same value. Once you’re done, save it as a binary .wok once more, and you’re done with that section. I typically go in game once I have multiple walkmeshes in and check them each time I link two together. Most of the time, if you have issues, it’s not the link. Most of the time, it’s the walkmesh geometry that’s screwed up. If you do think it’s the link, open up the binary .wok file in the renderer and check the edges against the lines in the layout file. Remember, 1st line 0, 2nd line 1, 3rd line 2, etc. Walkmesh Tutorial.pdf

Yeah, knowing Fair Strides, I'm not one bit surprised that the computer gets transported by bicycle.

I'd be down for that.

Awesome! Make him do his Sleheyron work!

http://deadlystream.com/forum/topic/4684-wip-color-loadscreens-for-kotor/?p=48858

Well, to be honest, I thought it would take longer...

Likely Sleheyron loading screens will come in grayscale by default, but there will be a patch that adds color if the user chooses.

Can you do a test for me? I want you to extract the High Quality Blasters archive into a folder. Then extract the following UTI files with the KotOR tool: w_brifle_004.uti w_brifle_018.uti w_brifle_022.uti benoksblaster.uti (KotOR II \ RIMs \ 208TEL_s.rim \ Blueprint Item) Put those in the tslpatchdata folder and then try the install again. I think those may be the culprit as when I try to open them in KotOR Tool, they show up as K1 for some reason. Also what did you to do get it working now?

Don't expect another tomorrow... That's all I've got up my sleeve for now. And I really don't understand why they went with black and white over the color. I can only guess that maybe since the cameras and other recording style cutscenes were in black and white with a blue overlay, they thought it would be more immersive to do the same.

That's very, very odd. Is there any chance you had the KotOR version also and accidentally installed it into your TSL folder?

Released now here: http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/916-loadscreens-in-color/ Quick write up on how I did it: This mod has its roots in Sleheyron. I was working on adding loadscreens to Sleheyron, and made a Photoshop template for creating them. It had a filter to add the blue television noise lines, and I used screenshots and then desaturated them. But, the screenshots in color really looked spectacular. I hadn't thought much of it before, but I realized how terrible the default loadscreens were. So, I decided to do the rest. I noticed that load screens do not have NPCs, placeables, or doors in them. I wanted to do the same, but obviously had to figure out a way to quickly remove them. I opened the GIT file for each area, and deleted the Character and Placeable trees, effectively eliminating all NPCs and placeables. All the GIT files get dumped in the override, and I'm good to go. I opted to leave doors in, but open them in-game where necessary. In a number of locations that I warped to, the area I needed was inaccessible. I used Darth InSidious' Sonic Screwdriver mod as a tool to open these doors, allowing me access. It more or less became a grind of warping, taking screenshots, and resizing them. For the swoop and default load screens, I had to re-create the scenes using 3DSMax and Photoshop, which wasn't too difficult. It ended up being a decent amount of work, slightly more complex than one would expect.

File Name: Loadscreens in Color File Submitter: Sithspecter File Submitted: 20 Sep 2016 File Category: Mods K1R Compatible: Yes A KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC MODIFICATION Loadscreens in Color By Sithspecter Description: Knights of the Old Republic is a fantastic game. There isn't a whole lot that can be improved on. However, one area of the game that could, quite literally, use some more color is the loading screens. This mod replaces all the default black and white loading screens with loading screens that are in color. Each of the loading screens has been reproduced shot for shot, with a few exceptions where the angle was not possible or didn't showcase the area very well. Extra care was taken to produce a look very similar to the original, but in color. The result, in my opinion, really freshens the game and invokes the feel of the area being traveled to. Installation: Installation of Loadscreens in Color is extremely easy. Drop all the files in the "Override" folder in this archive into your Knights of the Old Republic Override folder. The new loading screens will automatically appear, you will not have to start a new game! INCOMPATIBILITY: IF YOU HAVE ANOTHER MOD THAT ALTERS THE LOADING SCREENS, YOU WILL HAVE TO CHOOSE ONE OR THE OTHER. INSTALLING THESE FILES WILL OVERWRITE OTHER LOADING SCREEN MODS. Bugs: None known. Credits: Credit goes to Kexikus for High Quality Skyboxes, which were installed when I took the screenshots. Credit goes to Darth InSidious for his Sonic Screwdriver, which was handy to open doors that wouldn't have been easily opened otherwise. Permissions: Do not upload this mod or assets from this mod, modified or not, to other sites without my express permission. I have uploaded this mod to multiple sites and can provide support on those sites. Legal: THIS MODIFICATION IS PROVIDED AS-IS AND IS NOT SUPPORTED BY BIOWARE/OBSIDIAN ENTERTAINMENT, LUCASARTS, DISNEY OR ANY LICENSERS/SPONSORS OF THE MENTIONED COMPANIES. USE OF THIS FILE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK AND THE ABOVE MENTIONED COMPANIES OR THE AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE CAUSED TO YOUR COMPUTER FOR THE USAGE OF THIS FILE. Click here to download this file