Salk

Hello! I used to have this modification stored in my hard drive but it must have gone lost somehow and now I have a hard time finding it. Can someone help me with that? Thanks!

Hello! I have already remedied the biggest inconsistency with the Academy turning hostile, which was it happening without any kind of visible reason. The fact that is sealed after you leave it is something that, like you, I can consider acceptable. The sealing of the tombs instead is something that bothered me as well but I suppose that it was done to avoid starting quests that are connected to gaining prestige. I remember now that I have added Naga Sadow to the list of tombs that were sealed because that was probably the only one that makes sense being sealed. It was sealed before entering with Master Uthar and we are told in the game that the Naga Sadow tomb can only be entered by Master Uthar and, if I remember correctly, he either ends up dead in there or has returned to the Academy if the Player sides with him. I'm almost tempted to seal the fourth tomb as well because having three sealed and one open makes even less sense than four sealed. I agree with you that ideally we would have no sealed tomb whatsoever though. Cheers!

Hello, Ragnarök. Thanks for your input. I have decided to remove the Wookie Warblade from Lehon and place two of them on Kashyyyk to give them a more fair representation. I'm not exactly sure I can agree with your last statement though. The weapon is called Wookie Warblade and I can hardly imagine being developed by any other race than Wookies, considering that in its lore it's specified that "The warblade was a cumbersome weapon for non-Wookiees but was perfectly wieldy for the Wookiees who carried them." It seems therefore consistent that this was a weapon designed by Wookies. I have additionally decided to make Bacca's Sword more unique. For starters, it's using one model and texture found in DI's Mandalorian Battleblade mod. It loses its rather senseless 4 Energy Damage Bonus while at the same time shifts its class from Vibrosword to Wookie Warblade and that compensates the nerf because Wookie Warblades in my own modification have an increased critical multiplier (from x2 to x3) and the "Mighty" property as well.

Hello! After installing the new version of the skyboxes I immediately wanted to look around to see the effects in the game and I must say it's impressive. One note: I don't use the Yavin IV modification but Kexikus' work there is so great that I am sorry I'm going to miss that. As I expected, Korriban, Taris and the Unknown World are top notch and a feast for the eye. The backdrop buildings of Taris are fantastic although I would have personally liked a slightly lighter color for them to make them blend even better. Exceptional job on those three worlds. Kashyyyk was better than I expected and it is in fact very much approved of by my own aesthetic sense. The lighter tone of the sky doesn't affect negatively the overall picture the way I initially feared and the various improvements are simply undeniable. And now I come to the only two criticisms, hoping that this won't make me sound ungrateful or worse because I truly admire the excellent job Kexikus has produced today and in the past. I was talking of personal aesthetic sense and alarm bells were ringing in my head when I checked Dantooine. Let me start with saying that this also brings in a wonderful set of images but my gripe is with the high, snow-capped mountains. They are present in LDA_sky0003.tpc and LDA_sky0004.tpc. While numerically speaking it's LDA_sky0003 which present a higher number of mountains that look like they could belong to alpine settings, it's actually LDA_sky0004's big mountain which looks less harmonious. Dantooine's landscape doesn't strike me for one that would allow such a strong contrast between hilly, undulating terrain and the relatively near presence of very tall mountain peaks. The snow, while being beautifully rendered, exacerbates this particular issue. But the rest of Dantooine is so beautiful that I elected it to be a worthy replacement and improvement over Kexikus' version 1 of his skyboxes. And now I come to the only one new planet I decided to not "upgrade" fully and it's a shame because there is really much I like here as well. It's Manaan. I installed the new version to test it in game of course and the alarm bells in this case were too loud to ignore and the suspicions which arose from just checking the comparison screenshots found this time confirmation. First let me say that I believe the structural changes and especially the corrected perspective for the Atho City vistas are a wonderful and welcome change. The lighter skybox looks very good here as well and is a great improvement over version 1. My problem is with a new texture found in LMA_bboard01.tpc, LMA_ring01.tpc and LMA_ring02.tpc used to replace the original. I have attached two images which show exactly what I am talking about. In my opinion, the replacement, which I honestly cannot even understand what is supposed to represent, is a sensible downgrade. It doesn't fit together with the rest of the composition. Chromatically, to begin with but also structurally. The texture is also much less detailed and tendentially monochromatic compared to the original one. That's something very visible just by looking at the walls' texture quality. So in the end I did not include that part in my own Manaan upgraded skyboxes. Ultimately I kept only the actual skies from that world: LMA_sky0001.tpc-LMA_sky0005.tpc and the .are changes (I don't know what the edited Manaan .mdl/mdx files are for but I left them out just in case) because I also liked V1's underwater Manaan skybox better. I do hope that this "mini-review" is not going to antagonize anyone, especially the very talented author of this modification. I focused mainly on criticisms simply because everything else is superb. Again, kudos to Kexikus for beautifying the skies of our beloved KotOR game! Cheers!

Hello! I believe Kexikus' just released new version of the K1 Skyboxes is overall a must-have graphics improvement. He will soon release a K2 version too so keep an eye out for it. You may also enjoy upscaled textures for both games. I personally make use of most of the content of Selphadur's Kotor Texture Redux. My advice is to check the Download section here at Deadlystream and see for yourself what is available that would suit your personal taste. I recommend strongly using the K1 and K2 Community Patches. The first in particular is a real gem and shouldn't be missed for any reason. Good luck!

Let me be the first to congratulate you here about this new release. Just a question: I have unzipped the archive and noticed there are many .are files that would be dumped in the Override. I, but also many others, would end up losing earlier vital changes made to those .are files (I'm in particular thinking of OnEnter scripts). Could you tell us what .are changes were required? Thanks a lot for sharing all this with us. Cheers!

Hello! As I approach the end of my project by going through the whole game in search of things to fix/improve on, I am now exploring the Unknown World and found that there is quite little to do for me there compared to every other planet I have visited before. Just minor stuff, really... But one thing that bothered me was finding this item, the Wookie Warblade, in one of the storage bins. Bioware seems to have filled such bins/crates with items that do not seem to belong there at all but this one in particular is special. We find this particular sword, which is nothing to write home about, for the first time just there on Lehon as opposed to much more sensible places like Kashyyyk. Not only that, but it is virtually useless since at this point into the game nobody would ever use such a weak weapon to fight with so I have been wondering if it might be best to move it from there and place it somewhere else, at least to make thematically much more sense. I was thinking of a bin in Kashyyyk. Possibly even have more than one such item, considering it should be quite a common weapon. Opinions? Cheers!

Well, in the end I only reduced the size of the burn mark of 70% more or less. This does not really solve the problem but it mitigates the issue considerably. I'll just have to live with that. Thanks a lot for the the advice, JC!

I understand, thanks. I guess what you heard was correct since I could verify it. The burn mark model doesn't use any texture so my asking you is just a curiosity: if it did use a texture, I could have used an invisible one with the same name in the .mod file and that might have worked or did you mean something else? Unfortunately now I am left with an unpleasant choice: either I remove the burn marks altogether from the game because of how ugly they look in places like Tatooine and Lehon or I just keep things the way they originally were. I have a third path which may be worth exploring if it was not that I cannot do any modelling and it's change the v_burnmark model itself. At the very least to make it much smaller thus reducing the aesthetics damage it makes. Any suggestions?

Well, it seems that the invisible v_burnmark.mdl/mdx model won't work unless it's dumped in the override. My goal was to have only Tatooine and Lehon's beach affected and so I followed DP's advice and made the model part of my .mod files but it won't have any effect. Am I doing something wrong or was it actually wrong information? Thanks!

Hello! Rather than starting yet another topic I thought I could ask here. I am working on the Carth/Player dialogue and for the life of me it seems like I cannot change the camera angle. I tested with 2 and 3 but the game always defaults to the close-up (1). It doesn't make any difference whether I set PLAYER in the Listener tag. I tried on different nodes with the same result. Someone has any idea why this is happening? Cheers!

I took another look at Kashyyyk and, while I enjoy the better resolution and quality of the new version, I realize I do miss the tree density of the original skybox which contributed much in terms of making me feel I am walking in the midst of a forest. So coming to personal preference, I favor the older Manaan and Kashyyyk. The drastic change of brightness in the underwater Manaan is not actually a very minor detail because the brightness/color choice changes the overall image drastically since it fills a rather hefty portion of what the player sees. Cheers!

Just wanted to mention that I have tested the new version on Windows 10 and it does seem to work perfectly fine! I won't need to bother poor JC about making lip files for me anymore. 😄 Thanks, Jenko!

My take about Manaan is a mix of what La Ingobernable and Malkior said when it comes to Atho City. It might as well be just like JC says. The perspective is very possibly "fixed" and the Player gets a realistic view to the outside from Atho City but in my opinion the vista loses too much in terms of beauty although I would have said it may have been worth the "sacrifice" if the new, how to call it... "golden stripe" used both in the "half ring" of the visible structure outside and on the billboards was better. I do think that particular stripe is giving me major grief. The original one may be lower resolution but to my eyes it fits much better. About the underwater instead I have a rather strong preference for the darker blue. In my opinion the new rendition is way too bright there. While I can understand the shift to brighter skies for every other place (except for Kashyyyk, which is also a bit too bright), here I do feel is not justified. My only other remark is about the mountain on Dantooine, as I said. The original look does strike me as intending to portrait an area of valleys and dales and the mountain (with snow, even) visible in the third screenshot looks out of place, according to me. Said that, I believe you did a wonderful job. Especially on Taris and Korriban, which I believe are a great improvement. Thanks for all your work and for your interest in our feedback. Cheers!

Great work there, Kexikus! I took a good look at the comparison screenshots for the original game's skyboxes and my favorites are Taris and Korriban. Dantooine looks great as well although I feel that a mountain in that landscape is out of place. Tatooine, the Unknown World and Kashyyyk all look very nice but personally I would have kept the version one darker color for their skies. And just like La Ingobernable, my only reservations are also about Manaan. I think I overall like your original work better there. Cheers!

Very nice! I'm following the development of your model and texture with great interest! PS: Do I remember wrong or is this sword only appearing in TSL, by the way?

Well, assuming that we won't be able to edit k_plev_throwdown, I have done the following: - Added a new global (K_SWG_CARTH2) to globalcat.2da - Created two new scripts void main() { int nCarthSWG = GetGlobalNumber("K_SWG_CARTH"); SetGlobalNumber("K_SWG_CARTH2", nCarthSWG); } and void main() { if (GetGlobalBoolean("G_Carth_RevTalk") == TRUE) { SetGlobalBoolean("G_Carth_RevTalk", FALSE); } if (GetGlobalNumber("K_SWG_CARTH2") == 8) { SetGlobalNumber("K_SWG_CARTH", 14); SetGlobalNumber("K_SWG_CARTH2", 99); } } with the first firing at E46 in the lev40_darthmala2.dlg and the second at E3 in the lev40_carth.dlg files. This won't solve everything because it reopens the romance and non romance talk only if the Player has started and not completed the Finding Dustil quest and, even in that case, it does skip a couple of interactions with Carth that might have been salvaged before reaching the "Let's talk about my being Revan" conclusive talk. This is thus the only real restoration, together with the possibility of advancing the romance at a later stage. The reason why I think it's best not salvage those two interactions [R187 and R106] is that it doesn't feel very natural that the immediate subject of their talk isn't the revelation. Also, the effective time for developing the Carth/Player relationship is drastically reduced by the game having advanced a lot and nearing its end. A preliminary test seems to confirm things work fine with this solution.

Yes, it is just like I suspected then. The developers killed the romance because it contains references to Saul that would no longer make any sense. But wouldn't it be possible to simply set K_SWG_CARTH to 14 if it is at 8 changing the content of k_plev_throwdown? In that way, the non compatible lines would be skipped and the romance could proceed from a valid point after the Leviathan is completed. Dustil's quest would still need to be completed first since the conditional scripts checking for KOR_DANEL comes first have priority. Unlike what I thought earlier, it's this angle that seems the right one to pursue while it seems correct to block the advancement of the romance as long as Dustil's quest is not solved one way or another. So yes, it seems that the ability of editing k_plev_throwdown may be very important here. But even if it is not possible, we can still use a secondary global to keep track of the K_SWG_CARTH state and roll back from 99 to 14. EDIT: For the non-romantic path we have k_swg_carth25x that checks on three globals: numeric K_SWG_CARTH must be other than 14 (OK), boolean Lev_MalDream to be true (OK) and another boolean G_Carth_RevTalk to be false (NOT OK). So even if the romance is killed the game doesn't allow for the non romantic path to be open either because the second boolean is set to TRUE somewhere during the revelation on the Leviathan. Do you know what script does that, @JCarter426? And even why we need that check?

Yes, I am really curious about it. It may be that the game is forced to kill the romance because after the Leviathan and the revelation some of the missing steps left in the romance would no longer make sense, dialogue-wise. If that is the case, then I guess there is nothing that can be done from that angle. But I'm not so sure about blocking the romance while the Finding Dustil quest is on. k_swg_carth18.ncs and k_swg_carth19.ncs are the conditional scripts in k_hcar_dialog.dlg responsible for it. They both check the KOR_DANEL global and if it's 2 or 3, Carth won't talk about anything but Dustil, the Gizka on the Ebon Hawk, the stowaway or the place you currently are at. I do believe that all this is original intended behavior though and perhaps it'd be best left alone.

Hello! In my heavily modified game it seems my female protagonist's romance chances with Carth were killed after the first skirmish against Malak on the Leviathan (the global K_SWG_CARTH is set to 99 sometimes during the long cutscene). I had started a long time before Carth's personal quest about his son Dustil and since then it seems like Carth's dialogue would not allow for advancing the romance because all the player can ask is "Do you need to talk?" and the reply is invariably "Talk about what? The only thing I want to do right now is find Dustil. If he's alive... Th-there's just nothing else I want to think about." I never really completed his personal quest before the Leviathan and that seems like it's spelled doom on the romance. To me that doesn't make any sense. For starters, why would the game kill the romance after the Leviathan at all? What is the logical reason? Why punish the player that doesn't rush to complete Carth's personal quest because Korriban is perhaps the last planet they want to visit? Assuming this is not a local issue (it shouldn't, really), I would like to know what can be done about it in order to make it work differently. Cheers! UPDATE: Apparently, the script responsible for updating the global to 99 is k_plev_throwdown.ncs (found in lev_m40ac). Unfortunately, it's one of those that DeNCS can't decompile. Perhaps @AmanoJyaku can check if his WIP decompiler might do the job instead?

Hey Kexikus! Now that this is coming to a close, could you tell us how version 2 for KotOR compares to version 1 in terms of size? If I'm not mistaken the first version required something like 200 Mbs of hard disk space (nothing compared to the current 20.5 Gbs of my own project, by they way... 😄) but I assume that this one will far exceed that number. Am I correct? Thanks again for all your work!

Great news there, Jenko! Thanks for working on a solution for W10 users. I must say, I am generally speaking very disappointed in the OS from Microsoft after Windows XP and W10 is no exception but migrating to Linux would pose another set of challenges. Cheers!

This new version has been a massive work for you and your poor GPU (😄) but I'm sure you're really satisfied with the end result. Well done, Kexikus!

Hello, guys! I was wondering if any of you has made a nice "package" with all these signs for Tatooine? I've been looking forward to test the signs and see what kind of effect they make in Anchorhead. Also, I'd love to check how your Manaan animated signs look in the game, @ebmar. Perhaps you wouldn't mind sharing? Cheers!

Hello! I was trying to make an NPC play the ready animation via script but it doesn't work for me. The only way I can make it happen is if I insert it directly into the .dlg file (using DLG Editor or K-GFF). I'm not sure whether there is something wrong in my own system or if this is a known problem which I never heard or forgot about. I tested starting other looping animations (DANCE, for instance) via script and they work correctly. Cheers!