JCarter426

View File JC's Blaster Visual Effects for K1 This mod changes the visual effects for all the laser blasts in the game. Energy blasters, ion blasters, disruptors, bowcasters - I've replaced them all. Except sonic, because really, sonic? In general, I've added more detail and made them match what's depicted on film as best as I could, when there was a visual reference. I took screenshots of the movies and got out my eyedropper tool and everything. The cores of the lasers are brighter so they look more like lasers, instead of having the whole thing as one flat color. I also messed around with light objects so each laser will illuminate surrounding objects in the appropriate color. For disruptors, I've included three color options: white, green, and yellow. The default install is white, like the original, and the other two are included as optional things. Submitter JCarter426 Submitted 06/04/2018 Category Mods K1R Compatible No  

What makes the ASCII look easier to me is that everything is listed together on one line - timecode, red value, green value, blue value. In this case it doesn't really matter much because there aren't a lot of animation frames but for a more complicated one that makes it easier to tell what's going on. Also, you can do a find/replace to change the "1.0 0.0 0.0" to whatever color you want. I do this all the time with ASCIIs when I forget to set the ambient and diffuse colors properly. But I was able to figure out how MDLEdit's thing works just by looking at it, so it could be a lot worse!

Ah. Yeah, I suspected that. I think MDLEdit can edit them, based on what I'm seeing here: timekey_0 0.0 timekey_1 0.0333333 timekey_2 0.166667 timekey_3 0.333333 timekey_4 0.466667 timekey_5 0.5 color_0_r 1.0 color_0_g 0.0 color_0_b 0.0 color_1_r 1.0 color_1_g 0.0 color_1_b 0.0 color_2_r 1.0 color_2_g 0.0 color_2_b 0.0 color_3_r 0.0 color_3_g 0.0 color_3_b 0.0 color_4_r 0.0 color_4_g 0.0 color_4_b 0.0 color_5_r 0.0 color_5_g 0.0 color_5_b 0.0 I'm guessing the color_# things are the keyframes and the numbers correspond to the list of timecodes at the top. In this case, it's clear that the frames with 100% red are the ones that need to be edited and the all zeros are the off keys. Though this is a bit messy so it may be easier to edit the ASCII as you say.

Oh, it's all fine now. I was just reminiscing about the dark ages.

No, it's only on the power blast models. They have a secondary emitter that also has colored particles and gives it a sort of glow effect. In the past it wasn't possible to change the color of this (or at least I didn't know of any way - every one I edited with KAurora crashed the game) so you'd be stuck picking one of the existing colors (red, blue, or white). The color you're seeing there on the light object doesn't effect the appearance of the laser, but it casts light on any other object it passes.

That's true, and that's how we made new colors back in the day. But if you only rely on that (as was necessary before) you lose out other stuff like the glow from the gas emitter. When I did my edits before it was always yellow or green lasers with a white glow and I was never happy with that. I suppose with the current tools a combination of both methods will be possible, retexturing the laser so it can be more complicated than a simple color hue shift, but also retaining the ability to change the glow color and such.

I did some messing around in MDLEdit and also took a look in KOTORMax. The last time I worked with this stuff was long before we could properly import or edit these, and back then I did some edits like making the blue lasers bluer and making yellow and green variants. It was interesting to take a look at them again with the new tools. So, it appears that only the red lasers really make use of the light color. Of course the light is white for the white lasers, but it's also white for the blue lasers. Only red has red light. Also, because the color is animated, I'm not sure how to edit the color in MDLEdit. I believe it's the colorkey controller, but I didn't try it. I used the white lasers as a template for my yellow and green ones and thought they looked decent as is, though I might fiddle with it at a later date.

You can edit it with MDLEdit. The controllers you want to change are color for the light and colorStart, colorMid, and colorEnd for the emitter.

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).

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?

This isn't necessary, as it has no effect unless you have other mods installed (and assuming they don't have their own fix, like Sithspecter's does). But I guess if you want to include it, knock yourself out.

If you only need different textures for each version, you can manage that without making any duplicate models by packaging the textures in module files rather than putting one in Override. That adds the annoyance of having to use module files for the installation, but it would get around the placeable limit. I'd lean more towards adding the maps to the room models if not for the mess of the scripts involved. They better all decompile or you'll be out of luck.

Ah, I was overthinking it, since changing the on/off sounds is a rather trivial baseitems.2da edit. But yes, the point remains - it can only be by type, not color. If it were any other weapon then it wouldn't be a problem to add a new type specifically for that sound, which mods have done in the past, but with sabers we're out of luck.

It works. The sound is determined by the weapon material (weaponmattyp) in baseitems.2da, which directs to the line number in weaponsounds.2da. By default the three lightsaber types use line 1, but they could be made to be different. However, you'd only get different sounds for different lightsaber types, not for color. And as you say, we can't realistically add new lightsaber types so the limit is those three.

Just reiterating my previously-issued blanket permissions announcement for the record:

// 698. SpawnAvailableNPC // This spawns a NPC from the list of available creatures // Returns a pointer to the creature object object SpawnAvailableNPC( int nNPC, location lPosition ); Mission for example would be SpawnAvailableNPC(6, lLocation);

From NWScript: int DAMAGE_TYPE_BLUDGEONING = 1; int DAMAGE_TYPE_PIERCING = 2; int DAMAGE_TYPE_SLASHING = 4; int DAMAGE_TYPE_UNIVERSAL = 8; int DAMAGE_TYPE_ACID = 16; int DAMAGE_TYPE_COLD = 32; int DAMAGE_TYPE_LIGHT_SIDE = 64; int DAMAGE_TYPE_ELECTRICAL = 128; int DAMAGE_TYPE_FIRE = 256; int DAMAGE_TYPE_DARK_SIDE = 512; int DAMAGE_TYPE_SONIC = 1024; int DAMAGE_TYPE_ION = 2048; int DAMAGE_TYPE_BLASTER = 4096; 7 = 1 + 2 + 4 so it's bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage. Interestingly, that makes it weaker than any weapon with only one of those flags (with respect to the damage flag alone - all other properties aside) judging by what you say, as it sounds like it can be blocked by any of three things rather than just one.

Well, you're not wrong. I'm not sure if it's a bug or developer intent, however. The damage flag for disruptors is set to 7 (aka 1 + 2 + 4) which is bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage rather than universal, which would be 8. For what it's worth, Obsidian changed it to 16, acid, which was a NWN leftover. It could be done for K1. I don't recall if anything else in either game deals acid damage, or if anything grants resistance to acid, though.

Yeah, it's now on the top toolbar, to the right of font size. And it behaves completely differently now.

Something like this was actually part of the plan for my Telos Expansion mod from ten years ago that never got finished. Sadly, a hard drive failure wiped all progress, and then I gave up on it. I don't recall any specific details on it, but according to my notes it was some sort of extension to either a new smuggling quest or the existing one with Samhan, and one aspect of it was breaking a Trandoshan out of prison, if you were siding with the slavers. I remember I also wanted to add a Selkath for much the same reason. The content's all there and it's something of a mystery as to why it didn't get used. On the other hand, Obisidan did make use of a lot of stuff from K1 that was hidden in the files, like the Chadra-Fan.

It looks like you've set the envmap in appearance.2da to CM_Baremetal when it should normally be DEFAULT.

Well, yeah, there is that. It's definitely an easy way rather than the best way. But the best way would be to have actual geometry, which, of course, isn't an option here. It seems like a waste to me to go to the trouble of modeling that when it has to be simplified before going into the game... even if you do get a lot of that detail back with the normal map. But maybe it only seems that way to me because I'm more comfortable with texturing rather than modeling.

What you're doing isn't wrong, exactly, - you're making a height map, which you need to do to make a normal map. But there's a step after that. I use an Nvidia Photoshop plug-in to convert a greyscale height map to a proper RGB normal map. You have to be in indexed color mode to save it properly, but apart from that it's no more complicated than applying an effect. Although, I would suggest using a 50% grey background rather than black, since that serves as the default no-height-change value. Grey is the default color for materials in 3ds Max, I assume so highlights and shadows will be visible when a default material is applied. But of course it has to be white for KOTOR, even if the default is grey. I wouldn't feel too bad about it, though - you might remember the problem with Kreia was that her material was yellow, and that somehow made it into the game...

Items like the breath mask use MaskHook. Other headgear use GoggleHook. Which they use is determined by the base item type.