JCarter426

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.

I'll keep it in mind. I had planned to take a look at that scene eventually, though there are a couple others ahead in the queue. I got taken away from those when... the data was taken away from me. But it's since been recovered, fortunately. It's been a while since I've seen the scene, but I remember they used the regular dead animation rather than something like prone (as seen with Saul Karath's death, for example) and a new animation might indeed be desirable. Visas doesn't talk in the scene, so that makes it somewhat easier.

It's certainly possible, but the difficulty is that the K1 supermodel does not have the bones needed to animate the cape, like the K2 one has. And while new bones can be added to the supermodel, they would require thousands of frames of animation keys to match the game's animations. Maybe capes could be added as dangly meshes instead (like Bastila's skirt flaps) but I don't know how good that would look.

I just might. I'll have to take another look at the designs first, though. The last time I worked on them, they ended up being a totally different design, so I'd want to make some changes to bring it closer to the game appearance again.

...then you go to Dantooine? Or did you mean what happens if you're on your way to Dantooine when you're captured? In that case, you're automatically sent to the last remaining Star Map planet after escaping the Leviathan.

Cool! I'll be interested to see how much of it you can change. I've done some pazaak card designs over the years but I never thought about putting them in the game - I made them to have them printed out. It might be nifty to see them in the actual game.

Yeah, that works, no catch to it.