JCarter426

Well, rule systems get revised for reasons (not just to sell more rulebooks) so I'd still be interested in more Saga-like changes. There are some parts of Saga I prefer, and some I don't, but either way I do think the game in general could use an overall. If someone else is going to do it, then I look forward to it. I was just talking to someone else about this today. Personally, I don't really like the idea that feat gain is the major difference in classes. It's a little unbalanced the way soldiers get lots and lots of feats to choose from, while the other classes don't get to chose as many, but get some automatically, and in general those are superior than any the soldier can choose. I don't think evening it out would necessarily work, as you say, but at the same time it irks me that such a vague thing is the major difference. It only works if there are a lot of good feats, and by the end of the game most of the ones you have left to choose from are garbage. I recall the last time I played, when I was leveling up Carth and Canderous the last few times, there wasn't anything left that would really benefit them, and I just gave them tiers of implants or something. I don't know if there's a solution to this... the more customization you offer, the less distinct the class choice becomes, that's a universal rule. But it's certainly a weak point here. I don't recall ever seeing any way to change it, so I assume it's limited as the attributes are. You can change the base amount of points each class gets per level, however. On the subject of skills, though, I did some thinking and a bit of digging and I don't believe there is anything forcing you to keep computer use and repair. As far as I can recall, every game mechanic involving them is a scripted skill check that could be changed to something else. Using repair kits, repairing droids, slicing computers, all that is through scripts we can edit. The only possible issue I can imagine is that it would display the wrong values on computer terminals, and maybe there's even a way to get around that. The same goes for treat injury and persuade, but I doubt you want to get rid of those. Demolitions and security have some function that is hard coded, I believe, and would present more problems. I'm not sure about stealth or awareness - these might be handled through AI scripts I've simply never researched thoroughly. Depending on how the code is, and this makes me curious because I see the constants in skills.2da, it may be possible to rearrange even these functions. I'd be fine with reducing the classes that way, only thing I would worry about is that it would make them play too similarly but I would say they already do that for the most part anyway. There are a couple problems with your idea, though. First, there's no way to force the player to choose one of three feats that way, unless you do make them different classes. You could make each class statistically the same for the most part, but they'd still be taking up space and you couldn't add more Jedi classes. Second, with the game's level up system, the more agency you want the player to have, in general the dumber you have to make the system. You can't say, for example, a Jedi Guardian will get this feat at this level, unless the player already picked this, in which case they get the next tier of it, or a different feat, or whatever, the way the tabeltop rules can let you. You can either say a Jedi Guardian gets this feat at this level, or they don't, and they can choose it at this level, or they can't. So there's no way to work in recommendations apart from the descriptions like you described. I don't think a footnote at the end would be enough, especially if every class can pick anything anyway. I would suggest grouping them all together, changing the icons as well to make it clearer, something along those lines. All this is why, I think, they dumbed it down to the level they did. Although they did have a far more complicated system in Neverwinter Nights, unfortunately none of it works here.

Make new ones, no. Edit the existing ones, yes. The combat animations are spread across five models: S_Male01, S_Male02, S_Female01, S_Female02, and S_Female03. Recompiling them with different animations is not difficult... though doing the animation itself is a bit.

There was a mod that did it with this very method ages ago, and it worked. The only thing you'll have to look out for is that some party members already use these slots. If the unused skill focus feats don't work, the hidden item method would work here as well. If you edit the heartbeat script, you could have it check for those feats and then script in the appropriate item. You'd need dozens of items to account for all the possible combinations, so it would be a complete mess, but it would be possible. If it were the second game you could just script in a skill bonus but you can't do that in the first game. You got this backwards. The Saga Edition came out a few years after KOTOR. KOTOR itself was based on the Revised Core Rulebook, which had two Jedi classes: Jedi Consular and Jedi Guardian. BioWare added Sentinel to make the game work with their three-class system, and then when Wizards of the Coast revised the tabletop version, they simplified Jedi to one class and made the talent system to reflect the customization in the previous version and KOTOR. It is very possible to reduce the three to one Jedi class but anything resembling talent trees isn't feasible. The only way to limit choices is based on class, so you'd just be back to classes. It would be fine if the player could start as a Jedi and then multiclass to a specialty, as with the prestige classes in the second game, but we can't add new Jedi classes, and a character can't have more than two classes, so that's not an option either. They left out a few other classes as well - again, three-class system, video game simplification, etc. Adding them back in is doable... but you can't make them starting classes. We're stuck with three options. The only way around this I see is to offer different versions of the mod for anyone who wants a different class. This would be as simple as changing which ones appear on the first three rows of classes.2da and then editing all the relevant checks for them, and also any UTCs that use that class (so Carth and Canderous don't turn into nobles, for example). Regarding the difficulty of adding a Jedi class, I did some testing on this in the past. The problem is really an amalgamation of different problems, but the one thing that absolutely cannot be fixed is that any new class is not granted Force points. Even if the character has Force powers, they have no points to use them. If it's a multiclass character and they have Force points from their previous class, they still have those, but the GUI reads them as always having 0 Force points. When I was testing, I got into a funny situation in which I could use Force powers from my old class, but I couldn't tell when I ran out of Force points. There's really nothing that can be done here. The game is hard coded to only let those classes use the Force.

Ah, looks nice.

Seems like it would be doable with the scoundrel clothes, in a process similar to what DarthParametric did here. Extending the length of the coat is a little problematic, because it would have to be weighted to the legs bones to avoid clipping, but likely possible. I might be interested in doing it but I'm not sure when I could get to it.

It might be possible to fix the visual so you can actually see it fumble. I'd have to do some testing to be sure, but it seems like it should be possible to remove the grenade projectile from the spell, then have the script cast a new spell with the projectile added on a success roll. If it goes quick enough it should look no different from the original visual. Then for the failure, you'd need a new visual effect of the grenade dropping to the ground since there's no projectile for that, but that's definitely doable. Probably would be a lot of 2DA work, though... I'm guessing you'd need a duplicate spell for every grenade type, one with projectile and one with fumble.

Well, I think it looks nice so I would favor of the higher quality option. If it's just a matter of processing power, there must be some options here. I wouldn't even mind rendering it for you if there was a way to do that.

Yeah, the collar was the big problem when I tried it before. Looked like the neck was sucked through a vacuum cleaner. Had the same problem with the Ithorian. I had planned to maintain the original collar should I ever take a look at it again, only replacing part of the torso, or perhaps just the arms and legs. That would at least allow for a little more body variety. I'd have to take a closer look, but I wasn't thinking of attempting to get the entire animation - rather, picking one rig or the other as the base, and then making an approximation of the animation by mixing the parts. That thing they do during dialogues, scratching the cephalic lobes, could probably be done by replacing just the arms but leaving the rest of the skeleton intact. Mind you, such scripts would be nice to have...

I've tried and failed to put Selkath heads onto the player bodies. The anatomy is just too different. It may be doable by someone more talented than me, but it's definitely not an easy job. It would be more practical - still not easy, but easier - to fix the animations themselves on a new Selkath supermodel. Might be possible to get the original dialogue animations on it, too. This looks great, by the way.

For most things it's not going to make a difference. On the Xbox, lightmaps, area models, etc are actually module files rather than BIFs anyway. And if it was fine on a 2002 Xbox then it should be ok on today's computers. I've done it and noticed no discernible difference. So the organizational benefits may make it worth it for you. The catch is it only works in that module. So if you want to use an asset in multiple modules, you'll have to duplicate it - which is less efficient, especially for textures.

It's two separate strings. "Cannot Equip" and "Bao-Dur". But the Bao-Dur part might be used elsewhere, is the problem. Like for the feats only he can have.

Yes, that one is indeed that simple. For the heavy armor row, changing the entries tec_list and baodur to 0 should let him choose the feat at level up. That's probably the way to do it. As you said, it's not the items or denysubrace. It's also not itemtype. There is an item property for limitation by subrace, but it doesn't seem to be that, either. My guess is it's something about those specific baseitem lines, like how Force jump is. Unfortunately, if so, that means there's no way to remove the "Cannot Equip: Bao-Dur" text either.

"One Jedi attracts others." That's my guess, anyway - he wanted to keep the Exile prisoner as bait for other Jedi. He also might have hoped the Exile knew more about the problem than he/she actually did. Well, let's go in chronological order. Zez-Kai Ell hired Mira to watch over the Exile. The Exile shows up looking for Zez-Kai Ell, wanders around, and attracts the attention of the Exchange. The Exile goes to meet Visquis in what is obviously a trap. Furthermore, such a meeting is in violation of Goto's orders. Goto told the bounty hunters not to go after the Exile until he/she makes contact with another Jedi; Visquis had no business meeting with the Exile behind Goto's back. Mira goes in the Exile's place, so the Exile won't get captured, but she screws up and gets herself captured instead. In conclusion: And I agree that the original version made more sense, with the two of them going together, so Mira gets paid and the Exile gets to talk to Goto. But I'm not sure how the whole capture thing was supposed to play out in that scenario. Azkul was likely working for the Sith. If you side with him rather than Khoonda (or at least pretend to) you can ask him why he wants to attack Khoonda, and he says "people much more powerful than you or I are paying a great deal of credits to have the job done." And he knows he's talking to a Jedi. He used to be a Sith trooper himself, so it would make sense that he still had connections with them. Although which faction isn't really clear. I would guess Nihilus', given that Dantooine is a part of his overall plan already. The Republic wanted to talk to the Exile to find out about Revan. Some content suggests that Atris was keeping tabs on the situation, so she may have been manipulating them into doing her work for her, bringing the Exile to Telos. Though personally I don't think Carth would fall for it; more likely their interests merely overlapped, I'd say. As for why the Exile goes along with the whole thing, well, that's probably up to you, the player. But it's clear the Exile had heard about the Jedi Civil War, and then the Republic wants to make contact, so there are reasons to be curious. Hmm, I don't know why it's there in TSLRCM. All the bounty hunters have lines like that, but the UTCs in 351NAR, where the rescue takes place, are not set up to use it. The ones in 352NAR, where the meeting cutscene takes place, are set up for it, however. I believe that at some point in development, you were able to wander around the yacht and interact with all the bounty hunters before all the rescuing and fighting starts. It might've been from a previous version of events, or maybe it was never even supposed to be in the final game, only put there for fun during testing of that module.

Well, the final video hasn't been rendered yet because there might be textual changes. I don't want to release credits that aren't accurate. But it's not much different than the current video, since it was stylistically designed to be the same length for the music. The only major difference is I made it scroll from the voice actors on.

Because they're a bit on the long side. Also, and this is just my personal opinion, I don't think a mix of themes works very well here, because of how short the credits are. TSLRCM is under a minute and a half, and then M4-78 half that. No matter how well the music is edited, it's going to sound abrupt if it changes in the middle of the beta testers or translators or whatever. There's no transition in the credits to justify a change in music, in my opinion. It's just too short. With that in mind, I aimed for one track for each credit. M4-78 is going to have KOTOR March, as previously discussed; for TSLRCM, in my proposal, I went with the Sith action theme, since I noticed that cropped up in a few mixes here, and it wasn't in the original credits. "Sith Action" is what I call it, anyway. If you string together the Korriban and Malachor battle tracks, it amounts to a single three and a half minute theme, and parts of this were used in other areas in the game. I edited that down for the TSLRCM credits. Just waiting to hear from the guys in charge now. Also, now is as good a time as any to talk about my original plan for the credits, which was rejected due to technical reasons. Currently, the mod credits are played in a separate video, after the original game credits run, and that's not going to change with the updates. However, at first I wanted to replace the credits entirely, and have it all in one video. Hassat Hunter and Zbyl were worried about the added file size, though - it could be as much as a gigabyte - so we're not doing that. But I already did the game credits, so I'm thinking of going through with it anyway as a separate mod. And that might require a new mix as well. I'll have to put it all together to be sure, but I think it would be shorter than the original credits (because the original credits are painfully slow) and therefore I'll have to decide what music to drop and what to keep, or maybe just do an entirely new thing. I don't know yet.

And if you're adamant on keeping KOTOR March for M4-78, then it's actually already just about the right length, so all that's left is something to replace the Old Republic theme for TSLRCM.

Well, there's another slight complication. A lot of the themes mentioned here are already in the game credits. The original game credit music is as follows: Star Wars credit music, mus_a_main ("The Sith Lords"), mus_a_800core, mus_nihilus ("Nihilus' Theme"), mus_jedi ("The Jedi"), and the unused "KOTOR March" - the credits are where M4-78 got that in the first place. Remember all those themes would be playing before these credits when you finish the game.

Pretty much, yeah. As it is now, each module has its own OnEnter script doing whatever that particular module needs. My proposal would be to replace every single one of those with one universal script. The universal OnEnter script would have a bunch of code, like setting the current planet, whatever you want, and then a huge if tree. If 001EBO, execute a_bet3m4. If 512OND, execute k_512_enter. All the original OnEnter scripts. Any mods that edit the original scripts (including TSLRCM) would be unaffected. Any future mods would only have the issue of editing the one universal script. The biggest compatibility hurtle here is that every module's ARE file would have to be edited. But if everybody could get on board with that, then it would be a lot more convenient than it is now.

No, not every one. Just all the landing areas. 101, 201, 301, etc. Plus some stuff to account for anything unusual, like all the warping around in the endgame. You could use the galaxy map for the bulk of it, and then edit OnEnters as needed. Although, honestly if I were doing it I'd edit every OnEnter - if only to have each and every module executing one universal script. I'm a little surprised they don't already do that, because of how useful it would be to have that ability.

Yes, that's true. As well as whichever one triggers Kreia. For fun I typed up a full table based on my old planet script. This one accounts for a bit more, too: That should cover every conceivable area you'd want to distinguish... unless you really want Goto's yacht or something too. But anyway, if you throw that into the OnEnter script, then in your menu script you can just check the planet global and do another if tree to narrow it down to the 5 options. The reason I'd suggest splitting it in two scripts is a ) you're editing at least two scripts anyway, but more importantly b ) once you have one script setting the planet, you can then edit the menu script to put in alternative options, since we're limited to 5 total. Yeah, that would be my guess as well. And I guess if it is always firing when you get alignment points, then it could be of some use... but there's no guarantee. It's firing a lot, but not necessarily every time you go to a new location, if you don't encounter any choices. And I know for a fact there are no alignment shifts at all once the masters are found.

If I recall correctly, k_align_movie only fires once, after the player has shifted towards the light side or dark side 25 points, or if they're neutral but have gotten a total of 50 alignment points, or once they've found three masters. So I don't think it would work here. The only reason the menu crops up in that script is this just happens to be when the menu is shifted to Darth Nihilus.

That's why my first thought was OnEnter... while the galaxy map does account for most travel, it doesn't account for all of it. And, for example, if you wanted to have a menu for the Ebon Hawk (perhaps as the standard, "anything else" option) then it would never tell you that. The code to attach to OnEnter would be something like: int nCurrentModule = StringToInt(GetStringLeft(GetModuleName(), 3)); if( nCurrentModule < 100 || nCurrentModule == 950 ) SetGlobalNumber("K_CURRENT_PLANET", 0); else if( nCurrentModule >= 100 && nCurrentModule < 200) SetGlobalNumber("K_CURRENT_PLANET", 1); ...etc You should be able to write one generic thing and then throw it into each OnEnter.

Oh, I thought he wanted it to load based on wherever the player last left off. So if you if you're on Onderon it shows Onderon, for either trip. I guess you could use the current planet integer instead, though. If the script to store the global data checks for that first, then it doesn't really matter.

Yeah, if it were actually serving its original purpose. Now that you mention it, if it actually were working correctly then it wouldn't be ideal for this (if a value is only stored when the rapid transit system is used). But for the purpose of the main menu, all that's needed is a means to store the current module. K_LAST_MODULE is a global string that is not being used for anything, so it's as good as any, right? You could make a new string or numeric, but that's more work. Yeah, sorry, I meant GetModuleName(). That returns the string of the module. If you want, you can copy the code from my script jc_c_planet in my Toolbox. I think I accounted for every possibility in there. 950 counts as the Ebon Hawk, etc. For the OnEnter or OnExit or whatever method, you'd have to add something like SetGlobalString( "K_LAST_MODULE", GetModuleName() ); at the end of the script.

Yes, I may be overthinking it. But things in this game rarely work the way you'd think. It's made me paranoid. Well, we don't care about that? We only care about what module we're in right now. GetModule();