JCarter426

Every time Varsity Puppet uploads a video I have to resist the urge to say "GIVE ME YOUR FILES AND I WILL FINISH IT FOR YOU."

Yes, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to do something about it yet. I already have too many projects...

I'm with bead-v. I think a proper Malachor ending can be accomplished, but it requires some liberal thinking that isn't befitting the ethos of a pure restoration mod like TSLRCM or TSLRP before it - the "restore only what can be restored" philosophy. We need more restored than can be restored, and even in some cases I think a bit of cutting or moving might be in order. Essentially, one would have to be willing to look at the game and admit what is there does not work, and change it, without caring about how things could have been or should have been, what this bit of content implies, or what a developer said in an interview - without caring about anything except what will make the game work according to their personal vision. Frankly, we will never know how the game should have ended, and the best we're going to get is someone's personal vision. And then inevitably a lot of people will disagree with that vision. But I for one would respect the effort regardless.

I'm not sure he was... what he describes sounds like that dialogue in part, but it also sounded like the context was different. Well, sure, they didn't have time to do it consistently. As you say there are contradictions all over the place. However, what makes me suspect there was at least some sort of plan amidst this madness is that there are several lines towards the end of the game with alternate takes - a pair with one line mentioning Malachor, and then the alternate that does not. For example, I remember one of Zez-Kai Ell's - "For you, the Mandalorian Wars was that crucible." / "For you, Malachor was that crucible." And Atris also has two scenes with the Sith holocrons, one with her saying she didn't tell the Exile about Malachor and then another with those lines cut, if she did. Stuff like that. Add to that I know there was another way to learn about Malachor that was cut - T3 unlocking the navicomputer - so it seems like a pattern to me. But we'll likely never know. I don't understand - what makes you so sure that Chris Avellone didn't know how the game was going to end? Just because the content is missing in the game files does not there was never one written. The story was there. It just wasn't finished. I wouldn't criticize the writing of a novel for failing to explain or conclude things if I knew the last five chapters were missing. You could argue that the ending had a higher priority and all that should've been completed before work was done on M4-78, the swoop racing, and so on. And Avellone has admitted to that as well. The game suffered due a combination of the rushed schedule and less than stellar planning. But I don't see how you would conclude that's a problem with the writing. And of course complicating the matter is that nothing is really directly explained, instead left open to your interpretation. But that's a matter of preference so I don't see any point in debating that particular issue. So instead, I'll address some of your complaints with my own interpretation. The destruction of Malachor created an echo, a sort of scream in the Force that was too painful for the Exile to bear, so he/she severed his/her own connection to the Force. Kreia wants to force that choice upon the entire galaxy. She would do this by creating another, even greater echo. I believe the destruction of Telos would have done the job, given how it is supposedly connected to everything in the game. But of course the Exile saves Telos, so this is averted. I also believe Kreia never intended for her plan to succeed - or to be more precise, her true plan was for the Exile to defeat her and become stronger for it. The Exile has lost his/her own personal connection to the Force, but is still able to use the Force of others through bonds. Kind of like a computer with a wireless receiver. We'll just have to agree to disagree there. The very premise of the story is that you can be cut off from the Force, and it's an idea that does not originate with Knights of the Old Republic II. But the game also makes it clear that the Exile is a very unusual case, regardless.

Hey, one line is more than no lines, all I'm saying. I don't think it meets the standard for restoration material, but I do think there is enough content for a mod to be made. The lack of dialogue could be covered up by some sort of playing as Bao-Dur sequence, as with several of the other party members' sequences towards the end of the game. It's theoretically doable, I say. That doesn't mean I'd want to do it, though. Oh, that's interesting. You are the THIRD person I know of (including myself) to consider using those Bao-Dur lines in that specific manner. I still had it during Dantooine, but very similar. On that subject, though, I suspect the repetitive Malachor revelations were just to ensure the player learned about it at some point. There's some evidence in the dialogue of checks for if the player already knew about Malachor, so I assume the idea was different stuff would fire off depending on how the player learned about it - from Atris, from Bao-Dur, possibly from T3, and I know there was another that I don't believe made it into the game files, but Avellone described it in an interview - a scene on the Ebon Hawk with the Exile meditating and remembering stuff from all over the game, that I assume was the final cover if the player missed all others.

Well, that's not entirely true. There was one line of dialogue related to Bao-Dur's fate posted on the original K2 website, which I have. It has music in the background but the VO could theoretically be isolated. Of course it's just one single line.

And here is the specialer, YouTubier edition: There's a lot that we did not get to with this episode, about half of what recorded total, so that will all be in the next episode. I'll say right now that the other Deadly Stream news item was about Varsity Puppet's Malachor VI post-mortem, but because it was related to another segment that was cut it's been pushed to the next episode. So stay tuned on the not-radio. I got out of bed to post this so I may have just made up a few words.

Yeah, but... it's ears we're talking about. Not the color of feathers or some such, but a whole sensory organ. Such a difference in evolution would not occur within the same species... bah. Well, anyway, as I said, the bump map is the only issue I can see. So maybe someone who was researching those could elaborate.

It should be a simple enough job to smooth the neck out into more human proportions. I don't think you'd need to patch together different models. The problem with Twi'leks, though, is the bump mapping. The male Twi'lek models are some of the few that actually have it in the game, and the format isn't fully understood at this time. So I'm not sure if they could be reproduced. What really bothers me about Twi'leks, though, are the ears. Female Twi'leks have bumps, like frogs. Fair enough. But then males have ears. Why?

As long as I'm being gently coerced into reminiscing, I thought I should let you guys know that a buddy of mine is starting a KOTOR podcast series, and he's tasked me with bringing to him news from Deadly Stream. He's not as in touch with the modding community because he only played the games on Xbox back in the day. Jenko on the forums here is also editing the podcast with us. The first episode will be posted this weekend assuming we finish it on time - cue Sith Holocron's slogan - and one of the first news items is, of course, M4-78. Keep in mind that it's news FROM Deadly Stream so if you're already here well you probably know it already but stay tuned and we might have some more interesting bits for you.

Ah, don't worry about it. I get what you're saying. And I agree - it is disconnected from the rest of the game. But... well, what would you do instead? The way I see it, either you'd have to change stuff in other parts of the game, or rewrite M4-78 to have an entirely different origin from the one presented in what little was left in the game files. You could argue maybe one of those things should have been done instead, but in any case, both were beyond the scope of this mod in particular. Even though it was not a restoration in practice, because there wasn't much left to restore, it was meant to be a restoration in spirit - so that meant not directly contradicting anything that was left over, or messing about with other parts of the game (apart from Vash's death on Korriban, obviously). And for better or worse, what was left implied it was a relatively insignificant planet, disconnected from the rest of the galaxy. So that's what we got. But regarding your other point, about not having a big choice to make... well, we started reminiscing about some ideas we had that didn't make it in, and it led to this topic here.

Well, I wasn't allowed to talk, as previously established. But I thought you were still working through the original M4-78, before the Enhancement Project. (Also, I did half a walkthrough already! I'm going to finish it, I promise...)

Yeah, I love puzzles but Obsidian made them all optional so I voted to go with the flow. But since the rest of the main quest at that point was just talking to people, it does make sense to have gameplay there to mix things up... even if dozens of YouTubers in my inbox disagree.

Hah, I have no idea. That color looks good on him, though. I still have my documents too, actually came across them again pretty recently, but it sounds like most of the same stuff. I know my idea for the power puzzle was even more complicated than what ended up in the mod, so I'm sure people would've LOVED that.

I never did sign that non-disclosure agreement... Unfortunately I think all our discussions went down with LucasForums, so even if we did want to do a thing we'd be relying on everybody's memories.

Yeah, it's been a while since I scripted any action scenes but that is my recollection. There's some weirdness with the factions but NPCs can die left and right no problem. And while I think a dead speaker would break the conversation, I know a dying speaker does not:

Previously, on M4-78... Discussion here led me - and Zbyl and others... I saw you guys messing about with the thread titles! - to start reminiscing about some ideas for M4-78 that did not make it into the mod. One idea was the Sith survivor, as Zbyl mentioned, and another - am I allowed to discuss the others? Maybe we should do a post-mortem on M4-78. Well I'm going to discuss some of it now, anyway! Another one was about how the droids developed in isolation from their colonists for so long. In that undeveloped plot, the droids had divided into two factions - one that still followed their original programming to prepare the planet for the colonists, and another that didn't believe in the colonists anymore. There were a lot of ideas thrown around and would've had a more typical player choice for the planet, but like I said, it never developed into one cohesive story.

Well, there is one thing... the game does bring it up but never really addresses the connection. Talia, Vaklu, and the whole royal line are descendants of Freedon Nadd. And Freedon Nadd died centuries ago. If the usual laws of genetics are at play here then a significant portion of Onderon's population could trace their ancestry back to a Sith Lord. That would be enough to draw a hungry Nihilus' attention. But as for M4-78, I agree with Zbyl. It's isolated and I really don't think there's any helping it. Obsidian was pretty thorough in their cutting, this time. Nothing else in the game connects to it because they wanted it gone. So I don't think that's a very fair criticism of the mod. It's asking M4-78 to address things it could not possibly address, because all that content was removed or moved elsewhere. In its very conception, M4-78 had to be a new, standalone thing.

That was a bit of speculation/misremembering on my part. The exact quote was: "The original premise had the player drafted for help by the Handemaiden to free her world from matriarchs led by a figurehead reminiscent of Kreia. After playing K1, we ditched the storyline - and it sucked that we wasted 2 months on it considering how little time we had over the course of the project, but LucasArts couldn't legally give us copies of K1 to examine or play until the contract was signed, so no one's to blame, it was just circumstances." I guess I assumed the figurehead was Atris and the planet Telos, just by association with the Handmaiden. You can read the entire interview here.

Great stuff once again. You have me conflicted about the shuttle dialogue... but I think you do win. While it's nifty to have that back, I suspect that stuff was cut on purpose for being too repetitive and not cinematic enough, and might be better utilized for Malachor. I don't think the Atris Traya was a mix-up, though. I have two theories. First, from what Avellone has said of the original story plan, it seems like Atris was the main villain and most of the story was centered on Telos - so if they had already started recording VO back then, it may have just been left over from that. Atris as a party member might also have factored into that somehow. My other theory is that it might've been left over from when the Handmaiden and Visas were the light/dark party members and led to two completely divergent end games, one in which Atris becomes Darth Traya while Kreia does not. Anyway, I'm looking forward to episode 3!

Both the turbolaser and the blast damage are visual effects and can be applied anywhere. I wrote a script to generate random visual effects (as well as physical damage, copied from the the grenade script) some time ago, and included it in the beta of my K1 Toolbox, which can be found here. One would need to figure out the coordinates for the hangar and then decide frequency of the blasts and such, and then have the script continuously fire. It's not complicated, and I could probably do it in about ten minutes, but I can't run the game currently due to technical difficulties, but I could take a look when I get a new video card. If anyone else wants to take a crack at it in the meantime, feel free to use my script as a reference. The script is jc_exp_r_3016.

Wow, that looks nice. I've been using Excel to generate the data points I need but frankly my feeble attempts were not adequate. I'd love to try this but I can't run the game at the moment - but I know someone else who's interested so I've sent him your way.

When you apply the shader in the 2DA, it gets applied to the entire character. That's why some player lines in K2 have it while most lines don't; some of the heads have jewelry or some such, needs the shiny. Anyway the deal is like you said, either you can use a shader or you can have transparency, but not both. EXCEPT... the electromesh armor does use a different shader. It uses CM_Bright even if you put something else in the 2DA. And if you try to use a shader with any other texture with that model, it will always use CM_Bright instead. I think it does that because the first TXI (PFBC01 or PMBC01) uses that, so they all do. But for Bastila you want the 2DA to have a shader and then the texture to have none, not a different one... so I'm not how to get it to do what you want, but there might be a way to do it. I used to have this problem and it went away when I changed my video card... if I recall correctly, it was a driver issue, essentially certain newer drivers cause KOTOR to not like it, and I couldn't roll it back for whatever reason, so I just switched cards. I'm not sure if there's a fix otherwise. Incidentally, even switching cards hasn't made the issue go away completely for me. It still kind of blocks things out along the edge of things, although it's not as bad as before.

All of her underwear variants use the model P_BastilaBA. And all the clothing is P_BastilaBB. P_BastilaBB02 is her cutscene model (clothes); the only difference is that the flaps aren't flex meshes, but instead are weighted to additional bones. I don't believe the model is ever used in the game; rather, it's left over from when the Bink videos were animated.

No, it's not - but you do need to reload the module if you're currently in it.