Fair Strides

I don't know if these blogs have any sort of length limit, but I guess I'll find out, huh? *Warning: This might look organized at first, but I jump around and just drop a whole lot of info on you. If you are able to make sense of what I'm trying to say, then good on you.* I would welcome you to my blog and ask that you enjoy the first post I've ever made, but I'm just not in the mood for all that "happy and friendly" stuff at the moment. The truth is, I always thought my first blog post would be about my Toolset and all the things I have planned for it, with successive posts being about progress or polls for features or design and all that cool stuff. I even thought I'd be doing some cool blog posts about college near the beginning, but that at least is still a possibility. Right now I'm writing this just to clear my head, though I really have no clue how many people are even going to see this. This just isn't the kind of thing I normally do, okay? Normally I don't make small talk or chit-chat, don't get long-winded about myself or god forbid I talk about my feelings. It's just not my usual style, but I'm in a mood that I can only describe as "very weird" twice now and I don't even know why. Usually I'm a fanatic for self-control and self-awareness, prizing those two things right up there at the top of my priority list; come to think of it, they're right next to dignity. I'm sitting here typing all of this out and I just don't feel anything besides the normal mild headache (we'll get to that), a little empty from hunger because I haven't eaten all day (should probably do something about that, but I'm almost out of money, so it has to wait until I get home in around two hours), and too warm because I'm still sitting with the blanket on me. I don't know how this will be received by all of you. And it's usually one of those many things I think about doing and then end up not doing, but right now I'm in a major "I don't care, I'm doing it" attitude and who knows if I'll look back and think "I shouldn't have posted that." *sigh* I guess I'll get to the point now that I've already lost half of you that clicked the link. *later bit here: I go on a bit of a tangent, so if you want to get to the current stuff, use Control-F and search for "And here I am, still working away at doing nothing."* I started modding back around November 7th, 2011. I knew nothing about computers besides how to type and click stuff (and play games, of course). Fast forward two or three months; In January, I've moved to Missouri to live with dad and I've gotten a D in my math class (my fault for not contacting the teacher; this was an online class) and really starting to figure out that my dad is an asshole. Oh, and I was banging my head against the keyboard trying to figure out scripting. And dad was practicing the usual "how to put down a woman and make yourself superior" routine because he's a real man and can walk the walk (please tell me you can hear the sarcasm...). Another five months and I've gotten more experience with modding and can navigate KotOR Tool pretty well. I've also been playing the games and enjoying the mods. I'm starting to actually have conversations with the other modders and feel like I'm fitting in. Come August and my brother shows up to visit (he moved in with Mom around September or October 2011). Everything's going great until dad goes off the deep end again with the vodka and my brother and I are in the bedroom playing videogames to ignore the belligerent jackass raging up and down the hall. *sigh* Then my brother went back to Oregon and I went back to my routine. I was usually spending eight or more hours a day engrossed in something KotOR, whether it was the forums, the tutorials, playing the games, or modding itself. Then I beta-tested the pre-beta version of the beta of the public beta of The Jedi Masters 2.0 for Trex and lost my internet for about two weeks. I was cut off and forced to learn a lot about modding in a real quick hurry to be able to finish TJM when things broke. This was actually a good experience for me, as it helped give me a lot of the basis for what I know today. And then in November I started spending a few days learning the programming language Perl and was working with KotOR Save Editor (what most probably know as "KSE"). Things had been heating up between me and dad this whole time. I yelled at him in the kitchen while he was drunk (I was actually yelling that I was on his side), he took one step in my direction, and then I was running (I honestly believe quite literally for my life) away for a few hours before I got sent back home by a friend (no, I don't blame the friend; he was just doing what he honestly believed was right). And before this incident I came home and found them drunk (they had been out of alcohol when I had left a few hours previously) and I got mad. I called a different friend to come get me for the night and then threw a note toward my dad as I went out the door. I should add that I was 16 and not exactly the brightest at forward thinking. Next day I got taken from school by dad, brought out to the backyard, and shoved up against a building while dad looked my right in the eye and said we were either going to duke it out (fight) or he was going to thrash me in the pool behind us. In the end, I didn't fight and I didn't go for a possibly-fatal dip in the pool. But after that I made firm steps to get my ass out of there and I left over Thanksgiving. I also was out of modding and mostly away from the community for the next... 8 or 9 months until I got a laptop from Mom. Then I helped LDR with a few projects and enjoyed some nice chats. He was helping ZM90 with some stuff for K1R and ZM90 was in need of a scripter. So my name was submitted and I agreed because I was bored. Oh boy, what a ride that started. Mom's boyfriend was just as bad as dad, except in a few different ways and he was most of the time sober. So while I worked on K1R and made some cool tool or other that is broken half a dozen ways, I also had to put up with him and graduating from high school. I eventually did and was making steady progress on K1R until the summer hit. Then I went into a slump and didn't do a whole lot of modding until around August. I was also fighting trying to get stuff from Fallen Guardian and ZM90 was trying but not really helping a whole lot. I had found out later that LDR was only a temporary helper and not a full-time guy. We finally got K1R 0.9 released and we got rushed with a lot of reports and bugs. I dealt with it okay and did the work to get K1R up to 1.0. And I've done the same with 1.1 and 1.2. Almost all of the work was me, Fair Strides the work-horse (self-admitted), with the exception of testing fixes, bugs, and compiling lists of stuff, which was done by ZM90. But I'm the big workhorse; always have been. Part of it's just my nature, my diligence, but a lot of it's been my conditioning. Conditioned by dad that playing video games means I'm lazy. Conditioned by Mom's boyfriend that doing nothing but laying around and watching TV means I'm lazy. Conditioning that reinforced my nature, my diligence and sense of perfection in my work, and makes it so I work my ass off on the task at hand, no matter if it's modding, programming, cleaning the house that my "aunt" leaves in a constant mess, or working outside on lifting, carrying, cleaning, and helping my uncle and grandpa out. And here I am, still working away at doing nothing. I haven't programmed in months, my modding is taking a nose-dive, I was absent from DS for a week and for the most part didn't notice, even though I hated not replying to the PMs. I know more about the KotOR engine than almost anybody else in this community, have helped out an astounding number of people (I never did count how many times people have mentioned me in read-mes, but there's also my post count), and yet I can't even string a dialog together and have tried several times to write tutorials. I've been here five years (almost), have risen to be one of the best around, and in a metaphorical sense I'm now feeling old and tired, spent. I can still help and I still do small tasks, but you won't see me crusading a project. I can't write my own tutorials even though I know so much, and I'm on the computer way too much. Almost daily I deal with headaches. Most of the time they are mild ones that stick in one spot, but they last for so long. There's a general blanket over my mind and I don't feel like doing much. I also have really bad motivation issues. I don't know what this means for me in the long run, but I know that I feel tired and that I'm almost useless at the moment. I don't plan on running out on anything I'm currently working on if I can avoid it, but I might end up taking a back seat on a lot of it. I know I need to be on the computer less and get out more. I hope I can get out more when the FAFSA comes in for school, but that just leads to a whole swarm of issues, all of which involve socializing. How do you people do it? Most of the time I'm not really in touch with most of my emotions and I've gotten good at suppressing stuff. But how do you people just walk up to a stranger and talk to them? Does it matter to you if you're talking to a guy or a girl, because it absolutely makes a difference for me. I like people, really I do, but I don't like trying to get to know them, that initial time where you're both just strangers. And when I do get to know someone, things go much better if they're a guy. If it's a girl, I know jack nothing about anything. A friend of mine once said I was kind, considerate, and caring enough that if I just tried, I could probably get a girl. But nowadays, if you try to act like that, you get labelled a creep or a stalker because it's not natural for a guy to be so nice to a stranger... I really should stop rambling. I'm rambling so much I don't even care that I've said things I probably should have kept to myself. :| To anyone who has read this far, thanks for taking the time. I don't blame you if you can't make sense of what I've written, so I'll try to sum it up below: 1. I'm moody and have issues. 2. I'm tired... 3. It's not you guys, it's me that's the problem. 4. I won't give up the projects I'm already on, but I won't be as big a presence around here for a whie.

What's the reason why KotOR Tool won't compile scripts? If it's talking about nwscript.nss, pull the nwscript.nss from KotOR 2's scripts.bif and put it in your KotOR 2 override folder.

I also recommend checking out Shem's SEM Super Enhanced Mod in the downloads section. There's a K1 and K2 version of it.

The mod itself is entirely optional in-game and will not affect the main menu.

I don't know how the Enhancement pack installs, but I imagine you might have overwritten BoS:SR's appearance.2da file, amongst other things.

That's what the guy is saying: Mods aren't version-specific. The mods you find on this site work with all versions of the games.

I forgot to mention it, Pavijan. Because TSLPatcher patches the global.jrl file, there's nothing that needs to be done for compatibility with M4-78EP. Just the installer as it was sent should be fine.

1. In KotOR 2, yes. You have the GrantFeat and the GrantSpell functions. As to removing them from the level-up screen, you should just be able to change the min level in feats.2da to 50. At the very least, that should prevent it from being selectable, even if it's still visible. 2. Yeah, you can edit k_inc_force.nss, save that to the Override folder, and then just re-compile k_sp1_generic.nss.

As to your second post, there is a Disable Vertex Buffer setting you can add to the .ini file, but I forget the exact text and where in the file. However, that will fix your issue, and it's because of Aspyr's patch/update to the Steam version of the game.

Zaalbar can't be used because of his racial properties. He's set to a beast with a sub-race of Wookie in his .utc file, so you'd need to edit that and re-add him to the party. Or just use another party member.

Blinky, you're back! I remember working on some of this with you and trying to get it to work over at LF. If you need some help, I'm usually around here, Discord, and Skype. In regards to each of your in-progress things, I will detail some stuff here below: Bonus Equipment: 1. I would use a custom OnSpawn script with a pool of items (for example, 30 strings of item template resrefs) and then use two integers in a while and a switch:case loops. Could even throw in a third integer to give a random amount of the items. You could even modify the code to add another integer in the switch:case loop to determine on a case-by-case basis how many of the item should be given, even if you're just changing the range of the possible number (for example, Random(6) + 5 would be anywhere between 5 and 10 of the item). Extra Feats and Stat Scaling: Both of these would need to be handled the same way, so I'm going at them at the same time. Basically, you can't directly do these things in KotOR, but KotOR 2 has the functions to do this. Instead, what I would do is make items that give packs of feats and then make items that give set attribute bonuses. I would combine these into string lists like above with the bonus equipment. And just like the bonus equipment, I would do a switch:case loop (but not a while loop. JUST the switch:case loop) to compare the difference in the OBJECT_SELF's level versus the PC's level and give a "tiered" attribute item and one or two feat. With this approach, you have 1 Attribute item + 1 or 2 Feat Packs, which means that you can equip all three of these in the "hidden" Inventory slots for the Creature Weapons (which is what the creatures in the game, like Kinrath, use to give you poison). Those slots are INVENTORY_SLOT_CWEAPON_L, INVENTORY_SLOT_CWEAPON_R, and INVENTORY_SLOT_CWEAPON_B (or 14, 115, and 16, respectively). Shield Happy! and Stim Junkie!: I believe I helped you on the Shields, but I recall you weren't getting quite the results you wanted. As for the Stims, you can probably use the same approach as the Shields when those work. Difficulty Scaling: This one you probably already know how to do, since you'd just be doing integer checks on the effects of your code against the difficulty level to see how often the effects should be ran. Basically just an if-if/else-else series. Enemy Reinforcements: I know you got this one to work rather well, except that you were disappointed that the player could often see the people showing up, so the immersion was ruined. I worked on a bit of an arena at one point after you and I stopped talking, and I came up with some code from adapting a fellow modder's and someone else's code. This bit of code allowed me to spawn things quite randomly and anywhere in relation to the player. I need to go grab the code off the other computer, so I can PM it to you tomorrow and also post it in here. It'd also be quite possible to add line-of-sight checks on the coordinates BEFORE the things are actually spawned in, allowing even more control for you.

While lace underwear on Bastila is nice, I like to amuse myself by picturing Mira's face when in nice lace underwear and seeing Atton poking his head around the corner... Come to think of it, didn't you or someone else put Handmaiden in a lace-or-similar number in a party retexture mod from Filefront? I don't think the Exile would mind too much during a sparring session.

The other DLG I mentioned is not in the mod, so download this and put it in your Override folder (it's a dialog file taken from the TSLRCM 1.8.5 version of the level). zuka.dlg

Tone aside, I feel I should mention that the cutscenes would depend on your resolution I believe. As far as the TSLRCM Tweak Pack, it's been sent off to the author, but I made a TSLPatcher version with the author's permission. It's temporarily hosted by Snigaroo for his mod builds. http://www.mediafire.com/download/rw94kjpjct35au2/URCMTP+1.2.2.7z

Which one? http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/520-lightsaber-and-force-forms/ http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/149-holocron-icon-replacement/ http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/581-k1tsl-modders-resource-holocrons/

This is an issue with PartySwap. The author says you can try removing the dlg file from the Override folder and trying it then. I think that's zuka.dlg or kelborn.dlg.

My very first released mod was a red-head version of the third female asian head, PFHA03. It actually reminded somebody (I think VP?) of the Bloodrayne series, which I had not (and have not) ever played before or heard of. I just saw Miro42's Mara Jade mod and felt we needed a decent red-head mod. So I decided to try it on my favorite head. Sadly, I no longer really know what I was thinking with the eyes, but I might update it at some point to bring in better eyes. Here's the link: http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/144-reskin-of-pfha03/ My first ever actual bit of modding was reskinning Glovemaster's Halo Energy Sword to be a more accurate white-blue instead of his pink-purple-white shading, but that was never released.

I feel I should point out that No-CD cracks are explicitly banned under our site rules. Secondly, had you not been using a No-CD crack, this handy tutorial would have helped you: http://deadlystream.com/forum/topic/4631-how-to-force-kotor-i-iis-bik-movies-to-play-in-any-resolution/?view=getnewpost

In cut content, Mandalore and Visas went to the Ravager and the Exile joined up later, though I don't know exactly when.

VP would need to confirm this, but I believe he tried making new Baseitems.2da rows, but that the game no longer did the blaster bolt delfection on the new rows...

What ideas did you have in mind for this, Salk?

@USMCFR: I was saying you were correct, but that there were limits. The first half of my post was directed at the guy above me, not you.