Malkior

Pretty neat discovery I've always wanted to change the cm-baremetal to something less.. well, for me boring. Also, your post isn't terrible at all. In fact you've both solved an annoying limitation, and given me a pretty cool idea for a mod, or rather an addition to an existing one. Very soon I will have my computer back, and will then have access to my old mod files.. I can't wait..

Good eye SH. I do believe these normally have a bunch of boxes with the letter C on them. (Although I could be wrong :/)

I'm glad to hear it got fixed! I may be upgrading my system to Windows 7 in the near future, so I'll be on the lookout for those folders.

I recognize this particular behavior from when one of my folders was listed as read-only. Since Tslrcm uses custom textures, is it possibly hanging at 24% due to not changing the override folder in this way? (And could it be fixed by right-clicking on the override folder and unchecking the "read-only" radio box?)

Yeah. I agree that more background information on each quest could definitely make those detective cases more compelling. The only question I have is how you'd go about it. Would you just add random story elements to explain it, like your suggestion on the real Rem? Or would it be too complicated to add another NPC to discuss the matters with as either a key witness or informant?

You could still use it. You just have to delete most of it. :/ -Edit: ignore that first part, I was thinking the rebalance mod.. I also didn't have anything bad happen during Nar Shadaa either. The only caveat would be that combat can get rather difficult unexpectedly.

I like this iteration as well, except that I too prefer Aurebesh to English, especially on the "Cantina" sign. By the way, have you considered redecorating the cantina interior (the bar and pazaak parlor) as well? Good stuff

So is that the deal with Kotor2's levels? They used lightmaps instead of Aurora lights? If so, that may explain why some of its skyboxes are darker while the characters are unrealistically light. (With an exception of Citadel Station, where it's the opposite) I apologize if I keep bringing up in this thread too much, but would one be able to "fix" Kotor2 by adding aurora lights, or is that feature hardcoded? Well to keep from drifting off-topic, I am still looking forward to what the Sleheyron level quests are going to look like, and am curious to see what will happen when the Hutt overlords are added. (Particularily if they're going to look different than vanilla or how their rivalries will play out)

BTW, did you get my message?

I looked on my Hard Drive, and I have them. I should have them uploaded when I can get them transferred. I'll let you know when.

I've tried it out for myself (although SIC helped out with the area model names). Short answer is, it's a little complicated, but what I did was edited the area model file and changed the texture for one I renamed. There are actually two nebulae (one orange and one purple) with the purple one being used in the spacewalk portion. You can also get the orange one to work with a little .txi trickery, while I believe the aforementioned method works on the purple.

Believe it or not, I actually modded those specific assets, (each planet combat backdrop texture replaced with the ones I drafted up myself) but could never test them.

Love the visuals in the backdrop and how it works with the lighting of the floor/ground texture. Also that music. Was that in the Kotor game files all this time, or is it a new creation? All of that said, one thing I feel is a bit missing, myself, is a lack of labelling or lit signage. It could break up some of the parts that look empty IMO. -_ That said, it looks identical to the tech demo they showed, which is frankly incredible.

Kotortool is my tool of choice for 2da's. It basically edits them like an Excel document and then your changes are saved at a location of your preference.

So there is a purpose to MDX files after all.. Thank you very much for this much needed fix!

Agreed with you there. If I might also note that all of the grass textures in K2 are pulled from the Dantooine grass as well. I saw a few hopeful results in a texture pack of the Dxun textures with high resolution photos as reference. From what I've seen of the texture itself, it seems the alpha layer is to blame for its pixelated quality.

Hmm.. Okay I can't get too many personal screenshots at the moment, but the texture files are as follows: 1. 002_EBO_Main3 and possibly 002_EBO_Main1 as well as 002_EBO_Inside1 for the outside metal panelling. 2. TEL_Rav -only texture for both the ships and ravager background image. 3. Unknown. I've gone through the texture list time and again, and can't find which one it is. 4. Trunk of trees is TEL_trunk01 and branches are TEL_Bra01 5. fx_smoke -but there may be other varieties I missed. 6. fx_ritual01 --- Sorry bout that. It may help to actually know where the textures are :/ Oh yeah. #1's pretty bad. This is the best I could do and only after boosting the size of the textures to 1820x1820 (my phone may not post spoiler tags, so I apologize if the picture is too incredibly big...or if the image never gets embedded at all.. Pic is from my photobucket)

Thread's up. Let me know how I did :]

This list is an all-encompassing account of the parts of Kotor 1 and 2 which really bring down the calibre of the texture quality and are as of yet, impossible for us in our current capacity to fix. My goal with this thread is to chronicle all of these problem areas, and offer or present solutions to them. Sort of like a massive request log, but one only concerned with how the graphics fall short of HD. Hopefully in time, we can get these fixed and see Kotor as good as we possibly can. _-------<< To get this gravy train rolling, I'll offer my at the moment short list of problems I want to see fixed, but can't fix no matter how hard I try. 1. The Ebon Hawk during the prologue: The floor texture throughout this sequence is both pixelated and overly contrasted. I believe this is due to the player being on the actual Ebon Hawk model which was never meant for such close up detail. Work to up the resolution does virtually nothing except make the engine work harder. (Minimal detail boost and only at 2300 + resolution) 2. The tiny sith ships that fly outside during the Ravager sequence: Likely the texture is just too close to the camera; each ship is so blurry that one cannot distinguish any details. The texture also includes the Ravager with them, so scaling them up to add detail to them makes the ships look extremely large and equally blurry. 3. Some of the railing textures in the Telos Landing Bay: These railings in the landing bay have an extremely pixelated/muddy texture with metallic highlights which is further exacerbated with how the railing geometry warps the texture further. 4. The trees throughout the Telos Restoration Zone: Terrible UVW unwrapping coupled with bizarre shader anomalies causes any texture edits to be both distorted and overexposed no matter what work is done on the texture side. I have no idea how to even begin to fix it. 5. The Smoke Effects: Some may disagree with me, but a lot of the smoke textures are grossly small and while they may hold a classic charm for some, are a pretty good indicator of how low rez the textures are when observed. Lastly, 6. The Ritual Animation in the Tomb on Dxun: Extremely small animated texture that goes every level of crazy when edited at all. The texture stops animating if the edited texture is put in the override, and if the shader envmap is changed, it animates..wrongly. --/ There's no set format at the moment except that I may draft up a master list if the problems and solutions get buried as comment threads tend to do.

For 1 the skirt is part of the model, so you/the modder would have to either edit the model to remove the skirt portion, or alternatively reskin a suit of your choice to look like the Zeison Sha. For 2 the headband is part of Mira's head model and the goggles are part of the maintenance officer's head model. However, a way to make it work could be to make a new headgear item which looks like the maintenance officer's goggles and apply them to Mira's NPC appearance. I don't know how you'd make them sit on her head the way the officer's do, but it's at least a probable solution.

So then, now that I've considered how significantly I want this, how do you guys feel about me or perhaps a few other folks from the site (if they wanted to) drafting up a list thread of all of the problem areas we see throughout the Kotor and Kotor 2 games which 1) interfere with a proper HD retexturing so that no level of Photoshop/Gimp wizardry can come even close to the quality expected of an HD texture(IE bad geometry or bad rendering) or 2) are either too low quality of textures by design as an example, the particle effects; or are placed too close to the camera and look blurred as a result. Some solutions could be as easy as rewrapping a bunch of models or as hard as remaking parts of the module. I've also considered using the request thread, but this list has many parts and would also need to be updated as people found difficult parts to work with.

Yep it is indeed. Also sorry if I was a tad aggressive in my response. Yours was a legitimate question.

It's cool. I didn't take it that way. Admittedly I'm getting a little frustrated with some of the in-fighting (myself included) between texture modders and how we use the terms "high rez and HD" to describe our own interpretations of the few (hundred) textures we can change instead of working together to fix the parts we neglect to address. ... And (I'm guilty of this too) the problem of if we've modded an oft forgotten part, we take exception when someone else decides they want to do their own take on it, as if we own the rights to it.

Many of us have been working to achieve that, but most only got as far as Peragus and Telos with a few forays into the other worlds albeit on a smaller scale than the first two. Xarwarz and few others have a new looking interface. The biggest hurdle is that the way Kotor 2 renders textures and lights has a lot of artifacting and odd lighting. Additionally, some of the textures are rendered way too close to the camera and would require many placement/geometry tweaks to have any real control on how the look. (Chief of these is the sith ship sprites during the Ravager sequence, and the effects which for the most part are only about 30 pixels in size) Our only control at the moment is to replace the texture, and hope it renders properly or to uvw unwrap every single asset and alter every file that affects it so it works in-game. So we modders are hard at work on it, but I personally believe that no one person can obtain the level of control required for a 100% HD retexture unless we learn from each other and allow our work to complement existing works. These games are nearing a decade of age, and the work required is astronomical. Plus "faithfulness to the original source material" is relative from personal perspective, so no one person's work is guaranteed to fit that requirement. Still at the moment, there are quite a few impressive "HD" textures and high resolution assets on this site to choose from. Just look for the screenshots and personal project threads and downloadable releases to see what progress is being made in which part of the Kotor game. (Apologies if my post is too large in comparison to your statement, but I feel it needed to be said.)

..literally "we don't discuss cracks" It looked silly to me, but necessary since saying it out loud would in effect be extending the topic which I was trying to stop. That is, until SH said it explicitly.