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While trying to install a mod that added entries to placeables.2da, I came across a relatively severe limitation in KotOR that I feel should probably be known to anyone attempting to make or use large-scale or placeable mods. Maybe this is known or was documented on lucasforums, but I didn't find it anywhere. Unique placeables defined in placeables.2da are limited to 256 (0-255). If you use a value higher than 255 for 'Appearance' in a UTP file, it rolls over. So 256 = 0, 257 = 1, etc. That might not sound like a big deal, but the vanilla game already has 232 placeables, which means that there are only 24 placeable slots available for use by modders. K1R adds 8 placeables, so if you're using that, you have 16 slots available. BOS:SR 1.5 adds 21 placeables, so if you're using that, you have 3 slots available. And if you're using both of those mods you're already over by 5. So people using K1R and BOS:SR can't use any additional placeable mods (and should experience some visual errors in-game from getting the wrong placeables). This seems like key info for users to be able to evaluate what mods they want to try and use based on how many placeable slots they use. It is also among the first things to check if you have any problems with placeables not showing up or showing up as the wrong thing. I am wondering if any experienced modders know or will be able to think of viable workarounds for this? I've tried putting placeables.2da into module files (and removing it from Override/), but that doesn't seem to work. My only other thoughts have been: Making certain placeables characters instead of placeables? You lose any walkmesh related functionality like blocking line of sight... Combining certain placeable models and using animation states to swap out the mesh that is showing. For example, BOS:SR includes 6 rock placeables, could it be 3 if one rock was the 'on' state and another was the 'off' state? Baking placeables into area geometry? This is more work, harder to make fine adjustments, and you can't interact with the objects at all. It would have the advantage that you could 'easily' lightmap 'each instance' of the placeable though. Now that we have advanced model compilers this is at least a more viable option than in the past... I can say that this definitely applies to the GOG and Mac Aspyr versions of K1, I don't know about others. FWIW, this limitation doesn't seem to be present in TSL as its vanilla placeables.2da file has more than 300 rows (thanks DarthParametric for checking that).
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