First time making a mod - help needed (K2 spoilers)

[BillyYank 3]

So my goal is to make a mod which gives Atton the feats "Complex Unarmed Animations" and "Unarmed Specialist 1" if you catch him using Echani stance in Telos Academy and he says

"Huh? Well... hey, thanks. But you've got the wrong guy. I'm good at shooting people, cracking wise, and pretending to know how to fight with my hands."

Later on I plan to make one where after he reveals that he was Sith special forces, he gains the same "Special Training" as Handmaiden and Bao-Dur and gets the same amount of Unarmed Specialist ranks, and continues to gain them as he levels. However, I'm sticking with this for now.
 

I've already made a version of the a_givefeat script that instead of giving the feat to the PC using a parameter, gives the two feats to Atton instead without a parameter, and I've also made a modified version of Atton's .dlg file. I got it to work by dropping the files in override, but I'm not sure how viable it'll be for public usage as I plan to release it. I found a version of atton.dlg in overrides already, so there's two ways I can see this going:

A: There's a way to make this a "plug-and-play" operation compatible with any mod setup
B: I find out where the existing atton.dlg came from and make a patched version

Your thoughts?

[Thor110 518]

2 hours ago, BillyYank said:

A: There's a way to make this a "plug-and-play" operation compatible with any mod setup

Yes and no, it all depends on what you have to modify and what other mods modify, as well as how they modify it, look into TSLPatcher & HoloPatcher.

2 hours ago, BillyYank said:

B: I find out where the existing atton.dlg came from and make a patched version

BIFs/dialogs.bif/Dialog/atton.dlg I think is what you are looking for.

Making that compatible with other mods that might modify it could be difficult, but if you just make a new script with a name that is unique and slip it in somewhere using ChangeEdit/TSLPatcher or HoloPatcher, then it should be able to be compatible with other mods, but it does also depend on whether you patch the one in override ( if there is one already, such as in TSLRCM )

2 hours ago, BillyYank said:

I've already made a version of the a_givefeat script that instead of giving the feat to the PC using a parameter, gives the two feats to Atton instead without a parameter, and I've also made a modified version of Atton's .dlg file. I got it to work by dropping the files in override, but I'm not sure how viable it'll be for public usage as I plan to release it. I found a version of atton.dlg in overrides already, so there's two ways I can see this going:

Nice start!

2 hours ago, BillyYank said:

Your thoughts?

Sounds interesting, but I don't have much in the way of thoughts other than that as I don't spend as much time thinking about stats and such as I probably should.

[BillyYank 3]

38 minutes ago, Thor110 said:

Yes and no, it all depends on what you have to modify and what other mods modify, as well as how they modify it, look into TSLPatcher & HoloPatcher.

Took a brief look at the descriptions of those two and they sound like what I need, thank you. I'll look into them

38 minutes ago, Thor110 said:

BIFs/dialogs.bif/Dialog/atton.dlg I think is what you are looking for.

Making that compatible with other mods that might modify it could be difficult, but if you just make a new script with a name that is unique and slip it in somewhere using ChangeEdit/TSLPatcher or HoloPatcher, then it should be able to be compatible with other mods, but it does also depend on whether you patch the one in override ( if there is one already, such as in TSLRCM )

To clarify, I already found the original game's .dlg file and exported it to work on via KotorTool, and I found a separate atton.dlg in the overrides folder from one of my mods I've installed (I also edited the existing overrides .dlg successfully). I'll check TSLRCM to see if it's the source of the atton.dlg in overrides.

 

If I can get the aforementioned tools to cooperate, I'll put up a mod page somewhere, probably on this site. Atton not doing some amount of unarmed combat (especially with restored content of Handmaiden testing his skills) has bothered me for years, lol. If I'm still feeling it I'll take a crack at giving him full-on unarmed specialist that kicks in once you ask Atton how to kill Jedi, I have half an idea of how the code for that will work.

Edited Friday at 08:43 PM by BillyYank

[Thor110 518]

22 hours ago, BillyYank said:

I'll check TSLRCM to see if it's the source of the atton.dlg in overrides.

TSLRCM definitely includes a modified version of atton.dlg

Given that your mod references content added back in via TSLRCM it would probably be advisable to just state that TSLRCM is a pre-requisite and depending on how much you alter atton.dlg stating that anything that alters that other than TSLRCM is not compatible, you can probably find a way to make it work with anything though, if you just slide in the script that gives him the relevant feats on a line of dialog that is out of the way.

Edit : Nevermind, you are already done, congrats.

Edited Saturday at 07:05 PM by Thor110

[JCarter426 1,224]

On 1/17/2025 at 12:49 PM, BillyYank said:

A: There's a way to make this a "plug-and-play" operation compatible with any mod setup

TSLPatcher comes with a program called ChangeEdit which can difference two files (in this case, GFF files) and generate instructions for TSLPatcher to apply those changes during installation.

On 1/17/2025 at 12:49 PM, BillyYank said:

B: I find out where the existing atton.dlg came from and make a patched version

This isn't advisable because many mods edit this file, and that would only guarantee it to work for someone using the current version of TSLRCM. If an update to TSLRCM were to make additional changes, your version which lacks those changes might then result in issues. It would also be incompatible other mods which take this approach, unless you were to make a patched version of every combination.

[BillyYank 3]

3 hours ago, JCarter426 said:

TSLPatcher comes with a program called ChangeEdit which can difference two files (in this case, GFF files) and generate instructions for TSLPatcher to apply those changes during installation.

This isn't advisable because many mods edit this file, and that would only guarantee it to work for someone using the current version of TSLRCM. If an update to TSLRCM were to make additional changes, your version which lacks those changes might then result in issues. It would also be incompatible other mods which take this approach, unless you were to make a patched version of every combination.

I'll do that once I get all my desired changes done, thanks for specifying which function does that.