ROR Dev Diary 2 - Introduction and Jedi Temple

[N-DReW25 1,412]

Hello, and welcome to the first Dev Diary of the Revenge of Revan mod.

For those of us who have been living under a rock for the past decade, Revenge of Revan (or ROR for short) is a total conversion mod for Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II The Sith Lords (Kotor II) that adds a standalone original story that continues from where Kotor II left off. With the Star Wars The Old Republic MMO (often shortened as just TOR) being released not long after the original ROR Demo, and with the new and innovative modding tools released over the years since, the ROR mod has gone through some drastic changes and has never looked better! In this Dev Diary I hope to show you some of these exciting changes.

 

In this second Dev Diary, I shall focus on the very first level of the mod – the introduction and the Jedi Temple

(Please let me know if any of the links and/or images are broken)

 

After you create your character, as we discussed in the last diary, you go through an opening crawl just as you would expect. In the following spoiler, I have written the opening crawl text that you’ll see on screen:

 

Spoiler

In the years following the victory over Telos IV, the remaining Jedi Knights have emerged to rebuild their Order under the leadership of the elusive BASTILA SHAN.

After decades of sporadic warfare, the galaxy has been left in a state of TURMOIL. Unable to repay its loans, the Republic is now at the mercy of crime lords to maintain its reconstruction efforts.

In the Corellian system, a diplomatic envoy returns home aboard the Sojourn oblivious to the imminent danger brewing in Corellia's orbit.

 

After viewing the opening crawl in-game about a week before the mod’s release I actually realized that this is not the final opening crawl draft I had written. Though instead of delaying the mod’s release to fix this, I decided to keep it unchanged as the text still somewhat reflects the current setup of the mod. The only thing I want to address is the part about Bastila Shan, but I shall talk about her later on in the Dev Diary alongside the rest of the Jedi Council. An updated opening crawl text may be added in a future revision of the intro cinematic, or if it’s easy to change the text it can be added in one of our upcoming bug fix updates.

 

After the crawl, the screen pans down to the Tyrena Station from the Demo. Tyrena Station’s model has been updated and the planet you see is Corellia, not Earth as some users have been teasingly suggesting.

 

 

I would like to point out that, when writing the dialogues, I always imagined Tyrena Station to resemble the Tie Fighter Factory from The Force Unleashed video game. Whilst this updated model is a massive improvement, it still looks a bit small from this perspective so if you’ve seen this new Tyrena Station and felt that my dialogue is a bit odd this is the reason why.

 

For those of us who haven’t yet played or watched the Demo on YouTube, Tyrena Station was attacked by a “Phantom Ship” which destroyed the entire station and then disappeared from the scene without a trace. For the first half of the old ROR mod, there was the mystery of exactly "what" the Phantom Ships were, were they were coming from, and who were behind them (Sith, Hutts, and the Exchange were culprits) before the player would discover that it was the "True Sith" who were responsible sending out the Phantom Ships.

 

 

This lore was written before the release of the TOR MMO, and since we want the ROR mod to act as a bridge between Kotor II and TOR we’ve rewritten the Tyrena Disaster plotline to accommodate this.

 

The scene opens up to Tyrena Station with a Republic Ship, the Sojourn, flying past it.

 

 

It then explodes.

 

 

When I wrote this scene out, I wanted it to be a bit more cinematic than what we have right now. I imagined the scene would play out similar to The Phantom Menace where the screen pans down from the crawl towards the ship and the camera would physically rotate as it flew past (like it does in BOSSR), the next shot would be this scene but when the station starts to explode the Sojourn would take a hard right to avoid the explosions and a piece of debris would suddenly fly towards the camera turning it black and ending the scene.

 

Of course, what I’ve just described isn’t what was produced - but considering this mod has been in development for over a decade, has been cancelled before, and many of you didn’t have faith that we would ever release this mod in any capacity… we’re happy that we can present you, the player, with something, not to mention that this scene is still inherently better than what we had in the original demo.

 

Whilst it isn’t yet shown, I imagine that only a chunk of Tyrena Station has been destroyed instead of the entire station itself being destroyed. I do hope that when we get the updated cinematic cutscene of the player’s ship arriving at Corellia we can see the gutted Tyrena Station floating near the planet with little ships trying to tractor it away to have it scrapped for parts. This scene I’ve described would only be made if we have a finalized Tyrena Station model and the textures and skybox on Corellia are finalized.

 

In the original Demo, the next scene took place inside the opening crawl movie cutscene similar to how the Darth Sion, Darth Nihilus, and Darth Traya intro scenes were all shown in their own respective movie cutscene. This meant that, just like those cutscenes, all you had to do was right click and you could miss the scene entirely.

 

 

The reason why this cutscene took place in the .BIK movie format is because the Coruscant set you see in the background was added in via a bluescreen effect. Once you completed the original demo, the game would teleport you inside the bluescreen area that was used to make this scene.

 

 

In this cutscene, King Bardok had requested for Jedi intervention in the Tyrena investigation offscreen and the Chancellor, the General, and a few Senators debated the request amongst themselves. But in the new ROR, the first cutscene has been changed so that it now depicts King Bardok making the actual request in a cutscene in-game. The scene opens up inside the Royal Palace on Corellia, with the Chancellor, the General, and one Senator in attendance as holograms and two new NPCs flanking the King.

 

 

These two NPCs are Grand Moff Julio to the left in the green and to the right is Octavian, the Grand Vizier. Julio's uniform is seen in the Demo though it's been slightly edited (more on that in a future dev diary), Julio's head was lifted from BOSSR and his hat texture used photo-sourced elements of his uniform which was made by RedRob41. The Grand Vizier's head was made by me with photo-sourced elements from Daemon Drexl's head texture (again from BOSSR) for his eyebags and his body texture is by 90SK from his classic K1 Robes mod.

 

Their backgrounds shall be explored in a future dev diary.

 

Fun fact: The first four lines of dialogue, the brief pause at the start with the flags and King Bardok's three lines were supposed to have Bardok kneeling before the holograms. This was removed as only the animation on the very last line worked, so for the start of the convo he'd be standing up but then at the last second he'd drop down like this.

 

 

Also in attendance is General Shabayev, a General in the Republic military. In the demo, Shabayev wore a simple soldiers uniform despite being a General.

 

 

In the screenshot below, General Shabayev now has his very own uniform – this uniform was actually made by RedRob41 for Carth Onasi but since the popular and highly recognizable Admiralty mod by Jinger/Kreia has free permission I decided to give Carth the familiar Admiralty uniform whilst Carth’s original uniform was given to Shabeyev.

 

 

Despite this change, Carth will still have the new head RedRob41 made for him. Carth appears as a cameo towards the end of Episode One so we’ll talk more about him when we reach that point in the dev diary series .

 

Much like in the Demo, General Shabayev is a sceptic to the New Jedi Order and as such it’ll take much good on your part to sway him to your side should you take a pro-Republic path in the mod.

 

In the original Demo, there were two Senators: Bail Antilles and Maris Foron. These Senators used generic appearances and commoner clothing making them indistinguishable from the likes of Gana Lavin and her Waiter from Kotor I. And what’s worse, since these two appeared in a .BIK cutscene you couldn’t even check the dialogue feed to check their names.

 

In the new ROR, Maris Foron has been removed from the initial cutscene (though may appear with a new appearance later on a different planet) whilst Bail Antilles has been replaced with a brand-new character. I did this as the name “Bail Antilles” is the name of an Alderaanian Senator mentioned in The Phantom Menace and has been used quite a bit in Legends lore due to the name being one of the old names made up by George Lucas during his early Star Wars drafts back in the 70s.

 

 

This new Character is “Aurin Solo”, the Prince-Senator of Corellia and the youngest son of King Bardok. I was inspired by the character Gaul Panteer, the Prince-Senator of Alderaan in TOR. As Bardok’s youngest son, Aurin Solo isn’t the immediate heir to the Corellian throne hence why he’s on Coruscant acting as Corellia’s Senator. Here's a screenshot from the end of Episode One with better visibility than what's visible in this scene.

 

Even though you can’t see it that well, his head was entirely done by me. His body, much like the Grand Vizier, is from 90SK's K1 Robes mod. I gave him this green outfit by 90SK for two reasons:

1) King Bardok’s outfit is also green.

2) The Green Jedi from TOR.

 

The Green Jedi are a wayward sect of Jedi based on Corellia. In my early drafts of the ROR plotline, the Corellian Jedi were actually present in the plot but Logan23 ultimately didn’t want them and so I wrote them out (though your actions in ROR “may” result in the Green Jedi Order’s founding, though this isn’t confirmed for now). In the Legends lore, the Corellian Jedi’s robes were inspired from the old Corellian flag, which you can see in the background in this mod. If you go the Canon path for Corellia, your actions can also see the green flag changed to the brown flag Corellia is known for, though you may also be given the choice of keeping the green flag or having a different color for the flag depending on your choices.

 

 

This NPC is the Supreme Chancellor, an Arkanian by the name of Helena Cinn. She succeeded Chancellor Tol Cressa in 3945 BBY after the Gordian Reach crisis in which G0-T0 droids overthrew the Sector government there. There isn’t much to say about Helena as her role as a main character will become quite apparent as the mod continues, needless to say, if you are a Dark Sider who becomes Anti-Republic then she would obviously not be your ally.

 

Fun fact: Ancient ROR lore from 2008 suggests that her last name was originally "Marr", this was probably changed to avoid confusion with Visas Marr's character.

 

In the spoiler below, I'm leaving another one of my controversial proposals that I wish player feedback on. Just like with my last dev diary, if you don't care about what I have to say here then feel free to skip the spoiler and continue on with the Dev Diary, though it would be greatly appreciated if you would hear me out and leave your opinions on the proposal in the comment section.

 

Spoiler

The entire first scene with King Bardok contacting the Chancellor from his palace could be removed and replaced with an alternative scene that I wrote but did not implement in-game. In this alternative scene, it begins all the way back to the opening crawl - once you read the crawl and the camera pans down it would pan down onto the Sojourn but then an in-game cutscene would play.

This alternative cutscene would take place inside the Sojourn between a hologram of King Bardok, a Corellian diplomat (possibly Senator Aurin), a Duros diplomat who is yet to be introduced, and Admiral Onasi. This scene would be tied to content planned for the planet Duros and would foreshadow the main plotline of that planet. The scene would then be interrupted by an alarm, and a second .BIK cutscene would play depicting the Tyrena disaster.

 

This alternative scene could replace the Palace scene, or maybe this scene could be added in so that this scene plays first and afterwards the scene at the Palace would play second.

 

Once the Chancellor approves Jedi intervention and General Shabayev utters the line “I got a bad feeling about this” you are taken to the Jedi Temple where you wake up in the medical bay.

 

 

This scene from the Demo has been massively reworked.

·        Firstly, the room now actually looks like a medical bay and is no longer a reuse of Jorran’s hiding spot.

·        Secondly, the dialogue has been updated and improved.

·        Thirdly, whilst we don’t have a new voice for this character we did give him some generic beeping VO, so it isn’t mute.

·        Fourthly, he has a new appearance.

 

 

Fun fact: This skin actually was made for another mod.

 

Through the Medical Droid, you have the opportunity to have your species affect you stats. In the Demo, there was no information on these stat changes but I decided to list the effects in-game and the stats I listed in-game are now listed down below:

Spoiler

Human:

·        The privilege of being a human.

 

Arkanian:

·        Intelligence: +1

·        Constitution: -1

 

Arkanian-Offshoot:

·        Constitution: +1

·        Charisma: -1

 

Chiss:

·        Intelligence: +1

·        Dexterity: -1

 

Echani:

·        Dexterity: +1

·        Wisdom: -1

 

Kalzerian:

·        Charisma: +1

·        Dexterity: -1

 

Kiffar:

·        Intelligence: +1

·        Constitution: -1

 

Miralukan:

·        The ability to use the Force Sight ability if you press Caps Lock on your keyboard in-game.

 

Mirialan:

·        Wisdom: +1

·        Charisma: -1

 

Rattataki:

·        Constitution: +1

·        Intelligence: -1

 

Zeltron:

·        Charisma: +1

·        Constitution: -1

 

Twi’lek:

·        Dexterity: +1

·        Strength: -1

 

Devaronian:

·        Strength: +1

·        Wisdom: -1

 

These stats are unchanged from the Demo and so they may be changed upon player feedback and testing, if you do not like these stats you can always simply choose the “Species will not affect stats” and so you can have your desired build and play your desired species without your species ruining your ideal build.

 

 

Special alien abilities like Zeltrons being able to read emotions, Kiffar being able to read inanimate objects, Echani having the Echani Strike feats, and all the other possible alien-based powers are not yet in the mod. We don’t want to make one species overpowered thus rendering the other alien species weak by comparison. If we are to add unique, species based, dialogue or feat options that can be considered an “advantage” then most, if not all, player species will need their own advantageous dialogue and/or feats to make up for it.

 

The player head you chose will also determine how NPCs react to you. For example, a human player would be accepted on a human majority world like Corellia whereas an alien majority world like Nar Shaddaa may discriminate against a human player. Each species you can play as will have certain traits that NPCs can praise or discriminate you with, many of these traits are taken from their Wookieepedia pages. For example, Arkanians are known to be arrogant and so NPCs can discriminate against you because of that, Mirialans are supposed to be flexible so if you’re trying to convince someone that you’re a capable person that may give you an edge in persuading someone over other species.

 

NPCs will be able to recognize that a Chiss has red eyes or that a Miraluka has no eyes, this can result in dialogue in which an NPC acknowledges your features or dialogue in which said NPC becomes frightened by your appearance thus making it harder for you to interact with them than other species. Most player species have NPC equivalents, so whilst Arkanian players can be discriminated against by other NPCs their fellow Arkanians won’t do such a thing and may even be easier to deal with than if you were a non-Arkanian. The only species who don’t get this are the Kalzerians, Miralukans, and Rattataki (but only because the Rattataki NPCs only appear in one area whereas the other species appear everywhere else).

 

Arkanian Offshoots are supposed to be extinct by the time of the Jedi Civil War, so your Arkanian Offshoot player is a hybrid with another species thus retconning that plot hole. Another retconned plot hole is the fact that Arkanians see things in the infrared spectrum, Arkanian players have an “eye implant” that makes them see things normally. Zeltrons are… the opposite of a hopeless romantic if you view their Wookieepedia page. Zeltron NPCs may get unique dialogue responses in future Episodes to reflect this, and they may even get the opportunity to attempt to flirt with party members who you otherwise couldn’t regardless of their gender (Meaning you can try to flirt with the male player’s female love interest as a woman and vice versa but it’ll go nowhere, though do know there are plans for actual same-sex relationships outside of being a Zeltron player).

 

Once you talk to the Medical Droid, you equip your Padawan Robe. There was a unique Jedi Robe based on your class that you used to get back in the Demo, but I had Logan remove that as player’s would typically want to wear the unique Jedi Robe whilst giving Drayen, your Jedi Master, your Padawan Robe. You will have the opportunity to obtain your unique Jedi Robe later on in the mod. 

 

I also have not yet touched the Lightsabers in this mod, so we still have this Lightsaber Form color crystal system from the Demo. This “might” be changed in the future to make way for modern Lightsaber designs, both in terms of Lightsaber models and reworked implementation. But for now, the Lightsaber system remains unchanged – though I do vaguely recall being able to obtain Kyle Katarn’s Lightsaber in the Demo, that was removed long ago.

 

 

Drayen then comes in and starts talking, though without sound... so you have to read.

 

The reason why Drayen, and many main characters, do not have a unique voice right now is in this spoiler below:

Spoiler

Let’s say I got someone named “Bob” to voice Master Drayen, ideally I would want Bob to voice Drayen in Episode One and Episode Two when he is alive and for any Force Ghost or Force vision scenes we need of him in later Episodes. That would be ideal, but let’s assume Episode Two will take a year to develop before it’s ready for Beta testing – who’s to say Bob will still be around to voice the character? What if he got hit by a car and died? What if "Eurasia" invaded his home country of "Listenbourg" and he is either drafted or killed in the fighting? What if he got cancer and is unable to finish all of his voice lines before he passes? What if he moves on from Gaming and we can’t contact him? What if he just backs out because he feels like it?

 

All of the above examples have happened to mod developers and mod actors alike in other modding projects, the most famous example in the Kotor Community of an actor disappearing before they could finish their lines is DarthVarkor's 2018 fan film The Prodigal Knight where lead character, Zekk Vornn, had to be recast as his actor for the previous films had disappeared.

Another problem with voice actors, especially actors who voice big characters like Drayen, is that they want money for their job. Imagine if we payed someone to voice Drayen for Episode One and they got hit by a car and died before Episode Two was finished – we’d have to pay another actor to voice Drayen's Episode One and Two’s lines meaning Bob’s work was done and paid for absolutely nothing.

 

And even if we did get voice lines for Episode One, Two and any future appearances of Drayen, what if we wanted to go back and change something? If we go back and change dialogue lines that means the VO already paid and recorded will be discarded, we'd have wasted money paying Bob to film the lines we'd later cut and we wasted Bob's time as he filmed VO that got cut.

 

And I can tell you, there WILL be lines changed in Episode One and I shall get into that when we encounter them in future dev diaries (Here is a hint, Drayen hints at something that some player’s don’t particularly like, so we plan on changing it to be accommodating to those players demands).

 

So, our plan is simple, until all the lines of a character is written, and a characters story can be considered “finished”, those characters will remain silent. Characters like Drayen won’t get VO until their story is over and we feel their lines are final.

 

This does not mean there won’t be VO done by actors for characters, characters from Episode One’s optional side quest like the Widow and the CEC guy who wants datapads who both appeared in the Demo could receive VO right now. Side characters like King Bardok could receive VO at some point beyond Episode Two once we know his characters plotline is “finished”, we know he won’t be making any further appearances, and his lines are final. That means characters like Bardok might one day be voiced before the mod is “finished” meaning you can play it from start to finish.

 

For now, as many of us can assume, the animations these silent NPCs use are there to compensate for them being mute as they help convey the emotions these characters are going through.

 

Fun fact: just before launch Logan actually used an experimental dialogue editor which is meant to replace the DLGEditor and using it caused all the animations to break thus disabling them all. We had to go through earlier builds of the ROR mod to try and salvage dialogues that still had the animations so that we didn’t have waste hours trying to restore the hundreds of animations we lost.

 

 

Through Drayen, you are given the option to set the mod to “Canon” or “Non-Canon”. Unlike Atton in K2, there isn’t really a way to get this to work without breaking the fourth wall so this is one of the few points in the mod where we have to break the fourth wall so we can allow you to set your game to one of the two following options:

 

• “Canon” means the mod takes the Revan novel into account – meaning the Exile and T3-M4 are dead, Scourge is immortal and is waiting for the TOR Protagonist, Revan is imprisoned and is influencing the Emperor to stop him from attacking the Republic. The Canon ROR mod acts as a bridge between Kotor II and TOR, allowing you to close up any loose threads from Kotor I and II and end the Kotor trilogy on a good note before the TOR era begins… or you can do your own thing and set up a hypothetical different TOR scenario as if you were a time traveller changing the timeline. Do not be surprised if there is no literal “Revan’s Revenge” in this path.

 

• “Non-Canon” means the mod will not take the Revan novel into account, however, whilst the Exile and T3-M4 may potentially still be dead, Revan will not be imprisoned like he was in the novel and will not be actively influencing the Emperor to prevent him from attacking the Republic. The endings of the ROR mod between Canon and Non-Canon may be different, where Canon endings will simply bridge Kotor II and TOR the Non-Canon endings will give some sort of definitive conclusion to the Kotor trilogy.

 

 

Drayen also quizzes you on Revan and the Exile. As this is part of an official test, I have removed the Atton-style one liners from the Demo and added a fade to black system which implies that you are reciting a historical topic you have studied offscreen. I shall discuss the varies ways a Dark Side/Light Side and Male/Female Revan and Exile impacts the story as these Dev Diaries continue.

 

 

There’s a fade to black, a door closing sound effect, and Drayen is now gone allowing you to look around the room. You’ll notice that we removed the Remote droid, it was supposed to be a parody of the Episode IV Remote Obi-Wan used to train Luke with but in the Kotor II engine the player would actually fight the droid head on.

 

 

 

Going outside, you meet your childhood friend – Liana.

 

After you deal with her, you’ll notice that the god-ugly ray shield from the Demo has been removed. It now uses a proper door from the Vulkar Garage that is long enough to stretch across the entire hall.

 

 

The Jedi operating the terminal is now a Republic Officer who will, in a future update, one day be promoted to a proper Temple Guard. He has some AI generated audio, a brand-new feature of the ROR mod we shall discuss in the next Dev Diary. Going ahead, you’ll meet your second childhood friend – Kyle. Unlike in the Demo, he won’t take the player to visit Moza who subsequently becomes the victim of an assassination attempt by a Batu-Rem copycat.

 

 

The characters Liana and Kyle are both slated to become party members in future episodes, in the pre-Demo lore you were originally going to recruit two older Jedi who would become your Master figure but with the lore rewrites due to TOR your Jedi companions will now be your childhood friends. These are the main NPCs whom the player may wish to start a romantic relationship with, you recruit them the same way you recruit Brianna and Mical… via your gender, though we may change this so that you can choose one or the other regardless of gender. Though do know that our current plan is to only recruit Liana at first whilst we develop Kyle as an opponent to the player like he was in the Demo. Once Kyle’s opponent and Liana’s party member content is made then we’ll add the opposite, Kyle’s party member and Liana’s opposition content.

 

In the room to the left, there was originally a Padawan studying the news and a Jedi Master in the corner. I originally removed the random Jedi Master and kept the Padawan though when Logan told me that the random Jedi Master I had removed was supposed to be Liana’s Jedi Master and was "important" for her plot I retconned the Padawan and made her Liana’s Master instead.

 

 

Fun Fact: All of the Exile headed Jedi from the Demo used the Onderon Commoner appearances for some reason, if they were wearing clothes they'd look like this.

 

Liana's Master is now a Yoda creature, she uses the same model and texture as the Jedi Master who trains the Younglings in the Demo. That Master has since had his species swapped to avoid similarities between him and another character in the franchise. There are currently three Yoda characters in the mod - Liana's Master, Ulon Tuain on the Jedi Council, and a third Yoda character who is yet to be revealed.

 

Like the generic Padawan NPC in the Demo, Liana's Master also serves to introduce the player to the HoloNet news feature:

 

Ryloth HoloNet has been downgraded, the Hologram no longer spawns upon interacting with a terminal and is spawned in by default. We may restore the spawn in functionality of the Hologram later on though for now it is easier for us just to have the Hologram spawned in from the start and it will be easier for you, the player, to spot where the HoloNet news locations are.

 

 

An idea I had for the HoloNet news is "news categories". Similar to the 2002 Website, news articles would be divided into categories with many of the articles found in those categories being filler. As I didn't want to delay the mod's release by another year writing fictional tabloids for a fan-fiction mod, I haven't yet implemented this feature and for the moment you only have the one "BREAKING NEWS" category which will either be relevant to the current plot, foreshadowing the future plot, or reflects on either Revan's, the Exile's, or your past actions.

 

On Coruscant, there are currently three articles you can listen to: the Duros Restoration Project, the Onderon Civil War, or the Tyrena Disaster article.

 

• The Duros Restoration Project is written to foreshadow the lore for the planet Duro. When the planet Duro comes out, some of things foreshadowed in this article may be present though the Duros Episode may come with a revision to the Coruscant HoloNet news to account for any future changes.
• The Onderon Civil War article reflects the Exile’s decision on Onderon. If the Exile was Light Side then Queen Talia is still ruling Onderon and is still part of the Republic. If the Exile was Dark Side then General Vaklu would’ve won and seceded from the Republic, the article tells you how Vaklu sending volunteers to Citadel Station at the end of Kotor II convinced the Banking Clan to fund Vaklu’s regime and allow Onderon to secede - an act the Galactic Republic was too weak to stop. After Kotor II, General Vaklu is assassinated by a beast-rider and his son is now the King of Onderon, you can imagine Effix’s Son of Vaklu head is what ROR’s current Onderon King looks like.
• The Tyrena Disaster article informs you about the Tyrena Disaster. This sort of article is directly relevant to the plot you’re going to face in the first Episode.

 

Fun fact: Before the current setup with the Beast-Rider Assassin, Vaklu’s regime had a brief war with Czerka over the legal status of Dxun and Vaklu died when a Czerka starfighter Green Leadered Vaklu’s Command Ship. I’m sure we can agree the current setup is more reasonable.

 

Each planet will have a HoloNet news hologram to speak to, and each hologram will have different news articles that’ll either detail current events you’re about to go through, foreshadow future events, or discuss the outcomes of your previous actions.

 

 

Entering the fountain room you see a Rodian Jedi, she is using a head that was made by JCarter426 as part of a modder’s resource he released some years back. You will see certain aliens wearing armors and other accessories that otherwise weren’t possible in Kotor I and II.

 

 

This droid guards the landing pad, this version of the Jedi Temple is based on the Jedi Temple mod so this door would lead to the landing pad the Ebon Hawk would land on in that mod.

 

 

This door is now locked, in the Demo it had another ugly ray shield door and I didn't want to use the Vulkar Garage door trick twice.

 

 

The Speeder bike from the Demo has been removed, the Twi’lek Padawan (who used an elderly Twi’lek head for some reason) has been moved over here and is now browsing a filing cabinet.

Fun fact: The reason there was a Speeder bike inside the Jedi Temple was related to the old lore, in the pre-Demo lore the planet Coruscant could be revisited, and you had to break into the Temple and sneakily retrieve something, once you found it you would be discovered, and you would literally run to this Speeder bike and use it to flee through the window above. Returning to Coruscant, breaking into the Temple, and escaping like that has been removed.

 

 

This is the training room, and if you’re a follower of my K1 mods something should become quite apparent to you. The Younglings are wearing clothes from my K1 Clothing Pack mod. Yes, the K1 Clothing Pack is fully integrated into the ROR mod, and you can spot more clothes from this mod throughout the ROR mod.

 

The Master training them used to be the Yoda character we saw in the newsroom, at one point Logan changed it to an orange Twi’lek, but when we added JC’s alien heads to ROR we made him a Sullustan.

 

 

Whilst you don’t get the chance to go sicko mode with the Younglings in this mod, you have the dialogue option to bully them before you leave.

 

 

You’ll speak to Drayen near the door which led to the Jedi Council chamber from the Jedi Temple mod, and he’ll take you to the ROR mod’s Jedi Council. I must warn you that the Jedi Council scene was a pain to make and is really glitchy, behind the scenes it’s amazing that the game is even holding itself together.

 

 

The scene begins with an "out the window" shot, and as you can see... we've got permission from Kexikus to include his High Quality Skybox for Coruscant.

 

When it comes to using HQ Skyboxes in ROR, I believe the policy is this - we can reuse skyboxes only if said skybox is for the same planet in ROR. This means we'll be using Nar Shaddaa's HQ Skybox in Episode Two as the HQ Skybox is being used for Nar Shaddaa, whereas we cannot take the HQ Taris Skybox and reskin it to look like Corellia, we cannot take HQ Taris' Skybox and then use it for Corellia either - if we use the HQ Taris Skybox then it must be used for Taris. ROR Skyboxes will vary in quality due to this, like how Corellia's skybox is comparable to vanilla quality in terms of texture resolution. Though with our talented art team I'm certain we will deliver satisfactory skyboxes for all the new ROR planets that'll be worthy of your Kotor III roleplaying experience.

 

Depending on the Exile’s alignment, you’ll be warped into either cort.mod or evcort.mod. Both modules are the exact same except cort.mod has Brianna and Mical in attendance whilst evcort.mod doesn’t, you’re taken to cort.mod if the Exile was Light Side and evort.mod if the Exile was Dark Side. The Exile’s actions in Kotor II impacts the Kotor II party members, so if Exile was Light Side that means Brianna is a Jedi Historian and Mical sits on the Jedi Council whilst a Dark Side Exile has Brianna become a psychotic Jedi-hunting assassin whilst Mical becomes a cold-hearted Senator. If the Exile was Light Side then these two party members appear in the Jedi Council scene whereas a Dark Side Exile will have these two party members later on in areas that fit their Dark Side personalities.

 

You might be wondering; why are they both present? To which I have two reasons.

 

• Brianna canonically travelled with a female Exile alongside Mical even though it’s impossible to do in-game without PartySwap.
• It’s easier for us as modders just to have them both appear in-game as we don’t have to factor in conditionals for whether the Exile was male or female alongside the alignment conditionals.

 

When I previously talked about the current opening crawl, I wanted to speak about Bastila. Obviously we didn’t know of Bastila’s canonical insignificance post-Kotor II before the Revan novel and TOR were released so Logan would’ve written the old Council to imply that Bastila was the leader back in the Demo.

 

Canonically, according to Gnost-Dural, Bastila served as a Jedi Master in the years that followed the Revan novel but later decided to spend the rest of her life with her son, Vaner Shan. I’ve compromised with this new lore by keeping Bastila on the Council as a Jedi Master and, assuming the mod is set to “Canon”, and the player takes all the Canon paths, she will retire from the Council and will end the mod living with her Son.

 

But of course, if Revan was female than Bastila wouldn’t have a son – whilst it hasn’t been decided yet, Bastila’s son might be replaced with a fan-fiction depiction of Carth’s daughter with Revan as her mother if Revan was female. We will also add a dialogue option to give you the option to set a female Revan to be with Juhani instead of Carth, possibly removing Revan’s child entirely or creating a fan-fiction depiction of an adopted child depending on player feedback to the idea.

 

Outside of the romance possibilities, there is also the fact that Revan could’ve gone Dark Side and that Bastila is partially, or fully, responsible for the murder of Jolee Bindo, Juhani, Mission Vao, Zaalbar, Admiral Dodonna, Master Yandar, and the hundreds, if not thousands, of Jedi Knights, Republic Pilots, Republic Officers, and Republic Soldiers who perished at the Battle over Lehon. So whilst it may've made sense for Bastila to have become the leader of the new Jedi Order if she never had a child, with the possibility that Bastila has violated the Jedi Code at best, and is a potential war criminal at worst, there’s no way Bastila could possibly be the Grand Master of the Order if Revan was Dark Sided. So since it's easier for us modders, Bastila is simply a member of the Jedi Council and is not the Grand Master of the Order regardless of alignment or romance status.

 

So, who is the Grand Master?

 

Well, I believe the Jedi Council in ROR should lead by a policy of “Collective Leadership”. The lack of a Grand Master following Nomi Sunrider can be easily explained away thanks to Disney who merged all of the Expanded Universe stories into one confusing “Legends” timeline.

 

You see, Nomi Sunrider was the Grand Master of the Jedi Order… and yet her last documented appearance in the Legends timeline was the time she participated in the Second Battle of Onderon. This story was written by the Wizards of the Coast company to promote their line of Kotor miniature sets that they had released, but because all the Expanded Universe stories were merged into the "Legends" umbrella this story, written to promote a toy line, had become Canon to the overall Legends Star Wars timeline (Canon as in the "Legends" timeline, not to be confused with Disney Canon).

 

And you know what that means? Nomi Sunrider, the Grand Master of the Jedi Order, canonically joined Revan and the Revanchists, just like the Exile did, and fought in the Second Battle of Onderon alongside Revan, Meetra Surik, and General Vaklu against the Mandalorians… and this happened because Wizards of the Coast wanted to promote a toy line in 2008 once.

 

This story written for a toy promotion holds just as much weight in the Legends timeline as the two Kotor games thanks to Disney, and we know from the Kotor games the only Jedi who returned to face judgement by the Jedi Council was the Exile, Meetra Surik, so that means Nomi Sunrider died during the Mandalorian Wars or fell to the Dark Side and joined Revan because that’s what the Kotor games heavily implies happened to the Revanchists.

 

With this new bit of lore, courtesy of Disney, we can assume the Jedi Council during the Mandalorian Wars operated under a “Collective Leadership” policy which continued into Kotor II and has since continued into the ROR mod.

 

Now, let’s talk about the other Jedi Council members.

 

The other Jedi Council members, as you can probably guess, were not Jedi Council members before the First Jedi Purge. These would’ve been Jedi Knights during the time of the Jedi Civil War who went into exile after the war had ended and would later take it upon themselves to become the new members of the Jedi Council.

 

Other than Bastila, Brianna, and Mical, you have new characters like Ulon Tuain, Zane Parlayy, Agnook Acib, Gruku Avadro, Piadre Doaki, and Nawbeca.

 

 

Zane Parlayy and Piadre Doaki are humans, so we can assume that they were Jedi Knights during the Jedi Civil War, probably weren’t promoted to Masters due to the First Jedi Purge and would later promote themselves to the rank of Master following the restoration of the Order.

 

Fun fact: Zane Parlayy did not have a unique appearance in the Demo, he outright reused Gendar’s appearance from the first game. I’ve reskinned the Gendar head so that Zane looks somewhat different from Gendar.

 

 

Ulon Tuain and Nawbeca could be old, we know Yoda was over 900 years old by the time of the Movies whilst Chewbacca was around 200 years old. The problem these characters face is that it would make sense for these characters to have been around during the Great Sith War in 3996 BBY and the Great Galactic War in 3681 BBY. When writing these characters, we need to explain why they weren’t present for the events prior to ROR and why they don’t appear in TOR.

 

For Nawbeca, we can assume that he was someone who kept a low-profile, not joining Revan during the Mandalorian Wars and had either gone into exile on Kashyyyk following the Jedi Civil War or on another jungle planet where he could remain hidden. Depending on his age, it is possible that Newbeca could die of old age before the time of TOR though it is also possible for him to have died through other means – various Jedi Council members in The Phantom Menace who do not make an appearance in Attack of the Clones were killed off in novels and comic books to explain their absence in the movie.

 

For Ulon Tuain, this one is a tricky one. If we are to take Disney Canon into account than this guy was definitely alive during the Great Sith War, though due to his species decelerated aging it is possible that he was a Jedi Knight by the time of the Jedi Civil War whose role in the Order was too small to have played any important role in the Jedi Civil War, Mandalorian War, or Exar Kun War. For the same reason as Newbeca, it is also possible that Ulon died before the events of TOR, though it is more likely that he was murdered than having died of old age. Master Yarael Poof and Yaddle from Legends both canonically died doing heroic deeds to save others outside of an active war, so perhaps the same happened to Ulon or Nawbeca.

 

 

For Gruku Avadro, I actually wrote some backstory for this character. He fought in the Jedi Civil War and lead the Republic forces in the Battle of Rodia against the Sith forces, the Sith were hoping to use their fleet to bomb the planet just as they did Telos and Taris but the Republic victory on that planet repelled the Sith and caused Rodia to side with the Republic during the course of the war.

 

The above Battle of Rodia is Canon in the Legends universe, though in ROR the Battle of Rodia has been expanded for the sake of this character’s backstory. Following the Republic victory, Rodia fell into a civil war between the followers of the pro-Republic Grand Protector and the defeated Sith collaborators who waged a bloody insurgency on the planet. The concept of Rodia being a violent place full of bloody infighting is also Canon, and the idea of an insurgency occurring after one side is victorious in a war is present throughout history. Two modern examples would be Iraq and Afghanistan. Gruku Avadro stayed on Rodia and helped put down the pro-Sith Rodian insurgency, though in doing so he was MIA for many years and once the Rodian Civil War was over the new Jedi Order had already established itself.

 

 

For Agnook Acib, this one is a bit tricky. There is no Canon or Legends idea of how long these guys live for, and in Legends these guys live on Mon Cala with the Mon Calamari (Admiral Ackbar’s species) who live in semi-isolation with only a few leaving their homeworld to visit the greater galaxy (Loppak Slusk, Visquis, and Saquesh are examples of Quarren who left their homeworld). This means Mon Cala is not part of the Republic and due to it being a water world it’d be difficult for a Jedi to have recruited Agnook when he was a baby. For Agnook, I’d say he developed his Force powers independently of any Force using organization (The Jedi and Sith aren't the only Force using groups in the galaxy, the Baron Do referenced in Kotor II is another Force using group) as a child and would later be banished from Mon Cala for misusing his Force Powers.

 

It is possible that he encountered a Jedi, or the Sith, during the Jedi Civil War and fell into the company of a lone Jedi before the First Jedi Purge. This Jedi took him on as his or her Padawan and he went on to join the new Jedi Council, you could head canon this unidentified Jedi as one of the other Jedi Council members present.

 

I personally discovered that, if you feed Kotor alien VO into ElevenLabs, it uses the alien sample to produce a usable voice. As of right now, the Jedi Agnook and your future party member Nindo from the Demo shall use AI generated VO using their species VO.

 

This scene was a real pain to setup, I took the dialogue from the vanilla Jedi Council scene and removed 99% of the dialogue so that I could use the 5 pre-set “sitting down” animations for the Jedi Masters here before adding 4 more animations so that all 9 of the ROR Jedi Council can sit down. I then used the “Copy Node” and “Paste Node As New” function in the DLGEditor for all the lines in this scene so that I didn’t have to manually add 9 sitting down animations per dialogue.

Fun fact: If I had manually added the animations, I would’ve had to have manually added this animation 378 times. As you can see from these screenshots, and in-game, this workaround paid off as we now have an authentic Jedi Council scene.

 

However, there is a rather annoying bug with this scene. If you try to rapid fire spam click your mouse, it will not rapidly fire through the dialogues. Instead, it ends one dialogue line and makes you wait for several seconds before the next dialogue fires and this repeats until the scene ends. And what’s worse, this applies to the player responses. Due to the several second delay, it is possible for the player to select all four dialogue responses though the game will only register the first dialogue response you clicked.

 

 

This particular line spoken by Piadre Doaki was originally Master Drayen’s line, but upon setting up the Council scene like this the game would always crash every time it came time for Drayen to speak. For some unknown reason, the fix for this crash was to make a Council member says his line for him so I decided to give his line to the underused Piadre.

 

 

As previously established, Brianna and Mical won’t be present in this scene if the Exile was Dark Side, but for some reason, the game would freeze at the very start of the scene during the opening shot by the window if Brianna and Mical's UTC files weren't present so to fix this we replaced Brianna and Mical with generic NPCs as a temporary bug fix in the Dark Side version of this scene.

 

In order for me to keep the Jedi Council members facing the camera when they spoke, I had to add 9 invisible NPCs directly in front of them. In the dialogue, the Jedi Council member who speaks is the “Speaker” whilst the “Listener” is an invisible NPC standing right in front of them. When I first tested this out, I didn’t realize I had replaced the invisible NPC appearance with a CEC Protocol Droid so here is how the Jedi Council scene would look if you could actually see the invisible NPCs.

 

 

And at one point before this, half of the NPC puppets I was using to test how I would add these NPCs were hostile resulting in this funny screenshot.

 

 

As you have probably seen in the mod already, the Jedi Council here informs you of the Tyrena Disaster and you and your Master are sent to Corellia to aid in the Republic’s Tyrena Disaster Investigation, thus kickstarting the plot of the Revenge of Revan mod.

 

And with that, the Dev Diary comes to a close. Please let us know in the comments of this thread what you think, and feel free to stick around for more updates and Dev Diaries for the ROR mod – a mod you can now play for yourself.

 

 

[Spectrometer 20]

Thank you for the Dev Diary, very interesting as always. I have two commentaries/questions:

1. If Revan is Dark side, wouldn't it make more sense for Bastila to be either dead or with a similar fate as Dark Side Brianna? I don't remember well her dialogue at the TSL holocron, but I thought it was at least implied that she didn't survive Korriban's civil war. It also would solve the uneasiness of having a former Shadow Hand/War Criminal as a council master instead of just a low profile master.

2. Since the demo I would have really liked if Deesra Luur Jada was part of the Jedi Council. I hope he still makes an appearance as an steemed Jedi survivor.

About the change for the beginning:

Spoiler

 I really like your idea for a new beginning scene. As much as I like world building and exposition, an ellipisis which would not show the King requesting for the Jedi (immediately cutting from the explosion to the Temple), and would keep him and his palace as more mysterious, to be revealed when you visit the planet, would perhaps fit well narratively. And vague references to the Duros plot would serve as a nice foreshadowing. I think you should also add the Supreme Chancellor to the scene though, or introduce her more formally at the meeting at the end of the Chapter.

 

[N-DReW25 1,412]

4 hours ago, Spectrometer said:

1. If Revan is Dark side, wouldn't it make more sense for Bastila to be either dead or with a similar fate as Dark Side Brianna? I don't remember well her dialogue at the TSL holocron, but I thought it was at least implied that she didn't survive Korriban's civil war. It also would solve the uneasiness of having a former Shadow Hand/War Criminal as a council master instead of just a low profile master.

Bastila's Sith Holocron strongly implies that she left Korriban to find Revan, here is the full dialogue:

 

Quote

Whoever survives this Sith Civil War shall not be one I wish to follow. There is only Revan. Only he can shape this galaxy as it is meant to be shaped. He lives still, this I know. If he will not return, then I shall find him and discover why. I cannot remain here, not knowing. I've become certain there is something he remembered in the Unknown Regions. It is a technique he learned fighting the Mandalorians, that allowed him to convert the last of the Jedi who fought beside him - and murder those who would not. And he fears it is still out there... and silent for far too long.

 

Looking at this dialogue, it's somewhat conflicting with what's presented in TOR as what Bastila says here somewhat aligns with what Kreia says about Revan even though what Kreia says about Revan is directly retconned in TOR.

 

The retcon could be explained as Kreia 'projecting' her own views onto Revan, though what Bastila says here will inevitably have to be explained in the ROR mod. I have a feeling the answer as to what Revan's "technique of mass conversion" is is probably explained in the half hour lore-dump that is the Enclave scene.

 

Another bit of useful Dark Side Bastila lore is what she says to T3-M4:

Quote

T3, I have one last order for you. Our master does not know about this, and I order you to keep it a secret. Every day as we build upon Korriban, more of his memories return - and the bond he and I share cannot hide it from me. He believes a threat lurks on the edge of the galaxy. Something that could threaten his power. I... fear he will go there... and I fear he will not return. If he leaves, he will take you with him - but not I. He knows the bond we share may prove a weakness... but he will take you. If something happens, T3, then I need you to return to the Republic and find me. And if you cannot, then I need you to seek whatever help you can elsewhere, whether Jedi or the Sith... or someone in-between. This is my last order to you, T3. Obey it - and do not let me lose my Master... even if he believes he is protecting me. 

 

Using both the Sith Holocron and T3-M4, we can assume that Revan left his Sith Empire around 3954 BBY. Without the strong, unifying leader that is Revan, the Sith started fighting one another for control of the Empire. The Sith who remained were too weak to control the Star Forge, thus rendering it useless for producing new ships. Bastila appears to be somewhat aware of the threat of the "True Sith" on Dromuund Kaas and so instead of dying in the Sith Civil War she set out to look for Revan.

 

It can be assumed that an alternative version of the Revan novel took place where, between Kotor I and Kotor II, Darth Revan, T3-M4 and Canderous went to Rekkiad and found Mandalore's Mask. After leaving Canderous behind, Darth Revan and T3-M4 took the Ebon Hawk to Nathema where they were shot down by Darth Nyriss and Scourge. After capturing Darth Revan, T3 was left alone on Nathema and spent years repairing the Ebon Hawk so that he could return to the known galaxy. By the time he had finished his repairs, it was 3951 BBY... just in time for the events of Kotor II.

 

And just like in the Light Side ending, Bastila gave T3 the orders as stated above - "If he leaves, he will take you with him - but not I. He knows the bond we share may prove a weakness... but he will take you. If something happens, T3, then I need you to return to the Republic and find me. And if you cannot, then I need you to seek whatever help you can elsewhere, whether Jedi or the Sith... or someone in-between."

 

It is possible that Bastila became privy to Revan's actual plans, Goto and Disicple both speak of Malak as a conquering brute whereas Revan's agenda seems to have run deep and alluded them both. It is possible that Bastila left Korriban to find Revan, she might've found Nathema, though she did not find the True Sith who had captured Revan and so, as she ordered T3, had returned to the Republic as they were the only ones with the capacity to stop the True Sith now.

 

And as I've probably discussed in the diary, only Carth would've known of the full extent of Bastila's betrayal if Revan was Dark Sided. It makes no difference whether Revan and Light Side or Dark Side as Bastila was technically a Sith in both endings, one has her redeemed and save the day and the other has her "redeemed" years later (Again, only Carth would know of the full extent of Bastila's betrayal so everyone else is oblivious to her past).

 

Logan wants "replayability" with the ROR mod, you see that sort of thing with the player species and you'll see it here with Revan and Exile's gender and alignments wherein what you set impacts the story of past characters. In the case of Bastila, we can assume her thoughts and motivations towards the end of the mod will differ based on these factors.

 

4 hours ago, Spectrometer said:

2. Since the demo I would have really liked if Deesra Luur Jada was part of the Jedi Council. I hope he still makes an appearance as an steemed Jedi survivor.

At the start of Drayen's dialogue in the Jedi Temple the player asks Drayen how his trip to Dantooine was to which Drayen directly mentions Luur Jada by name.

 

As to what extent, I cannot say, but I can say he will make a cameo one way or another beyond this name drop.

 

4 hours ago, Spectrometer said:

About the change for the beginning:

  Hide contents

 I really like your idea for a new beginning scene. As much as I like world building and exposition, an ellipisis which would not show the King requesting for the Jedi (immediately cutting from the explosion to the Temple), and would keep him and his palace as more mysterious, to be revealed when you visit the planet, would perhaps fit well narratively. And vague references to the Duros plot would serve as a nice foreshadowing. I think you should also add the Supreme Chancellor to the scene though, or introduce her more formally at the meeting at the end of the Chapter.

 

 

Spoiler

When the Duros content is released, we will consider our options with this alternative scene.

 

[DeathScepter 51]

with a female Revan, Regardless of Alignment, How are you going to link Bastila Shan to Satele Shan?