My Projects In the Pipeline (mostly texture related)

[Malkior 476]

Apologies to double-post, but edits don't show up in the Updated Threads, so here we are.

 

Anyway, A quick update on my progress for things, I have made a decent amount of headway on the Aliens Redetailed, but I've hit a bit of a snag. 

 

 

 

 

Basically, I like the design of the head, but as you can probably see by the second screenshot, the clothing looks kind of well, bad.

 

 

 

 

 

I think this is mainly because the texture itself is clearly part of the Rebel Alliance flightsuit (Or Bossk's flightsuit), but is horribly pixelated and most definitely doesn't fit with the leather straps on the Rodian's shoulders.

 

Now, this wouldn't be a problem except I have made it important that every piece of the texture have a practical purpose, and I feel the flightsuit component really drags down the overall quality.

 

So I am curious what you guys think: 

 

Should I focus on recreating the iconic flightsuit with a higher level of detail?

  

 

 

or Should I instead try to make the center portion more like a leather jacket or captain's shirt as is the case of basically every Rodian?

    

 

 

Or... Should I try to recreate the look of Greedo's vest?

  

 

 

 

(Or all three for the different Rodian color variants?)

 

 

Anyway, I'm glad to hear whatever you have to say, and I am still quite ready to release this thing once I'm done.

 

Hopefully once this part is past, I can start work on finalizing touches, and after that, maybe some UVW edits later along the line to make them look even better. 

[DarthParametric 3,785]

If you want the jacket look but the vanilla body isn't working out for you, it seems like you could probably hijack the PMBBS body (assuming this is K1, although I think they did keep the scaled class clothes meshes in TSL). Lop off the hands and it would only need some minor repositioning of the forearms to align with the weirdly bowed Rodian arms (and its giant hands). Like so:

 

 

 

[Kexikus 995]

I'd go for the jacket version, possibly using Darth Parametrics idea. And maybe give one color variant the detailed flight suit. But I'd stay away from Greedos jacket and go for something less unique.

 

Also, maybe you could tweak the skin details slightly. They look good, but also somewhat disconnected from the skin texture, like they're just pasted on top of the base texture. I have no idea how to integrate them better, but if you'd manage, it'd improve the Rodians even more

[Dant95 2]

What DarthParametric suggests in case you want the jacket look. I myself prefer the jacket look, but if it's difficult or require too much work around then a higher level of detail and color variations for flight suit would be enough. That said nice work on a more detailed Rodian's head.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

What Parametric said. Might be a bit tricky but the results would be amazing.

 

Instead of the scoundrel body though, I would use the scout body, so it can be reused and consistent with the body sizes from TSL

[DarthParametric 3,785]

Instead of the scoundrel body though, I would use the scout body, so it can be reused and consistent with the body sizes from TSL

The Rodian is a single body mesh with some unique animations, so you'd most likely want to scale medium and large meshes down to fit it, rather than trying to go the other way. The small body size was already the right scale so struck me as being much less of a pain in the ass. For the medium body though, a quick mockup would suggest something in the order of 95% would be about the right scale:

 

 

 

 

It's a vest though, not a jacket, so I don't see that it is more appropriate than the small body.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

The Rodian is a single body mesh with some unique animations, so you'd most likely want to scale medium and large meshes down to fit it, rather than trying to go the other way. The small body size was already the right scale so struck me as being much less of a pain in the ass. For the medium body though, a quick mockup would suggest something in the order of 95% would be about the right scale:

 

 

 

 

It's a vest though, not a jacket, so I don't see that it is more appropriate than the small body.

 

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter, but the body size is at least consistent, though you could argue that Rodians should be smaller in general.

 

I disagree that a vest automatically is less appropriate than a jacket. That doesn't make any sense to me. But I would use the hell out of this mod regardless.

[DarthParametric 3,785]

I guess it's up to Malkior whether to even go the route of messing with the body mesh. I'm not even sure if it will work - after all it would require dealing with MDLOps, tool of Sstan - but I'm willing to offer whatever help I can.

 

Edit: So as not to keep hijacking the thread with new posts, I'll just edit this in here. Somewhat to my surprise, MDLOps seemingly compiled the model without a hitch:

 

 

You'll just need to swap the textures with whatever your custom named ones are and re-export (or edit the ASCII). It is set to use the original model as the super, and it uses two different textures, so you'll need to edit appearance.2da and for the 5 rows for Rodians change the race and model to N_RodianJacket (or whatever you decide to use if you rename it) and blank out the texture column. If you want multiple texture variants you'll need to compile new models using them, as overriding it via the 2DA will apply a single texture to all the sub-meshes, which won't turn out well. I can give you a hand setting up TSLPatcher to make the appropriate appearance.2da edits if you need. Oh, and one thing I noticed afterwards that I missed before exporting the model, the lowest of the "hairs" on the back of the head clips through the collar, so you may just want to select those polys and delete them.

 

Btw this means you could do female Rodians relatively easily, if you wanted (assuming MDLOps continued to co-operate), although they would require a tad more tweaking. It seems like the medium female body is already about the right size, so the jacket actually required scaling up:

 

 

And of course, the obligatory:

 

God, those truckasaurus hands......

 

You'd probably also want a new, higher pitched voice set to go along with them.

 

Edit 2: And a couple more, why not (although I don't think the forum script embeds more than 2 vids per post). Both these were scaled down. 96% seemed spot on. First is the swoop ganger body:

 

 

 

And this one should make VarsityPuppet happy, more vest action via the smuggler NPC:

 

 

[scoutception 17]

I agree with DarthParametric. I also gotta ask, are you planing on improving the eyes for the Rodians? They look pretty out of place compared to the rest of the (fantastic looking, I have to say) head.

[MrPhil 58]

Heh, this rodian dancer seems to have hands made for poles

[Malkior 476]

Yeah.

 

BTW, Darth Parametric, I've been working on finding a good design for each clothing piece, but I'm no great fashion designer, so progress has been unbelievably slow...

 

Do you know of any good designs you'd like to see on the Rodians that isn't the default Bossk's flightsuit or the scout uniform?

[DarthParametric 3,785]

Depends on what you mean. It should be possible to transplant any of the standard body models based on my experience so far. If you are talking about retexturing, that sort of thing is outside my wheelhouse. At this point I'd say even just sticking with the vanilla textures would be a big improvement in terms of diversity. You could always just focus on finishing off the head retextures to get it released, then worry about body retextures as a supplemental download at a later date.

[xander2077 80]

Well, Malkior, if you want to use the existing body models as DP suggested that is a good start. Retexturing them for variation is an easy way to make them more diverse, but coloring them differently can be a chore. That requires breaking up the existing texture islands into separate parts so you can have layers for each piece. So . . . say you want belts or leathers on one layer, boots another, part of clothing cloth on another layer, and trim maybe on another layer. But by the time you get them all layered, it can be pretty intense.

 

Then you can try re-coloring or even changing the material a bit.

 

Redrob did a write-up about retaining the wrinkles and shadows as a mask for new clothing layers that kind of touches on that idea.

 

The possibilities are endless really, just on the Juhani standard clothing I think I have about 24 variants with different coloration combinations, and the hardest part was breaking the islands up and doing the color correction on the vanilla colored outfit first before getting into the other details. I limited the colors to a few leather dyes but I could have gone wild and done every color in the spectrum, but the results would not have been to my liking as much.

 

The good thing about full body clothing is that you don’t have to worry about hands or forearms.

 

Really it boils down to what editor you are using for textures and then the limitations or perks of each one can be used to help you accomplish the reskin.

 

As far as coloration or variation goes, taking cues from the costume designs of the original trilogy is a good start, because a lot of the outfits are based on those costumes.

 

Redesigning them is a whole other ball game and can get into some really annoying stretching. So when in doubt, stick to the textures already made for the body and try re-coloring those. sometimes the textures can already have variations for each body. Now if you notice that you can superimpose one over the other and mix and match the styles because they share the same islands, you might be able to put the arms of one jacket style on the body of another simply by cannibalizing the textures. or pants or whatever. Maybe the base texture doesn’t have stripes on the pants, so you copy that island and paste it over the original (new layer though).

[Malkior 476]

Okay, so here is my first attempt at a recoloring/redesign of the bright red Scoundrel or Soldier outfit.  

 

 

 

I know after looking at the screenshot that I subconsciously used the color scheme on Boba Fett... 

 

This is also in flat colors, as I'm working on color schemes first. This is what I'm using as a basis for this currently. http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071029025214/starwars/images/d/d4/Nikto.jpg

[xander2077 80]

Just a quick question: which photo editor are you using? Was it gimp? If it is GIMP, then there is a nice little trick you can use to increase resolution and make things look crisper.

 

For example, if you find the best possible resolution you can and use that as the template, then increase the size - don’t just rely on the default settings for pixels per inch (72x72). Up those two or three times. This will decrease any artifacts and pixelization. Then for layers like the gray ones you have, they tend to get muddy from using the color adjusting plug-ins that come with the program, but if you go to enhance/unsharp mask, this powerful tool will make your layer pop with detail, especially the higher the pixels per inch. So instead of the muddy grey wrinkles and details, you will have crisper lines. The resolution can be saved in a smaller size later, but the details need to start out very crisp. Of course the tradeoff is the files can become large, like 230mb, but the final texture will be top notch.

 

If you are using PS then I can’t remember any more what to do there.

 

Other than that I think you have a really good color scheme. If you have those parts in layers, then you can start to mix and match colors.

 

I also just thought of another cool trick. Do a search on the type of fabric you want to recolor, so for instance the softer one would be maybe cotton, the leather would need a leather sample picture or several and you want different colors. Try and find textures related to that, such as close-ups of clothing samples. Then use that as the donor for the color. Use color/maps/sample colorize. When that window opens, uncheck the box that holds intensity for the part you want to recolor, for the donor side on the right, check the box that says use subcolors, then click "get sample colors" and then apply. You can always undo and redo until it looks right and you can adjust sliders to the right tint or lightness in the plug-in window. I usually use that on layers from the original so the details have the proper coloration for each color change. That way the folds look correct because there is more contrast than using the regular colorize or colorify plug-ins.

 

Give both a try and see what happens.

[Malkior 476]

Another year (Or two), another backlog of modding projects.

 

I'm posting the progress on any mods I'm working on back here just to keep it in a central location.

 

 

 

The current mod on the docket is the Kotor1 version of Blasters Reloaded.

 

 

_updated_

 

I'm going to finish the first iteration, but for the next I was wondering what to do to better differentiate the weapon types.

 

At the moment, there is little advantage to using a bowcaster versus just a heavy blaster and like the rest of the goal of this mod, I want to make weapon choice a more tactical decision rather than just which has more damage or criticals.

 

I want these advantages and disadvantages to match their "real world" counterparts though, and at the moment the weapon effects Kotor has are somewhat troublesome to use in that it seems only Paralysis, Stun, and Poison are the only effects that actually do something impactful. The rest seem useless.

 

For example, I've planned to use Pierce bonuses for Disruptors, but I'm getting information online that it's not even a real effect and is only left over from NWN. Additionally, the Electrical damage which I was going to use for Anti-Droid weapons seems to only be effective against some shields.

 

I've also noticed that some of the effects such as Dexterity damage may be too overpowered and make the game too easy.

 

 

 

 

Basically, I want to know any ideas of which bonuses will work best with the weapon types and which are pointless to use.

 

 

 

My current list is as follows:

 

 

Disruptor Weapons do bonuses to Piercing to simulate how they ignore any physical barriers and attack at the atomic level.

 

Bowcasters have a Slow effect and bonus to bludgeoning to simulate how they knockback targets -I wanted to use a knockdown effect, but it turns out Kotor doesn't have one :*(

 

Ion Weapons do bonus Electrical damage with possibly some sort of Stun to humans and massively increase damage against droids.

 

Mandalorian Weapons have a Dexterity Damage effect to simulate the overwhelming force anything Mandalorians make have.

 

 

 

So, I was wondering, which types of effects should these weapon types have in your opinions? For example, should Disruptor cause Stun and Bowcaster cause Slowdown? Should anything do Poison?

 

_updated_

[jc2 581]

Another year (Or two), another backlog of modding projects.

...etc..

 

Yeah you should add slow effect to blasters, I did that. 

 

Ion weapons sound like a good idea, but I wouldn't add the stun effect to them.

 

Additionally, you could have some blasters come with a feat such as improved rapid shot. Not to mention you could play around with the restriction, making certain items only useable by one class throwing in a level on uniqueness/balance.

 

 

Do blasters use any impact script? If so I could script a knockback effect into it for the bowcaster or whatever else.

[Malkior 476]

Yeah you should add slow effect to blasters, I did that. 

 

Ion weapons sound like a good idea, but I wouldn't add the stun effect to them.

 

Additionally, you could have some blasters come with a feat such as improved rapid shot. Not to mention you could play around with the restriction, making certain items only useable by one class throwing in a level on uniqueness/balance.

 

 

Do blasters use any impact script? If so I could script a knockback effect into it for the bowcaster or whatever else.

 

Cool. I was thinking of adding slow or stun specifically to the Sith Sniper Rifle with a minor lowering of ranged defense throws ( To balance out its insane damage and critical potential, and since sniper rifles are generally unwieldy and it's hard to dodge incoming fire) The slow or stun would make it more of an interesting unique weapon IMO

 

As far as the rest of the weapons, I added all of the rapid shot/power blast/sniper shot feats where they apply.

So for the blaster rifles, most if not all have an improved rapid shot or improved power blast. Some benefit from Master versions of these feats if their description warrants it. The "shotgun" type weapons generally have Improved or Master Power Blast, and some have Improved Sniper Shot if they have scopes on them.

 

 

Also, I looked through the scripts, and I don't know if there is an impact script. All I could find was k_hen_damage01 in the Kotortool. I'm fairly inexperienced with scripting, so I use just the Kotortool and even then I'm not great at actually *reading the scripts. However, if a knockback effect could be scripted, that'd be quite awesome.

[Malkior 476]

Finally FINALLY finished my first test version.

BlastersReloaded_K1.zip

I'm posting this here instead of a proper mod page because I haven't finished changing the descriptions in the feats window, and I figured I'd get this out as early as I can while I deal with changing that. Other than that, the mod should be totally finished.

All weapons have been altered to have their feats added, and hopefully that pesky issue with companions getting these feats has been dealt with. I had to get a little unconventional for some of the upgradable weapons, but hopefully the balancing is still fine.

Please let me know if you have any problems or if there's anything you think should be changed.

[Reshki 2]

6 minutes ago, Malkior said:

Yeah, I made the Carbines more useful by giving them more heavy fire rate and higher tier feats on average since the rifles are basically either upgradable or more distance focused (Higher chance of adding Sniper Shot feats for instance)

 

If it's cool, we can probably move this conversation to this page here 

 

as I'm sure Tyvokka isn't keen on me having 3 pages of discussions on a mod page.

 

Oh Sorry about that lol yeah I'm doing damage numbers only for now then reincorporating your mod as well then tweak from there. Did you see the thing I mentioned about Benok's Blaster? It's benoksblaster.uti

[Malkior 476]

1 hour ago, Reshki said:

Oh Sorry about that lol yeah I'm doing damage numbers only for now then reincorporating your mod as well then tweak from there. Did you see the thing I mentioned about Benok's Blaster? It's benoksblaster.uti

Yeah. I can only guess that Obsidian missed something and left it misnamed. A lot of game developers do that fairly regularly. I've been plumbing the depths that are Bethesda game files, and it's wild how many errors they just plain ignore.

[Reshki 2]

15 hours ago, Malkior said:

Yeah. I can only guess that Obsidian missed something and left it misnamed. A lot of game developers do that fairly regularly. I've been plumbing the depths that are Bethesda game files, and it's wild how many errors they just plain ignore.

Sorry just wanted to point out I think restored content mod or something added benoksblaster.uti to my override. Idk but when I look for benoksblaster.uti in kotor tool I absolutely cannot find it so I'm thinking it was made available to edit from some other mod perhaps?? I only say this because you can find vanilla versions of files by opening them from the kotor tool list obviously and I can't find benoks blaster in there. Just wanted to let you know incase you don't have it in your override already and go mad browsing your kotor tool lol

[Reshki 2]

Feedback/Thinking out loud
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Active Feats: Rapid Shot, Sniper Shot, Power blast

Reassigned a couple of feats, I can't remember at this point which i added or removed from what weapons or I'd post a detailed list. (still may, redoing my old spreadsheet of blaster changes. If I finish it I'll share it with you.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Economy: Blaster Values

May tweak this further but I really like so far how my price changes have worked out. Blasters Rifles are no longer a measly 100 credits. On average everything cost MORE a good bit more (except for the most expensive blasters they were either made cheaper or left alone because DAMN some of those are crazy expensive). But the now more powerful non upgradable blasters are a good deal cheaper than the fully upgradable blasters.

Example - basic Blaster Rifle is set at 4000 credits, basic Blaster Carbine is set at 1235 credits
This means the player is better off buying the carbine (which is now tough early-mid game) and then selling it and buying the Blaster Rifle when they feel they can craft worthwhile upgrades.
It's not perfect but I can feel the effects and I like the change. Will probably tweak prices further as I go through all the blasters again.

You may be thinking well I'll just craft these weapons then. WELL fun discovery: apparently the component cost is automatically calculated based on the items value. SO the newly expensive craftable blasters are now more costly to craft so you can't circumvent the new price. Well same percentage as vanilla but hey the amount of components you find early game are now not enough to blow on blaster crafting right away.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Passive Feats: Precise Shot, Targeting

I may try dialing back some of the damage and attack bonuses. Might be a hair too high for me. I'm goiing to leave the non upgradeable blasters strong or even stronger in some cases. But some of the fully upgradeable blasters I think don't need Precise Shot at all because they become monstrously strong with mid-late game upgrades. As of now some of the fully upgradeable blasters become craaazy strong. BUT that may be to your liking!! Just throwing my thoughts out there.

I'm gonna play around with making non upgradeable blasters damage just shy of maxed out fully upgradeable blasters, while leaving the non upgradeables with a higher attack bonus.
Then I'll see how that feels. I'm going to try and keep fully upgradeable blasters at either vanilla damage or try to not go over Precise Shot III with them.

[Malkior 476]

22 hours ago, Reshki said:

Feedback/Thinking out loud
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Active Feats: Rapid Shot, Sniper Shot, Power blast

Reassigned a couple of feats, I can't remember at this point which i added or removed from what weapons or I'd post a detailed list. (still may, redoing my old spreadsheet of blaster changes. If I finish it I'll share it with you.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Economy: Blaster Values

May tweak this further but I really like so far how my price changes have worked out. Blasters Rifles are no longer a measly 100 credits. On average everything cost MORE a good bit more (except for the most expensive blasters they were either made cheaper or left alone because DAMN some of those are crazy expensive). But the now more powerful non upgradable blasters are a good deal cheaper than the fully upgradable blasters.

Example - basic Blaster Rifle is set at 4000 credits, basic Blaster Carbine is set at 1235 credits
This means the player is better off buying the carbine (which is now tough early-mid game) and then selling it and buying the Blaster Rifle when they feel they can craft worthwhile upgrades.
It's not perfect but I can feel the effects and I like the change. Will probably tweak prices further as I go through all the blasters again.

You may be thinking well I'll just craft these weapons then. WELL fun discovery: apparently the component cost is automatically calculated based on the items value. SO the newly expensive craftable blasters are now more costly to craft so you can't circumvent the new price. Well same percentage as vanilla but hey the amount of components you find early game are now not enough to blow on blaster crafting right away.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Passive Feats: Precise Shot, Targeting

I may try dialing back some of the damage and attack bonuses. Might be a hair too high for me. I'm goiing to leave the non upgradeable blasters strong or even stronger in some cases. But some of the fully upgradeable blasters I think don't need Precise Shot at all because they become monstrously strong with mid-late game upgrades. As of now some of the fully upgradeable blasters become craaazy strong. BUT that may be to your liking!! Just throwing my thoughts out there.

I'm gonna play around with making non upgradeable blasters damage just shy of maxed out fully upgradeable blasters, while leaving the non upgradeables with a higher attack bonus.
Then I'll see how that feels. I'm going to try and keep fully upgradeable blasters at either vanilla damage or try to not go over Precise Shot III with them.

I'm liking this price upgrade you're suggestion here. 

Perhaps there's room for an "Economy Rebalance" Addon in future updates?

 

Very glad you're getting such a kick out of the experience of finally making weapon purchases abundantly more useful. I'd enjoy checking out the spreadsheet once I'm done getting this TSLPatcher process streamlined. As it stands, I have to reload all 60ish entries every time I make a change which takes exponentially longer than making the actual changes.. So, at the moment I have to ensure everything is how I like it before I actually build the install, which itself takes about an hour to create.. It's quite the process, but it will at least ensure compatibility with most other mods which I feel is worth it in the long run.

[Reshki 2]

1 hour ago, Malkior said:

I'm liking this price upgrade you're suggestion here. 

Perhaps there's room for an "Economy Rebalance" Addon in future updates?

 

Very glad you're getting such a kick out of the experience of finally making weapon purchases abundantly more useful. I'd enjoy checking out the spreadsheet once I'm done getting this TSLPatcher process streamlined. As it stands, I have to reload all 60ish entries every time I make a change which takes exponentially longer than making the actual changes.. So, at the moment I have to ensure everything is how I like it before I actually build the install, which itself takes about an hour to create.. It's quite the process, but it will at least ensure compatibility with most other mods which I feel is worth it in the long run.

Yeah that's most important. It'll be worth it in the end to get the patcher working. I'm just modding my utc files directly. Don't know anything about the patcher lol

I'm working on the spreadsheet as we speak, like I said earlier you'll see changes from what you originally had but those are just my preference and current balance test lol

Last note: Today I tried all kinds of different ways to get "activate Item stun droid" to work on Ion blasters but it doesn't appear to do anything at all unfortunately (unless you've got it working before) so I don't think it does anything. Instead I'm leaving their base damage low and raising their Ion damage vs droid. It's the only thing I could think of to give them a purpose. Massive damage to droids, while mediocre damage to non droid targets. I didn't use Precise Shot on it because that raises the base damage that affects ALL targets.

Here's an example of the Ion Rifle currently:
 

	Vanilla Data	Kotor Tool Additions		New Data	Upgraded Dam
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ion Rifle	Ion, 1-10	n/a		Ion, 1-10	Max Dam (6-29)	<- Damage possible (with upgrades) against NON droids
Scope,Chamber	Ion,+1-10vs Drd	Add +1d12, +1d12 Ion vs Drd		Ion,+3-34vs Drd	vs Drd (9-63)	<- Damage possible (with upgrades) against droids
	20-20,x3	n/a		20-20,x3
		Targeting I		Modifier: +1
		Power Blast
		Sniper Shot
	cost 580			cost 5080