Sleheyron and other things

[Viralmelon 0]

Hey guys, I've been following kotor modding since 2010 (noob) and like many others I followed the Sleheyron restoration project.

 

Now, if you weren't aware Sleheyron was a planet intended to be in the original kotor. Unlike tsl kotor 1 was not a broken game so until recently there were very few attempts at restoration (by recently I mean at least 5 years after release).

Now evidently there were multiple attempts at restoring the planet but many ended prematurely, to the point that every team that tried it ended up closing its doors.

 

I was reading an old thread quite a while back in the K1R section that detailed how until the mods official release no attempt would be made at Sleheyron by ZM90 and his team.

However, it was mentioned that modder over on LucasForums called Disbeliever was working on modules and I think that Quanon was mentioned but I'm probably wrong as I doubt he had any involvement.

I PM'ed Disbeliever and he said "yes I'm still working on it".

 

I created this thread to see if anybody could elaborate and shed some light on the story.

 

 

Secondly, the guys at NexusMods created nexus sites for kotor 1 and tsl. We already have a great community but I was thinking that if we also used the NexusForums our modding community would balloon in capacity, I even found a skyrim thread talking about a possible kotor remake in skyrim (a man can dream, right?) This shows that there would definitely be interest in kotor modding.

 

 

 

Can I just add that I am in no way trying to apply pressure to modders and this is my own sense of curiosity, I respect modders for their work and if any of this is risky I apologise.

[Sith Holocron 2,471]

I PM'ed Disbeliever and he said "yes I'm still working on it".

 

I created this thread to see if anybody could elaborate and shed some light on the story.

 

I think that Quanon was mentioned but I'm probably wrong as I doubt he had any involvement.

Let me see if I have this straight . . .

 

You PM'd Disbeliver - the creator of the mod you want to know about - and he answered. And now, you're asking us about it rather than asking him? I am wondering why you didn't ask him more about it.

 

BTW, Quanon was involved with the Sleheyron mod. Had you fully read the original thread that would have been abundantly apparent. However, they had a falling out and now they are not working together.

 

On a more general note: if a WIP thread has been dormant for over 3 months, it's better to PM the author than performing an act of thread necromancy.

 

Lastly: If you have a comment you wish to add to a post - and no else has posted yet, edit the previous post and add that new information. Please don't make me assume that you're bumping your own thread. (I really don't like that.)

[Fair Strides 508]

...Um... I get that he's been a bit active in Holowan Labs, but don't you think you're a being a bit stand-offish/abrupt, SH???

[LDR 234]

He doesn't beat around the bush. He's blunt and straight-to-the-point. That's the SH I know.

 

I of course have doubts whether or not disbeliever is still working on it at all. Then again, it might be an on-and-off thing.

[Fair Strides 508]

He doesn't beat around the bush. He's blunt and straight-to-the-point. That's the SH I know.

 

I of course have doubts whether or not disbeliever is still working on it at all. Then again, it might be an on-and-off thing.

I'm familiar with it; I think he's talked to Shem too long.

 

But there's a point beyond bluntness, and it borders on callousness...

[milestails 264]

Restoring Sleheyron would be quite something.....I recall that April Fools Joke a couple years ago on LF saying it was released lol

[Fair Strides 508]

Restoring Sleheyron would be quite something.....I recall that April Fools Joke a couple years ago on LF saying it was released lol

I found that myself when I joined the community!

 

Oh, man! People were so into it until the other boot dropped! I wish I could have seen they're faces in person!

[Viralmelon 0]

 

 

Lastly: If you have a comment you wish to add to a post - and no else has posted yet, edit the previous post and add that new information. Please don't make me assume that you're bumping your own thread. (I really don't like that.)

Well with all due respect bumping my own thread would be a dumb idea when my thread is less than a day old and on another note I didn't perform thread necromancy, I already knew what had happened and i never touched the old threads

[Vriff 21]

I highly doubt that it's actually still being worked on, it's just like TSLRP, told for years "we're still working on it" and it was a lie because the modders didn't want to accept that it would never be finished.

[Sith Holocron 2,471]

But there's a point beyond bluntness, and it borders on callousness...

I was thinking whether I took it too far before so I decided to do a un-SH-like way of approaching it and ask "Mrs. Holocron" what she thought.  As she's not involved with this whole scene, I had to figure out how I'd explain it without getting too bogged down with KOTOR jargon.  After rolling that through my head I decided, I didn't need to ask her at all.

 

OK, I was being somewhat of a jerk in post 2.  I admit it.

 

I don't quite get why you'd ask us about Disbeliver's mod if you were talking to him.  Maybe you're just wondering why all of the other Sleheyron mods didn't come to be . . . a postmortem if you will. That sounds like an interesting idea. I've reached out to Quanon to see if he'd like to give any input on his involvement. That's not a guarantee that he will respond mind you but the attempt was at least made. As Viralmelon seems to be last one to have chatted with Disbeliever, perhaps he could coax him out to provide his views and perhaps some sort of update. ZM90 could discuss his reasons why Sleheyron was cut from the K1R. If any of you want to ask Sithspecter what happened with his stab at the planet, feel free to ask him.

 

I'll be letting the other moderators / administrators tackle this particular thread.

 

But I'm standing by my comment about follow up posts and using the edit function.  That first post he has at the top . . that was a merged post. Just sayin'

[Fair Strides 508]

Thanks, SH, for not blowing up at me. After reading my comment and then considering what I know of you from podcasts and the posts I've read from you over the years (I've been here for two, so I can say it plural! ), I realized that I might have come off a bit aggressive in my own way.

I support your opinion on the matter completely; I was just at odds with how it was expressed.

Also, you put a smile on my face with that first paragraph. I was laughing at the idea of getting bogged down explaining KOTOR jargon, in particular.

[Quanon 263]

Hey,

Sleheyron, oh boy. Where to start?
Let's see... Ah, yes, way back in time on the LF boards that it all started. So I got the ball rolling together with MagnusII to create new area models.
Well, to be honest; MagnusII did all the heavy lifting. I just tested Kaurora and told him how I did things in 3Ds Max to create my areas.

 

Anyway, the whole modding community was thrilled with this breakthrough. So a few ambitious modders, SithRevan (R.I.P my friend), Darth Insidious and 
a few others got together. They looked at K1 and started to dig into the files of the game, to see what got scrapped by Bioware. It wasn't only Sleheyron
that was left out in development. There was a whole bunch of small things left out or just altered.

So, my fellow modders asked me to start and design Sleheyron, I had 3 or 4 screenshots from the real Sleheyron, Bioware showed at games show like E3.

I jumped in and started to work. Though, like any big ambitious project, we didn't get far. Interest fizzled out and people had serious issues to deal with in real life.

It died a quiet death... certainly after SithRevan took his own life, very sad day...

That was the first attempt at Sleheyron. But a few years back and a newer group of modders on LF. I guess the buzz about creating new areas attracted a lot of 
newbies. SithSpecter and all, hahaha, good times! Disbeliever joined LF and for a long time we all worked on our own mods and stuff. Though Disbeliever found
the older threads of Sleheyron, saw that I had worked on that. He asked me to team up. I agreed to help out and together we had some nice progress.

 

Even MagnusII helped out to make a new breakthrough on the Lightmap business. And then, I crashed... See, in those days I suffered from depression - though

I didn't know that then. But I had good moods and very bad moods; where I was dog tired. Everything started to feel just to heavy to carry on. Even modding, which
before I enjoyed very much.

Instead of being honest with Disbeliever and telling him I didn't have the energy to continue on the works; I just... well, I kept my mouth shut. And made it worse by putting more time in one of my own projects. In one of my good mood swings, I posted about my own project on LF. Disbeliever saw that and got furious. We exchanged a few PMs.

But the damage was done.... Disbeliever thought of me as a liar and a cheat. Putting my own projects before the team effort. 

I understand his frustration and anger. I admit that what I've done was wrong... And I feel sorry for it. Though Disbeliever forgets one thing. I've teached him a ton of things about creating areas and models for the Kotor games. I was not just working on new models. I made a few short tutorials and things to help him out. That took time as well!
And modding isn't my only interest. For Disbeliever modding was a very serious thing; that is what I got out of those last few PMs between us.

I had a very different view to his. Plus the depression thing; I ended up in the hospital for 4 months if you have to know. It might sound cheap and an easy excuse, but I was 
a different person back then. 

That sums it up a bit.

Pictures of the first Sleheyron project can be found here:

http://s116.photobucket.com/user/slazzir/library/Sleheyron?sort=3&page=1

 

 

Pictures at the second attempt:

http://s129.photobucket.com/user/Quanon/library/Sleheyron_2?sort=3&page=1

 

http://s129.photobucket.com/user/Quanon/library/3D?sort=3&page=16


You'll have to browse around a bit. The albums are a bit of cluttered mess

[Viralmelon 0]

Thanks for shedding light on the subject Quanon!

As for ZM90 I personally think it is a good idea to focus on K1R first, whether or not they ever decide to restore Sleheyron is their choice but I think they might tackle it after the first release of K1R as an expansion.

I'm interested in digging around in the files myself although I'm no modder.

[Sithspecter 909]

Disbeliever does in fact take modding very seriously. I don't know if he's still around or not, but if he is you can bet that he's got something really awesome up his sleeve.

 

To recreate Sleheyron is exhausting. It takes a special team. And it's hard to have a team over the Internet. I desperately wanted to make this happen, and I tried multiple times to get it off the ground, but I just couldn't do it all by myself. Not that there weren't others helping out when they could, but the bulk was on me.

 

Modding for KotOR is often tedious, buggy, and has an extremely steep learning curve. This is really too much for the average person. The tutorials are great but most people don't have what it takes to figure it out. Creating areas from scratch takes this to an all new level. I can count on my hands the number of mods released with successful new areas. Making these areas look good is another killer. It takes a special artistic talent that most people frequenting the KotOR modding forums don't have. There are maybe 10 folks in the history of KotOR modding that can make scratch areas look good. I include myself in that, but it often takes multiple tries for me to get it to look how I want.

 

Also there is real life! I'm a senior studying Aeronautical Science. The whole time I've been modding I've been in school and working also. Modding always has to take backseat to everything else. And often when you have time, you don't want to deal with the frustration that comes with modding.

 

And then if you overcome all odds and get done with a mod, you have limited options for getting it out there. And then there's not much displayed appreciation afterwards. All in all it's a very lonely gig.

 

Say I was able to model all the modules for Sleheyron. At that point, I'm just beginning. I have to create characters, quests, storyline, scripts. The list is almost endless. And one person isn't going to be strong at all of the above.

 

I spent years of my life working on this. I only have a few screenshots to show for it. Unfortunately I don't have any of this stuff anymore because my computer was stolen several years back.

 

[Sithspecter 909]

 

 

Wow. What a trip down memory lane. Kinda makes me want to go back and work on this again.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Sithspecter

[Viralmelon 0]

Damn, such a shame this stuff is unlikely to be realised.

[Sithspecter 909]

I know. But at the end of the day does it really matter?

 

Also, here's where Sleheyron began for me:

 

Ahhh...I was so young and stupid.

[Viralmelon 0]

Still, its a good thing that kotor 1 wasnt such a broken game but you're right in the big picture it doesn't matter

[Fair Strides 508]

This might seem totally unrelated, SS, but I feel the need to say it:

 

Thank you for this post. It has done everything that I could not. For months now I've been reluctant to face the truth: I've lost my passion for modding these games. I have at least 5 projects that I can name right now that are on my list. I've been unmotivated/depressed every time I have some free time to mod. I even started(am am still working on) a Jedi Holocron(basically like the NWN Lexicon, but for all of Kotor Modding; kind of an end-all approach to the search for collected modding knowledge) in an attempt to get motivated again.

 

Your post has done just that. I'm revving at full throttle right now, like I haven't ran since 2012. I'm modding again and I'm not stopping until I get my projects out the door. I'm not even sure I'll stop then. Thanks, SS, for the unintended pep talk. By outlining what it takes to mod these games, the issues we run into doing so, and the obstacles we have to overcome, I know what I have to do, what qualifications I have to meet, to get the job done, and I'm determined not to fail again.

 

As an aside, if someone can model and texture an area, I can do everything else you need to do it. I might take a few tries to get it to my expectations, but I am more than capable of getting the job done.

[Sithspecter 909]

This might seem totally unrelated, SS, but I feel the need to say it:

 

Thank you for this post. It has done everything that I could not. For months now I've been reluctant to face the truth: I've lost my passion for modding these games. I have at least 5 projects that I can name right now that are on my list. I've been unmotivated/depressed every time I have some free time to mod. I even started(am am still working on) a Jedi Holocron(basically like the NWN Lexicon, but for all of Kotor Modding; kind of an end-all approach to the search for collected modding knowledge) in an attempt to get motivated again.

 

Your post has done just that. I'm revving at full throttle right now, like I haven't ran since 2012. I'm modding again and I'm not stopping until I get my projects out the door. I'm not even sure I'll stop then. Thanks, SS, for the unintended pep talk. By outlining what it takes to mod these games, the issues we run into doing so, and the obstacles we have to overcome, I know what I have to do, what qualifications I have to meet, to get the job done, and I'm determined not to fail again.

 

As an aside, if someone can model and texture an area, I can do everything else you need to do it. I might take a few tries to get it to my expectations, but I am more than capable of getting the job done.

 

Huh, that post sounded way more depressing in my mind, I'm really surprised that it worked as a pep talk.

 

In any case, HAVE FUN MODDING! Don't take it too seriously. It's supposed to be fun. Don't be afraid to create corny stuff like the Gizka Gun or the Giz-kebob.

[Fair Strides 508]

Still, its a good thing that kotor 1 wasnt such a broken game but you're right in the big picture it doesn't matter

TAKE THAT BACK!!!

 

I think I'm in the same boat as Disbeliever here, guys. I take modding these games very seriously; I'm a diehard storyteller and will mourn a story left untold. When I first started modding at 15, I knew nothing compared to what I know now, about computers, modding, star wars, all of you wonderful, wonderful people(and how we still work together at the end of the day. ), and so much more. Modding these games was a turning point in my life; I learned scripting(after the long six-month off-and-on battle that I pulled through in the end), got into programming, updated KSE, shared my knowledge in little tidbits all over Holowan. I've not released that many mods(only 8 or so), but that's not important to me. I'd prefer helping someone realize their mod then work on my own, because I have a lack of self-confidence in my ability to create from nothing versus my ability to improve what's already there.

 

Modding these games holds a soft spot in my life and has helped keep me stable these past two years. When I was having issues with my dad(and eventually had to leave my dad's house), modding was my escape, my way of maintaining sanity. This is special to me.;;

 

 

Huh, that post sounded way more depressing in my mind, I'm really surprised that it worked as a pep talk.

 

In any case, HAVE FUN MODDING! Don't take it too seriously. It's supposed to be fun. Don't be afraid to create corny stuff like the Gizka Gun or the Giz-kebob.

Hehe, don't worry; I'll try to be more relaxed about modding. I can't make any promises though...

 

And as to why your post worked as a pep talk: I like a challenge, and lacked a reason. I purposefully took it as a slap to the face and wanted to overcome it.

[Sithspecter 909]

Making mods wasn't always as fun as seeing what innovations I could make. The best part for me was figuring out how to do stuff like Revan's Flowing Cape and Belt for K1 and exploding ammo. I always enjoy a creative challenge.

[Fair Strides 508]

Making mods wasn't always as fun as seeing what innovations I could make. The best part for me was figuring out how to do stuff like Revan's Flowing Cape and Belt for K1 and exploding ammo. I always enjoy a creative challenge.

 

Exploding ammo?! Why haven't I heard of this?!

[Hassat Hunter 571]

because I have a lack of self-confidence in my ability to create from nothing versus my ability to improve what's already there.

Sadly for you we (I?) are already on that

Though feel free to see if you can improve on 1.8.3, keeping in line with "Restoration" if you want a new challenge after your own mods

[Sithspecter 909]

I released it in my rocket launcher a while back:

 

http://lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=205377