M4-78 is driving me nuts.

[Mkilbride 1]

I should never have installed this. The poor VA. Random performance drops. Boring quests, a log that doesn't update, and no clear idea where to go, and pretty much only crappy video Walkthroughs, and I hear it's like 3 hours long? God. 

 

I know alot of work was put into it, but boy am I regretting it. I literally quit for 3 days because it was boring me so much, now I try again tonight and am stuck on the part with the cleaning droid to get into the area, he wants me to upload a report - I've checked every location I can, nothing. I've found a Droid collar, talked ot the cleaning droids, talked to CS-45 ect.

 

I honestly cannot recommend this mod to anyone else whom plays it. No offense to the developer, it's a great effort, but it was scrapped for a reason, I think.

[Mephiles550 227]

I'll admit, I thought the same way which you were thinking about this level. I ended my first full playthrough of the M4-78 Mod with negative impressions. I thought that the quests were unclear, repetitive, boring, annoying, and all the time I had to spend going from one side of the industrial zone to the next was considerably annoying (I know that this issue is addressed for the most part with the Escord Droid, but I don't believe it covers all the parts of the Industrial Zone).

 

Of course, I thought that there were plenty of positive aspects about the mod overall, such as all of the dedication and hard work put into it, the overall complexity of the quests themselves, how the quests could extend beyong M4-78 into Telos, and how the mod made such creative use of scrapped modules.

 

When I uninstalled M4-78, I actually decided to give the older version on Filefront a chance, as I've seen a video that showed off the majority of the level, and how the the overall straight-forwardness of the original version was 10X higher than that of the newer version. The original version pretty much just consists of the rule "Get from point A to point B while killing all of the enemies and finding hidden goodies," with a few extra quests here and there. At first, I preferred this version tremendously, and admired how the simplicity of the level could still make for a fun mod. Eventually though, the simplicity began to bore me, so when I re-installed Kotor 2 again, I decided to retry the newest version of M4-78 at the time, the version before the latest update.

 

Upon playing the newest version of M4-78 for a second time, I began to admire the level design, side quests, and fine details added into the levels much more, as I constantly compared the newer M4-78 to the older version available on Filefront. The fact that I also already completed the mod before and knew the majority of what was to be expected also helped the second experience tremendously, I think. I also began exploring for new secrets and attempting all of the side quests the mod had to offer to ensure that I would experience the entirety of the mod. Let me tell you, I enjoyed this second playthrough a hell of a lot more than my first. My third playthrough only impressed me more.

 

When the latest update for M4-78 came out, I became even more impressed at the modders for how they improved my original experience even more by fixing the majority of bugs I had with the level, and adding in some more content.

 

TL;DR: It's understandable, to me anyway, that you dislike the M4-78 mod, and I'm sure some others do as well; however, I heavily recommend you play it again in a second playthrough after setting aside all of the confusion as to figuring out what you need to do in the mod. If you don't want to try it again, than perhaps you should try out the original version here:

http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/M478;89207

 

Also, do we even know why the level was scrapped? Sleheyron was scrapped, but was that for a good reason, or for time constraints? Sleheyron originally contained an additional Star Map - would that have ruined the experience, or improved it? M4-78, if included in the final vanilla version of Kotor II like Obsidian intended, might have proven itself a great addition to the game. There's also a chance the level could have been the worst part of the game. We just won't know, and we certainly can't determine why a level was scrapped based off of a mod that's probably 50% different story wise than Obsidian originally intended.

[Fair Strides 510]

Also, do we even know why the level was scrapped? Sleheyron was scrapped, but was that for a good reason, or for time constraints? Sleheyron originally contained an additional Star Map - would that have ruined the experience, or improved it? M4-78, if included in the final vanilla version of Kotor II like Obsidian intended, might have proven itself a great addition to the game. There's also a chance the level could have been the worst part of the game. We just won't know, and we certainly can't determine why a level was scrapped based off of a mod that's probably 50% different story wise than Obsidian originally intended.

 

Well, I can answer both of those, Mephiles.

 

Sleheyron was scrapped EARLY in production; the dialogue files weren't even the same format. It was scrapped because it was the least vital element and the team thought they were over-extending their workload. David Gaider designed Sleheyron(what little he got to do before it was scrapped), and he slid in Yuthura's lines about growing up as a slave on Sleheyron afterwards, to get his two cents in...

 

M4-78EP is only about 10-15% original story concept, and the rest is built off of that and the team's interpretations of side effects, consequences, and ways to flesh out the areas. The original concept was that Vash went there to investigate the missing colonists that had colonized the planet. The colonists disappeared and Vash, searching for emptiness in the Force, went to M4-78 to investigate it. It being a planet full of droids(no Force signature of "life signs"), she'd perceive it as an emptiness, a hole. Given the Exile's "disease", it makes sense why Vash would want to check it out.

[Mutilator57 140]

Hear me out this may help you.

 

I should never have installed this. The poor VA. 

Well if you are only up to that stage of M4-78 (The cleaning report part is pretty near the beginning of the planet I should think) is it really fair to be categorizing all voice acting as poor? I will admit, sometimes the quality of the voices fluctuates but on the whole they're generally well done, after all this was all done by fans who have put in the time and effort to record these lines rather than simply sticking them with some boring default droid voices, of course they're going to have difficulty matching studio quality voices found in the vanilla game!

 

 Random performance drops.

Can the quality of the mod be called into question when the issue is about whether or not your computer can handle the module? Are they to blame for that? 

 

Boring quests

Well as Mephiles550 said, compare it to the original mod years ago which was much more straight forward, at least they took the time to implement several quests this time AND with some variety I might add!

 

a log that doesn't update.

Ah now this is an issue I can sympathise with as I also suffered this problem with my first installation, however it can easily be resolved by a re-installation (I have yet to encounter any negative ramifications from doing so)

 

and no clear idea where to go.

The journal fix I detailed above might help with this, although (to me at least) the mod seemed straight forward to follow mostly, and hey, they even made you video walkthroughs for assistance

 

 

I know alot of work was put into it, but boy am I regretting it. I literally quit for 3 days because it was boring me so much, now I try again tonight and am stuck on the part with the cleaning droid to get into the area, he wants me to upload a report - I've checked every location I can, nothing. I've found a Droid collar, talked ot the cleaning droids, talked to CS-45 ect.

 

Perhaps it isn't everyone's cup of tea but at least give it a chance further on, the cleaning droid area (from my memory) is very early on and I would try to avoid basing your entire view so early. BTW I dont know if this was a hidden request for help but I will do it anyway if you want to upload the report go to the main terminal in the Central Zone.

[Hassat Hunter 571]

What *does* your questlog say?

 

I know a LOT of people expect the questlog to be basically a walkthrough like modern RPG's, but hell if I'm going to do that. It's made to be 2005. No modern arrow, follow this path, turn off your brain stuff.

It's a good training for more games with that philosophy coming around like Divinity: Original Sin (which is awesome) or Pillars of Eternity.

 

But again; what does your questlog say?

[zbyl2 811]

Also, do we even know why the level was scrapped? Sleheyron was scrapped, but was that for a good reason, or for time constraints? Sleheyron originally contained an additional Star Map - would that have ruined the experience, or improved it? M4-78, if included in the final vanilla version of Kotor II like Obsidian intended, might have proven itself a great addition to the game. There's also a chance the level could have been the worst part of the game. We just won't know, and we certainly can't determine why a level was scrapped based off of a mod that's probably 50% different story wise than Obsidian originally intended.

M4-78 for scrapped for time constraints. Planet itself was even shown in the game's official trailer few months before release - I believe the trailer was first shown at E3 a week before droid's planet was cut.

 

Saying "50% different story" is very misleading, as only things left in game files were some main plot points. I'm actually gonna go into some details on what was left, as I don't know if I ever properly explained it.

 

What was left of the story was the fact that Vash was there with her Padawan, M4-78 was offline (shut down by the Sith) and you needed Archon's permission to reactivate him and that Environmental Zone - and the control of ES-05 - was taken over by Kaah who's gone mad. Also the fact that Sith were pretending to be the colonists but were dead by the time player arrived.

 

Actually, most of Kaah's dialog in the Environmental Zone, when he's pretending to be ES-05, were Obsidian's. I did some rewrites but nothing major.

 

There were some voice overs for IS-24, the Industrial Archon. He only had 10 lines recorded though, compared to 60+ in M4-78EP.

 

Obsidian left a very brief dialog with the other Archon, ES-05. There were just some basic questions - who are you, what do you do, something about Kaah, asking about re-activating M4-78. Some of left-overs lines for her were used in M4-78EP, but I had to write a lot of dialog on my own. Same situation with Kaah.

 

I thought there were some lines left for LS-44 (Landing Arm droid) as well, but I can't find any now, so maybe I'm mis-remembering something now. I thought there were some lines for him informing us about radiation, but I can't find them.

 

Radiation idea itself was also Obsidian's; Vash, Kaah and IS-24 all had lines about it.

 

There's also a datapad description saying that re-activating four power stations in the Central Zone would increase L5-65's effectiveness. We ran with the idea and tweaked it, so it was required to re-activate them in order to proceed. I don't think we'd have had that puzzle without original datapad's description.

 

Also, there were bunch of puzzles but they were all moved to Goto's Yacht right after the planet was cut (the Yacht itself was designed in less than a week, IIRC, and it's possible it would be scrapped as well if they couldn't move M4-78 puzzles).

 

And that's pretty much all there was for the planet. There was not a single line for M4-78 himself or any proof that we were supposed to talk to him (though what are the chances we weren't?). No indication of any kind of "droid's quest" for clearing the radiation (although tlk has some lines that look like their supposedly HK-47's, asking about M4-78). No conversation with any other droid, or any indication of what each place of each area was.

 

Industrial Zone was also most likely supposed to be more combat heavy, at least in the end, since player had an option to ask IS-24 "Why did your droid attack us?" or something along those lines.

 

 So anyway, there was maybe 10% of the planet left, but that's being pretty generous

[Maugomale 2]

Reading through your post got me curious, zbyl. Is there any way to access the game's files in order to listen to these left-over lines?

[zbyl2 811]

Only recorded dialogs were IS-24's, and you can find them in steamvoice/804/IS24. The rest is text-only and you'd have to dig through dialog.tlk file to find it (there were no DLGs left - just the text).

[Mephiles550 227]

M4-78 for scrapped for time constraints. Planet itself was even shown in the game's official trailer few months before release - I believe the trailer was first shown at E3 a week before droid's planet was cut.

 

Saying "50% different story" is very misleading, as only things left in game files were some main plot points. I'm actually gonna go into some details on what was left, as I don't know if I ever properly explained it.

 

I wasn't sure what remnants of the original M4-78 were left over in the games files, story or level progression wise, so I suppose me saying a "50% different story" was probably a fairly inaccurate guess on my part. I knew how the overall basis of the idea behind finding Master Vash was relatively the same, and how a good chunk of M4-78's puzzles were moved into G0-T0's yacht, but pretty much nothing else.

 

It's definitely interesting to hear that some voice files from the original IS-24 were still left in the final game. Maybe I'll check those out some time.

 

I don't know if anyone remembers this, but in the original M4-78, Master Vash had a second Padawan, an orange female Twilek, who would attack the player no matter what. She was found in the Industrial Zone in what's now the droid testing area, the place where you would see combat droids doing target practice on different types of holograms.

I'm going to assume this character was completely fan made, right?

Here's the video I was talking about in my earlier post, showing off the original version:

(The Orange Twilek I was talking about can be found be found at the 1:50 mark)

[Sith Holocron 2,480]

I'm going to assume this character was completely fan made, right? (The Orange Twilek I was talking about can be found be found at the 1:50 mark)

That would be Tourath.

[zbyl2 811]

Right, I forgot about her. There's player's reply to her in dialog.tlk saying "You are Mara's Padawan, aren't you?", which is pretty interesting (who's Mara?). She was most likely supposed to be on M4-78 going by position of her lines in TLK (between IS-24's and L5-65's).

 

Then again, she had 4 lines plus some player's answers, so there's not much to go on

 

I would assume Tourath & Mara we some sort of early version of Vash & Kaah, or maybe there were supposed to be 5 masters at one point, but it was quickly scrapped and Vash was moved to droid's planet instead. It's really impossible to know for sure, though.

[Mkilbride 1]

I'm at the part where I have to get into the room near the Console with the two recordings. I talked to the cleaner droid who wanted me to "upload some data" somewhere.

 

Also, this isn't my first KOTOR2 Rodeo people, and I play lots of old games, including ones like FFXI, a MMORPG that never told you where to go besides the actual text during the quest, even the log didn't show you or give hints, and that is my favorite MMORPG. It's not that I can't handle old school MMORPGs, I'm 25, I've played lots of old ones, including Planescape: Torment.

 

Also,. near the start? I'm 1 hour+ in so far. I heard this is around 3 hours.

 

Yes, the video guides exist, but I want a text guide, I literally cannot stand the video guides at all.

[Mutilator57 140]

I'm at the part where I have to get into the room near the Console with the two recordings. I talked to the cleaner droid who wanted me to "upload some data" somewhere.

 

Also, this isn't my first KOTOR2 Rodeo people, and I play lots of old games, including ones like FFXI, a MMORPG that never told you where to go besides the actual text during the quest, even the log didn't show you or give hints, and that is my favorite MMORPG. It's not that I can't handle old school MMORPGs, I'm 25, I've played lots of old ones, including Planescape: Torment.

 

Also,. near the start? I'm 1 hour+ in so far. I heard this is around 3 hours.

 

Yes, the video guides exist, but I want a text guide, I literally cannot stand the video guides at all.

 

Well time-wise you may be 1 hour into it, however if I recall correctly you are looking for access to the second part of the Industrial Zone, meaning there are a lot more areas to see yet  And as Hassat Hunter said, what exactly does your journal say? Is it just "unhelpful" or is it completely empty and doesn't update?

 

I didn't mean to imply that you were a novice at RPG's but we can debate the different aspects of this modification in a different forum. If you want help with that specific part...

You need to access the terminal in the Central Zone, the same one where you killed the two droids who were attempting to stop you from accessing the terminal to stop the radiation

and from there it is self-explanatory, hope this helps. 

[Hassat Hunter 571]

I'm hearing that argument a LOT now surrounding Divinity: Original Sin (I'm an uberleet RPG-god, so it obviously cannot be my fault I loose, the game is wrong!) so I'm even more sceptical of it than normally.

 

Again, the question; *What does your questlog say?*

[Mkilbride 1]

My quest log says this.

 

"I may be able to talk to the person in the recordings and find out what happened."

 

And I talked to him. And his dialogue tree made somehow made it to me upload reports when I said I'd help him.

 

I've been to every terminal, including the one you've mentioned, with no options.