This is the Sleheyron Planet, which is a Work-In-Progress mod for KotOR

[N-DReW25 1,336]

Reading through this I see someone suggesting you use Rakghous as opponents for the player to beat. Here is my idea of how one could legitimately use Rakghouls on Sleheyron.

 

Firstly, the Rakghouls bite would turn people into Rakghouls themselves, that is why Taris' Undercity was infested by them despite the fact the Rakghoul source (The Muur Talisman) was lost on a different planet. At the time the player would visit Sleheyron it would have been at least months since Taris was destroyed, perhaps as a way the Hutts could get their hands on Rakghouls was that once the bombardment ended the Sith abandoned the planet letting the Galaxy see its destruction first hand instead of protecting a ruined planet and censoring any news of its destruction (Similar to how the Empire wanted the control the Galaxy through fear of the Death Star).

 

The Hutts sent their henchman to Taris to scavenge broken metals and parts to be repurposed into Sleheyron manufactured droids, ships and weapons. This is where they are attacked by the Rakghouls who are, at this point, eating the dead Tarisians. Perhaps the henchman smuggled them to Sleheyron and sold them to the Hutts for use in their areas but might not know about the Rakghoul disease, maybe this can be a side quest where a Light Side player would wipe out the Rakghouls before they infect and a dark side player would encourage their use in the arenas and possibly the sale to outside buyers like Czerka.

 

The only reason why I wouldn't use Rakghouls is that it might dimish some sort of significance of having Rakghouls on Taris, kinda like how Sleheyron deathmatches would dimish Bendak's deathmatch on Taris.

 

As for other opponents, I'd highly suggest the baby Rancors from Lehon. They'd make legitimate sense for Hutts to own them and as they are just babies they make sense for gladiators and the player to fight them. For rewards, I'd recommend any item that exists in vanilla Kotor that cannot be obtained such as Qel Droma's Battle Armor and the Eriadu Prototype armour for example. Anything Baragwin (the items for Suvan Tam on Yavin) would also work but, like before, it could dimish the significance of saving up and buying from Suvan, though Suvan himself does mention that the Trandoshans and smugglers including Twi'leks and Aqualish do purchase his goods so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to believe these items ended up in Sleheyron.

[ebmar 893]

4 minutes ago, N-DReW25 said:

...the Trandoshans and smugglers including Twi'leks and Aqualish do purchase his goods so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to believe these items ended up in Sleheyron.

And with inflated prices! In overall, I like N-DReW25's plot.

16 hours ago, Sithspecter said:

A battle royale might be very interesting as well, especially for a qualifier round. I think a combat round in which all the weapons are in crates or something could be neat. You have to grab whatever weapons you can get and work with what you find.

That sounds wild! I like that! Though I like the idea that we are not wanted there in the first place, so we should got handicapped. Well, you could always add a your-everyday-antagonist a.k.a a local-reigning-champ-favorite who politically cheats their way having their own imbalance weapon smuggled to the ring for bit of spice as one of the scenario, hahah.

[DeathScepter 46]

Suggestion of a Potential for dealing with Rakghouls, Exchange Beast Handler Armor gear set. Well It does have good damage resistance to Slashing and Bludgeon damage also increase Fortiude Saves against Poison.

 

Fighting against Beasts of all stripes will be a good challenge.  Rancors, Rakghoul, Terentatek, Shyrack, Tuk'ata among other beasts would be fun to go against.

 

Possible Side quest of a Rescue Mission of a Jedi Master and depending on the stage of the game, the ending will change.

[GNihilus2 88]

On 6/6/2019 at 12:23 PM, Sithspecter said:

The past couple days I have been working on the arena. The original one in the game's files, m31aa_00a.mdl/mdx is a bit of a mess, and also seems to be scaled differently than the rest of the game.

Some of you may know that at one point in time during development, the environments in KotOR were scaled larger. About 33% larger than the current scale. I can't remember precisely how the change came about, but they ended up liking the smaller scale that everything ended up at.

I believe the arena is leftover from this phase of development. It seemed a little bit large during testing, so I re-created it from scratch in 75% scale of the original. The original had a few minor issues that I've adjusted as well. I think this is turning out rather nicely, and I like the new scale and lighting:

Also, I have made the floor modular to add in other obstacles or such for variations in the arena. The other two areas still included in the files have what seems to be a "maze" style arena and a "king-of-the-hill" style arena. The maze is little more than a few walls, but it breaks up the place. The "king-of-the-hill" is an elevated platform with ramps on the sides.

I am open for suggestions on how to make these different "game-modes" work. One idea for the "king-of-the-hill" arena is to have two switches on either side of the arena, either of which will knockback all PCs/NPCs off the center when triggered. On the center platform there would be a trigger that activates a counter when members of either team are on it. First team to a certain count wins.

I am thinking there will be 10-15 different matches over the course of the game, with escalating difficulty. Sort of like a Taris Dueling Ring for the entire game. It would keep the player coming back to Sleheyron and allow for higher level enemies. I also had an idea that after a certain point in the matches (maybe about halfway through the 10-15 matches), you have to side with one of two Hutts as your sponsor. This would affect which teams of gladiators you would encounter.

Another question I've been pondering, should these matches be death matches or just knock-out matches like Taris? Death matches for the entireity seem a bit macabre, and potentially darker than the lighter tone of KotOR. They are also problematic for light-siders to participate in.

But why would the Hutts restrict the matches to knockout only? Perhaps a steady supply of good fighters is hard to come by. Maybe by restricting the matches to KO only, they retain their fighters and the losers get a chance to learn and improve, leading to more competitive matches and larger betting pools. Let me know what you think!

I am open for suggestions and discussion as to how these concepts would work, and other ideas anyone may have to keep things interesting.

      impressive so far !!!!!

[Sithspecter 909]

Here's a screenshot of the "Maze" style arena. It's really not that much of a maze, just a few walls to break up the place, but it does take a while to get around them all. This was definitely the most complicated of the arenas.

[DeathScepter 46]

Maze Arena can set many different challenges of your choosing.

[JCarter426 1,214]

Looks good. I'm looking at the original model too, and while I like the idea of weapons hidden in the maze, it doesn't seem like it would be all that difficult to find them. Maybe the maze could be supplemented with force fields between each wall section that can be triggered on or off. Like once you take an item, it changes the whole route of the maze that leads to that item.

[Kexikus 995]

10 hours ago, JCarter426 said:

Looks good. I'm looking at the original model too, and while I like the idea of weapons hidden in the maze, it doesn't seem like it would be all that difficult to find them. Maybe the maze could be supplemented with force fields between each wall section that can be triggered on or off. Like once you take an item, it changes the whole route of the maze that leads to that item.

I get the feeling that the enemy AI wouldn't like that at all and get super confused.

[N-DReW25 1,336]

6 hours ago, Kexikus said:

I get the feeling that the enemy AI wouldn't like that at all and get super confused.

This might not be the best idea around this but I figured as SS will probably need to make the duels a "non-deathmatch" duel  I was thinking when an enemy gets to 1HP instead of dying or falling over they get Stasised or frozen in place by a Force Field, the generators for these Stasis force fields would be those brown things protruding from the roof you see in the screenshot. This would make a lot of sense for a non-sentient being as when a Rancor, for example, takes too much of a beating they are forcibly frozen in place so it will stop fighting and won't get itself killed.

 

In this case,  the enemy would be standing Neutral behind the Force Field then they are turned hostile when the Shield goes down and when taken to 1HP they go Neutral again and become Stasised until the round is over.

 

An idea for sentient gladiators would be Iridorians, the yellow space suit guy from the Manaan Cantina, you hear so much about how his species is so deadly and sadistic but you never actually get to fight any of them.

[JCarter426 1,214]

8 hours ago, Kexikus said:

I get the feeling that the enemy AI wouldn't like that at all and get super confused.

Normally no, but getting them to run around a maze and pick up weapons is going to require custom AI anyway. Might be tricky, but I think it could be done.

Something like a variant of GN_WalkWayPoints() with different paths for each maze configuration. Either the OnBlocked script or triggers could have them change between waypoint paths when they run into an obstacle.

[DeathScepter 46]

4 hours ago, N-DReW25 said:

This might not be the best idea around this but I figured as SS will probably need to make the duels a "non-deathmatch" duel  I was thinking when an enemy gets to 1HP instead of dying or falling over they get Stasised or frozen in place by a Force Field, the generators for these Stasis force fields would be those brown things protruding from the roof you see in the screenshot. This would make a lot of sense for a non-sentient being as when a Rancor, for example, takes too much of a beating they are forcibly frozen in place so it will stop fighting and won't get itself killed.

 

In this case,  the enemy would be standing Neutral behind the Force Field then they are turned hostile when the Shield goes down and when taken to 1HP they go Neutral again and become Stasised until the round is over.

 

An idea for sentient gladiators would be Iridorians, the yellow space suit guy from the Manaan Cantina, you hear so much about how his species is so deadly and sadistic but you never actually get to fight any of them.

 

To be lore friendly with Iridorians gladiators, having them to be High Tier Enemies regardless when you do face them. and Trandoshan would be another good enemy type to face.

[Sithspecter 909]

21 hours ago, JCarter426 said:

Normally no, but getting them to run around a maze and pick up weapons is going to require custom AI anyway. Might be tricky, but I think it could be done.

The mechanic that I really had in mind was that essentially the NPCs would be scripted to run to a container or placeable, and then equip a pre-determined weapon. The PC/Party would only have one or two containers close by with maybe a longsword or a blaster. Essentially the idea being to make you fight with weapons that aren't necessarily your forte. I didn't think a large scale NPC weapon search mechanic would work very well. Nor do I have the knowledge to execute that idea, as neat as it could potentially be.

In other news, I have successfully implemented paths for the first time in my areas! This is a big step toward the content-friendliness of my areas, and possibly the last new area related issue I needed to solve. Now NPCs can find their way about my areas with ease, which is going to go a long way when the content is rolling in heavy.

[Sithspecter 909]

Here's a screenshot of the "king-of-the-hill" arena. The mound really dominates the center.

[JCarter426 1,214]

On 6/16/2019 at 9:32 AM, Sithspecter said:

The mechanic that I really had in mind was that essentially the NPCs would be scripted to run to a container or placeable, and then equip a pre-determined weapon. The PC/Party would only have one or two containers close by with maybe a longsword or a blaster. Essentially the idea being to make you fight with weapons that aren't necessarily your forte. I didn't think a large scale NPC weapon search mechanic would work very well. Nor do I have the knowledge to execute that idea, as neat as it could potentially be. 

Ah, I thought you meant a more traditional free-for-all type of gameplay. Which I do still think could be done, the execution would tricky indeed.

I wouldn't mind playing around with some mechanics a bit to see what could be done, once/if I ever finish some of my own ongoing projects, that is.

3 minutes ago, Sithspecter said:

Here's a screenshot of the "king-of-the-hill" arena. The mound really dominates the center

Huh, it certainly seems a lot taller up close. Also looks like there are three different layers to it. I wonder if it would be possible to implement some sort of scoring system with it. Like you get one point for knocking someone down to to the next layer, but more if they go all the way down.

[Sithspecter 909]

10 hours ago, JCarter426 said:

Huh, it certainly seems a lot taller up close. Also looks like there are three different layers to it. I wonder if it would be possible to implement some sort of scoring system with it. Like you get one point for knocking someone down to to the next layer, but more if they go all the way down.

There are three different layers, and it is quite tall. I moved as far away from it as I could for the screenshot, in fact I was in one of the little elevators when I took the shot.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to knock people down between the tiers. The way the walkmeshes work I don't think it's possible, but it would be really neat.

[JCarter426 1,214]

If I remember correctly, there is a push function that ignores the walkmesh to some extent. It's been a while since I messed with it, though.

[R2-X2 34]

Fascinating progress as usual.

[Mephiles550 227]

I haven't looked forward to a mod in years, but this broke that streak. I can't wait for this to come out! It really does feel like you're just showing me pictures of a regular area from Kotor, the quality is perfect.

[Sithspecter 909]

3 hours ago, Mephiles550 said:

I haven't looked forward to a mod in years, but this broke that streak. I can't wait for this to come out! It really does feel like you're just showing me pictures of a regular area from Kotor, the quality is perfect.

Thank you sir, I'm glad you are looking forward to it. The latest pics of the arena are truly restored content, I've re-created the original ones left in the game files to the proper scale. They were the only models of Sleheyron still left in the files.

[DeathScepter 46]

Well All I have to say is that do want you can with the files in order to restored them fully first then fill the rest with your ideas.  A possible idea that Each time the player discovers a Star Map, new content and side quests can appear on Sleheyron.

 

 

[SatineKryze 3]

I’ve just read the whole thread from start to finish and I can’t believe you’ve still continued with this mod, everywhere I’ve read said that all modders had quit this project. Everything looks stunning and high quality , massive props to you for doing such a great job.

[Lady Revan 3]

Oh my goodness! I had never even heard of Sleheyron being cut until recently from a friend, so I started looking up mods and WHAT YOU HAVE SO FAR IS AWESOME!!!! Are you planning on working in a Star Map for the planet also? Sorry if that's been asked already. I mostly skimmed and only read bits and pieces. I look forward to seeing when it will be available for Alpha Testing. I'd like to try to incorporate writing the planet into my fanfic since it would be far enough away I think (currently only at the battle of Duro, Mandalorian Wars). I'll be watching this thread very closely Currently playing through the general restoration mod for the cut DS female ending and planning on starting my "Let's Play" for some friends who know of KotOR but have never had the time to experience it themselves.

Unrelated Statement: I love your gizka gifs XD

Edited July 2, 2019 by Lady Revan
fixing spelling

[Sithspecter 909]

I've been working on getting lots of things back in-game that I haven't touched in a while due to a new PC that I purchased back in April. I'm currently away from home with my new PC, and some things slipped through the cracks and I don't have access to them. However, I am using this as an opportunity to try and improve a few things.

The first big thing is that I re-did the lightmaps on the landing bay. Since the advent of KotORMax and MDLEdit, my workflow has changed a lot and it's taken me a while to get adjusted to the new tools, as welcome as they are. The landing bay was completed during this transition, and since then I've learned a lot about my render settings and lighting, which has turned out very nicely in the arenas. The landing bay was a bit of a contrast to the newer lighting when I went back and looked at it again. I decided to use the new techniques for the landing bay and see how it turned out.

I think it's turned out very nice and looks a lot more naturally lit than it did before.

Another thing I did is revisit the doors. I was actually very happy with the doors before but apparently I didn't transfer the files over to my new PC. So I made a few adjustments and added a little extra animation flair, and now they're back in the game.

Enough of the improvements for now, I'm going to try to focus on more stuff that I haven't gotten into the game yet.

[Salk 374]

Sithspecter,

that looks real good to me. If it is not too much trouble, could you also post (if you have them with you) a couple of pictures with the old lightmaps for the landing bay?

Thanks and godspeed!

 

[Sithspecter 909]

Here's the old: