Fan Made KotOR 3 ; WTFN?

[gillian_seed 0]

 

So, I think it's pretty clear that we won't be getting a KOTOR 3 anytime soon. Given that it has been ten years since its last installment, I personally would be extremely surprised if it ever happens.

 

That bitter pill out of the way, with a fan base so large and present on the web, why is it not reasonable to think KOTOR 3 could be a fan made project? Before the devil's advocate and his nay saying buddied pick me to pieces; I think with good management, a clear vision, and s##t ton of work, it would be very doable. I'm not just talking, I would put in the work and be willing to take the lead on many aspects of the project. LET'S DO IT!

 

I welcome any and all constructive feedback. Thanks for looking.

[Boilpoint 12]

Something like RoR?

 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/revenge-of-revan

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

Or The Jedi Masters?

www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?p=2858125

[Circa 40]

Don't be so sure. We're getting a new Battlefront, so that's a step in the right direction. Now that Lucasarts is being run by competent people, we'll be seeing some great games in the next few years. We only got a handful of Star Wars games in the past 10 years or so, compared the dozens we got from 1999 - 2006, when the movies were coming out. I bet a KOTOR 3, or a KOTOR remake is on the horizon.

[gillian_seed 0]

Something like RoR?

 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/revenge-of-revan

 

 

Or The Jedi Masters?

 

www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?p=2858125

 

For sure, The Jedi Masters was awesome, but when compared to the first two installments of the series, it is a little slim. I know this isn't a fair comparison and I have nothing but admiration for the efforts put into it and what they produced. As for RoR, it's hard to say anything yet. The beta is surely promising.

 

I am here to see if there is enough interested in this to make a full game plausible. I'm sorry if it feels like I'm beating a dead horse. In any case, thank you for your feedback.

 

Don't be so sure. We're getting a new Battlefront, so that's a step in the right direction. Now that Lucasarts is being run by competent people, we'll be seeing some great games in the next few years. We only got a handful of Star Wars games in the past 10 years or so, compared the dozens we got from 1999 - 2006, when the movies were coming out. I bet a KOTOR 3, or a KOTOR remake is on the horizon.

 

You could well be right. My concerns are that, with EA owning exclusive rights to publish Star Wars games, that the results wouldn't be something worthy of it's predecessors. You can be sure, as well, that the SWTOR version of the Revan story would be honored.

 

I know what I'm talking about can seem like a ridiculously ambitious and far fetched proposition. However, we are all surrounded by the products of work that began on such unsure footing.

 

Thank you for your feedback and I hope you can forgive my naive optimism.

 

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

One major setback is that the modding tools, while helpful, are completely separate from one another. Ideally, there should be some sort of integrated toolset that pulls all these components together for faster workflow.

 

Another major setback is the nwscript language is very unreliable. I've had times where the difference between something working and not working comes down to literally nothing. Completely random.

 

Lastly, we can't and shouldn't be paid for doing this work, which, let's be honest, would be a pretty big incentive to stay invested in the work.

[Xuul 224]

Hopefully we get a new Battle front and not Battlefield 3 : Star wars Skin DLC.

 

The MMO is actually the biggest reason we won't see a KOTOR 3. If it fails: PEople don't like Koror. If it stays successful: We cant't oversaturated the market

An official KOTOR 3 would likely have to deal with the mess of the SWTOR lore as well.

 

 

As far as unofficially projects the problems are 1) Legality- Dubious at best, most projects will get shut down fairly quickly if they get too big. 2) inertia - seen time and time again. Announce a project early with no work done, get burnt out and then close the project 3) Difficulty- No official nodding tools, no source code, buggy engine.

 

 

Not to say an unofficial Kotor3 couldn't happen (looking at you ROR) but I'm saying that it is very, very unlikely.

 

It would require a skilled and dedicated team a long time to get a basis going. They would have to do so *Before* announcing the project and thus have little motivation to do so.

 

I'm not saying it won't happen, but even if the perfect team started right now, I doubt we would see anything like this for years.

[InSidious 237]

So, I think it's pretty clear that we won't be getting a KOTOR 3 anytime soon. Given that it has been ten years since its last installment, I personally would be extremely surprised if it ever happens.

 

That bitter pill out of the way, with a fan base so large and present on the web, why is it not reasonable to think KOTOR 3 could be a fan made project? Before the devil's advocate and his nay saying buddied pick me to pieces; I think with good management, a clear vision, and s##t ton of work, it would be very doable. I'm not just talking, I would put in the work and be willing to take the lead on many aspects of the project. LET'S DO IT!

 

I welcome any and all constructive feedback. Thanks for looking.

The fan-base may be large, but the modding community is not. Even the community of those who use mods (besides TSLRCM) is pretty small. Those of us who are left modding these games are, by and large, focussed on our own projects, which we're releasing to our own schedules, because real life takes priority.

 

This reply will probably be a little curt. I'm sorry about that, but we've been getting blasé, yes-we-can posts of this sort since... probably about the middle of 2004, at a guess. And I do see an implicit rebuke to the modding community in this that we're somehow not pulling our weight, and that you know better than we do. Again, we've had quite a few of these posts in the past. We've even had a fair number of K3 projects - there seemed to be about one a month in 2007-8. Suffice to say that almost all of them petered out within a matter of about two months, at most.

 

You say you're willing to put in the work; again, sorry to be that guy, but we've heard this before. Are you really willing to be the one who's up at 3:30am on a week night, looking for the reason a script function isn't firing? Or moving placeables two inches to the left, and recompiling the module agan to realise they're still out of place? Are you willing to be doing that two years in, and then messaging the rest of your team, most of whom are asleep, or at work? Are you willing to still be doing this a year and a half into the project and still be implementing the prologue, having lost half your team to boredom? Are you willing to put in 98% of the effort on a plot you may not like or agree with? Are you willing, in short, to face a long, uphill, depressing struggle, for which the actual, appreciable gain at the end of it, is five minutes of mediocre entertainment? Because if you have any doubt about that, I wouldn't even start.

 

Whether you use KotOR/KotOR II as a base or not, it will take you a good while to even master the basics of doing this; I'd guess that really getting to grips with KotOR modding takes somewhere in the region of a year for most people. I wouldn't hazard a guess for how long it would take using a fresh engine and code-base. If you do it by modding KotOR, you have effectively no ability to affect gameplay features and no proper dev-kit, and a tiny pool of people who would be capable of helping you. If you do it with a fresh engine, you have no base collection of professionally-made resources to draw on, and you have to completely (re)construct features like the combat engine from scratch.

 

This is before we get onto the business of plot, dialogue, and so on. Suffice to say most mods do not come close in this area to even the cheesiest of major titles. In many ways this would be the toughest part of all, since it is based in the least well understood and most variable criteria.

 

If you want to have a go at modding, you're welcome to, and it's always good to see new faces. But trying to jump in with a total conversion immediately isn't going to do you much good - without experience, you're going to find the struggle that much harder, and no-one is going to believe you can pull it off.

 

That's not to say it's impossible, but the probability of it happening is very, very low. We've seen innumerable sweepingly ambitious, top-down-planned projects come and go. To date, maybe four have actually been completed. And some of those were after a fair number of false starts. Sorry, but caution would be the pragmatic response were this the first time this idea was being suggested. At this point, pessimism about the idea is the most sensible recourse.

[gillian_seed 0]

You guys make some excellent points.

[Malkior 476]

Wow, Insidious! That was eloquent.

 

The only thing I'd have to add is that the engine itself doesn't work 100 percent of the time, and that alone makes the most ambitious and well thought out ideas simply impossible to accomplish without many revisions to compromise. This entire process can take years longer for an otherwise basic, well-planned mod to be finished. If done poorly, it will be mired with inconsistencies and plot holes, If done properly, it can still take forever..

 

Plus, videogames in general take years to develop with no less than 30 team members who are paid to do it full-time, and even they can be absolutely poorly written, and full of gameplay bugs.

[Fair Strides 509]

Plus, videogames in general take years to develop with no less than 30 team members who are paid to do it full-time, and even they can be absolutely poorly written, and full of gameplay bugs.

 

And my answer to that is that "release dates are for those that don't care about quality in mods."

[Circa 40]

And my answer to that is that "release dates are for those that don't care about quality in mods."

Or on a grander scheme, don't care about quality of games, just want to get their hands on the money ASAP. Look at TSL and JKA, both are victims of this.

 

 

I'd be a bigger fan of a KOTOR and TSL remake than a KOTOR 3, at least at first. Maybe remake them, and use those as a basis for a new installment. That way they can get their feet wet in new gameplay and graphics but not worry too much about story, and then use all that they learn to improve on a KOTOR 3 and focus on the story more.

 

Might be wishful thinking though.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

And my answer to that is that "release dates are for those that don't care about quality in mods."

I see what you did there.

[DiamondchessMaster 0]

Both RoR and TJM both are mods and reuse maps, I feel like what we should do is try to get permission from disney to gather a bunch of fan programmers, game makers, modders, animators, and anything else nessary and make a full on KOTOR 3, with new features, characters, and completely and utterly crazy good graphics. Then as Circa said remake KOTOR and TSL, TSL truly does need a remake with updated graphics and the completed TSLRM story.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

I feel like what we should do is try to get permission from disney to gather a bunch of fan programmers, game makers, modders, animators, and anything else nessary and make a full on KOTOR 3, with new features, characters, and completely and utterly crazy good graphics. Then as Circa said remake KOTOR and TSL, TSL truly does need a remake with updated graphics and the completed TSLRCM story.

Rather than going over this topic again, I suggest that you read the "Help KoTOR III Get Made!" topic in full over at LucasForums. (It's only a page long.)

[DiamondchessMaster 0]

Rather than going over this topic again, I suggest that you read the "Help KoTOR III Get Made!" topic in full over at LucasForums. (It's only a page long.)

Hmmm...yes now I see what people mean, but I wonder if there are 500 people who can make the game? Perhaps there is, but convincing EA and disney is our best bet, but I see no way of convincing them. Even 100 million people could'nt get to their stubborn minds.