New to modding and a little stumped

[turbinejk 1]

Hi everyone, I'm just exploring customizing the game with my own mods, and I have some questions. I've been searching the internet for a few days trying to find the answers to no avail. I'm playing TSL on Steam and have two workshop mods, TSLRCM and the Content Pack - Feats and Powers. So far, all of my manual mod installs seem to be running completely stable.

 

1. I want to put a custom placeable in a module with specific inventory in it. I've figured out how to modify the .git file for that particular area to add the placeable (and used the whereami armband to find the float position) and I think I know how to put the inventory I want in it, but I'm stumped as to how I get the new .git file to take effect. I tried dropping it into the override and it didn't do anything. How do I get the modified .git file to take effect?

 

2. I used kotor tool to extract .rim and _s.rim contents to a directory and tried to modify a few files (.utp files to modify their contents), then I used the kotor tool ERF tool to compile it back into a .mod file, but the new mod file is a lot smaller than the stock mod file. After doing some digging, I figured out that the dialogues were missing from a straight ktool TSL .rim/_s.rim extract. How do I fix this? Do I just straight up import the dialog.bifs from the bifs tree into each new mod? What is missing from a mod file when I do a straight .rim and _s.rim extraction to a file, then use the ERF tool to rebuild a mod from all of those files?

 

3. It's possible that I may just be barking up entirely the wrong tree on how to do custom placeables/modify currently existing placeables. If I am, can anyone steer me in the right direction?

 

4. The Steam workshop loads all its files to the workshop\content\208580\ folder, but there are still game files located in \common\Knights of the Old Republic II\. Should I direct kotor tool to the original game directory, or the steam workshop TSLRCM directory? I tried directing it to the TSLRCM directory in the workshop folder, and it told me the chitin.key was missing and wouldn't let me access any files.

 

Thanks team, the forums and materials on here have definitely enhanced my Kotor 2 experience!

[1Leonard 134]

That content pack from the steam workshop in combination with TSLRCM is almost certain to crash your game as far as I know.

[Kexikus 994]

1. The .git file needs to be repacked into the .mod file and you need to load a savegame from before entering the area. If you simply place the .git in your Override, the changes will happen, but the module will also reset every time you enter or load a savegame in that area.

 

2. .utp files, as long as they're uniquely named (some share names, but are used in different modules and thus different), can be placed directly into the Override folder and will work as long as you load a savegame where the area with the placeable (or character in case of a .utc) was not visited before. About the dialogs: I don't know. In K1, they're in the .rim files and thus extracting the .rim and the _s.rim and packing those back into a .mod is all that is needed. I would think that it's the same in TSL, but it's weird that they get smaller even though the dialog is not in the original .rim. But someone who knows more about TSL modding than me should answer that question.

 

3. I never did placeable editing, but it sounds right to me.

 

4. You should point it to the normal directory. The problem with the Steam workshop is that you can easily get conflicts when multiple mods edit the same file since they both save it in a different folder and Steam cannot merge them. So you generally want to install all mods to the TSLRCM workshop folder, but since Kotor Tool won't work there, you'll need to point it to the vanilla directory. And that won't be a problem as long as you want to edit only vanilla files. It does get problematic as soon as you edit the same .rim/.mod as TSLRCM does however. If you were to do so, you'd need to either put the .mod in the vanilla modules folder or in the TSLRCM workshop modules folder. In the first case, the workshop would ignore your .mod since TSLRCM as a mod also has the same file and takes higher priority. In the second case, you'd override TSLRCMs changes. So, instead of extracting the .rim files, you want to extract the .mod files from TSLRCM. To do so, either install TSLRCM with the installer instead of the workshop, or copy TSLRCMs modules folder to your vanilla TSL directory. In both cases, Kotor Tool will recognise the .mod files and you can work from there. In the first case, put your edited .mod files in vanillas modules folder, in the second case put them in TSLRCM workshops modules folder.

 

I hope that helps and welcome to Kotor modding

[turbinejk 1]

Thanks for the quick responses, everyone! I'll give this stuff a shot.

[turbinejk 1]

So, I did a complete delete/re-install after unsubscribing from TSLRCM and the Content Pack in the Steam workshop. Then I did manual installs of all my preferred mods (THAT took a while) and backed up my entire game folder to a flashdrive for safekeeping in case i totally screw something up. For a test run I extracted the 101per.git file and modified it to add a placeable, then I extracted all the .rim files for module editing, added the .dlg from the modules folder (somehow it's miraculously there now when I've never seen it there before), and voila! Custom placeable in the kolto tank area carrying the hak pad!

 

Thanks for all the help! Now on to figure out scripting and texture editing for custom armor mods . . .