Kotor 1 Arena Crowd

[Guest angelofunny]

Can someone make a mod where there's actual people in the audience for the taris arena instead of that weird flat texture? It really makes me angry, since I have so many high quality graphics mods on that that is the only part of the game that remains unmodified. If it is not possible to add actual npc's, then can someone just remake the texture so that they look like actual npcs? Also, can you make the rakata looking thing not present as well?

[DarthParametric 3,785]

I saw mention of this over on Reddit and poked around in the level model. Part of the problem is that the crowd are midgets - they are only about 1/3 to 1/2 the height of a an actual NPC model, presumably to create an artificial sense of scale. And obviously the textures are horribly low res.

 

The crowd are just textured planes, but they are set up in an odd fashion. They have a flipbook animation, but they are split between separate planes and textures for head/torso/right arm/left arm. I didn't actually see them moving when I did a quick in-game check at the start of a match. Do they only start moving at the end of a match? I saw a bunch of FX nodes in the level model so I would guess that is how it is controlled in that case.

 

I figured the best approach would be to get rid of the planes and add some real NPCs. Because there are about 200 plane meshes, that's way too much work to hex edit the render flags, so the easiest approach is to replace the textures with alpha'd out ones. That gives a clean slate to work with:

 

 

I also tried editing the grandstand meshes to flatten out the angle of the floor and give a bit more room height-wise, but Taina's Replacer choked on the MDX edit, so no luck with that atm.

 

I'm unsure what the best way to go with adding NPCs is. Create a placeable maybe?

[Guest]

Placeables sounds like your best bet.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

Could just replace them with hologram versions

[JCarter426 1,215]

I'd suggest using a room animation rather than a placeable. At least, assuming room animations work - I've been told they do on the latest MDLOps but I've never tested it. It's the same amount of work on the model, but with a placeable you also have to make a UTP, edit placeables.2da, and therefore TSL Patcher work too, and spawn it in the game. With a new room that you can't actually enter, you only have to edit the layout and VIS files... and I guess you may still have to script the animation on, but I'm not sure about that. But anyway, editing two text files is easier, and there's no TSL Patcher work because compatibility is a non-issue. I can almost guarantee no mod has ever edited these particular ones, and it's very easy to fix anyway because they're simple text files, so there's no need for TSL Patcher.

 

Making the model would still be a lot of work, though. You'd have to pick out each NPC and import them all separately, merge the head and body, put animations on the model, rename all the objects to avoid conflicts, scale them down, delete the Aurora base and such. Then merge every individual NPC together into one project and position them. And you'd have to fiddle with the animations so they aren't all doing the same thing at the same time, because that would look weird.

[DarthParametric 3,785]

I figured using the Lite models would be the best approach, seeing as they are already a single full body mesh. This is exactly the sort of purpose they exist for. They are far enough away (and you are presumably busy enough fighting) that you wouldn't really notice the lower detail. They are certainly a hell of a lot better than the existing billboard approach. The problem is there aren't really any decent existing animations. Aside from "victory", which is the weird one arm pump thing, there's no cheering or celebrating animations that I can see.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

I figured using the Lite models would be the best approach, seeing as they are already a single full body mesh. This is exactly the sort of purpose they exist for. They are far enough away (and you are presumably busy enough fighting) that you wouldn't really notice the lower detail. They are certainly a hell of a lot better than the existing billboard approach. The problem is there aren't really any decent existing animations. Aside from "victory", which is the weird one arm pump thing, there's no cheering or celebrating animations that I can see.

You could just make them do the arm pump in a wave

[Kexikus 995]

If this mod somehow ends up finished, I request an additional mod to do the same for the dark side ending sequence

[Sith Holocron 2,479]

If this mod somehow ends up finished, I request an additional mod to do the same for the dark side ending sequence

Perhaps with more than one voice saying "All hail, Lord Revan"? LOL

[DarthParametric 3,785]

If this mod somehow ends up finished, I request an additional mod to do the same for the dark side ending sequence

The DS ending is interesting.

 

 

Unlike the arena level, it doesn't actually have any sprites as part of the level that I can see. There is a model comprised of null/dummy objects in the layout of where the droids/people are standing. I gather that sprites are spawned at these locations, but I can't see a script or the like where this is done. Someone more familiar with levels than me might have to explain it. The module is STUNT_55a/stunt_unktemp. The level models are m44ad_01x (skydome), m44ad_01a (level geometry), stuntroom44ad (crowd dummy objects).

 

Edit: To clarify, k_scene_start seems like the most promising source to spawn in the crowd, but it doesn't seem like it is doing so as far as I can make out. I can't decompile it, but looking at the pcode it seems like it is just spawning in Bastila and the PC, then starting the conversation. The other scripts control the Sith officers walking between waypoints, starting the end credits sequence playback, etc., but there's nothing apparent that spawns in the crowd.