Appearance.2da and Heads.2da editing/modding question

[xtprojects 13]

Hi all, I have been working on getting the kotor 1 restoration project over to xbox and for the most part, everything is going mostly OK! Before i go any further, this is not a question about any help specifically with the K1r project but a request for information about 2da editing and where in the files the game looks for the information. 

The current dilemma is this. If i replace the appearance and heads.2da files from K1R into the override folder, the xbox will for the most part accept and read the 2da files and everything will work correctly. HOWEVER, if it adds a new line in appearance or heads, like those files do, then the xbox simply ignores any newly added entries and for anything that's added that adds or edits characters thats not in the default xbos 2da files, then the character will show the body, but not the head. I compared the 2da files for appearance and heads from xbox to the original pc version first to see if anything was different. There are some newly added entries to the appearance 2da file that is not present in the xbox, so it seems in the pc version they added a few extra versions of existing npcs. Obviously the 2da files are for pc, so how can i get the xbox to read these entries correctly?

Hopefully i am making sense, and again this is not a question about K1R, but moreso about getting the game to read the newly added information in those 2da files. First i simply placed the k1r files in the override folder, and heads were missing. Then i tried using 2da merge to merge the info into the xbox 2da files, still no luck. I then tried replacing the appearance and heads.2da in the global.rim files for xbox, still didnt work, and causes the game to bug out with sounds so i had to move it back. Is there something i am missing here? There has to be a subtle diff somewhere, but the bodies show up, its just the heads.

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this and provide input!

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Are the normalhead values you are referencing in appearance.2da new rows in heads.2da, or existing ones? If you are editing or replacing heads.2da, I am guessing the former. What happens if you add a new row to appearance.2da and point it to a pre-existing head?

[xtprojects 13]

I gave you your 1000th rep DarthParametric! Thanks for the reply! I just ran a test and figured out the issue, however there is a new issue. The reason why the heads were not showing was because those models that were missing heads had no mdl/mdx files. Apparently the pc version has a few extra heads that are not in the xbox version, so when the xbox would the use the k1r appearance and heads.2da files to look up the heads, there was no head model to load. I used beadv's awesome tool to convert those files to xbox.Now the models are in override, and the xbox can see them.  SO......

Now the issue is, the heads show, BUT there is graphical distortion and they flicker. Are there any more files that need to be added or do they need to be put in the models bif folder? I thought putting them in override should work?? Or is it an issue with the mdl converter? I converted some stuff before with it and it was fine.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Did you add textures as well? It could be they need to be downsampled for Xbox.

[xtprojects 13]

Sorry if this sounds noobish, but where can I find the textures? Are they in bifs like the mdl and mdx files? 

[DarthParametric 3,782]

You didn't add any custom textures then. What were the models you added?

[xtprojects 13]

A few head files from models.bif. The xbox never had these heads so I pulled them from the pc version and used beadvs tool to convert the mdl files. They must have been something added to the pc version only. I wasnt sure if those head files had an accompying texture file. The mdl files in question are:

 comm_a_f2, comm_a_m2, comm_b_f2, comm_b_m2, comm_w_f2, comm_w_m2, old_a_f2, old_a_m2, old_b_f2, old_b_m2, old_w_f2,old_w_m2. Those are the mdl files for heads the xbox never had for heads, but pc does. I assume there must be an accompanying texture for those right? That has to explain the flickering and distortion on the heads.

When i look in the pc erf texture packs with kotor tool, those file names are not there however. Its hard to tell if the problem is the mdl converter or if it is missing textures. They somewhat have a face but its distorted and flickery. Where can i find the references for the tpc files for those heads?

 

Edited June 24, 2018 by xtprojects
Cleaned up

[JCarter426 1,214]

If you convert the models with KOTOR Tool, it'll extract any textures that are on the model. Just turn off the "clean directory" thing before you do that or you won't be happy. They should all be on the heads for K1, but if they're not then you would have to check heads.2da. Also I'd suggest you still use the original TPC files and not whatever KOTOR Tool extracts.

[xtprojects 13]

Thanks for the response Jcarter! I am somewhat confused here though. I did not know that the kotor tool can convert models to xbox readable format like beadv's mdl tool can. I can't simply use anything extracted from pc mdl/mdx wise since it will crash the xbox. Anything mdl/mdx has to be converted to xbox readable format. Also the xbox will not use the tpc files, only the tga i believe.

I hope i am being clear with my problem lol. It really is not k1r being the issue here. It's the issue that the original  kotor pc version has a few head models that the xbox doesn't have. K1r just uses some of those heads in this restoration, but those heads are/never were in the xbox. Originally the heads were missing on my first testing attempts because even though the xbox is reading off the k1r heads and appearance.2da files in override, those models were not to be found in the xbox files so they were headless. Mostly everything is ok until i come across those heads listed above that there are no models for. I only simply extracted the corresponding mdl/mdx files from the texture packs with kotor tool in hopes that i can convert them with bead's tool, but now they appear to be flickery and have graphical distortion. I just was not sure if there was supposed to be a corresponding texture file for this face.

Hopefully i am making more sense. Thanks for the reponse and ill check out to make sure that clean directory thing is on. Its just weird because for a split second, it seems like the head is ok, but it flickers and changes colors from red to others. LOL.

[JCarter426 1,214]

You don't actually want to convert the models with KOTOR Tool (its version of MDLOps is garbage). You just want to exploit its feature of extracting all the textures with the models when you do so, that way you can easily find the file names. When you double click an MDL file in KOTOR Tool, you should see the option.

[xtprojects 13]

BINGO!! That did it! When i was extracting the mdl/mdx files with kotor tool i was not double clicking it, i was simply clicking the box that says extract model so it was only extracting what i was clicking and not the tga file associated with it. Everything works great and this long standing issue with heads missing on xbox is now resolved! Thank you so much Jcarter!

I wonder if this is the reason why the taris swoop track can not be visited with k1r. That's the last thing to fix and k1r will be 100 percent compatible with xbox kotor!!! Usually when you visit the new module everything is just black and you can see people standing around and you are standing in place.