Cut alien model found!

[N-DReW25 1,338]

In the Taris Duel Arena texture files, a file called "LTS_Crowd01.tga" exists which contains these 6 aliens.

 

These low poly, 2D images were probably going to be sprites in the Taris Duel Arena crowd before being left unusued in the end. In this image, you can see a Twi'lek (A very common NPC), a Gran (Only 3 Gran's exist in K1), a Quarren (Only 1 Quarren exists in K1), a Chadra-Fan (An unused alien which was later used in K2) and a purple robed alien and a pink alien of unknown origin.

 

The Twi'lek was probably using the Lite model, which looks like this:

Spoiler

N_Twilek_low_M

 

The rest of the aliens that do exist in K1 use the N_alien models. N_alien01_low is missing, N_alien02_low is a Quarren, N_alien03_low is a Chadra-Fan, N_alien04_low is missing and N_alien05_low is a Gran.

 

What's the point of mentioning all of this?

Well, I found N_alien01_low's model in the game files. Since it's texture does not exist, I decided to apply N_alien01_low''s model to N_alien05_low thus giving  N_alien01_low a Gran texture, this is the result:

 

After seeing this model, I belief I have found some sort of missing link here:

 

Now the final missing link here is: WTF IS THIS THING SUPPOSED TO BE? And what is N_alien04_low supposed to be as well? Keep in mind, N_alien04_low's model doesn't exist in the game files unfortunately.

 

If someone could fetch me the UV layout of N_alien01_low's model, I will happily attempt to create a texture for this bad boy... and for you non-Modder's, let's theorize what on earth I found and what species this thing is.

[Effix 532]

Uh, there is an N_alien01_low model? Where?
Anyway, I'd go for "unknown generic filler alien".

[Mephiles550 227]

Neat find, I didn't know about this.

The red one could be a messed up version of the Devaronian, just without the horns. The clothing also gives that away to me, alot of Devaronians are seen wearing that type of garb (bulky and open upper jacket, too-cool-for-school look, biker gang, etc)

The blue one could be a Gand, It's got the same bug head thing going on that the Gand have. It could also be a Sullistan, but the eyes aren't spaced quite the same. Those feint blue streaks coming down from the head to the torso on sprite also match the same patten of the Gand's breathing tubes seen in Kotor 2. 

Both species would be seen in Kotor 2 and some species had model updates from K1 to K2, so it's not a big revelation to think that these sprites were cutouts of older models for the Gands and Devaronians. Alien01's (the one I suspect is a very early Gand WIP) model height could be attributed to how they barely worked on the thing and didn't put time in to provide it with the proper height. 

What I find interesting is that the bottom left sprite is a perfect match to that little mouse alien in Kotor 2 (the one in the Nar Shaddaa cantina who helps T3 get into Vogga's warehouse). That means that they must've already had the model finished, but didn't include it into Kotor 1 for some reason.

[N-DReW25 1,338]

13 hours ago, Effix said:

Uh, there is an N_alien01_low model? Where?

Inside the models.bif as part of the BIF section of Kotor Tool. No texture exists for this alien, just the model.

 

Here are some more screenshots of the alien from different angles.

 

13 hours ago, Effix said:

Anyway, I'd go for "unknown generic filler alien".

I had a look through a bunch of Star Wars aliens, could not find one which matched the model.

 

If I'm able to reskin it and still can't find it's species, I might consider allowing the community to submit name proposals and we'll all vote on the species new name.

 

11 hours ago, Mephiles550 said:

The red one could be a messed up version of the Devaronian, just without the horns. The clothing also gives that away to me, alot of Devaronians are seen wearing that type of garb (bulky and open upper jacket, too-cool-for-school look, biker gang, etc)

I was thinking something like that, the Bulky Jacket does feel like a biker gang type of NPC... though I don't think it's a Devaronian per say.

 

Quote

The blue one could be a Gand, It's got the same bug head thing going on that the Gand have.

I agree with you on this one! The body of this alien looks similar to the K1 Quarren, though look closely at the arms.

 

Notice how the Gands arms are sticking out in a T-Pose? That's usually how NPC models look like when viewed from a model viewing program.

Here's an example:

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

Assuming the NPC has NO animations in-game (like, none at all, no breathing, no idle animations etc), it will appear in-game as a T-Pose and if it was moving across the map then it simply glides along the ground in that T-Pose because the leg's aren't animated either. If this Gand was a very early draft alien, then it could be assumed that it was never animated and thus appears as a T-Pose in the image here:

 

Quote

It could also be a Sullistan, but the eyes aren't spaced quite the same.

Unlikely, it looks more like a fly then whatever this is supposed to be:

Spoiler

 

And as we both know, the Gand do look like flies.

 

Quote

Those feint blue streaks coming down from the head to the torso on sprite also match the same pattern of the Gand's breathing tubes seen in Kotor 2.

That could be possible.

 

Quote

Both species would be seen in Kotor 2 and some species had model updates from K1 to K2, so it's not a big revelation to think that these sprites were cutouts of older models for the Gands and Devaronians. Alien01's (the one I suspect is a very early Gand WIP) model height could be attributed to how they barely worked on the thing and didn't put time in to provide it with the proper height. 

You see, I don't think Obsidian would've selected their new aliens based on one unused sprite in the game files of K1. Inside the alien VO 2da file exists an entry for  an alien species called a "Gotal": https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gotal

 

Only the name is ever mentioned, there is absolutely no evidence of Gotal's being a thing for K2 other than that one name mention in a 2da. It can safely be assumed the Gotal's probably became Devaronian's in the end and that the decision to make the K2 aliens were totally independent from K1.

 

Quote

What I find interesting is that the bottom left sprite is a perfect match to that little mouse alien in Kotor 2 (the one in the Nar Shaddaa cantina who helps T3 get into Vogga's warehouse). That means that they must've already had the model finished, but didn't include it into Kotor 1 for some reason.

That's because it IS. That mouse alien is called a Chadra-Fan, though in the game files it's only ever referred to as N_alien03_low as I wrote on the image. 

 

In K2, the N_alien02_low Gran was replaced with the actual Gran alien and the N_alien05_low Quarren was replaced by an actual Quarren. But N_alien03_low was unchanged, why? That is because N_alien03_low, the Chadra-Fan, was never used in K1 despite it existing in the game files.

 

 

Oh, and an interesting thought:

Spoiler

 

The reason why I suspect the Chadra-Fan was unused in K1 was because the Quarren, Gran and Chadra-Fan were supposed to be "Lite" NPCs. And since they were just designated as "aliens" they simply existed to be background characters, that is why you only see 1 Quarren with Bith VO (Pre-release screens from early 2003 show more Quarren background NPCs on Tatooine who were cut), the Gran simply exist as two swoop fans on Manaan with Duro VO and a has a small role as a GenoHaradan target with Gamorrean VO (Inconsistent) so the Chadra-Fan were probably intended to be background unimportant NPCs with Jawa VO most likely.

 

It's a good thing Obsidian used them and gave them unique VO though.

[Effix 532]

Catfish alien?

[DarthParametric 3,785]

I'd guess it was probably intended to be some sort of insectoid race.

[Jango32 23]

Early Selkath concept perhaps.

[N-DReW25 1,338]

Got some good news... and some bad news.

 

The good news, I made the skin!:

 

And I'm sure from that screenshot above, you can already see what the bad news is.

 

For those who aren't familiar with models, that "T-Pose" the alien is doing is the result of a lack of animations, very similar to what I theorized with @Mephiles550 above. I tested this bad boy out, and it turns out he lacks an idle animation, a walking animation, a death animation and presumably combat animations. That means my plan of adding this guy in random locations in the galaxy isn't going to be a thing after all 

 

Oddly enough, when you speak to the alien he THEN has animations as seen here:

After the convo

 

But when you leave the module and return he's back to T-Posing! 

 

So what I think I'm going to do is restore him in the Manaan Swoop Track area, taking the place of one of the Gran's as their ambient scripts make them perform animations which prevents T-Posing. 

[Mephiles550 227]

The more I'm looking at it, I'm guessing that @Jango32 was correct and that this definitely feels more like an Early Selkath attempt than anything else. Makes sense, I guess.

Good job restoring what you could.  Something I like doing with old games is restoring as much old content as I can and reverting the game to the earliest, yet fully completable, extent possible (Half Life 2's beta started that hobby for me). I would like to see a version of this model with a working idle animation so that I can use it in a "beta build" of Kotor and view it in all it's 480P glory on my 4K monitor. 

[N-DReW25 1,338]

4 hours ago, Mephiles550 said:

The more I'm looking at it, I'm guessing that @Jango32 was correct and that this definitely feels more like an Early Selkath attempt than anything else. Makes sense, I guess.

Now that it's reskinned, I'm starting to see exactly what you guys mean. I'm sure this game was the first real appearance for the Selkath so that doesn't seem too far fetched.

 

I wonder if "Pyrath" would be a good name for this species, this name was chosen as this species would be from "Pyr" which is a planet in the same system as Manaan. This way there could be some form of connection between Selkath and the "Pyrath" species.

 

4 hours ago, Mephiles550 said:

Good job restoring what you could.

I was actually contacted by DarthParametric yesterday and it turns out that I had set the wrong body type in the 2da, that resulted in the broken animations and by fixing it I have since restored the animations of the NPC.

 

So I will hopefully get a mod ready real soon!

[N-DReW25 1,338]

The mod has been released, just needs to be approved by a moderator... so god knows how long that'll be!

 

But for those wondering, this will be the eventually link to the mod. If the mod isn't approved then this should just lead to a blank tab (Unless you are a moderator of course 😁), but when it is approved this link will lead to the mod, and for you future viewers of this post, enjoy the mod:

 

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the mod in someway/contributed to this thread in someway, I couldn't have done it without you guys! I hope to make more mods in the future, and to answer @Mephiles550's observation of The Champ's species being in K1, I have indeed discovered where exactly the Chadra-Fan where going to spawn, so that might be one of my next mods coming in the future!