MOD:Dark Side Ending Cutscene Enhancement

[DarthParametric 3,777]

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Dark Side Ending Cutscene Enhancement

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This mod replaces the terrible low poly and sprite-based crowd in the Dark Side ending with a full 3D crowd. Due to engine limitations, these are static in order to preserve the frame rate, but the original only has some slight wobbling of the sprites anyway. The two animated Sith Officers that walk up and salute still remain, as in the original version, although they have been tweaked so that the transition from walking to saluting is a little less janky. Both now also bow in a later shot, as intended. Two doors that were missing have been added (also to the regular Temple Summit module) so Bastila and Revan have an obvious path to the dais besides Force Leap. Some of the level geometry has been consolidated to improve performance, since models with high individual mesh counts seem to tank the frame rate. As of v1.2, all the vanilla lightmaps have been completely replaced with entirely new higher resolution ones, cleaning up artefacts and adding in a lot of missing shadows.

Known Issues / To-Do List:

Currently, the DS credit sequence does not play in fullscreen when movies are enabled due to the requirement for additional exe patching not currently done by any existing widescreen patch. I have provided info about this to ndix UR for incorporation into his high res menu patcher, but there is no ETA on an update for that. In the meantime, for those willing to crack open a hex editor, here are the offsets you need to edit with your own resolution values in the CD/GOG exe:

0x28F9E0 – E0 01
0x28F9E5 – 80 02

0x28F9FA – 80 02
0x28FA04 – E0 01

Credits and Thanks:

@bead-v for MDLEdit and KOTORMax.

@ndix UR for TGA2TPC, TPCView, MDLOps 1.x.

@seedhartha for KOTORBlender for Blender 2.8+, especially for adding the lightmap baking feature.

Thanks to @ebmar for offering his 2¢ on various aspects and for prompting me to dig this one back out of the "on hiatus" pile.

Thanks to @N-DReW25 for suggesting the addition of the doors.

Skybox textures in screenshots/video are from @Kexikus's High Quality Skyboxes II.

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• Submitter
  DarthParametric
• Submitted
  12/25/2021
• Category
  Mods
• K1R Compatible
  Yes

 

[Salk 368]

Congratulations on this new release, DP!

Many were looking forward to it.

I have one question about this: "Currently, the DS credit sequence does not play in fullscreen when movies are enabled due to the requirement for additional exe patching not currently done by any existing widescreen patch."

Does this limitation apply to the original 4:3 screen format as well?

Thanks!

[DarthParametric 3,777]

It should apply to any resolution above 640x480, since those are the hardcoded values (the offsets listed above) in the hack they use to play the last movie and the credits in sequence with no pause between them. But note this is only when hex editing the exe to change the hard coded movie resolutions, something that typically you only do for widescreen.

[Salk 368]

I tested this in full screen (my resolution: 800x600) by warping to STUNT_55a and after the cutscene the movie played correctly without any kind of issues.

A minor problem comes from the low FPS the cutscene plays at but you did warn about that and I was expecting it.

EDIT: I actually have a rather weird problem with the cutscene. I uploaded a recording of it here: 

 

As you can see, there are some differences. The Sith Soldiers use a different texture but that is expected. I have the two rogue Sith Officers (min 0:28 - initially only the first is visible) that should have been removed by dp_stunt55a_en. I checked the module.ifo file for STUNT_55a and dp_stunt55a_en is correctly set at Mod_OnModStart.

Any advice?

PS - I noticed that running the script at Mod_OnModLoad would correctly remove the mooks but the price to pay is the cutscene freezing twice for a couple of seconds after Bastila begins to talk. Same thing if I run the script in the first node of the .dlg file. 

ADDITIONAL INFO: The problem is remedied if I remove two animations in the dlg file that call for the now deleted UTC. That was what caused the temporary freezing.

[SpyBionicN7 0]

Any chance there will be a compatibility patch for Dark Jedi Wear Robes?

 

Edited March 18, 2022 by SpyBionicN7

[Salk 368]

DP,

I noticed that the new stuntroom44ad.mdx file has a size of 0. Is that normal?

[DarthParametric 3,777]

1 hour ago, Salk said:

stuntroom44ad.mdx file has a size of 0

As does the vanilla file. The model only contains references, no meshes or animations, so there's no data to put in the MDX.

[Salk 368]

Thanks.

Was just a curiosity I had.