okay, first i know that technically this does not belong here. but i have searched google for hours and can find no suitable forums. biowares official forum does not allow discussion of modding kotor, so this is a last resort. (though i have gotten most of my most useful replies from this very forum board)

does anyone know why, when neverwinter knights is so mod-friendly, kotor would be so d@mn restrictive with this? second does anyone know anything about a toolset or a tutorial helping to get into the textures/skins.

i am primarily into skinning and from the screenshots i saw i couldn't wait to start messing around with their skins, but i cannot figure out how to get into them. i tried the tools release for NWN, but to little avail.

so does anyone know of a mod board/forum/site for this game? and if not does anyone know how to get into the goodies? ?


and this is really not a question involving an in-depth mod of any sort. i just want to get to the skins.

i am saying this because of the legal issues involved in talking about modding this game.

and this is really not a question involving an in-depth mod of any sort. i just want to get to the skins.

and i did attempt to get in with the NWN toolset and even a program that would open .bif's, but everything seemed to be in .raw format and i could not get them to open properly in Photoshop as it kept asking for specific dimensions and the dimensions listed in the filename were not correct and all i got was ablack and white patchy block that looked like static.

I was going to play around a bit with this this weekend, but I haven't so far had the chance.

It appears that KOTOR does not use the NWN engine. (http://swforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=280733&forum=27) So I don't know if any of the NWN tools will work with KOTOR. From you experiance, it appears not so much.

So far I haven't found a forum that talks about these issues. If I do, I will post it here. :)

well, it says that odyssey is an enhanced version of the aurora engine. that does not mean it is a completely different engine. you have to remember JA is supposed to be using an ENHANCED version of the quake 3 engine. but the similarities are there enough that if you knew how to mess around with JO, you knew how to get around in JA as well. especially for something as simple as skins.

i don't want to do a thing with the game code. i just want to play with the skins.

but if you figure anything out, prime, be sure to let me know. lord knows we got ourselves through the JA SP skinning issues, maybe we can get through this as well. :)

Definitely. I may get a chance to play around with it tonight. As soon I find anything out, you'll be the first to know :)

moving this to the editing forum...

oh, so this is the editing forum. i got tired of trying to read through the figurative language and metaphors and just posted it somewhere. :) thanks for the help. :)

not to worry, it's a new addition... that's why you didn't see it before ;)

Originally posted by eidospsogos
does anyone know why, when neverwinter knights is so mod-friendly, kotor would be so d@mn restrictive with this?

Because, as Chris Priestly said,
Originally posted by Chris Priestly
as for moding, neither BioWare nor Lucasarts support it (to the best of my knowledge), we do not encourage it, and if anyone sends me a bug about a game that they have modded, I will ignore it as the game's integrity has been compromised.

He also said that NWN was a "special" case because it was designed to be modified, that half of the game was the ability to modify it. KotOR wasn't. That's why it's so "d@mn" restrictive.

And this is unconfirmed, but I've also noticed that not a single Lucas Arts published game is openly modifyable. This is probably because it's more difficult to design a game that doesn't break or become unbalanced when modded, and to help protect the copyrights and trademarks of the Lucas brandnames (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc).

I understand your desire to modify it, and I share your desire. I'm just letting you know the facts. And if you find a skinning and modelling tool for KotOR, I'd love to get it. :)

actually, you're wrong. the last two installments of the jedi knight series have amenu option specifically for loading mods. if that isn't openly modifiable then i don't know what is.

neither one of these games was designed to be able to be modified. but that did not stop raven from releasing modding tools for the game. no one came down on them for allowing LucasArts intellectual property to be messed with.

very few games that develop a mod community were intended to be modded. so, so what if KOTOR was not intended to be able to be modified with full support of a software corporation.

my point was this. i think maybe one percent of the games released on to today's market, probably less actually, were DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY to be modded by your average home pc user. and yet, this activity has managed to gain such a following that several months ago PC magazine said it would be the hottest trend in the pc world for 2004.

so, if everyone out there with their identical eulas, were being so restrictive as to say that any posts about modding their game on their forums would be locked, then not a single person could ever discuss modding games online at all. (which reminds me i think there are links to mod community sites and forums on the official JO and JA webpages at LucasArts' website)

considering that both jedi oucast and jedi academy have mod-loading options built in to the in game menu, i don't think it's lucasarts who has a problem with this.

and furthermore, all i do in the way of anything resembling modding is skinning. there's no way in #@!! that that could ever cause problems with the game if it is designed properly to begin with.

i have not had a single problem playing JA with custom skins.

but i have had more bugs and glitches from KOTOR than any game i have ever played, and i have not even taken the first step towards modifying it.

Hey, I never said anything about not wanting mods, and Chris Priestly even said that what the user does is up to them. They aren't going to get after LucasForums for allowing conversations of mods. They simply do not want people clogging their forums with questions about things that they (currently) don't support. That's for things they DO support, such as those bugs that you say KotOR have. Go report them.

And skinning can cause crashes if you try to make it load something it doesn't support. If you use the wrong header you might create a 100000000000x1000000000000 picture, or a 927 bit depth. I guarentee you your video card won't like this. Granted if they gave you developer tools this wouldn't happen, they decided that the single player game was long enough, and replayable enough, and that they had taken long enough making the thing, that they didn't need to spend more time making their toolsets usable by the general public.

I'l grant you the last two FPS's had SDK's later on, but those were provided "as is", if I recall correctly, and were unsupported.

Don't get your panties in a bunch, dude(ette). I'm just stating the facts and why NWN is so much more modifiable. Maybe because NWN CAME WITH A TOOLSET. You know they don't have to provide forums in the first place, right? Just be glad that they didn't hard code everything like companies did a few years ago. They don't owe you anything, they'll get enough money without modding. Heck, from a business standpoint replayability and modifyability are down right undesirable because then people are playing that game instead of the game you just released. Also be glad that they find it sensable to have replayability (because it makes the game more desirable, making more people buy it).

i'm not trying to be an ass here or anything. i just don't like that that they were trying to place the blame of their no modding stance on LucasArts being over-protective of their intellectual property. when it is very obvious to anyone that has played the jediknight series that this is not the case.

and i am sure there are alot more dos and donts when it comes to the skins in this game, as compared to the skins for a game like Jedi Academy. which is the main reason i posted to begin with. just to see if anyone knew how to work with their files.

the rant was merely a side issue.

i wasn't expecting bioware to release a toolset or support it. that matter is completely up to them. i think they have done a great job with this game. and other than occasional bugs this game is perfect. in every way. very true to the star wars atmospehre, a plot that is completely engrossing, huge amounts of addictive side-quests, the list goes on and on. all and all they took every thing i liked from all the different rpgs and put them all together into one beautiful package.

i was merely perturbed at their trying to point the finger at LucasArts and legal issues, when it came to their reasons for banning mod discussion on their boards. LucasArts has been very open to mods with other games they have released, and while they may not have been officially supported, they were not challenged or shut down, until they became intrusive into the star wars timeline(which is the big concern for Lucas since he sold away so many rights to what happened after the return of the jedi that he lost the ability to do the sequels that were planned to be released after the prequels, because he couldn't mess with the timeline that had been established by the authors he sold the rights to). but that's not what a majority of game modding is about. alot of us just want to mess with things of an aesthetic nature. maps, models, skins etc.

so i'm not downing bioware for their game, or their lack of official mod support. but for the reasons they were giving for their lack of official support.

That wasn't them, that was me (I'm not from Bioware). I noted before I said it that it was "unconfirmed." Every game that I had bothered to mod that was published by Lucas Arts didn't have developer released tools and required the fans to make the tools. However, I didn't bother to try to modify Jedi Outcast or Jedi Academy. I apologize for that misstatement. Chris Priestly, who IS from Bioware, said that Bioware and Lucas Arts does not support unauthorized modification of their games. Unauthorized. Meaning, fan mods. They support NWN Modules because those are "authorized," but they don't support anything you do to KotOR unless they release an SDK that says in it's liscense that you are authorized to make mods. I haven't looked at an SDK agreement in a while, but they usually say that they aren't responsible for anything you do, and that they don't support the SDK.

Go to the Bioware forums and read their Sticky about no modding posts being allowed, and they will state that the reason they are taking that stance is due to LucasArts and legal issues concerning their intellectual property. I wasn't trying to take things you said out of context. when i am trying to make points, i am not merely going back to things you said in your posts. i was basing most of my opinions on this from things said at the bioware forum.

but anyway, can we get back on topic here please. this was not supposed to be a philosophical debate about the evils of the corporation, or legal issues of the software, and it is obvious we will probably never come to a point of agreement here. so let's agree to disagree about the bioware modding issue and the validity of their reasons etc, and just get back to whether or not anyone knows how to get the skins.

that's what i want to know.

Well we know KotOR is not Moddable, at least in the NWN's sense. But then look at GTA 3 & Vice City, I dont think we need to say anything more on what a Modding comunity is capable of if they put there minds togeather.

What we need to do is work out or make a tool for extracting and re-incerting files ... anyone good with C++ ?

actually i have a friend that is a computer science major that said that would be the easiest way to mess with the files.....he was wanting to show me a few things, but to be honest, i got a graphic design degree for art's sake, not for the programming side. but if there truly is no easier way to get to this stuff, then i may have to take him up on the offer for help.....

Hey eidospogos and prime -

I share your desire to mod KOTOR, but I'd like to get a player model in the game. It looks like we are SOL until Bioware decides to release an SDK or some genius coder gets real nice.


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well, biowrae has made it pretty obvious they will be giving no tools or help towards modding this game to the mod community at all. so it is going to be up to some third party to develop any tools, or ways of doing this.

in fact modding this game cannot even be discussed on the bioware site, without the topic being locked.

so let's hope someone out there who has the desire to do any skinning or player models for this game also has the ability to create, or find ways of doing this. or knows someone who can. :)