Potential for adding New Classes and Prestige Classes!

[Darkkender]

Many people here have been of the mindset that adding new classes is not possible.

 

After being subdued alot lately due to a sparked intrest in NWN and more what has been done with modding that may be applied back to KOTOR. I have discovered that some of the NWN modders have created a Prestige pack with new classes and the sort.

 

Now among the many things they have created is new feats and the sort so this is also useful to the modding community here as well. I haven't begun to tackle any of these modding aspects yet but I figure with combined efforts of some of my fellow modders some of may be able to pull off something similiar.

 

On these notes it looks like NWN modding makes alot of use of HAK files for these types of mods. Has anybody tried or is anybody aware of house these files interact with KOTOR. It appears HAK files use there own "HAK" folder much like the "Overide" folder. Is this potentially a folder we could use or create that would work for KOTOR.

 

The following is a Link to The Player Resource Consortium::Manual::PRC Making::Guide. I'm certain we can make use of this for our own ends with KOTOR.

 

One of the things we may have to due though is rewrite some of the script functions in our own include file to make calls to custom 2da files. We can probably get alot of help and guidance from the NWN Lexicon on a function call for "Get2daString" as I don't believe it exists with kotor. However I'm sure that with the help of some of our advanced scripters "TK" we can overcome this hurdle as well.

[Darth333]

I never modded NWN but as far as I can see concerning new classes, they can only edit the existing ones. The page on new classes (http://ccg.dladventures.com/index.php/Prestige_Classes)

mentions:

You can also not create new spell lists or spell-casting classes at all - see the Hardcoded issues pages for why.

 

and it refers to this page:

http://ccg.dladventures.com/index.php/Hardcode01

Hardcode01

 

Issue

Unable to add new class entries that are treated as base classes available during 1st level character creation.

 

It is currently only possible to edit the original 11 classes rather than making new ones. The nearest you can get is to make a PRC with no/very few requirements.

- Khalek D'Ariana Sunday, 28 March 2004 07:27AM

 

Pretty similar to what we can/cannot do isn't it?

 

For the feats, if you read the material, some feats (automatic and passive) are also hardcoded. There seem to be a field in feats.2da to which you can attach a script to make a new feat. This is not possible in Kotor.

SPELLID Index into spells.2da (column 0, the spellID) for the spell characteristics and script used to implement this feat. Most of your custom-created feats will be activateable (Feats: Radial Feats) and will typically have this reference.

 

And the .hak files have already been tested with Kotor a long time ago: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=123002

[Darkkender]

All of the points you mentioned are all valid Darth333. That is why I mentioned that some of this would probably require the creation of custom include script files that define the script functions.

 

After following that thread Darth333 I didn't find any of the posts giving that much of an answer in the way of the HAK file.

 

*Edit* The closest I found was T7's reference to dropping them in "Overide" meanwhile NWN uses a seperate folder for HAK files labeled "HAK".

 

All of the links above have been ones that I have been reading as well and trying to gather as much information on this particular subject over the past few weeks. I realize there are alot of elements that are hardcoded and that we have declared as untouchable or not able to be done. I was bringing this up because with the information I've found I think with some combined effort with others we may be able to pull off something similiar to this and create our own classes or prestige classe. I'm willing to keep digging and begin working on some of these elements.

[Keiko]

It will be bad "A" if "we" (Modders of Holowan, not me, I suck at modding, trying to learn) will be able to add new classes

 

*Hopes that we can*

[stoffe]

Originally posted by DarthSmallz

It will be bad "A" if "we" (Modders of Holowan, not me, I suck at modding, trying to learn) will be able to add new classes

 

I seriously doubt such things are possible in KotOR.

 

1) Base classes are hardcoded in both NWN and KotoR. The NWN prestige class functionality does not exist in KotOR.

 

2) Active feats are hardcoded. Passive feats can be added, but does nothing by themselves. Their only use is as "flags" for scripts to check if they are present and then do something in the script.

 

3) Hakpaks don't work in KotOR, since the game isn't meant to be modded and their sole purpose is to allow modders to use custom content in their modules.

 

4) NWScript has no file I/O functionality. You can't read files from the scripting language unless there is a function specifically for doing so. No generic 2da reading function exists in KotOR NWScript.

[Darkkender]

As I have tried pointing out in my previous posts much of the content that will need to be made use of in creating a new class or Prestige class WILL have to be custom content on the part of the modding community.

 

Stoffe -mkb-: I'm not certain what you mean by kotor nwscript having no I/O functionality. Are you refering to include files and the sort? If so you can and I have made custom include files for kotor.

 

Now I know there is "NO" generic 2da reading script present in the resource files for KOTOR. However that does not prevent those with slightly better "C" programming experience from writing a script for doing just that. After spending most of my last few weeks going through various NWN modding resources I have come across custom scripting and programming others have done to add there own custom functionality in.

 

While many of the elements are Hardcoded for base classes and feats as is covered in my link in my first post and related links from there it gives us all stepping stones to build from.

 

The reason I brought up the information I discovered was to try to promote intrest by our fellow modders of this forum not to have another forum filled with modders nay saying and using all of the same arguments I have been known to use in the past. We as a community have become very stagnate with our modding with little advances or new discoveries since last fall of any importance. I realize my own scripting skills are enough to make me dangerous, but that doesn't mean my discovery doesn't stand a chance.

 

Now as far as active classes for character creation that is the only element that is Hardcoded. If you are building a class for a NPC or to later allow your character the chance to choose this new class that is not hardcoded. The biggest hurdle for that is of course the "tlk" file entry which the link provided above provides information on creating a custom "tlk" file. There are other hurdles but they are minor.

[stoffe]

Originally posted by Darkkender

Stoffe -mkb-: I'm not certain what you mean by kotor nwscript having no I/O functionality. Are you refering to include files and the sort? If so you can and I have made custom include files for kotor.

 

Now I know there is "NO" generic 2da reading script present in the resource files for KOTOR. However that does not prevent those with slightly better "C" programming experience from writing a script for doing just that.

 

What I mean is, there is no functionality within the NWScript scripting language for reading or writing external files or game data files other than what is coded into certain functions. As such, modders can't just add such function.

 

NWScript is not C. NWScript is not a programming language. NWScript is a fairly limited scripting language that only can access the functionality that the game engine exposes to it. This does not include reading 2da or other files, and there is no way a scripter could just add this functionality. The game engine simply does not support it.

 

This is not nay-saying, this is being realistic. I've been doing NWN mods for the last 3 years, and while I would hardly concider myself an expert you do pick up a thing or two along the way.

 

Originally posted by Darkkender

After spending most of my last few weeks going through various NWN modding resources I have come across custom scripting and programming others have done to add there own custom functionality in.

 

This can only be done within the bounds of what the scripting language allows you to do. If the scripting language does not have support for doing a particular thing it doesn't matter if you are the god of scripting, it still can't be done.

 

That said, the NWN persistant world community has worked around this hurdle by building external listener server applications, such as NWNX. This solution "extends" the scripting language by tapping into the NWN executable's memory space and reads/alters the information the scripting language has set in local variables on objects, stored in memory. This kind of hack has allowed for database functionality, and more recently other kinds of plugins that uses such data as control commands for doing things like editing GFF files automatically. This is all done by external applications though and not NWScript by itself, running in the background in parallell with the NWN Server.

 

This works well for persistant worlds, which runs in a client/server environment and thus not something the player will notice. It does not work so well in a soloplayer environment like KotOR where you couldn't realistically expect every player to download, configure and run this external app whenever they want to play.

 

That said, while it would theoretically be possible for a skilled programmer to do something similar for KotOR, what you have to work with in KotOR is more limited since the Get/SetLocal() functions in the KotOR variant of NWScript are severely gimped from what you have in NWN NWScript (where you can store strings, locations, floats, integers, object references with such commands, and do so much more freely than the index limited variants present in KotOR NWScript).

 

Originally posted by Darkkender

Now as far as active classes for character creation that is the only element that is Hardcoded. If you are building a class for a NPC or to later allow your character the chance to choose this new class that is not hardcoded. The biggest hurdle for that is of course the "tlk" file entry which the link provided above provides information on creating a custom "tlk" file. There are other hurdles but they are minor.

 

I guess this makes me a nay-sayer again, but Custom TLK functionality is a fairly new addition to Neverwinter Nights, so this is not something the KotOR Odyssey engine supports.

 

While there are a lot of similarities between NWN Aurora and KotOR Odyssey since they stem from the same code base, there are also some quite significant differences between them. Not only due to the fact that the KotOR engine branched off fairly early from its NWN ancestor, but due to the fact that the games themselves are made differently. As such, what can be done with NWN (a game from scratch designed to be easily modded, as this is one of its strong selling points) is not necessarily applicable to KotOR (which they even banned discussion of modding on their forums for).

 

I'm not trying to kill your enthusiasm or something, such a will to discover new things is what drives a mod community. I'm only trying to share what I have learned by modding NWN and give my opinion on what I would concider realistic to do. But you are of course free to ignore what I say and make those discoveries yourself. Or better ones that I missed.

[RevanA4]

um prestige classes for nwn are different than prestige classe for KOTOR and as for the creation of prestige classes there is sill limitations as to what you can do to them in NWN cuz feat creation is impossible and custom spells for the classes are also impossible to do all they did for those is combine the best qualties from the other classes into one and then made a class from it and unlike KOTOR modding of nwn is legall and NWN also comes with a tool set to help with it

[Darkkender]

While most of what you say makes some sense stoffe -mkb- I do have to question the ability for nwscript to fire and support external applications or for that matter other resources.

 

A prime example of the KOTOR nwscript engine being able to access an outside resource would be "Fred Tetra's Wristwatch" mod. Now I know that this makes use of spells.2da so maybe in that respect it might be our hurdle point I'm not sure. However it is a prime example of getting the game to use a resource that was not originally there.

 

 

Um Jedigoku custom spells are quite easy to do Darth333 does them all the time. Also if your going to say that can't do custom content like feats in NWN you really should take the time to visit the link I posted in the first post. Also while it modding KOTOR 1 & 2 lives within a gray area of legality it doesn't mean we can't make use of alot of the same modding resources from NWN. Also the aurora toolset that comes with NWN doesn't do much more than import the hak file data into the proper folders. It simplifies things but I've discovered it would be pretty useless to most of us anyways.

[stoffe]

Originally posted by Darkkender

A prime example of the KOTOR nwscript engine being able to access an outside resource would be "Fred Tetra's Wristwatch" mod. Now I know that this makes use of spells.2da so maybe in that respect it might be our hurdle point I'm not sure. However it is a prime example of getting the game to use a resource that was not originally there.

 

I must confess ignorance as to how that particular mod is supposed to work, since it doesn't work on my computer. It always displays the same time no matter what.

 

However, I did take a quick glance at it, and the spell script for the watch only starts conversation with the dialog file the mod includes, nothing else. The dialog only contains a single node with a text string containing the time.

 

So I would assume that some external background application (that fails to run on my comp.) is supposed to modify the dialog file in the override folder continually, thus it would always display the correct time when the script triggers the dialog.

 

That's my theory at least. Since the spell script only contains a single ActionStartConversation() line though, this isn't what is doing the magic in this case.

[d. aser]

Hey there.

 

Im aser from the PRC, I saw this thread and simply had to sign up.

 

While there are limitations in NWN the PRC has managed to get quite a bit into the game, we are currently working on version 2.3 which will add among other things a huge implimentation of Psionics.

 

We do add spells and feats obviously, as Darkkender has said. There are things which are made more difficult due to hard coding of the combat engine for example, but spells are fairly simple to put in and feats are simply a type of spell in many cases or place holders for scripts.

 

I have to assume jedigoku that if you dont think spells or base classes can be added to the game that you simply have never tried the PRC, or perhaps the Epic Spellcasting system. Or we are arguing semantics in some way.

 

I only recently got TSL, and so have a lot of researching to do on what can and cannot be done, for example can maps/modules be created? Is there a level editor? I dont know, I saw that Ultimate Lightsaber hilt thread, which looks pretty sweet, makes me want to learn to make my own.

 

Either way, I in no way shape or form speak on behalf of the PRC, and make no claims to have total knowledge of the inner workings of either games custom content possabilities, but I for one am curious as to what can and cannot be done in this game...

[stoffe]

Originally posted by d. aser

Hey there.

Im aser from the PRC, I saw this thread and simply had to sign up.

 

Welcome

 

Originally posted by d. aser

There are things which are made more difficult due to hard coding of the combat engine for example, but spells are fairly simple to put in and feats are simply a type of spell in many cases or place holders for scripts.

 

As far as feats go, this is infortunately one of the points where KotOR/TSL differs from NWN. There's no similar way of associating a new feat with a spell/force power. Making new force powers is fairly easy though, the biggest hurdle there is the name and description text, since they require editing dialog.tlk which isn't very distribution friendly.

 

Originally posted by d. aser

I only recently got TSL, and so have a lot of researching to do on what can and cannot be done, for example can maps/modules be created? Is there a level editor? I dont know, I saw that Ultimate Lightsaber hilt thread, which looks pretty sweet, makes me want to learn to make my own.

 

Either way, I in no way shape or form speak on behalf of the PRC, and make no claims to have total knowledge of the inner workings of either games custom content possabilities, but I for one am curious as to what can and cannot be done in this game...

 

While there's not quite any equivalent of the NWN Toolset available since modding is not officially supported by bioware/obsidian, quite a number of useful tools have been released you may want to check out if you want to look into modding KotOR/TSL.

 

Kotor Tool is the swiss army knife of modding, it does a little bit of everything in a user-friendly package. Essential for pretty much any kind of modding since it allows you to extract all kinds of game data.

 

This page contains a good number of useful tools and utilities that are worth downloading.

[Darth333]

Originally posted by stoffe -mkb-

Making new force powers is fairly easy though, the biggest hurdle there is the name and description text, since they require editing dialog.tlk which isn't very distribution friendly.

An intermediate solution that is also compatible with other language versions of the game is to refer to an existing entry of the .tlk table which fits the new force powers. There is always some compromise to do but it's better than nothing and it won't change the language of the game during installation. I did it with a few force powers and checked the entries of the French/English and Spanish .tlk tables and normally the description makes sense in all languages.

[Darkkender]

Originally posted by d. aser

Im aser from the PRC, I saw this thread and simply had to sign up.

 

Welcome Aser. I have come to the conclusion that I am going to start trying my hand at this end of modding for KOTOR. I would more than welcome any feedback of your own experience in this end of modding NWN.

[Darkkender]

Originally posted by Raven2001

Well, if you can somehow implement a way of putting new modules and armor/robes/clothing/whatever else a character may wear, I'd be much appreciated and give you a HUGE cookie

 

Please explain what it is you are trying to ask like new custome modules, or just new areas? New areas and armor/robes etc are already possible. Or are you refering to new starting item packs and the sort? Please explain your statement.

 

If this is an off-topic post please refrain from replying further.

[stoffe]

Originally posted by stoffe -mkb-

1) Base classes are hardcoded in both NWN and KotoR. The NWN prestige class functionality does not exist in KotOR.

 

Well, it appears I spoke too soon on this topic. It appears that you can easily add new classes to KotOR(2) that NPCs can use or you can multiclass to, as long as they are not force using classes.

 

I whipped up this quick test class to experiment, with unique skill, saving throw and armor class progression. It seems to work fine in the game as far as I have been able to tell.

 

I don't know if it's possible to give new classes auto-gained feats since the base classes have their own sets of columns for this in the feat.2da file, and I haven't tested if the game would use new columns added there.

 

It will use a new class specific column added to acbonus.2da at least, since I tested this and the new bonus values were used by the game.

 

Making a class force using appears to be trickier. Simply setting it to "spellcaster" and giving it a force dice value in classes.2da and assigning it one of the existing classes force power progression tables did not seem to make any difference. No "Force" button appeared at levelup.

 

Also, the same potential problem as with feats exist for force powers, with class-specific columns in spells.2da. Don't know if adding new columns here would be used by the game.

 

This will require more testing to establish what exactly can be done, but at least adding non-force using classes is fairly easy.

[Darkkender]

That is great stoffe -mkb-. I'm glad you will be joining me down this path of discovery. Now was that a new "tlk" file entry for Sith Thug or was it an existing one? My own excitement even over this minor proof and curiosity is bubbling.

[stoffe]

It was just some half-random string I picked in dialog.tlk like Darth333 mentioned above. I changed it to one better suiting my current test character now (in the screenshot in the above post too)

 

 

I tested a bit more, and it works to add a new class-specific column to featgain.2da as well, giving the class unique feat progression. Still haven't tested if new columns in feat.2da works though (which is used for automatically giving out feats at specified levels and determining what level a feat becomes available).

[d. aser]

feats.2da should have a column for gaining feats, looking over at my other comp which has the game installed and the toolkit it looks like featstable is what needs to be looked at.

 

Now, it was said that feats cannot link to spells in kotor correct? So this would mean that you cannot grant new force powers at level up and that the character must select them?

 

Once my wife is off my desktop I will give it a shot, it looks like so far things can link up and it should just be a matter of adding the rows.

 

I also gather that there is no custom.tlk, which would definitly make things a bit hard, perhaps a community one is called for?

 

So is there any source documentation on "official" PrC's? Also is there a character creator for TSL? One which functions outside of the game? If one wants to add new base classes this is needed in NWN and I would assume so in TSL aswell. Same goes for different races if there are racial differences in the which I would guess with the bounty hunter Hanharr...

 

Im curious if feats cannot be linked to spells how are the spells/powers granted on levelup with things such as G0-T0's droid powers, or the other character special abilities.

 

If we can get feats to be granted on levelup, then passive feats are a fairly simple matter aswell. The PRC has made a system, in case nobody has yet looked at it, in which on equip/unequip/levelup/enter, maybe other scripts aswell a main script is fired, this script then checks for the feats/prc's which a character has and then applies any bonus effects and sets a variable. Im probably getting ahead of things atm but thats the basics of it.

 

So yeah ill see if I can work any of this out and see what happens.

 

 

EDIT: Im looking in classes.2da, and in the featstable "SOL" for example is referenced, any idea where sol.2da is?

 

Other then some name changes it doesnt seem to different from the NWN version...

 

Edit 2: Ah feats are granted by feat.2da interesting.

[stoffe]

Originally posted by d. aser

Now, it was said that feats cannot link to spells in kotor correct? So this would mean that you cannot grant new force powers at level up and that the character must select them?

 

Not sure about this. I haven't found any place where it defines new force powers that are automatically granted on levelup. But the Jedi Master and Sith Lord classes get Inspire Followers and Crush Opposition automatically respectively. Could be hardcoded though, since some other force power related things appear to be. (Such as substituting Confusion for Mind Trick in the GUI if Confusion is already active, and making Inspire Followers unusable for Darksiders, and vice versa with Crush Opposition).

 

Originally posted by d. aser

I also gather that there is no custom.tlk, which would definitly make things a bit hard, perhaps a community one is called for?

 

No custom.tlk, no hakpaks AFAIK. The game wasn't made to support 3rd party mods.

 

Originally posted by d. aser

So is there any source documentation on "official" PrC's? Also is there a character creator for TSL? One which functions outside of the game? If one wants to add new base classes this is needed in NWN and I would assume so in TSL aswell.

 

You could probably use KSE for this, though I wouldn't recommend changing the first class and race of the protagonist. This caused trouble in the first KotOR and I'm not sure if TSL is more forgiving in this respect. Should be safe to add a custom class as multiclass to the Exile though.

 

Since you can't import/export characters as BICs in KotOR you'd have to rely on altering savegames.

 

 

Originally posted by d. aser

Im curious if feats cannot be linked to spells how are the spells/powers granted on levelup with things such as G0-T0's droid powers, or the other character special abilities.

 

All active feats are hardcoded in KotOR as far as I can tell.

 

 

Originally posted by d. aser

If we can get feats to be granted on levelup, then passive feats are a fairly simple matter aswell.

 

That's done by the class specific _granted columns in feat.2da. The number in this column is the class level (not total character level) when the feat is gained automatically. Some of your party members with special feats have their own feat gain columns as well.

 

Originally posted by d. aser

The PRC has made a system, in case nobody has yet looked at it, in which on equip/unequip/levelup/enter, maybe other scripts aswell a main script is fired, this script then checks for the feats/prc's which a character has and then applies any bonus effects and sets a variable. Im probably getting ahead of things atm but thats the basics of it.

 

The problem with a similar approach in TSL is that it would just work reasonably for custom made modules. For the standard game you would have to unpack all the module RIMs, modify the module.ifo for each and re-save them in order to add any module event scripts to the game. And since each area is a separate module in TSL there are a lot of them.

 

As for applying effects and changes though, TSL is a lot more flexible than NWN since you can modify the creatures base attributes, skills and base saves directly, as well as grant feats and force powers via script. No need to use effects for permanent changes. Relevant functions:

 

AdjustCreatureAttributes()

AdjustCreatureSkills()

ModifyReflexSavingThrowBase()

ModifyFortitudeSavingThrowBase()

ModifyWillSavingThrowBase()

GrantSpell()

GrantFeat()

AddBonusForcePoints()

AddMultiClass()

 

Originally posted by d. aser

EDIT: Im looking in classes.2da, and in the featstable "SOL" for example is referenced, any idea where sol.2da is?

 

Most of the columns in classes.2da refer to columns in other tables, not to 2da's themselves, with a few exceptions:

 

Attackbonustable --> unique 2da for each class.

Featstable --> feat.2da

Savingthrowtable --> unique 2da for each class

skillstable --> skills.2da

spellgaintable --> classpowergain.2da

armorclasscolumn --> acbonus.2da

featgain --> featgain.2da

 

Those 2da files contain separate columns for each class, except for the attackbonus and saving throw tables which use separate 2da files for each class.

[d. aser]

Ah ok thanks for the info.

[SuperSquall]

Question:

So by "a new class can't be Force Using" does that mean it doesn't get Force Points or it can't learn Force Powers, or both?

 

Because if its Force Points couldn't we get around this by having a script that runs OnLevelUp (or other triggers could be used) that uses the same method to grant bonus force points in the same way that the Exile gains those small FP bonuses throughout the game?

 

Likewise, couldn't a script be used to grant Force Powers based on level up as well?

 

I'm bringing this up because for a mod I made but never released (since it ended up just being an in-game mini version of KSE) I rigged Bao-Dur's remote to have a dialogue file to give conversation options like "give Visas this feat: ______" etc. We could write a script that checks to see what Force Powers the characters in the party have and then track the 'artificial level' of each character. For example consider the following:

 

-Visas becomes our new class when she is on level 10 (I'll call it a Force Bounty Hunter)

-Visas gains 2 levels as a FBH but she doesn't gain force Points or force Powers.

-We talk to Bao-Dur's remote. The remote looks at Visas and sees that her GetHitDice() level indicates she is on level 12, but her Force Points haven't been upped on this new level (we could use an obsolete Global from Peragus to show that she hasn't gotten her Force Point modded since level 10). It increments her force points by (2 levels) * (X force points/level).

-It also looks at her Force Powers and uses a script to determine what Force Powers are available for her to learn and these are arbitrarily granted without checking prerequisites.

 

-The Global variable is set to reflect these changes (I would set it to 12 to indicate the last level she had her Force Points/Powers artifically tweaked at).

 

Now instead of using Bao-Durs remote we could spawn our own puppet, or we could just as easily use an armband style item like the D333 or RH armbands, or we could cram it in an onLevelUp script or something. I dunno. Either way I think the above would get us around our problems.

[stoffe]

Originally posted by SuperSquall

Question:

So by "a new class can't be Force Using" does that mean it doesn't get Force Points or it can't learn Force Powers, or both?

 

They will not get any "Force" button at levelup, a "Force" button will not appear on the panel where you can inspect a characters Skills, Feats etc. Further, the character will not be granted any force points on levelup even if you've given them a force dice in classes.2da, and bonus force points granted with AddBonusForcePoints() will not register.

 

If you give the character powers with GrantSpell(), the same still is true (no buttons etc), but the powers will show up under their proper GUI buttons.

 

Clicking the buttons does nothing however, and I suspect that this is not entirely due to the fact that they have no force points. When a normal force user runs out ot force points, the power icons gets dimmed down. This was not the case for the character with the new class when I tested it. The icons are undimmed, but does nothing when clicked. (The icons will be dimmed due to armor restrictions though even for a character with a custom class.)

 

This problem is making me believe KotOR/TSL shares the same hardcoded limitation as NWN that makes it impossible to add new spellcaster/force user classes. (I will experiment a bit more with it though before I give up on that aspect.)

 

You can still grant jedi-specific feats to custom classes though, so you could make a new lightsaber wielding class for example, but they couldn't use the force directly.

 

(Adding new force using classes for AI controlled character would require a modification of the combat AI too, since it uses direct class checks to determine if the creature is a Jedi/Force user.

 

Not a big hurdle to do for yourself since I've already modified some parts of the party combat AI, but it would be a bit more bothersome to distribute if you wanted to make a mod out of it since it would require that you recompile loads of AI scripts.

 

Some which would need to be altered to work around the non-existant naming conventions obsidian uses, producing files with the same name in different modules.)

[ChAiNz.2da]

Originally posted by stoffe -mkb-

You can still grant jedi-specific feats to custom classes though, so you could make a new lightsaber wielding class for example, but they couldn't use the force directly.

Still though, alternate classes rather than Jedi is very tempting. There's been tons of requests for a "Bounty Hunter" class which this seems to fit the bill Even in the EU, Boba Fett collected sabers (maybe used them??)...

 

One question, have you tried custom force powers to see if the new classes can use those? I'd guess not at first assumption, but if they could... though it's the "long way around" one could emulate PC powers.. or better yet make custom powers that only the new class could use? Just a shot in the dark... but I still go with my first statement that any non-Jedi new class has tons of potential

[stoffe]

Originally posted by ChAiNz.2da

Still though, alternate classes rather than Jedi is very tempting. There's been tons of requests for a "Bounty Hunter" class which this seems to fit the bill Even in the EU, Boba Fett collected sabers (maybe used them??)...

 

They apparently had a bounty hunter classes planned at some stage (for Mira?) which was scrapped before the game was released. There's still an entry in classes.2da for it, though they removed the name strref for some reason. Type in 47997 in the name column and it's usable. Though to make it meaningful you'd probably have to edit its particulars a bit, since it's pretty much a clone of the soldier class in its current shape.

 

I would guess that adding new columns to feat.2da to give a custom class new feats on levelup would work, since it works adding columns to other 2da files associated with class definition. I've just re-used the feat columns of the scout class in my testing so far.

 

I haven't had the opportunity to test that yet though since KotorTool won't let you add columns to 2da and its XML import function is broken in this regard too. Since I don't own MS Excel and tk102s import/export macro doesn't seem to work in OpenOffice (free MSOffice lookalike) for some reason I'd have to recreate the 2da manually (like I did the other test 2das) in order to add new columns. {Edit tk102: } A fair bit of work since feat.2da is bigger than the others, though I'll probably succumb to my curiosity and do it eventually.

 

Originally posted by ChAiNz.2da

One question, have you tried custom force powers to see if the new classes can use those? I'd guess not at first assumption, but if they could... though it's the "long way around" one could emulate PC powers.. or better yet make custom powers that only the new class could use?

 

Unfortunately this doesn't work either. I tested altering one of my custom powers to require 0 Force points to use, and assigned it to the the custom-classed NPC with GrantSpell(), but it was still the same. The icon shows up in the combat GUI like usual, but clicking it does nothing. Nothing gets added to the action queue.