Compatibility vs. functionality. A couple questions.

[mattcrowston]

Hey hows it going? I have been working on a small story mod for almost 8 monthes and I am finding it very hard to actually finish it because I don't quite know how to proceed. I have pretty well finished all the graphical content, and what is remaining is integrating it all into the game.

 

I want to make it so that you run into different characters on certain planets and have a choice to take a dark or light path. Culminating in a showdown once all the planets have been completed. I believe that will require me to use global variables to track users choices on each planet.

 

What I am most concerned about is compatibility. Would it be a better idea to use spawn scripts for each character. Or rather would it be best to use kotor tool and the module editor to plot the characters inside .mod files? Again I am most interested with being compatible with all other mods. If there is another way to handle character spawning and events, please let me know.

 

I have come really close to just packing up all the graphics and releasing them as an extra content mod. But I don't want to just let all this work go to waste. If anyone has any ideas, let me know what you think. If you want to know something more specific, just ask. Thanks.

 

Heres just a few pics.

Developement Screens

 

MattC

[mattcrowston]

Hey. No one wants to venture a reply? Is my question too vague or something. I just want to know what would be the easiest way to have the characters spawn where I want and when I want. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

 

 

MattC

[stoffe]

I just want to know what would be the easiest way to have the characters spawn where I want and when I want.

 

I don't know the specifics of your case, but if it's possible its probably better to edit a script to spawn your characters that way if you want them to appear in the standard game modules. Otherwise you'd have to redistribute the whole module, which may be a lot with only minimal change. This might make it incompatible with other mods that modify the same module.

 

Granted, it'd still be incompatible with other mods modifying the same script, but there is little to do about that.

 

Just be careful to verify that scripts with the same name aren't used in multiple modules, or it may create problems to put it in override unless you merge the scripts carefully.

[Darkkender]

If you are actually creating a module with creatures in it then edit the ".git" & ".are" files so that the creatures are natively there. If you are modifying pre-existing modules to have a creature appear in the spaceport on dantoine lets say then hands down use scripting. It is actually a good rule of thumb to have as many things possible that can be loaded for a module there on module load. Try to keep the script loaded items down to a minimum as things that happen after entering.

 

I've learned from various 3d programming books that generally speaking having a script load an item once your in a module/area is significantly slower than those items loaded as part of the module/area itself. That and the fact that while not that noticable the script running and loading things into a module will eat into memory and usually the lag experienced when first entering an area is caused by a big script trying to do alot of things at once.

 

So to recap:

 

New module - plot inside the ".mod" file.

 

Existing module - Place with a script.

[mattcrowston]

Thanks a lot for the responses Stoffe and Darkkender. I appreciate it.

 

So to recap:

 

New module - plot inside the ".mod" file.

 

Existing module - Place with a script.

 

I might have just been wasting time because, thats pretty much what I thought. I was wondering if perhaps there was some magical other way to do it. I figure like Darkkender said, mod files would only be relevant or even advantageous if creating a new module. But as I am only planning on a couple small additions to existing modules, spawn scripts are the only way to go. Thanks again guys. I will be back with scripting questions.

 

 

 

MattC