Announcing Modder Basic Training

[Darkkender]

Over the last few weeks I have seen a steady influx of new modders coming into the Holowan Labs. Many are wishing to learn to mod. Since many of the tutorials can be a slightly confusing I figured it might be time to accumulate everything I've learned and distribute it as a series of classes. All of these classes will take place over the course of the next few weeks in small courses designed to teach everything involved in a mod. These courses will cover conceptualization followed by making use of the tools that we have available. There will be indepth walkthroughs of each of our tools and what role they play and they will include pictures as well.

 

I welcome all newbie modders and veterans to come join the program. The courses will cover all of the basics first and later possibly some more advanced techniques. Veteran's are especially welcome as there may be techniques they weren't aware of or even basic techniques that I miss.

 

The class lineup is as follows: -- For easy reference each class will be linked to from here. For each class with multiple courses they will be linked in the outline for the class.

 

Modding 101 -- Creating new NPC characters

Modding 102 -- Creating Items for the game

Modding 103 -- Placeables and you

Modding 104 -- Modules whats involved

 

After these courses I will look into Advanced Modding topics which have not yet been planned.

[Darkkender]

Modding KOTOR 1 & 2

101

 

 

How To Make a New Character

NPC's, Recruits, Creatures, & Bystander's.

 

Description:

This course is designed to take you through the entire process of character creation. It will begin with thinking of your character and what type of character it is and what type of role it will play within the scope of the mod. Next we will dive into the process of actually creating the characters ".UTC" file and everything that is involved in crafting the ".UTC" for the game. After that we will be proceeding on down the line with some basic dialogue for our new character learning how to use the DLGEditor and create a ".DLG" just for them. We will finish the course with in game placement and what would be the best way to place your new character into the game.

 

Outline:

Course #1: Character Concept

· What Type of Character

· What Role Does the Character Play

· -- NPC

· -- Recruit

· -- Creature

· -- Nameless Bystander

· What is The Character's Backstory

· -- Does the character have or need one

· -- What type of interaction will this play with the main PC.

· How is Character Supposed to Appear

 

Course #2: Creating The Character

· Lets Start with Kotor Tool

· -- Lets see a "UTC"

· -- There's so much what do I change

· -- My Character's Appearance & the related 2da's

· -- Lets make that character now

· My "UTC" in another GFFEditor

 

Course #3: Starting that Conversation

· So what does our new character have to say to your PC

· Let's write a script

· Next up DLGEditor

· -- What does a DLG look like

· -- Lets turn our script into that DLG

 

Course #4: In Game Placement

· What methods can we use to get our character in the game

· -- Script it in

· -- Module Placement

· Are there any other ways?

 

At the end of each of these courses I will give everybody an assignment. If you wish to post your homework you may.

[Darkkender]

Course #1: Character Concept

 

The first thing you must ask yourself is what type of character are you planning to make. This is probably the most vital question as it will make the decision for you later on as to what additional things you must do. Are you planning to make some sort of monster who's only purpose will be for the PC too fight it? Is this some sort of NPC your PC will have a lot of interaction with such as a Recruit or the main Villians. Does your character just stand off to the side in a city and basically tell you to "Buzz Off".

 

Okay so you have your basic concept which should answer the question of your characters Role of either one of the following Recruit, Creature, Bystander, or NPC. I actually define each of these below as there role with your PC are different.

 

Recruit ---- This type of character is one that will at some point join the players party and will have occasion of being controlled by the player. This character will also always have some sort of dialogue with the player available.

 

Creature ---- Creatures are either hostile or friendly and 98% of the time fall in the Hostile category. Creatures have no dialogues and serve either as background or to be killed. This also includes your mindless thugs who are spawned only to fight.

 

Bystander --- Bystanders really are almost like creatures the only difference is they will usually have some sort of single line comment type of conversation.

 

NPC ---- The NPC is closest to the recruit except they never become partymembers. They serve very versatile roles from simple merchants to people who provide you quests and include your great big boss Villians who make your life a living hell. These characters always have something to say and usually it can be quite a bit.

 

So now we know what are character is. The next step is to figure out what there story is. This only really applies to those that fit within the Recruit and NPC category above. However it can be nice to sometimes have the player know why they are suddenly fighting some guy in the street. So we need to establish a backstory. If this is going to be a main role character of some sort then it is best too write down your ideas about this character and give yourself some sort of outline. Your outline should contain the name of your character, what there role in society is, some sort of back history such as how did they get where they are now. You should also include there personality traits in this outline. Also the outline should provide an idea of weather or not they like to reveal very much about themselves, who there family was excetera.

 

Finally what is the appearance of this character. Are they an alien, are they human, are they young, or are they old. Does this character have any real identifying features such as a wicked scar across the face

 

 

So here is your first assignment. Come up with a male or female Recruit, include a name and backstory using the guidlines above. The only stipulation on the project is that you can't use your own alias or real name as the name of the Recruit.

[DarthMaul v.1/2]

Hail lord Darkkender!

 

As you know, I am already enrolled!

 

You also know that I think this is a GREAT idea, and probably a little over-due. I think it's great not just so I can learn to MOD with some guidance, but also for the future of this great site. Hands-on teaching is always the best way for any one to learn any new thing.

 

'Halowan U' should produce a new generation of MODders with fresh new ideas that can only cause this already great forum to grow. When it comes to MODs, if you are like me, there can never be too many MODs to choose from! Just think: by the time KotOR III is finally released (c'mon LucasArts...), there will be a full compliment of skilled MODders to expand on it even more than K1 and TSL!

 

THANKS to you darth333, for allowing Darkkender to 'open campus' to us nOOb-ies! I am certain this should be a benefit to us all. This is the next logical evolutionary step for this forum - we already have the great "Getting Started with MODding " and all the links to MOD tools and the great tutorials (thanks to darth333, Achilles, ChAiNz, svosh, T7, tk) - however as we all know, some of the tutorials are a little out-dated. While it isn't a real problem, it can be pretty confusing to a nOOb (believe me, I know!)- this training will only serve to make sense of it all.

 

Most especially, THANKS to you Darkkender! Thanks for having the vision to think this one up - and not just think about it, realize it!

 

This is going to be fan-freakin'-tastic! I am already signed up, and I encourage ALL the other nOOb-ies to do the same! I'll be starting my first home work assignment in just a few moments (after I finish finding out if Mac released the DAP Expansion yet!)

 

P.S. - Hey all, let's pick a name for our new campus! I already dropped the obvious one, 'Halowan U' - maybe something along the lines of 'Telos Hidden MOD Academy' - that's just a couple off the top of my head - as you guys post on this, give some more name ideas. Maybe once we have 10 or so cool ideas we can make a poll and vote for the name of our new school - just a thought!

 

- DM.005

[darthmaster50]

Im in sence Darkkender is great at explaining things.

[DarthMaul v.1/2]

Im in sence Darkkender is great at explaining things.

Hey darthmaster50!

 

Glad to see you're on board! I was just going 'door-to-door' (so-to-speak) and letting the masses know about this - now I can cross your name off the list!

 

I agree with your assesment of Darkkender, he is very good at explaining - also it doesn't hurt that he is a true Master MODder (reference: Halowan Plug-In)! This course should make MODding truly accessable to everybody!

 

Be seeing you in 'class' dm50! I'll be the Sith lord with the red and black tatoos passing notes to all the ladies!

 

P.S. So what do you think we should call our new MOD school? I dropped a couple ideas in my post above - any ideas?

 

- DM.005

[Valenica]

I think I'd like to learn too. I tried with the other tutorials, but since englisch's not my native tounge and so i'm having a little trouble with grasping the meaning of some things.

[Darkkender]

P.S. So what do you think we should call our new MOD school? I dropped a couple ideas in my post above - any ideas?

 

- DM.005

 

I suppose we could Call it "Boot Camp Maggot", "Now Drop and Give Me Fifty." j/k

 

But seriously it is great that your excited about it however you may want to ease off on the posting this in everybodies threads because the Moderators might get a bit cranky about it. Especially since it's really close to spamming threads. [Gasp] Fyi it's "Holowan" not Halowan.

 

I do hope that these trainings are as helpful as possible. Look for course #2 sometime this evening.

[Darkkender]

I think I'd like to learn too. I tried with the other tutorials, but since englisch's not my native tounge and so i'm having a little trouble with grasping the meaning of some things.

 

 

After all of the courses are complete I'll see about trying to get them converted to other languages. However since English is the only language I know It will be really difficult for me too translate because once it's converted I'll have no idea if all the information is translated properly. But I'll be glad to work one on one with anybody who doesn't speak english natively after all is done as well.

[Reclaimer]

This a great idea, but I though D333 said no...

 

Oh well, great job so far!

[Darth InSidious]

I suppose we could Call it "Boot Camp Maggot", "Now Drop and Give Me Fifty." j/k

 

<snip>

 

I do hope that these trainings are as helpful as possible. Look for course #2 sometime this evening.

 

This is a great idea, Darkkender, and I look forward to seeing what you produce

 

On the name, how about the MagnaGuard Production Line?

[Jackel]

This a great idea, but I though D333 said no...

 

Oh well, great job so far!

Darth333 shut down the other thread because Darkkender was linking to another forum which is against the forum rules.

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

Well, sign me up I guess. I've been a slow learner so far and every little bit helps:D

 

Does this simply involve following the thread?

 

So this is actual homework stuff, right?

For the first assignment are actual .utc's and .dlg's required, or just fill-in-the-blanks?

 

@Maul, This is DK's project, he has exclusive naming rights;)

uhhh...n00benders:lol: J/K

[Darkkender]

Darth333 shut down the other thread because Darkkender was linking to another forum which is against the forum rules.

 

Technically it is the same thread. I negotiated with her an edited version of the thread so as not to clutter the forums. She excepted it and re-opened the thread. Much thanks Darth333.

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

I forgot to ask, should work be PMed or posted?

[Darkkender]

This next stage of Modding 101 is being posted in parts to further wet the whistle. Once all of Course #2 is posted I will then assign Homework.

 

Redjohnnymike wrote

I forgot to ask, should work be PMed or posted?

Yes RJM there is actually Homework. Infact I highly encourage people to post there work as we go that way we all can see the ideas spawned by these courses.

 

That being said here is Part #1 of Course #2.

 

Course #2: Creating The Character

 

Okay you have your concept now what? Now we begin the process that gets at the root of creating that character. Okay first things first if you don't have any of the tools that we use downloaded and installed do so now before continuing. You will need the following programs downloaded and Installed. Kotor Tool(Latest Version), KGFF, & DLGEditor(This will be used in course #3).

 

Okay Let's take a look at Kotor Tool. Assuming that you have both K1 & K2 you should see a lay out similiar to this. Image_1 For the purposes of this course I will be using resources from K2 if all you have is K1 that is okay just skip my choices and focus on the locations of files and bring up a similiar file for K1. Click on the Kotor 2 tree you will see 4 sub-trees titled BIFs, RIMs, ERFs, & Saves. Click on the BIFs subtree which will give you a whole string of subtrees. You are looking for the one titled templates.bif, find this one and open it. You are now faced with a whole bunch of options many of which start with Blueprint, followed by other information. We want the Blueprint, Character subtree. So everything should look like the following. Image_2 Alright now we will scroll down through this long list and locate the file titled P_atton.utc. Go ahead and double click this and you should get a seperate window that pops up that looks like this. Image_3

 

Okay the first things we are going to edit are the fields titled "First Name" and "Tag". Replace Atton with the first name of your new recruit that we conceptualized in course #1. So in my case since i am building a Darth Vader Recruit mod I will replace Atton on those 2 lines with Vader. Like so Image_4 You can also choose to place the full name of your character in the First Name field if you like. The next field you want to change is at the bottom labelled conversation. You will find atton listed there as well go ahead and change this to the same thing as your "tag" and "First name" fields in my case it will be vader. Like this Image_5 As you can see all of this has been relatively easy and painless. So on to the next step. Click on the advanced tab at the top and your window should now look like this. Image_6 The only field we want to change right now is the one titled Template Resref. You will see an entry named p_atton. Go ahead and change this to a new uniquie entry for your character. I would recomend continuing to use the "p_" at the beginning and keep the name simple and no more than 16 characters. So in my case it will be "p_vader", Like so. Image_7 At this stage were only going to do about one more thing to our new recruit before we save our work and close him temporarily. Locate the tab at the top titled classes and your window should look like this. Image_8 We are coing to change the class to one that matches that of our new character. For some of you the listed scoundrel class may already apply in which case just leave the class alone. However for Darth Vader I'm going to change his class and adjust his Good/Evil scale to be more Darkside. Image_9. Alright go ahead and save your new "UTC" file. We want to make sure the name of it matches the entry in our template resref field with the .utc extension at the end. So in my case when saving it should be "p_vader.utc", like so. Image_10

[Mitchio]

The Stickeys are very most confunding.

 

I was sent here via DarthMaul v.1/2 and would like to learn more, enroll me please!

[DarthMaul v.1/2]

I suppose we could Call it "Boot Camp Maggot", "Now Drop and Give Me Fifty." j/k

 

But seriously it is great that your excited about it however you may want to ease off on the posting this in everybodies threads because the Moderators might get a bit cranky about it. Especially since it's really close to spamming threads. [Gasp] Fyi it's "Holowan" not Halowan.

 

I do hope that these trainings are as helpful as possible. Look for course #2 sometime this evening.

 

What's up, DK?

 

 

HA! Say, that whole "drop and give me fifty/maggot" thing - HA! Only thing is, I don't drop and give fifty anythings these days -

 

But seriously , it is great that I'm excited about it - however I don't think you need to waste your time worrying about me and the modERATORS (they do a good enough job of that as it is! ) - besides, what I posted in the other members' threads can NOT be qualified as "SPAMming" (where's Jackel with the 'rule book' when I need him? ) - did you read my posts and the respective threads that they were directed to thoroughly ? All I did was try to help out the new folks the same way I myself would want to be helped - by giving as many different solutions to their individual problems/questions as I was capable of giving - I never strayed off-topic or 'SPAMmed' anything

 

I think even a lawyer as knowledgeable as darth333 would have that case thrown out in a court of 'SPAM' & DarthMaul v.1/2 braces for impact; - easy darth333, I'm just trying to make my point - don't hurt me!

 

Hey, I am a nOOb, but I understand the rules here well enough. When darth333 stepped all over your original post I was smart enough not to "SPAM" anything - I simply dropped you a PM and told you what a great idea this was, and how I would try to support it - remember ?

 

Besides, I have not seen any complaints from those I posted my replies to. All I have seen is a couple "Thank you's" from these folks, and increased interest by some of them in learning how to MOD - isn't that the point? I was under the impression that this is exactly why this forum exists - "to answer MODding questions and give instruction to those that want to learn about MODding" - now that is a para-phrase , but I am certain I have seen that very message from darth333 to you, right?

 

Anywho, I suppose I will refrain from gettin' all up in your way like that - just trying to help...I know, that's where I went wrong, huh?

 

Should I still submit my 'home work' , or will that only cause more problems? LOL -jk! (or am I?)

 

Oh, and my humblest apologies to the site for spelling HOLOWAN wrong! I am off to edit every single one of those posts - FYI , it is a result of me spending around 3 hours of my time typing exceedingly fast (for me!), like I said ... That's where I went wrong...trying to help!

 

- DM.005

 

DM, posting like you did in everyone elses question threads at that time (3 of them by my count) was indeed a form of spamming, while I and the other Mods appreciate your zeal, you don't need to post advertisements like that all over, people definately can see the threads on the first page.

 

Posting like you did once to point someone in the right direction is ok and we encourage this, but to post the same or similar post more than once in multiple threads is where the spamming issue comes into play.

 

You could have posted in one thread then PM'd the other 2 thread creators with your similar suggestion. My Mod colleagues may see this differently but this is my take on it, and what I would do in a similar circumstance. Just an FYI. -RH

[stoffe]

Go ahead and change this to a new uniquie entry for your character. I would recomend continuing to use the "p_" at the beginning and keep the name simple and no more than 16 characters. So in my case it will be "p_vader", Like so.

 

If I may, wouldn't it be better to encourage people from the very beginning to start using a (hopefully) unique personal suffix or prefix on all the ResRefs and filenames they create to reduce the potential of naming conflicts with other modders' work? It also makes it easier to keep track of which files are yours and which are made by others.

 

If you start early you learn to do it automatically without thinking about it. For example I prefix the resrefs/file names of all new files I create with an st_ prefix, like "st_vader.utc". So please don't use that.

 

I prefer to leave the default namespaces to the Bioware/Obsidian developers, but that's just my personal opinion.

[Darkkender]

If I may, wouldn't it be better to encourage people from the very beginning to start using a (hopefully) unique personal suffix or prefix on all the ResRefs and filenames they create to reduce the potential of naming conflicts with other modder's work? It also makes it easier to keep track of which files are yours and which are made by others.

 

If you start early you learn to do it automatically without thinking about it. For example I prefix the resrefs/file names of all new files I create with an st_ prefix, like "st_vader.utc". So please don't use that.

 

I prefer to leave the default namespaces to the Bioware/Obsidian developers, but that's just my personal opinion.

 

This was actually something I thought about holding as an advanced modding course. More specifically Naming conventions and what are good and bad methods. When it comes to a recruit mod frequently you will find yourself creating more than one UTC depending on the mod. I find I use the default prefixs for much the same reason Bioware/Obsidian do when it comes to a partymember who is part of the party. But after reading your post I think I will throw the Naming Conventions course in following the UTC course.

[DarthMaul v.1/2]

Hey there, Darkkender!

 

I am unclear as to where and when we should post our MOD Home work. Do we post our progress here, or is there going to be a different thread for that?

 

Also, should I post my first assignment (completed), or are we to finish course 2 and then post?

 

I was under the impression that we post everything here, but I just want to make sure before I post in the wrong place.

 

Thanks DK!

 

- DM.005

[Darkkender]

Posting it here would be recomended. Now I leave it up to you if you want to wait untill everything is complete or post as I hand out each assignment. Truth be told you don't have to post any of it but helps if you start to have difficulties following along. That or if you want some feedback on how to improve your work it's a way of enabling others the chance to provide you that feedback.

[Darkkender]

Part #2

 

Course #2: Creating The Character

 

Alright onto our 2DA fishes. Earlier in course #1 I stated that you should think of an appearance for your recruit. There may be many of you who had an idea that would fit with one of the appearances already in one of the KOTOR games. Maybe you thought your recruit would look something like the TSL caucasian male PC head with the scar across the one eye which would be "Player Male Caucasian #1". If you open Appearance.2da you will find the entries for this appearance are lines 166, 167, & 168 as seen here. Image_1 If you open Heads.2da you will find the entry for this head on line 51, as seen here. Image_2 Finally if you open Portraits.2da you will find the portrait for this character choice on line 23, as seen here. Image_3 Where is this all leading you might be asking right about now? To that I just say hang in there. Alright if you take a look at Atton's entries in the 3 above 2DA files you will find that there are very few differences between the layout with the exception that in Appearance.2da Atton only has one line entry. Here they are to make it easy. Image_4 Image_5 Image_6 Some of you may be wondering why that is. This is because the player has a choice between 3 body types that correspond with there class at character creation. However your NPC's only have one body type ever.

 

Alright so we have located our appearance in the 2da files that we feel would correspond to our new recruit. So this is where there are some diverging schools of thought. There is the quick and easy route to creating that recruit and that is by going back to our utc and scrolling through those drop down menus for appearance and portrait untill we find matching entries to the 2da files of the same name. BAD Idea! Here is why, say you want your player to also be the very same appearance. When you come to your recruit he will be headless. The reason is no NPC can have a head that shares the same Heads.2da reference as the PC's head. So how do we avoid this we create unique entries for our new NPC.

 

To create a Unique entry is rather easy. First we go too appearance.2da and copy one of the 3 line entries for the The Caucasian male PC #1. To do so click on the grey box to the left of our row entry. For this example I will be copying line 167, as seen here. Image_7 Now to paste the line we will have to do some fancy footwork. The reason is there seems to be a glitch in the latest release of Kotor Tool at the time of this course. Usually you should be able to scroll all the way down and click on the last row the one with a */Asterick and then right click and paste. However it seems that of late that feature has been disabled. So to get around that I will show you all a little trick. First click on the last row with any data in it, in a stock TSL appearance.2da file that would be row number 670. If you right click you will get a few different options one of which is to insert copied row. It should look like this. Image_8 Go ahead and insert your copied row. You will find your copied row is one row above the last row in appearance.2da. To fix this we simply copy the last row click on the row right above it which is the one we originally copied and inserted and then insert the copy of the last row. Now we can go back down to the last row highlight it and push our "Delete" key removing our extra row 670. I told you there would be some fancy footwork.

 

Alright we have our new entry in appearance.2da now we just need to copy line 51 from heads.2da to the bottom and line 23 from portraits.2da down to the bottom of that 2da file. remember we will have to play the copy the rows fancy footwork dance in each of these 2da's. Our end result for the 3 2da files should look like these. Image_9 Image_10 Image_11 The next steps are probably easier than the copying of the rows. We start by renumbering the rows that we copied in each of the 2da files. So our new row number in appearance.2da should be 671, in heads.2da it should be 192, and in portraits.2da it should be 63. That done now we go on to the next set of entries to change in each specific 2da file. For portraits.2da we will be changing the following columns Appearancenumber, Appearance_s, Appearance_l, & forpc. In Appearancenumber change this number to 671 to match our new appearance.2da entry. In Appearance_s & Appearance_l change these to 4 astericks(****). For the the final column forpc change this to "0". I would also recomend later changing the names of the photo entries to new names and creating your own photo's to match but that is for a later date and that topic will require at least a course to itself. We need not make any changes beyond the row number to heads.2da so we move onto appearance.2da. In appearance.2da we will need to scroll to the right until we come too the column labeled "normalhead" we want to change the 51 in it's entry to 192 so that it corresponds with our new heads.2da entry. Then change the column right next to it "backuphead" from 53 to 4 astericks (****). I would also suggest at least changing the label of this line to something more fitting for our new NPC. In my case I will be changing the Label to "Party_NPC_Darth_Vader". Here is how the portraits.2da and appearance.2da should look. Image_12 Image_13 Image_14

 

For the basic purposes of this course this is all of the 2da editing that will be required. Later when we approach advanced modding I will cover areas of appearance editing for the 2da files. Also much of this subject matter will also be aproached in Item Modding. Next we will be returning to our UTC with our fresh new appearance and portrait entries.

[darthmaster50]

I have K1 and I am making a NPC that is based off of the spaceman model. I want the color of his suit to change as he gets towards dark/light side. http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/4689/spacemanmdl3tz.png

[BlazeHoliday]

sweat stuff! i'm working on it now! keep it coming!