Compatibilities list?(PLEASE read first)

[Shotgunner]

First off, I hope I am putting this thread in the proper forum. I was not sure which one would be the proper one, so I made an assumption and placed it here. If this is not the proper place for this thread, please forgive me, and have it moved to the proper place.

 

OK, now I can not speak for everyone here, BUT I am getting tired of seeing a new mod, saying "Hey, that sounds cool! I gotta try it!" and finding out that it doesn't work with the other mods I have installed at the time. In a few cases, I had to remove all the mods from my Override folder and reinstall them all over again(in some cases, I had corrupted my game directory files and had to reinstall).

 

I propose a project that will list, for KOTOR 1 & KOTOR 2, what mods are compatible with what. I know some of the mod makers give a compatibility list in their mod's readmes, but we all know that that is NOT the extent of the compatible ones out there. And I know I am not the only one who tries a new mod and has to remove and reinstall the mods he/she has due to incompatibilies. The sole purpose of this project is to either have a "sticky post" with all the compatibilities, or a seperate page(which I would be willing to host, BTW) with such information. Such information, however, would have to come from my fellow KOTOR players as well as myself.

 

As for how we would confirm a compatibility, I would think that three seperate confirmations from different individuals would classify one as being compatible. The only information needed would be the following:

 

Which KOTOR? - K1 or K2

Mod found where? - where you downloaded the mod from

Compatible with? - self explanatory(include version # of the mod if more than one version exists)

 

So, would this project be a good idea, or is it a waste of time?

[Darkkender]

So, would this project be a good idea, or is it a waste of time?

 

Not to be a killjoy however I would say the list is more waste than good. Not that it couldn't be beneficial, it's just that by the time you complete the list and testing of each mod you likely would have learned how to mod or in the least what methods would be needed to make mods compatible with each other.

 

Many of the incompatibilities you will run into out there are caused by 2da files. Many of them simply need to be merged together by the end-user. The other files that tend to be incompatible are the GFF files of differnet natures in particular creature's, item's, & Dialogs. These can be harder at times to fix but not that hard and usually once again simply need to be merged. The final thing you will run into for mod incompatibilities are texture mods. Frequently modders will reskin there favorite head and not offer it up as an alternate head only as a new skin. The same happens with robes as people frequently are not happy with a robes color and desire to improve upon it.

 

Of the above types of incompatibilities I've seen 2da and textures are at the top of the list.

[m16965]

It is a good idea as some of my robe mods do confilct, however collecting the 1000s of mods made by a huge mumber of authors and testing them all will sureley take more time than many people have Some people do put in thier readme's and that is very helpful.

[Darth333]

Well it doesn't seem quite useful to me. Basically if you have two files with the same names, the rule is that the mods are incompatible with each other unless the author says otherwise in the readme. I think that verifying if you have two identical files requires less work than going through a huge list of mods.

 

I'd say that about 90% of the incompatibilities concern mods that make use of the .2da files, the other 10% is for textures, items, npcs and more rarely scripts. This problem was largely solve for Kotor 2 mods with stoffe's TSLpatcher (not all the mods use it however) but the tool didn't existed at the time most people were modding Kotor 1.

 

[force persuade] Instead of making this list, maybe you should try your hand at modding: it wouldn't take more time than making this huge list, it would certainly be more fun and you would learn how to solve all these incompatibilities [/force persuade]

[BoredAdminMonky]

A mod manager would be very useful I have to say. There was one made for freelancer a while back, which would tell you if there was a conflict with any mods once you activated them from the control panel. But i is a large undertaking :-(

[Kitty Kitty]

Ahem...

cchargin's Mod Manager [K1/TSL]

 

To be honest, I haven't used it myself, since while I haven't quite mastered all aspects of modding, I've known enough about it that I know how to solve any potential conflicts I might encounter.

 

At a glance though, it looks like it would be pretty handy for anyone who'd rather not try to ensure compatability by hand.

 

-Kitt

[Darkkender]

You hit that one square on the head. Also KMM(Kotor Mod Manager) was heavily used by many of us modders for a while during K1 and before the TSLpatcher for the convience of mod users. So you will find many mods that have included a KMM file for use with the Kotor Mod Manager utility.