nightcleaver

That's not a toolset, thats not making the game fundamentally more moddable. Case closed.

Maybe her aging face is to fool us. Maybe she was once a darksider, and still holds those scars.

why would she be described as your spiritual guide like jolee, then?

I think you're right about that one, Kefka... Lucas probably has a real fascination with the possible toys he could use more than making an interesting or good movie series for the prequels.

They're quite a ways from release. There were quite a few such out of place/character screenshots for the first KOTOR. I never saw any pig men in cantina's, did you? Bastila most certainly isn't dark-side, whatever her tendencies are, before the leviathan/temple/starforge, either, yet there are still screenshots of her in black robes and red sith saber. Not to say Kreia won't be darkside, though, but I definitely suspect not. As you said, Jolee/Obi-wan type in supposition.

You're arguing against a generic argument, kid, and not against what I'm saying. I largely agree with you, believe it or not. Read over my post, like over the specifics. I say what I mean, because I don't like to fool around with random, useless semantics alot. "I'll never understand why people make topics like this, especially when it has been stated a couple of times by the Devs that there are no plans for any modding tools." I made the topic to have a discussion. I wanted to know if anoyone else felt the same way I did about the idea. I didn't say anywhere, and I didn't MEAN to imply anywhere that I thought this was going to happen. "Non-crappy easy to do mods: new light saber colors, extra items, new armor, enhanced graphics, more monsters, different monsters, new force powers, balanced force powers (should, heaven forbid, they not be perfect). Mods don't have to be 10 hour long epic conquests bud. A group could get together and basically create a dungeon romp with all new enemies and items and I would be perfectly happen. It wouldn't even require dialogue !! Its safe to say that mod tools > no mod tools Cecil hath spoken, conclusion reached, THREAD FINISHED" Mod tools don't add anything useful to the game is the meat of the argument I'm making. "I made all my mods by myself. Sorry about ruining the game for you with my unpolished, juvenile mods... " I was talking about NWN mods. I never said anything about KOTOR mods being crappy. I misread the above quote to say crappy instead of non-crappy. Keep doing what you're doing, I appreciate it. To clarify further: I was talking about the story and character interaction when I said unpolished and such. I never said anything about content, except to mention tilesets FOR NWN. I don't know of any tilesets for KOTOR, thus I wasn't talking about KOTOR modders. I'm seeing what arguments I can get out of people, and if I can get people to really listen to me. So far, I haven't felt even faintly angry, and only slightly annoyed... so.... that was basically my intention for this. After all, isn't that basically what everyone's doing right now? Another note to the quote (rhymed back at ya!!!) at the first of this post. What I'm saying is this: it's kind of like the darkside. On the early part of the learning curve, things are made way easier, but perfections are actually much more difficult to make by virtue of the engine making it simple for any old joe schmoe to do what they want. The tile system fundamentally sucks. Without it, it would be pretty difficult to make any bad mods, but also difficult for any mods to exist at all. And yes, I know exactly what you'll argue to that last part, but I don't care. My opinion (of which is stated before) still stands. And no, the fact that they aren't paid salary to do such things isn't why it's crappy. It's crappy because they don't do the right things. And regardless of if they have as much incentive to make things perfect, the quality is still not up to snuff with the professionals, REGARDLESS OF THE REASONS. So no, you're not "right", though you do have a well-supported opinion. I'm never going to change mine, though, because I fundamentally don't like the user made mods that anyone can slop together in a few seconds. You do, and that's fine. I don't really mean that they shouldn't make modding tools even if given the chance, I just mean that I don't like the idea, unlike the vast majority of people. Again, I started this thread for discussion. Thank you for participating.

Ahh. But I don't think that's a good mod. I think that's a pretty crappy mod, actually. as for easy, on any of those things? I seriously doubt reverse engineering is easy, and I don't particulary think they're crappy - at least they aren't pretentious about being more than they are. But those aren't mods in the sense I was thinking of, those are minor addon's. I guess you really do like the idea of completely generic levels made over and over again, with no pretensions of liking them for any depth or purpose other than to hack n' slash, but it requires more for me personally to be interested. If that's all you want, why do you want to move it to the odyessey engine as well? Regardless, I hope the sort of mod you described above isn't your idea of truly "excellent". As well, look at what I said before - I specified WHAT I didn't like about the modding tools. The generic qualities of the tilesets, the gimpy combat system... Fundamentally, this doesn't help mod makers do more work, but rahter does half of a mod maker's work for them. You get a lot of modules that are all almost exactly the same out of it. People make their own tilesets, but those certainly aren't without flaw. They're neat, sure, but not on the scale of polish that Bioware puts in it's other games. How many tilesets shipped with the game originally? Lame. EDIT: The multiplayer, while variable, I've had quite a bit of fun with. The DM Client and such was nice and necessary to put life into any of the generic qualities of NWN. Multiplayer isn't an issue in KOTOR; if it were, maybe I'd feel a little bit less estranged to the idea.

I wonder if you just have a compulsion to respond to every thread on the forum at least once, now. MAkes sense.

Maybe, somewhat like gorth semi-suggested, there should be tools in moderation, so that the problem of good modules getting hidden in the crap and crap rising to the surface by a few votes, and thus getting more attention, wouldn't happen so much. Actually, I'd say that there haven't been any EXCELLENT mods, but a few good ones. As an EXTREME conniseur of character interaction, being very observant of such similar interactions in real life, I find it incredibly frustrating when mod makers write basically the same style (and to a certain degree substance) of dialogue for every character, with only slight differences. There have been a number of "cute" or "charming" mods out there, but what's surprsing is that these are college age and up people a lot of times. I know not to criticize individual mods like that anymore, but suffice to say there've been mods I played with lots of content candy and eye candy that weren't terribly interesting to me to play through. A lot of the problem is how crappy the NWN battle system is, though. And how generic it seems. I REALLY hate how generic it is, and it's all so the joe schmoe who doesn't know or really care what they're doing can piddle out a few mods. The tile system sucks.

No, I know it won't be moddable, but I saw the idea when I was hunting through old threads and felt like bringing it up. I think the real problem thus far is that mods are made by individuals instead of teams, and that really doesn't work out well. There is ZERO QA involved in such projects, and people aren't too picky about game expansions that are free. I guess the popularity of many user made modules go to show that for the majority, quality and ESPECIALLY polish doesn't really matter. As well, without multiple writers or at least multiple perspectives taken of the story, it's going to be a very limited, bland game world - unless the person spends endless hours making it as Tolkien did. Tolkien, though, was an english/historyish major from (that one university that starts with an O? I think.), so you can hardly expect someone like him to be contrived. He did and re did, probably hundreds of times, every inch of his book, which is hardly something I'd expect the common mod maker to even attempt.

Dude, you're a freak. You're sick.

OK, so I saw this idea and felt the need to vent. This isn't really to make ANOTHER thread about how good an idea modding tools are, but quite the opposite - the I'm sure it could end up like that. I hate the idea of developers spending time to make the game more moddable. It works well for NWN, and I even enjoy some of the mods that come out of it, but I am of the extreme minority (I guess) that doesn't want EVERYTHING to go this direction, and here's why. First of all, it takes up DEV time - which wouldn't be a problem except that I don't like the idea. Second, I've only played a VERY few mods in NWN that were any good at all, or that were even properly polished. The common community, I think, can't really be trusted with stuff like that. Right now, there are probably millions of user made mods, and of them I've played, oh, maybe a total of 20, and actually completed and ENJOYED a total of three. No, those aren't precise statistics, but they're pretty class, and you get the picture. Can you see the problem here? I can. The ease of mod making has made it disgustingly easy for any twelve year old with an over-indulging hero complex to slop together a mod with absolutely no polish, effort, enthusiasm or imagination. I even feel about like that with some (well, I guess most) of the top rated mods out there at NWVAULT. I feel sorry for myself for ever giving user made mods the chance. Anyway, though I'd prefer only people who agreed with me posted in this thread hereafter, feel free to express opinions to the contrary. Realize that I respect other people's opinions just fine already, though, and if LA decided to comission user tools, I wouldn't scream and cry about it. I wouldn't look at user made mods, though, unless I didn't see a single typo in the description and it had a rating of 8 (allowing for the error inherent in the rating system) at least. You get the picture. So please, post a message and have a party. Everyone's invited! whoo!

It was footage from an old build, I'm pretty sure, though I'm not certain where I got that info. I'm pretty much 98.1 percent certain, though.

I was going to make a crack about all his "instruments" and "slots", but...

I liked the romance in PS: T just fine. It all went into the story is what I liked, which didn't really happen in KOTOR. There's Carth-Leviathan, sure, but you get the EXACT same scene with SLIGHTLY different undercurrents to the same conversation later. The only integration into the plot the Bastila romance has is at the very end, or if you get 1/1 million lucky, at the temple - even if THAT one happens, though, it's still pretty minor. I couldn't really pinpoint what it is that's missing in the KOTOR romance, I just know the Carth half proposal thing seemed really out of place to me. The more intimate conversations with Bastila, as self-imposed as she is, could have actually had some intimate undercurrents, you know? Nothing really seemed intimate or even FORCED to avoid intimacy until the kiss/starforge scenes. No, I couldn't say how you would change that - maybe it's just the voice acting. Then again, before that there was only the parents/past conversation that was faintly intimate. No way to know what the Dev time/limitations were, but those were problems as I saw it. The way I see it, over all: the Carth romance was awkwardly to the side, the Bastila romance was too front and center.

The reviewers probably saw a rumor and went with it. All the stuff in the IGN article looks rehashed. I don't think chris needs to clarify anything - HE hasn't said anything ambiguous.

It would be really great if they integrated the romances to the plotline a little better. I didn't like how they seemed to be entirely by themselves and separate from the rest of the game. There was never any banter/comments on what was going on around you, which is how people in real life ever fall in love, really. You don't just randomly start talking; that feels artificial, and makes the romances/friendships feel sort of incomplete. Banter is implied, but never used - I wonder why that is? Surely it wouldn't be that hard to do.

It was a neat idea, anyway, and I think it would add to immersion. It would be entirely cosmetic, mind you - or at least that's what I was thinking. I liked the mini bio in the first BG, so I guess that's more or less what I mean. And why not? it would make you feel like you were playing a real character, right? Not necessary, perhaps. But doesn't it add something? just pondering.

This has never been brought up before, but I think it's a great idea. It would introduce the PC, and would be an engaging chance to allow the PC to "determine" what his character is by more than just feats and skills. In movies and books and plays, characters are introduced along with the setting and the beginnings of the plot at the beginning, so this really wouldn't be too gimmicky - but I've never seen it done in a game before. Perhaps there could be dialogue options like, "my past is my own" so that power gamers can just go on with their business and not bother with it. Even if you're already doing this, this is an interesting concept to throw around, so I wanted to. What do you guys think of this idea? Would it be engaging and interesting, or a waste of time?

Agreed. The PC has nothing to forget during the time he's asleep. Read over the sentence again - it says the character doesn't know how they got to where they are at the beginning of the game. One explanation is amnesia, the other is that THEY WEREN'T EVEN CONSCIOUS, and thus totally INCAPABLE of forming memory, and thus incapable of LOSING memory. Do you form memories of everything that happens when you sleep? No. But if that makes you define SLEEPING as having amnesia, well... I don't know what to say to you. Amnesia, by the dictionary, is the LOSS of memories. Personally, I think it makes more sense for your character to not be pre-defined and for the PC to have some control over who they are. I think of it less as a plot gimmick, and more as a way to allow the game (within reason) to be linear, but still follow a plotline and allow the player to roleplayer their PC as they wish. This is, after all, a game. As for plot device: well, kinda. Anything you do in a plot can be called a plot device. We'll have to see what they do with it.

Whoa! when do you force choke in dialogue, KOTOR?

*clap clap*

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I wonder how many more threads like this will randomly pop up, and twenty five people will inexplicably always answer them. Yeah, it should be good.

Odyssey isn't Aurora. If it were, a toolset would be easy to make, and the tilesets would likely have the same generic quality to them that NWN does. Multiplayer would actually be supported- that's the REALLY big difference here.

None of these games sound very conducive to special inspiration or imagination. They're all run of the mill and don't attract much attention at all. I hope lucasarts knows what they're doing, choosing him. Lucasarts has made a lot of mistakes in the past, there's no denying. I think music matters a lot. I brought up this thread, and I am, after all, a musician. However, I don't think a soundtrack, no matter how good, could ever suffocate other parts of the game, unless it were a bad soundtrack. Maybe the soundtrack sounds good, but it doesn't fit at all - that wouldn't work, but anyone who composes music for a living has a concept of that, so I'm not worrying. Actually, this is what really bother's me about a lot of jeremy soules stuff. I really hated the Republic theme, in character creation and elswhere. His music is a little too subdued in a lot of instances, and I was hoping this guy was different. I'm thinking lucasarts, based on the other games this guy has done, is getting this guy to do it because he's good at sticking to the star wars type themes, and that's what people complained about and wanted more of for the most part in the first one.