Lara for DS II

The second Dungeon Siege has some significant advantages over the first, and also some major drawbacks.

On the plus side, it supports shaders, larger resolution textures, and and has the flick system for NIS's and other animation chores.
Negatives are the overly complex character development (the skills/powers thing), excessive visual fx which make everything glow, drip, burn and flash, and the CRC blockage for mods, which stops you from changing the resources during a game, so you now can't add or change a mod without starting over from the beginning.

I decided that I could do something about most of the features I didn't like, and make good use of the ones i did, so I started a new Lara project using DS II. Because I'm not happy mapping, I reused part of the ds2world one and replaced all the population, good and evil, with a new selection of new and old creatures that fit my story. One of them, of course, is the latest version of Lara.

After looking into the files, I realised that the skills and powers are too deeply embedded in the engine, so I left them in, but I intend to replace some of the skills and powers with more suitable ones later. The fx overload just means editing templates to delete the ones I don't like. And the CRC problem isn't for a Total Conversion, because you're not mixing mods anyway.

Plans for the siegelet include:

Her packpack will hold her inventory - if she takes it off, she has no inventory space, and she can buy/find a bigger one with two pages. It equips as a shield, so she can't use bows, or two-handed weapons.
Sex to balance the violence. She won't won't just hack everything and everyone, sometimes the interactions will be more pleasant.
Less magic and more science. Make bombs, acid or similar weapons to use instead of spells from chemical reagents. Healing "magic" based on herbs etc. The "enchanter" becomes a lab assistant to help make them.
Pets reduced down to just the packmule. I may even eliminate pets completely.
Credible mobs and NPC's - no elves, no dryads, no half-giants. Dwarves are OK, and one or two goblins might turn up. Lions, snakes, scorpions, spiders, hyenas, bats and all genuine wild animals are fair "game", but dragons will not be in there.
The teleporters will be eliminated, or at least reduced to a few special cases of importance to the storyline. Town portal spell also needs review.