Support NeoGAF

[RandomSeed]

I probably played KOTOR2 10 times back on the original XBOX, but I don't think I ever got sick of Peragus. It's one of my favorite prologue type areas I think. The mystery of what happened is so damn good, and having force powers from the start avoids the Taris Rush, aka Force Skip

Spoiler

Content

.

 

[la_briola]

My monitor is running at 1080p 120Hz as well; KOTORs options were 1080p@60Hz and, weirdly, 1080p@84 Hz. I set it to 60Hz with vsync on, and according to the Steam fps overlay it ended up running at 120. I didn't check xrandr or anything.

You are right, the steam FPS counter shows 120 for me as well. :lol

 

[pmj]

The Game seems to offer a generic list of resolutions and refresh rates, instead of arbitrary.

Can anyone confirm this?

I have a 60 Hz screen and get the same list of resolutions and refresh rates but with one addition: 1152x864 @ 75 Hz

Edit: Actually, my list perfectly matches my xrandr output. Didn't think my monitor could do anything but 60, but xrandr at least says it can, in lower resolution.

 

[FlyinJ]

Is there a button on the controller to switch weapons?

And what do the triggers do? They seem to have no function...

 

[Grief.exe]

120 FPS KOTOR. My 144 Hz monitor is ready, but I don't know if my body can handle the utter smoothness as the frames slide over my corneas.

 

[Trojita]

You really find the latter an example of good writing? It's Oblivion's standard overwritten crap

And then we shall see if Wulfram can stand against the full fury of Bishoptl! Ha-ha-ha!

 

[Altazor]

Found out about this last night. HAD TO install it.

I regret nothing.

 

[Ralemont]

Ha-ha-ha!

Does this show anything except both companies know how to write bombastic villains who talk a big game they can't back up? If we're being reductionist, let's also not forget Darth Nihilus, a character who comes across like a Sonic fan fiction writer started dabbling in the Star Wars universe (hyperbole).

lol.

Every BioWare RPG has the exact same character templates. Carth Onasi IS Kaiden Alenko right down to the voice actor. Mission is Tali, Bastila is Liara, etc.

Different game, same cast.

Wow, we really are being reductionist. Carth Onasi and Kaidan have the same voice actor, but that's where the similarities stop. Bastila is Liara? Come on, now.

I probably played KOTOR2 10 times back on the original XBOX, but I don't think I ever got sick of Peragus. It's one of my favorite prologue type areas I think. The mystery of what happened is so damn good, and having force powers from the start avoids the Taris Rush, aka Force Skip

Spoiler

Content

.

Agreed. Awesome area.

 

[Ifrit]

Controller support? Awesome

Ok thats it, finally time to buy and play this game

 

[Nzyme32]

You really find the latter an example of good writing? It's Oblivion's standard overwritten crap

Hahaha. Was going to talk about how awful Bioware has been with writing but it's already been taken care of. Obsidian are by no means stellar with their writing but I find them superior to Bioware for sure.

lol.

Every BioWare RPG has the exact same character templates. Carth Onasi IS Kaiden Alenko right down to the voice actor. Mission is Tali, Bastila is Liara, etc.

Different game, same cast.

 

[Easy_D]

lol.

Every BioWare RPG has the exact same character templates. Carth Onasi IS Kaiden Alenko right down to the voice actor. Mission is Tali, Bastila is Liara, etc.

Different game, same cast.

Not to mention the plot structure is laid out in the same god damn way too. BAD GUY OH NO. Go to different planets to find map to dangerous thing!

 

[Kinthalis]

Purchased.

Any news on whether KOTOR 1 will get the same treatment at some point?

 

[AntiFacebook]

Hahaha. Was going to talk about how awful Bioware has been with writing but it's already been taken care of. Obsidian are by no means stellar with their writing but I find them superior to Bioware for sure.

lol.
What video game developer does writing better than obsidian?

 

[Spacejaws]

Purchased.

Any news on whether KOTOR 1 will get the same treatment at some point?

Only on IOS.

Ha-ha-ha!

 

[la_briola]

Meh. I finished the prologue, landed on Peragus, the cutscene played, then loading screen of doom. I quit the game and reloaded into the loading screen of doom...

 

[Ralemont]

Meh. I finished the prologue, landed on Peragus, the cutscene played, then loading screen of doom. I quit the game and reloaded into the loading screen of doom...

 

[pmj]

Meh. I finished the prologue, landed on Peragus, the cutscene played, then loading screen of doom. I quit the game and reloaded into the loading screen of doom...

Same thing here. I assume you installed restored content mod? I tried without it and was able to progress.

 

[heringer]

I wonder if there's any chance the upcoming iOS version of KOTOR 2 (developed by Aspyr) will come with the restored content... ?

 

[Henrar]

Only on IOS.

Ha-ha-ha!

There is also a Mac version

 

[la_briola]

Same thing here. I assume you installed restored content mod? I tried without it and was able to progress.

Yeah, its a saving screen, not a loading screen. I took a picture:

 

[Pixel Samurai]

Did you try this?

Thanks! I'll try this later.

 

[la_briola]

Seems to be a known problem: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/485537937/541906348059098329/

With a fix/workaround?!

Hello,
I've found a simple workaround for the problem. Just copy the entire content of the "steamapps/workshop/content/x//y" (the place where the mod is) to "steamapps/common/Knights of the Old Republic II/steamassets". And that fixed it for me - running latest mint.
I ran the kotor process with strace but the resulting file was too big to properly analyze - but I noticed that there were few ENOENT errors so I figured might aswell copy the files over.

Hope that helps in finding the proper fix.

Best Regards

The case-sensitivity thingy was my best guess, right after incorrect OS locale. I figure someone can write one-liner to check if the 'open' calls have paths that correspond to real files in the mod directory (or if the open path argument is, for example App.mod and the actual file is app.mod). I wanted to do it, but it's really late here

did a bit more investigation on this, btw, and it does seem like it's a case-sensitivity issue. I ran an strace on the process and this appears to be the relevant bits (I've trimmed a bunch of unnecessary stuff out)

[pid 16654] open("/usr/local/games/Steam/SteamApps/workshop/content/208580/485537937/modules/101PER.mod", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 16654] open("./localized/english/modules/101per.mod", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 16654] open("./modules/101per.mod", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

So that's the point at which loading freezes. As you can see, the filename that's first requested is "101PER.mod" (with an uppercase "PER"), but then when the engine attempts to fall back to the non-mod locations, it switches to lowercase "per." The file itself, as distributed with the mod, uses lowercase, so it's stored in workshop/content/208580/485537937/modules/101per.mod.

That's probably why copying the data outside of the workshop dir happens to fix the issue - the engine's changing the case of the file that it's looking for, which makes the file-load work properly.

 

[heringer]

Also, does the game has any must have graphical mods? Like enhanced textures, things like that?

 

[pmj]

Seems to be a known problem: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/485537937/541906348059098329/

With a fix/workaround?!

The dev posting there seems interested in getting it fixed, so I'll wait for a patch.

 

[KojiKnight]

Also, does the game has any must have graphical mods? Like enhanced textures, things like that?

The game engine can't seem to handle larger textures (or at least I assume that's why I've never seen any). There are mods out there that add different weapons/armors/light saber crystals.... but none that I'd consider essential.

 

[heringer]

The game engine can't seem to handle larger textures (or at least I assume that's why I've never seen any). There are mods out there that add different weapons/armors/light saber crystals.... but none that I'd consider essential.

Shame. I also always wondered why the game wasn't full of mods.

 

[demosthenes]

Does the game come with the mod now or do you need to download it separately?

Going to play this as I just finished arkham knight. So excited!

 

[KojiKnight]

Does the game come with the mod now or do you need to download it separately?

Going to play this as I just finished arkham knight. So excited!

Separate, but it's in the steam workshop now instead of having to go out and download it and apply it manually.

 

[demosthenes]

Separate, but it's in the steam workshop now instead of having to go out and download it and apply it manually.

Oh, great. I can't wait! Hope kotor 1 gets this :3

 

[ricki42]

Purchased.

Any news on whether KOTOR 1 will get the same treatment at some point?

Currently not on their roadmap, so doubtful at this point.

.

 

[Chance Hale]

120 FPS KOTOR. My 144 Hz monitor is ready, but I don't know if my body can handle the utter smoothness as the frames slide over my corneas.

Game often drops to the 40s at 1440p with a 980ti for me so good luck

Framerate capped at 85 in the menu options as well

 

[Grief.exe]

Game often drops to the 40s at 1440p with a 980ti for me so good luck

Framerate capped at 85 in the menu options as well

Whoa

I don't remmber having frame dips when I was downsampling KOTOR 1 from 4K when I played it a couple years ago.

 

[demosthenes]

.

Ugh

 

[blackjaw]

How's it run on MacBook Pro? Anyone attempt it?

 

[StereoVsn]

What's cool is that its even "mostly" supporting 21x9 and 3440x1440 resolution! I have had couple crashes when cut-scenes are switching but overall the update is really nice.

 

[StereoVsn]

How's it run on MacBook Pro? Anyone attempt it?

It runs on Surface Pro 3 so I would imagine you wouldn't have issues with a MBPro as long as it's not too old.

 

[Durante]

Durante do you know or can you surmise that this new update will break all existing mods. I had a Disciple and Handmaiden mod that allowed them to join you regardless of gender.

Also will all mods have to move through the steam workshop or will we be able to use previous overwrite methods?

It really depends on the specifics of how each previous mod in question works. Mods which modify exclusively game data should still work, while ones which actually modified code most likely need to be adjusted.

I don't think you will find anyone who disagrees with this statement(except for makers of closed platforms,that is)

I'd hope so, but given how deeply some members of GAF associate themselves with the makers of closed platforms I sadly doubt it.

Does this show anything except both companies know how to write bombastic villains who talk a big game they can't back up?

It shows that one company is better at writing than the other. Admittedly, what shows that far more clearly than a single sentence from each is actually playing both games. Or, say, playing a Dragon Age game and then playing Pillars of Eternity.

 

[agiantenemycrab]

It is perhaps worth noting that KOTOR1 is marked as having Steam achievements in SteamDB, and shows the "Show Stats" option is visible on the Steam Community Hub (which only appears for games that are marked as having achievements - even if they haven't been implemented yet).

I would surprised if a similar update for KOTOR1 does not happen.

 

[Ralemont]

It shows that one company is better at writing than the other. Admittedly, what shows that far more clearly than a single sentence from each is actually playing both games. Or, say, playing a Dragon Age game and then playing Pillars of Eternity.

I haven't played Pillars yet, so it's entirely possible I'll agree with you once I do regarding Dragon Age.

Having said that, I sincerely doubt replaying both KOTORs for the fifth time is going to drastically shift my opinion that both are written well and that neither stands clearly above the other.

 

[Grief.exe]

It is perhaps worth noting that KOTOR1 is marked as having Steam achievements in SteamDB, and shows the "Show Stats" option is visible on the Steam Community Hub (which only appears for games that are marked as having achievements - even if they haven't been implemented yet).

I would surprised if a similar update for KOTOR1 does not happen.

Database hasn't been touched in months, a year if you don't include the slight Mac version patch.

No achievement data on the database either.

"achievementpercentages": {
"achievements": [

]

}
}

Unless something changes, don't expect anything.

 

[pahamrick]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but folks who say Bioware wrote better characters and villains than the folks at Obsidian are nuts. (Kidding, kidding.)

And I LOVE Bioware games, have many hundreds of hours in DA:O, DA:I, and the Mass Effect games but in my eyes you just can't compare them writing wise. I don't think I could put into words why I prefer Obsidian's writing style over Bioware (Or Bethesda). It's not to say the writing in Bioware/Bethesda games are outright terrible IMO, but there's just something about the way the writers at Obsidian (I'll miss you there, Mr. Avellone) work that grabs me like few other game writers can.

 

[Bizzquik]

Lost in all of this excitement about controller support, widescreen support, higher resolutions, etc ..... is Steam Workshop support.

I think I'll put off playing this game for a month or so, just to see what shows up in the Workshop.

 

[robgrab]

Proper widescreen support coupled with Reshade FTW.

 

[la_briola]

The dev posting there seems interested in getting it fixed, so I'll wait for a patch.

Yeah, it seems the dev of the game is to "blame".

The renaming is legit, Aspyr added that for Linux specifically to prevent issues.
Apparently something did slip past though...

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop...37937/541906348059098329/#c541906989389992851

Interesting. So it seems to me that if the engine is asked to load a file, for instance "modules/101PER.mod," it'll look in three locations: 1) Workshop mod dirs, 2) Localization dirs, and 3) the base game dir itself. It seems that in the latter two cases, KOTOR2 will automatically lowercase the filename request, but when loading from the workshop dir, it won't. I assume that that's what needs to get fixed on the engine side.

I'd be happy to submit a report to Aspyr about that, but I suspect that you might have a more direct contact line to their devs right now? Though since it's an issue on a platform you don't actually support, I would certainly understand if you didn't particularly want to be in the loop on it.

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop...37937/541906348059098329/#c541906989390056131

edit: Update!

So, until Aspyr has an opportunity to fix the engine to look for lowercase filenames in workshop mod dirs, I'd say that the file-copy method is certainly the best bet for getting this to work. Given the behavior of the lowercase-filename normalization, I'd guess that it should be solid, and you wouldn't have to worry about a file being "missed" or whatever.

Also given the behavior of file-loading, it looks like you've got two choices for where to copy the mod files: 1) on top of KOTOR2's "steamassets" dir itself, or 2) inside a "steamassets/localized/english" dir (The language dir itself seems likely to be different depending on your locale, so folks not running it in English might have to do more investigation). In my case, running the English version of the game/mod, it looks like using the "localized" dir would be preferrable, because that dir doesn't exist on the base installation, so cleaning up the mod after the fact would be much simpler. To install:

Subscribe to the mod
Launch KOTOR2 at least once, so the engine lowercases all files in the mod
Create $STEAMROOT/SteamApps/Common/Knights of the Old Republic II/steamassets/localized/english (the "localized" dir itself did not exist for me)
Recursively copy the contents of $STEAMROOT/SteamApps/workshop/content/208580/485537937/ into the dir you just created
Unsubscribe from the mod


At that point, you've got a steamassets/localized/english dir which will only contain the mod files, and nothing else. If you wanted to remove the mod (after this bug gets fixed, etc), all you've got to do is remove that "localized" dir. This has the added benefit that so long as nothing gets officially added to the "localized" dir in the Steam manifests, updates to KOTOR2 won't end up breaking the mod. I assume that possibly other localizations could make this more problematic, though - it might only be this simple if you're running the English versions.

If you instead copy over the base "steamassets" dir, removal of the mod at a later date is a bit more problematic. Most of the files provided by the mod are new, so you could just keep a text file with a list of the files around and manually remove, but a number of them are actually "overridden" by the mod, so if you copy over directly into "steamassets" you'd need to make sure to verify your game cache, etc, to fully recover those files. For reference, here are the files which are overridden:

lips/301nar_loc.mod
lips/610dan_loc.mod
lips/605dan_loc.mod
lips/101per_loc.mod
lips/303nar_loc.mod
lips/650dan_loc.mod
lips/602dan_loc.mod
override/handmaiden.dlg
modules/702kor_s.rim
modules/401dxn_dlg.erf
modules/702kor_dlg.erf
modules/401dxn_s.rim
dialog.tlk
streamvoice/702/rev_end/702rev_end002.wav
streamvoice/702/rev_end/702rev_end003.wav
streamvoice/303/zezkaiel/303zezkaiel106.wav
streamvoice/301/tienn/301tienn006.wav
streamvoice/605/ralon/605ralon010.wav


Anyway, I did test out copying the mod into steamassets/localized/english, and it worked beautifully for me, so that might be the best bet at the moment.

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop...37937/541906348059098329/#c541906989390180095

 

[Kinthalis]

.

 

[Grief.exe]

No plans for a KOTOR 1 update currently.

https://twitter.com/Grief_exe/status/623894131660554240?s=15

Proper widescreen support coupled with Reshade FTW.

So clean.

Post your settings, I've never used reshade before.

There's something major broken with the fog in that screenshot.

Uh oh.

 

[Durante]

There's something major broken with the fog in that screenshot.

 

[robgrab]

There's something major broken with the fog in that screenshot.

I think it's a LOD issue. Not sure if it can be increased/decreased.

This was the only angle where the fog wasn't overly distracting. Other levels didn't have this problem but I just wanted to show grass using AO. Makes a HUGE difference.

 

[Arulan]

This is an unexpected surprise. I hope it encourages more players to finally play the better KotOR.

It shows that one company is better at writing than the other. Admittedly, what shows that far more clearly than a single sentence from each is actually playing both games. Or, say, playing a Dragon Age game and then playing Pillars of Eternity.

I don't know how this is a matter of debate. Obsidian has a long history of favoring writing and by extent world-building in their design priorities. Even before the formation of Obsidian Entertainment a lot of their prominent employees have a strong reputation in doing so, notably with Planescape: Torment (MCA will be missed, but I hope his future RPG endeavors will put his talent to good use). Some good examples from Obsidian proper include Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, Fallout: New Vegas, and Pillars of Eternity. On the other hand, BioWare has never excelled at writing, even before their decline. I feel the reason they're often put on a pedestal is because relative to the standards of the rest of the industry, they stand out, but that's not saying very much.

 

[elcuervo75]

I love how they added this to an old game and I hope it makes them a lot of money so others do it too! I wish the first two Dragon Age games had controller support.

Please also bring this to kotor 1!