KOTOR II fan restoration article over at ars

[ICXRa]

KOTOR II Article

 

[DaveSimmons]

There was a discussion a week or two ago, but good luck finding it with forum search

It's nice to see a released restoration from someone else after Team Gizka failed miserably. If you give up on your project after promising it for years the honorable thing to do is either to turn it over to someone else to finish or open source it for everyone and hope someone adopts it.

 

[Sylvanas]

Watching that trailer makes me really want to install Kotor2 again and try this out, it's been sitting on my desk for a while staring at me I just havent got round to installing it. Has anyone tried this and how stable or bug free is it?

 

[Bateluer]

Was this a fork of Project Gizka?

 

[Liet]

I'm just finishing up KOTOR I again after it was recently released on Steam, and I'd love to play II, but it doesn't seem to be available on Steam and I don't want to try searching for it.

Too bad, I'd have liked to try it with this patch.

 

[ICXRa]

You can pick it up at Target for $20

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Was this a fork of Project Gizka?

No, Team Gizka has never released any of their work to the modding community, even now that the team is down to one person who isn't actually working on it.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I downloaded the mod you are talking about, but have not been able to figure out where and how to install the files into KOTOR 2. Can anyone tell me how to install the mod?? I would really like to see a better ending to the game, but I dont know if it is worth it to play through the whole game again and maybe have it crash somewhere because the mod does not work properly.

By the way, I had a really hard time getting the game to launch in Vista. I had to download a revised Mss32.dll file to get it to launch.

 

[qliveur]

Vista, huh? The game does run fine, but you'll need to install it according to the instructions given in the first two posts in this thread. Please follow ALL of these instructions and you shouldn't have any trouble.

I'd start by updating DirectX with the full redistributable from MS. Then install the game according to the first post, and patch the game according to the last part of the second. Then replace the mss32.dll with the fixed one and the swkotor.exe with the updated one provided by SecuROM. The download links for all of these files are provided in the thread. Make sure that both files overwrite the old ones, or, better yet, remove the old files before replacing them.

Then hack the swkotor2.ini and enter the "Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1" lag fix under "Graphics Options", and set "FullScreen=1" under both "Display Options" and "Graphics Options". Then save and exit. Lastly, make sure that you set CPU affinity to a single core every time you launch the game. If you're still having trouble try turning v-sync on or off from the game's graphics menu.

To install the mod right-click on your main game folder (default would be C:\Program Files\LucasArts\SWKotOR2), select "Properties", uncheck "Read-Only" and apply to all files and subfolders. Then extract the mod to a folder of your choosing (NOT the game folder) and run the .exe in XP compatibility mode as an administrator. Then download the latest patch and run its .exe in the same way. I believe that both will automatically find your game folder, but if not, just point the installer to your main game folder (once again, default would be C:\Program Files\LucasArts\SWKotOR2).

Good luck.

 

[s44]

There are two patches to the restoration mod. I'll try to link all the mod pieces.

mod, patch a, patch b. You have to install them all in order.

Also, if you want to use the other restoration mod DarthStoney did (M4-78 -- the droid planet I think), another modder has popped together a patch to make this compatible with the larger restoration mod until Stoney is ready to revise the project himself to fit it with his newer work. To use this planet, get these files

original mod, compatibility patch, compatibility patch bugfix. EDIT: careful, you have to install the first one with a file from the second one. Then install the standalone part of the second one, then the third one.

All this stuff may eventually (or soon -- the second patch for the restoration mod just dropped 2 hours ago) be integrated into a neater package, but I think this is the state of things now.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
No, Team Gizka has never released any of their work to the modding community, even now that the team is down to one person who isn't actually working on it.

An early build of Team Gizka's work was leaked a while back.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
No, Team Gizka has never released any of their work to the modding community, even now that the team is down to one person who isn't actually working on it.

An early build of Team Gizka's work was leaked a while back.

True, but that was the "compiled" build not the "source," (that is, not in a form for others to work on to finish) and done against the will of The Last Gizka.

 

[Sylvanas]

Thanks for the compilation s44. I think I may wait a little longer until all the bugs are ironed out or everything is merged into a neater package.