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KOTOR2 gets a surprise patch, high resolutions, Steam Workshop and more

  • Thread starter Deleted member 7219
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Sceptic

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Divinity: Original Sin
So.... this is a Steam-only patch I take it? None of the resolution and other fixes will work with the CD version? Or is the update simply all the usual mods combined into the Steam version?
 

Ninjerk

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So.... this is a Steam-only patch I take it? None of the resolution and other fixes will work with the CD version? Or is the update simply all the usual mods combined into the Steam version?
It's on my Facebook sidebar. :lol:

Something big is happening.
 

Jools

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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Insert Title Here Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
http://steamcommunity.com/app/208580/discussions/0/541906348058768450/

Introducing and updated KOTOR II for Mac, Linux, and Windows!!!
Aspyr in partnership with Disney/Lucas is proud to announce STAR WARS™ Knights of the Old Republic™ II - The Sith Lords™ is now available on Mac and LInux, along with a massive update to all 3 platforms.

New features include:

• 37 achievements to be earned through gameplay
• Steam Cloud saves
• Native widescreen resolution support
• Resolution support up to 4K and 5K
• Support for controllers, including Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation
3, and Playstation 4, along with several others (check the system requirements for details)
• Steam Workshop support! We proudly worked with the Restored Content Mod team to have their famous TSLRCM up on launch day

Oh...and we added a "Force Speed Effects" option in the menu ;)

Chime in here with your thoughts on the update! I will be starting seperate forums for both Technical Support and Workshop Mods shortly.

Why did we do this? Because we LOVE KOTOR 2. But lets all remember what love truly is...Love is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope.

Seriously, what a pile of useless crap. What is even the point? The low-res textures and low-poly models are gonna look unbearably atrocious at the higher resolutions.

The only upside I can find to this is that it's gonna make installing the TLSRCM even easier (not that it was hard to begin with).

:negative:
 

Duraframe300

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There's a guy in the TLSCRM workshop comments that compared KOTOR II to a Zack Snyder movie.

Steam forums!
 

Phage

Arcane
Manlet
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4,696
So does anyone know if you can get the achievements with mods enabled? +M:M+M:M
 

Grathanich

Novice
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Dec 13, 2014
Messages
33
Got it and modded with the latest TSLRP on Steam Workshop. Works very nicely in Win 7, 1920x1080. However, I really don't recommend the M4-78 content restoration because it is basically a walking simulator in a very uninspired setting.
 

Seari

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Pathfinder: Wrath
The robot planet is one of the worst mods I've ever played, and I even overwrote my saves so I had to finish it.
 

darthaegis

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Dec 27, 2014
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Got it and modded with the latest TSLRP on Steam Workshop. Works very nicely in Win 7, 1920x1080. However, I really don't recommend the M4-78 content restoration because it is basically a walking simulator in a very uninspired setting.

and dat voice acting
 

Hassat Hunter

Educated
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Mar 23, 2014
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Got it and modded with the latest TSLRP on Steam Workshop. Works very nicely in Win 7, 1920x1080. However, I really don't recommend the M4-78 content restoration because it is basically a walking simulator in a very uninspired setting.
You might want to switch that TSLRP for a nifty TSLRCM! Didn't even knew TSLRP got on the Steam Workshop... how did the RPG Codex not go loco over it? :p
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
Got it and modded with the latest TSLRP on Steam Workshop. Works very nicely in Win 7, 1920x1080. However, I really don't recommend the M4-78 content restoration because it is basically a walking simulator in a very uninspired setting.
You might want to switch that TSLRP for a nifty TSLRCM! Didn't even knew TSLRP got on the Steam Workshop... how did the RPG Codex not go loco over it? :p

That's the Team Gizka one, right? I remember they spent years promising a release was just around the corner, and they were squashing hundreds of bugs a day, and then it ended in a huge amount of drama and butthurt. And then your good self came along with a hugely less drama-fuelled TSLRCM and released the damn thing. I think Gizka threw up a stink and then were blown away to the East, like the spirit of Sauron. Are they still around?
 

Grathanich

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Sorry guys, I meant TSLRCM. There is also a very minor mod on the workshop that hides your weapons in hand while you do things other than combat. It's a slight but nice effect.
 

Hassat Hunter

Educated
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Mar 23, 2014
Messages
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I much rather have it set in the .dlg property (there's a tag there for 'hide weapons'...) Of course that requires a lot of files to be modified, but it doesn't remove weapons for scenes where going in armed makes sense.
For example trodding down into the Exchange office on Telos had that set, but I removed it with TSLRCM since it doesn't make any sense to suddenly put your weapons away as you threatnen him.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
I much rather have it set in the .dlg property (there's a tag there for 'hide weapons'...) Of course that requires a lot of files to be modified, but it doesn't remove weapons for scenes where going in armed makes sense.
For example trodding down into the Exchange office on Telos had that set, but I removed it with TSLRCM since it doesn't make any sense to suddenly put your weapons away as you threatnen him.

I think people mainly got it for the Atton dialogue on the Hawk. Looks weird if Atton is holding a double blade while animating on the controls.

I haven't got that mod because I don't see the point. I quite like strolling around with my Dark Side Exile, casually holding a deactivated lightsaber. As you say, it makes him look a bit more threatening.
 

DDZ

Red blood, white skin, blue collar
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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Controller support? Fuck yeah.

Might finally play this game.

I hate when games that were released on console as well as on PC lack controller support for PC.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
Controller support? Fuck yeah.

Might finally play this game.

I hate when games that were released on console as well as on PC lack controller support for PC.

I don't think the game plays better on a controller though. There's lots of things the mouse is useful for, like the combat menus and the menus elsewhere in the interface. It is a bit of a pain to use the controller sticks to find your way through them.
 

DDZ

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I've played the first KOTOR on the Xbox when it came out, I once tried to replay it on PC a few years later but I just couldn't.

It's slower and maybe not as easy to work some things out, but when I play these games, that aren't deep games and work well on console, on PC, I wan't to at least have the option to use a controller.

Mass Effect is the same.
 

Hassat Hunter

Educated
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http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/comments/485537937

In case everyone ever wanted to make a documented case of just how many people find pushing one giant freakin' button only is too hard an installation. Also apparently people think I work at Aspyr or something, cause the amount of questions actually related to TSLRCM (aside from "how do I install this" true enough) is pretty dang low.

EDIT:
Also amongst all places so far this has got to be the place where people give me the least informative reports ever.
"With this mod my game crashes" "This mod's broken" "This mod doesn't work good" "I use about 15 mods and now my game doesn't function. It has to be this mod."
What the hell you guys talking about? Hello, uninformative much? Ugh.
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 7219

Guest
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/comments/485537937

In case everyone ever wanted to make a documented case of just how many people find pushing one giant freakin' button only is too hard an installation. Also apparently people think I work at Aspyr or something, cause the amount of questions actually related to TSLRCM (aside from "how do I install this" true enough) is pretty dang low.

EDIT:
Also amongst all places so far this has got to be the place where people give me the least informative reports ever.
"With this mod my game crashes" "This mod's broken" "This mod doesn't work good" "I use about 15 mods and now my game doesn't function. It has to be this mod."
What the hell you guys talking about? Hello, uninformative much? Ugh.

You don't need to convince us Codexers that the average Steam user is a moron.

I noticed yesterday that the top rated Steam Workshop mod for KOTOR2 is Peragus asteroids.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/249536/The_modders_strike_back_how_fans_fleshed_out_KOTOR_II.php

How a ragtag band of modders restoredStar Wars KOTOR II
kotorheader.jpg


Obsidian’s Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords holds a strange place in the Star Wars video game canon.

KOTOR II was critically acclaimed on its 2004 release, with weird and morally ambiguous characters who felt more at home in a Fallout game than the George Lucas-verse. But it didn't receive the same universal praise as its predecessor.

Firm deadlines led to many bugs, and complaints that the story felt “unfinished.” Its plot wrapped up very quickly and ended on a mysterious cliffhanger; modders later discovered entire storylines that were included on the disc but had not been implemented. Most players assumed that KOTOR II would remain an unpolished gem unless Obsidian was able to revisit it and fill in some of the gaps.

Then on July 22nd, all of that changed. Publisher Aspyr Media, responsible for porting games to non-Windows platforms including OSX, Linux, iOS and Android, updated KOTOR II on Steam for the first time in 10 years, and with it came a crucial patch note: support for Steam Workshop mods, and with that, The Sith Lords Restored content mod.

Now any KOTOR II player can install this fabled mod with a simple button push, and play the storylines that were previously abandoned. The work of one dedicated modder community has fleshed out a flawed masterpiece, and their work is sure to bring newfound attention to this game. (It's already drawing praise from KOTOR II’s lead narrative designer, Chris Avellone.)

The mod includes numerous bug fixes, new areas, and dialogue options that flesh out the story in the main game. It was actually in development since before 2009, when it was first released in open beta by modder Zbigniew Staniewicz, aka Zbyl, with his modding partner Darth Stoney.

Staniewicz was a big fan of the KOTOR series, and wanted to play the cut content as soon as he heard about it. “I also thought ‘finishing up’ the game would make me super famous, but I may have overestimated the size and reach of the KOTOR community,” he jokes.

Staniewicz and Stoney’s first versions of The Sith Lords Restored, built on the back of research and work done by other modders, added what they believed to be part of a known list of cut content found on the disc. “It turned out our list didn’t include even half of the trivial stuff left out of the game," he says. "It was always exciting and at times surprising to realize how much more there was buried in there.”

More than just fixing bugs
Staniewicz was joined by modder Hassat Hunter as development on The Sith Lords Restored continued.Hunter started out in the mod community bug testing and teaching himself the dialogue editing tools forKOTOR before signing on to work on The Sith Lords Restored.

Hunter’s passion for fixing KOTOR II's bugs grew into a desire to dig out all the unknown story content and present a “true” version of KOTOR II to the players.

“We didn’t just want people to experience the cut content, we wanted to give people the KOTOR 2 that should have been," Hunter says. "I don’t think anyone expected to still work on it five years later, or that eventually we’d take up a greater scope, albeit in steps.”

Doing this kind of restorative mod work isn’t just a process of cleaning up bugs and extracting unused models though. As Staniewicz and Hunter describe their process, it becomes clear that they wound up doing plenty of design work too, building on Obsidian’s work from a decade prior.

“For example in the very first closed beta of [the mod], you could finish the HK assassin droid factory without firing a single shot," says Staniewicz. "That just didn’t fit the story of the HK droids though, not to mention that it was extremely boring. The factory went through a lot of transitions, but I think the current version works very well.”

Much of the restored content reflects the core of what made KOTOR II so unusual as a Star Wars game. HK-47, a murderous assassin droid from the first KOTOR, began his life as a fan-favorite character in the context of a more traditional hero’s story (or villain’s story depending on the player’s choice), but like many other plot points from the first KOTOR he and other characters evolved under the moral lenses Obsidian took to the Star Wars universe. KOTOR II spends a large amount of its cut and uncut content examining how droids shape the world of Star Wars, and how the way most species treat them leaves them in a perfect position to perform acts of villainy or heroism overlooked by most.

KOTOR II’s lead narrative designer, Chris Avellone, has loosely kept up with modder’s progress over the years, with the HK Droid Factory being one of the biggest pieces of content he’s glad players can experience. “While we had HK-50 and HK-51 droids in the game, I always...intended the player and even HK-47 itself to feel offended by their presence,” he says

"This was intended to make the final confrontation with them all the sweeter when HK-47 gets to turn the tables on its upstart “successors” by using their programming that they inherited from him as a weakness," he adds. "There’s a ‘panicked’ sequence in the excised content where the HK-50s figure this out, and I always meant it as a scene to make the player grin."

Elsewhere, Kreia’s cut lines reinforce her as a character who possesses traits of both the Jedi and the Sith, constantly judging the player no matter which side of the Force they give in to, and the Sith are shown more to be a complicated, nuanced political group rather than an embodiment of raw evil. All of these ideas are far removed from their film incarnations, and are not even the kind of storytelling that Disney has endorsed in its video game tie-ins realesed after the Lucasfilm acquisition.

The Home Stretch
Hunter says that Aspyr approached them a month before it planned to push out KOTOR II on Steam (mostly to open up ports for Mac and Linux), but wasn’t able at first to properly say why they were interested in talking to the KOTOR II modders.

When they learned of Aspyr’s plans though, Hunter and Stanwiecz dove in to patch the mod to be Steam Workshop ready.

“They pretty much laid down for us what we had to do to make [the mod] work for the Steam Workshop so everything could go as smooth as possible at release," says Hunter. "And now hopefully we can get rid of all the remaining bugs and annoyances still in this version, and be in the unique position to fix things we couldn’t as modders. I can’t say that we or anyone else expected this to happen at this time or date, so that was a pretty nice surprise.”

previewfile_485537937%20(1).jpg


For its part, Aspyr Media's primary goal was to include Steam Workshop among a large batch of featured updates, including controller support, Steam Achievements, and playability on Linux and other platforms. Product manager Michael Blair explains that they knew the mod would be a huge feature to have on launch, which was why they reached out to Staniewicz and Hunter to get them on board.

"In order for our QA team to test 'live' content from months of working on this update, we moved our Steam branches from beta to live 2 days before launch," Blair says. "During that time, we allowed the mod team access and instructions on how to get their mod up in the Workshop, and ensured it remained hidden from public view. Our team then tested it before we hit 'go' on the launch.'"

Obsidian’s only involvement in the game’s update seems to be unofficial. Hunter says Obsidian lead programmer Adam Brennecke voices a character in the HK droid factory, but that connection came from chatting with him during a Pillars of Eternity (Obsidian's latest RPG) promotional stream, not any official endorsement.

Regardless, Hunter and Staniewicz both are floored by the positive feedback that they’ve received for their work, and are glad more players can make their mod a core part of playing KOTOR II. For his part, Avellone remains thrilled by the collaborative spirit of the modders pulling his old work out of the shadows.

“I love it, and I have much respect for the Total Restoration mod and any modders willing to experiment with gameplay and narrative aspects to our titles,” he says.

“I don’t feel like I ever ‘own’ a game I work on, it’s something to be shared, improved upon, and whenever possible, seen from a new perspective that gives the title new life.”
 
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Starwars

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Sweden
Haha, that guy.

In the description:
"IF YOU ARE THE OWNER OF THIS CONTENT AND YOU WANT IT REMOVED PLEASE CONTACT ME"

In his most recent comment:
" I won't take it down if it's not going back up."
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Come on, Hassat Hunter, give the people what they want. One file is a mod too.
 

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