Vapourware KOTOR 2 Restoration Project (not the Restored Content Mod)

[Hümmelgümpf]

Sure, just like lightsabers.

 

[dragonfk]

Team Gizka might be a lot of slowpokes. It's the people on their forums that are really little ass sucking bitches that fall over themselves to suck some Gizka cock. It's fucking emberrasing to watch the retarded holier-than-thou attitude on that forum.

What cracks me up is the thing that many posters on their forum firstly write that its "outrageous" that the mod has been leaked...and right after that they admit its still full of bugs as if it was the only thing that stops them from downloading it and not the "stealing affair".

 

[Helton]

Could someone cut the bitchin' and explain to me in practical, logical terms what the problem is? All I see is a bunch of emotional little sissies crying over absolutely nothing and making threats over the internet. Very *yawn*.

 

[racofer]

Could someone cut the bitchin' and explain to me in practical, logical terms what the problem is? All I see is a bunch of emotional little sissies crying over absolutely nothing and making threats over the internet. Very *yawn*.

It's the drama dude... the drama.

 

[PastramiX]

When drama freezes the waters of conversation, humor breaks the ice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2twS_2tJmw

As for me, I'm an avid poster of the Team Gizka forums. I've always looked forward to this mod, regardless of when it'll be released. As for my opinions on the dev team, some of their decisions were poor, such as not posting a progress report on the site for months, or not fixing any bugs for months. That was the past, right now the build is up to 1.0b9, with 19 bugs to go. My point is this, at least we're getting this mod, I would've liked it sooner, but I'm not complaining. Jaylittle may lie as much as he wants, but he did spread the leak. I'm not sure which of the beta testers leaked it, but they're gone, and it doesn't matter anymore. Peace.

 

[Lumpy]

Too lazy to check, but why would Jaylittle create an alternate account for posting the leak, only to use a name very similar to his real account? (gamorck compared to darkgamorck)
Seems a tad pointless IMO.

 

[Gragt]

The best thing to do now is simply to post a notice on the main page that there is a leaked version but that it does not reflect at all what TG inteded and that works continue. If that isn't done already.

 

[spiwak]

Or just go ahead and make future beta releases public so everyone can submit bug reports? Now that everyone has access to it they might as well use the opportunity and get feedback from it...right?

 

[Gragt]

Yes, it's another possibility but I was more thinking about TG's policy so far. It could be that they decide to change it and I do not really see it hurting but I'm not gonna throw them a rock if they still keep their beta private.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

To be honest, the pretentiousness of the guy who leaked the beta doesn't impress me much ("HAY GUYZ LOL LOOK AT ME IM SO COOL FOR DOING THIS!"), but then again I really don't like Team Gizka much either. They are all cunts.

The project would have been done years ago if they actually bothered to do some work. Other modding teams have done wonders on other games, in a matter of months.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

I would normally write people off like Sithspecter as trolls, but with all of this DRAMA and my knowledge of the KOTOR modding community, I'm going to assume he's real.

You should check out the Team Gizka thread right now. It's full of talk about hiring assassins and killing every one of you dirty faggots that contributed to this.

Unlike what jaylittle did, threatening death upon someone can land you jail. Jaylittle may be a dick, but being a dick is not against the law, otherwise there'd be no cops.

How would YOU feel if someone stole the work that you'd worked years on?

I'd feel like shit; however, I would get over it like a real man instead of bitching and whining like a pussy.

Work means to sit at a computer for three solid years and sweat as you toil tediously to try to make someone (who is fixing to steal your work just because they are getting impatient) an amazing mod.

Hobbies != Work(job). People mod games because it is something they enjoy doing. People still work, and if they find time, they mod. You are describing it as a job. If TG developers sat at their computers working as hard as you described, TSLRP would have been done a long time ago.

 

[jaylittle]

Note: I posted this over at Lucasforums as well. As I'm sure some of you have noticed, I'm waging a war for my reputation over there now as well.

Well TG just continues to obfuscate the issue, but here is a rather enlightening post by killerbob on the TG forums:

http://forums.team-gizka.org/viewtopic. ... 882#p59882

It wasn't personal... most of them got weeded out, and the team is down to about 3 people for now. It may expand again in the future, but for now I just don't know. All things considered, it's better to keep it restricted so we can keep a tighter lid and prevent another leak from happening. With the project as close to release as it is, and all.

This was in response to one of the now ex-testers complaining about being kicked out.

Seriously if people aren't questioning this now, I don't know what else I can say. Well at least I can go back to playing the leak knowing that the truth is going to come out if for no other reason than the fact that Team Gizka absolutely sucks at public relations and damage control.

 

[Wildstorm]

"The internet regards censorship as a form of damage, and routes around it."

Damage control isn't possible. And as I said before, the team is pretty apathetic when it comes to fans.

Though I guess I should mention that no charges are pretty brought up. Blah blah blah. But the reasoning was simply because it is a crime to impersonate someone - even online or even if someone wasn't wise enough to contact someone else before handing such data over. But charges aren't worth the effort. Better to be adults and move on.

You can say all you want that we are trying to prevent losing fans but the project will go on with or without them. They really don't have a say in this matter. *shrug*

 

[jaylittle]

You can say all you want that we are trying to prevent losing fans but the project will go on with or without them. They really don't have a say in this matter. *shrug*

And that is why the team will ultimately fail. By not paying attention and caring they have effectively shot themselves in the foot. The balance of power could be maintained as long as only the upper echelon had access to the actual downloads. However once they began to involve members of the community such as yourself and more recently the expanded closed beta team, all while continuing to act disinterested towards the rest of the community, they set themselves up for this.

Those ten beta testers that got axed are the ones who made all of this happen. I would guess that a large portion of them grew tired of watching this growing rift between the team and the community. It wasn't long before they began to realize that they could in fact do something about it. And they have. I for one applaud them for what they have done. If only for the reason that TG has really done some great work here (I've made it to Malachor now) and it would be shame to see it fade into obscurity as Team Gizka surely will as they continue to die a slow painful death.

If you want to see how to mod a game and rework it into a masterpiece, you need look no further than the Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines mods that are out there. These mods are masterfully done and released incrementally. This keeps the community involved, it keeps the testing feedback flowing in and generally keeps everybody involved very happy. Team Gizka's approach is quite the opposite and serves only to divide and crush the spirit of the community that wants nothing more to play an active constructive role in the process.

This is the very same reason most successful projects that are centered around the community are open source ones. Take a look at a project like DOSBox, which I am a beta tester for. We've had a few private builds here and there that we test, but for the most part everything is publicly available via CVS. Development is conducted out in the open within public forums. In fact the private beta tester forums are only active during the ramp up to release because for the most part everything is done in the open. Of course you also have massively successful projects like the Linux kernel and associated projects you could look at for further evidence.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Everyone in the KOTOR section at Lucasforums is a cunt. Don't bother with them. They are super easy to troll. If you post Fred Tetra's real name(available via registry entries for Kotor Tool), everyone gets pissed off.

Jaylittle you are a hero in my book. You have created a shitload of lulz: divided a community, put almost everyone's panties in a wad, and somehow leaked TSLRP.

Fellow insurgent.

 

[MetalCraze]

It wasn't personal... most of them got weeded out, and the team is down to about 3 people for now. It may expand again in the future, but for now I just don't know. All things considered, it's better to keep it restricted so we can keep a tighter lid and prevent another leak from happening. With the project as close to release as it is, and all.

now TG does sound like a bunch of dicks.
sure leaking wasn't that kind of a good thing but instead of taking it like men they all went "oh no our material that is copyrighted by lucasarts and we have no right to it got leaked. SHIT people are playing our mod now. IT FUCKING WAS OUR MOD!!". how usual for moddies.

 

[sah]

close to release = will take no more than 2 years

 

[aboyd]

sure leaking wasn't that kind of a good thing but instead of taking it like men they all went "oh no our material that is copyrighted by lucasarts and we have no right to it got leaked.

Yes, it's almost like they're begging all the excluded people to steal their thunder and release a competing mod. They've been turning down volunteers for a while now, and then they've gone and removed even a handful of people who they DID approve. So now the community that is left out is bigger than the community that is left in.

Don't get me wrong -- if TG can finish, more power to them. If TG can create something great, congratulations are in order. But over the last week I'd have to say I've gotten to the point where a fork in the project would not surprise me at all. If such a project would work the same way Drog does -- open, fast, incremental development -- then TG would be really hurting, because open & fast is far more participatory and inclusive.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

close to release = will take no more than 2 years

 

[Lumpy]

Guys you are fucking stupid. When Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, did he make it before a certain deadline? Fuck no, he made it exactly when he wanted. How would it have been for him if someone had stolen the Mona Lisa and put it in the Louvre before it was finished?
You can't force artists to finish their art. Art is an ephemere thing, it comes in waves and fluxes, at its own pace. I say we let Team Gizka take as much time as they want - and enjoy their content when they themselves finally decide to release it.

 

[PastramiX]

Guys you are fucking stupid. When Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, did he make it before a certain deadline? Fuck no, he made it exactly when he wanted. How would it have been for him if someone had stolen the Mona Lisa and put it in the Louvre before it was finished?
You can't force artists to finish their art. Art is an ephemere thing, it comes in waves and fluxes, at its own pace. I say we let Team Gizka take as much time as they want - and enjoy their content when they themselves finally decide to release it.

Finally, someone here that isn't a complete ignorant asshole. Remember kids, stealing=bad.

 

[spiwak]

The fuck you talking about? Mona Lisa was a commissioned portrait and probably did have a deadline (although Leonardo didn't end up finishing till much later). Most art does have a deadline, actually, because most artists are being funded by benefactors or galleries or producers or publishers, etc etc. So yea, basically this mod has nothing in common.

 

[Ander Vinz]

Mona Lisa is overrated.
edit: so does TSLRP

 

[El Dee]

Guys you are fucking stupid. When Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, did he make it before a certain deadline? Fuck no, he made it exactly when he wanted. How would it have been for him if someone had stolen the Mona Lisa and put it in the Louvre before it was finished?
You can't force artists to finish their art. Art is an ephemere thing, it comes in waves and fluxes, at its own pace. I say we let Team Gizka take as much time as they want - and enjoy their content when they themselves finally decide to release it.

Finally, someone here that isn't a complete ignorant asshole. Remember kids, stealing=bad.

Nevermind that Lumpy is usually trolling, though I admit sometimes I can't tell.

 

[jaylittle]

So I finished it as a Dark Side female. God the endgame is so much better, I don't even know where to begin. It seems less like clips from a movie trailer now and more like an actual narrative. So lets hit the nitty gritty:

Bugs Found:

1) HK-50 encounters are bugged out the yin yang. I never even got the opportunity to get the HK factory. As I understand it, before this could occur you had to get ambushed by a group of HK-50s with HK-47 in your party. Though I tried to do this several times, each time resulted in HK-47 staring down one of the HK-50s and the scene would fade to black never to return again. The best way to work around this is to save before HK-50 encounters (as you can usually see them from a ways off), try it with HK-47 in the party (assuming they trigger when you get near), otherwise reload and try it again without HK-47.

2) As mentioned earlier, having Kreia as the active character on Nar Shadda as you were racing to rescue the exile results in the fade to black forever consequence as well. The workaround for this is simple: Make another character active during the Nar Shadda rescue segment.

3) When it came time to return to Atris' academy on Telos, the cutscenes between her and Kreia had a bit of a bug. Near the end, the camera would shift over to where your character was as if you were in conversation mode. No options were displayed, but the scene wouldn't continue until I hit 1 on the keyboard. Apparently there is some conversation prompt in the script even though no options are displayed for it. Easy enough to work around though.

4) As mentioned in Mantis, the encounter with Darth Nihilius is bugged relative to the new options, such as trying to become his apprentice. Engaging in this options and killing Visas results in the inability to continue as Nihilius is no longer hostile, but you cannot speak with him either. Things are just kind of stuck there or so it seems. The easy work around for this is to just kill the bastard and be done with it. I figure a bug fix for this would only result in a reversal from him and a battle without Visas. And god knows there are other ways to achieve the death of Visas there without going down the apprentice road.

5) I remembered getting the chance after saving/killing Atris when I first played the game way back as a lightside male to raid some of the holocrons. That didn't happen this time around when I murdered the bitch (sorry got a little darkside running through me after these scenes it would seem). Perhaps that is supposed to be that way, perhaps not. Thought it might be worth mentioning.

Pluses:

Everything. Overall the quality of the reimplementation is very very good. When you look at the restoration list, it would seem that it's just a lot of little stuff. You'd be surprised how much it adds up however. The additional interactions between characters was very nice. The ability to actually unlock the influence points for all the characters was nice. I remember originally playing this game about a year after it came out on the xBox. For the first 3/4ths of the game I wondered why everybody hated it so much. Once I reached the end, I had figured it out. Team Gizka has effectively dealt with this issue. Endgame is much smoother and integrates better into the rest of the story. There are also what I think might be additional scenes before going to Malachor V involving a Genohardden battle. Very nice stuff, but very very difficult.

Wishes:

I wish I could know what happened to Bao-Dur. I know the content isn't there, and thats a shame. His additional scenes were very much appreciated however. I wish GOTO could've been felt out better at the end, though there is not much you can do about that either.

Anyway those are my thoughts. Take them or leave them, but keep in mind that this is only a beta.