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

[Anthony Davis]

Hi, I've been a beta tester (otherwise known as "Beta Minion") for TSLRP since January 2006 so, seeing as how I've been playing the game to death for over two years now, I suppose I can answer some of your questions .

I'm curious to see everything they have fixed.

The only thing, is that while some things were cut because we ran out of time, some things were cut for actual story reasons.

However, until I get a chance to see the change list I will just have to be curious!

Yeah, I wasn't particularly thrilled to see the GenoHaradan quests reimplemented because they had to be moved to avoid messing with Nar Shaddaa's current plot. As it stands in the 'restored' version, the quest seems rather arbitrary -- it almost detracts from the Exchange quest in that there is no sense of them being ever-present now that Batu Rem et al. are with the GenoHaradan. Then again, others may like having a new group of people trying to kill you; myself, I feel it divides attention.

However, it's more than made up for by the random encounters with the HK-50 units. They run on a timer so you should encounter a squad (+ a little piece of dialogue) when you enter a new module - provided it's not blacklisted by Dashus for story reasons - every forty minutes or so.

If you guys have any specific questions about how things work or where certain sequences are then I'm all ears.

Edit: And no chance of a torrent, by the way >_>

That is pretty much exactly WHY we cut it and made Batu Rem an amateur Bounty Hunter instead.

The HK Factory was certainly one of the more painful cuts we made due to time contraints.

 

[Ander Vinz]

From the outside it looks like Obsidian developers didn't land Team Gizka a hand in polishing their crippled game. I wonder why. I'm pretty sure TG has contacted them at some point.

 

[Anthony Davis]

From the outside it looks like Obsidian developers didn't land Team Gizka a hand in polishing their crippled game. I wonder why. I'm pretty sure TG has contacted them at some point.

It is usually a little more complicated than that. What a non-professional entity does and can do is a lot different than what two corporations (Obsidian and Lucas Arts) with binding contracts can do.

 

[-Pavlos-]

The HK Factory was certainly one of the more painful cuts we made due to time contraints.

I can understand why. It is pretty much essential for the tying-up of the HK plot-line. Plus, it's got to be one of the most amusing things I've encountered in a game. Whoever wrote it deserves major kudos.

What I am most interested about is the Battle of Khoonda. Most if not ALL of that scripting was already done. We had to cut it and turn it into movies because the framerate on the original xbox was just too low during that fight.

As far as I can see, the battle has been implemented pretty much as planned (including a rather nice animated camera acting as a pair of binoculars). It's fairly obvious from the dialogue files how it was supposed to slot together and its a real shame that it had to be cut for reasons of technology

How many cuts can be blamed on the Xbox technology, by the way? Am I right in supposing that technology troubles are the reason why a lot of the textures in K2 are 256x256 rather than 512x512, which was the standard in the first game?

 

[inwoker]

someone, please, post crisavelone pic of codex

 

[-Pavlos-]

someone, please, post crisavelone pic of codex

 

[dragonfk]

someone, please, post crisavelone pic of codex

Such young member, yet he knows which pic of Chris we cheerish the most in our hearts.

 

[MetalCraze]

I even guess why they are using closed beta for their mod. If they did not they would have a gazillion whiners like you besieging their forum and complaining about bugs and flaming them. Who would have wanted that? So they just choosed people who are reasonable and who can respect others work. Who can understand they are not the center of the fucking world.

no you're wrong and didn't get a point at all

Please do explain your point. All I keep on gathering from your posts is that they owe you something.

my point is why do they need a closed beta-test at all?
what was the point of the mod - to fix their own bugs or to implement missing content?
they restored the content - fine - I personally don't care about the bugs at all - if I will encounter one - I will post it to whatever bug thread with pre-searching if that bug was posted already - like other chosen ones do apparently.
if by the chance gizka is afraid of forum besieging - why don't they make users who really just want to play - to sign to some beta test rules like other beta testers do apparently.
considering that team-gizka spends 2 months fixing 3-4 bugs - I don't see the point of hiding their mod. they've restored the content they wanted - fine. now let them explain why to hide what's already ready. that's my point - why to hold something for months if it is already finished?

also it's kinda the question for Pavlos - what's the sense of simply hiding the mod if it's already finished and some users couldn't care less about bugs that will be fixed anyway?

 

[-Pavlos-]

Such young member, yet he knows which pic of Chris we cheerish the most in our hearts.

Lurking is a pass-time of mine.

also it's kinda the question for Pavlos - what's the sense of simply hiding the mod if it's already finished and some users couldn't care less about bugs that will be fixed anyway?

Because they want to release as polished a product as possible. There will be a point, of course, where Dash decides that enough bug fixing has been done (and it's likely to be fairly soon given the fact that we've switched from beta team to closed public beta). There's really nothing more to it than that but Dash did cover some of this back in the day:

I may be wrong (not quite sure I 100% understood what you were asking) but I think you're suggesting a public alpha? I have never seen alpha versions released publicly and I've been programming for 7 years. The entire reason we don't release alphas is that there's known bugs in the system. Now this is certainly true of betas but in general there are no show-stopping bugs which are not bypassable in some way (with any luck) in beta. We have no desire to release something that's known to be incomplete, especially when one considers that releasing something before it was ready is exactly why we're doing this in the first place. Additionally I don't see the benefit of releasing the alpha to the general populace when releasing a beta to a closed group produces the same results with fewer headaches. As for the speeding up argument: no it wouldn't speed things up. We have a backlog of bugs in the tracker as it is. So the problem is not that we don't have enough testers (1 is plenty at this point as he'll be sure to find many of them) but that time to work on it is limited to whenever we can find time to work on it.

...


This is slightly different than Deer Park though. Firefox can release an alpha of 1.5 because it is precisely that: 1.5. The program already functions and the probability of breaking core functionality in an alpha of a 1.5 release is probably pretty small. "Alpha" in the sense of a 1.5 (or 2.0) release is not the same as an "alpha" in the sense of a pre-1.0 release. Things aren't complete before 1.0. We guarantee that things will and do, on a regular basis, break right now.

In addition to not really being able to "play" in the sense of make it through the game, there's also something to be said for "exhaustion", or overplay. When you play through something a couple dozen times it becomes boring and/or annoying (collectively, "exhausting"). The last thing we want is to have people no longer interested in the mod when it's finished because everyone's exhausted playing the non-finished non-polished version.
[/diatribe]

 

[MetalCraze]

well my main concern is with team-gizka's bug fixing speed. yeah I understand they maybe busy with some other things - but still
the mod is not that unplayable and it's like the version you have today vs. the unknown time of waiting which I'm sure will be like another 2-3 months at min (considering that Dashus said in that recent topic that it's possible).

 

[Ander Vinz]

well my main concern is with team-gizka's bug fixing speed

It's not your business.

 

[jaylittle]

Hey first time poster here.

As a mid-level RPG addict, let me say this: I've been eagerly awaiting TSLRP for a good while now (it's been around two years since I played KOTOR2 originally). I've lurked on Gizka's forums for at least a year keeping abreast of events for awhile as well. For me the meat of this is in the content and not so much the bugs. As a developer I understand the need for perfection, but sometimes it's better to just get the product out there.

I think given the amount of time in this situation, that would be the appropriate course of action. I know full well that I'm not the only one jonesing for 1.0b1 of this thing as a result of sharing this opinion. However I think it is a bit overboard to claim the project is a fraud and to level other kinds of accusations at the team. They've done nothing wrong beyond trying to do what Obsidian and Lucasarts should've done to begin with and that is: Release a complete game.

What troubles me the most about KOTOR2 is that there really was so much potential. And even though the game was littered with holes, it rocked right up until that last fourth when there ceased to be a meaningful plot and no cohesion between various incidents. I mean I'm more than willing to accept that a game like Gothic 3 is beyond fixable for a variety of reasons (though hope is eternal for me even on that one with the advent of community patches), but KOTOR2 had so much awesome it was a damn shame it ended up like it did.

Anyway - cut Team Gizka a break and put in a prayer that some sympathetic beta tester will torrent it. Because while I don't know about the rest of you, I'll be downloading it and loading it up so fast it'll make your head spin. I eagerly await the release of TSLRP as I have no intentions of replaying the game without it.

 

[afewhours]

Hey first time poster here.

Welcome to Magical-happy-JRPG-LARPing-fun-land. You must complete the following tasks before you continue posting.

1. Get banned from TESF.

2. Complete Wizardry IV.

3. PM Jasede and tell him dungeon crawlers aren't real RPGs.

4. Read the whole of this comic strip and this thread.

5. Choose any RPG of your liking and write a 6,000 word essay on why it needs more "choices and consequences" and "moral ambiguity".

I managed to get around all of this when I started because everyone was too busy laying into Andhaira at the time.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Hey first time poster here.

2. Complete Wizardry IV.

You're out of your damn mind.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

He's a Codexer.

 

[afewhours]

He's a Codexer.

If by Codexer you mean: "is t3h uber l33t RPGer who pwns all", then I'm certainly not. I'm profoundly incompetent at most games.

If by Codexer you mean: thinks it's funny to inflict Wizardry IV on unsuspecting people, then I just might be.

[/derail]

Anyhoo, shouldn't we posting more pictures of Chris Avellone?

 

[jaylittle]

Here is an update. This thing isn't coming out anytime soon. I just saw a post claiming that the bug report system has already had verison 1.0b2 added to it.

Confirmed:

http://mantis.team-gizka.org/changelog_page.php

Oh well - so much for an imminent release.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

If by Codexer you mean: thinks it's funny to inflict Wizardry IV on unsuspecting people, then I just might be.

 

[Jedi_Teacher]

someone, please, post crisavelone pic of codex

WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME MCA WHY

 

[MetalCraze]

1.0b2 is not 1.0c [/whining]

but seriously - I think those are the bugs they fixed -for the- 1.0b2 release
it does not mean it came out yet.
because previous bugs were already fixed before 1.0b1 release

also - fuck MCA, post teddy bear Tim Cain

 

[jaylittle]

Only problem there is that the current release is 1.0b1, not 1.0b2 Oh well whatever. One would hope that a wonderful torrent will surface any day now. The current b2 bug list doesn't seem to contain any showstoppers.

 

[MetalCraze]

actually that list contains only fixed-for-release bugs
they have 15 unfixed bugs now. bastards...

 

[kris]

Hey first time poster here.

2. Complete Wizardry IV.

You're out of your damn mind.

don't worry, I haven't done a single one of those things.

actually that list contains only fixed-for-release bugs
they have 15 unfixed bugs now. bastards...

Blame the beta testers for finding them.

 

[afewhours]

don't worry, I haven't done a single one of those things.

Wha? I thought everyone had read the epic "Multi-headed Dicks" saga.

 

[MetalCraze]

If is capitalized in the middle of a sentence in HK-47's dialog
[Team Gizka] 003EBO - 03-11-08 12:37

I will specially count the time between the day this horrible game-breaking bug was posted and the day it will get fixed - just for lulz.