Obsidian’s legendary/notorious Star Wars RPG is currently on a daily deal sale 75% at £1.74/$2.49 off until Friday 6pm GMT/Saturday 10am PST, likely the cheapest it’ll ever be on Steam. For that reason, today I’ll be providing a guide to getting the Steam edition of Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords working well on modern machines.
Widescreen resolutions, extra content, crash-dodging – this will make the infamously unfinished but ambitious and wonderfully-written RPG look and play far better than it did upon release.
Not only is the game currently selling for almost nothing, many consider the Obsidian-created game to be superior to its predecessor, especially with the restored content mod. For your other PC gaming fixing needs, visit PCGamingWiki.
Not only is the game currently selling for almost nothing, many consider the Obsidian-created game to be superior to its predecessor, especially with the restored content mod. For your other PC gaming fixing needs, visit PCGamingWiki.
KOTOR2’s rerelease on Steam in August this year pulled the game out of a physical format purgatory (4 CDs no less), kicking and screaming into the modern digitally distributed world. Originally rushed to be released in time for the lucrative Christmas sales of 2004, Obsidian were forced to cut out large swathes of content to meet the release date, leaving an abrupt and nonsensical cliff-hanger ending to the game. Thankfully, the game’s code has been tinkered and toiled with by the loving modding community, who have created a huge content restoration mod to fill in all the missing gaps and fix a vast number of bugs.
The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod (TSLRCM)
The TSLRCM is a hugely substantial mod that helps the game meet the vision that Obsidian had originally planned for the game. Not only does the mod fix a whole host of bugs, including broken items, dialogue tree errors and combat glitches, it has pulled content out of the code and made entire areas of the game playable including unusued audio files and dialogue trees. The most recent build has also introduced compatibility with the long-awaited M4-78 Enhancement Project, aka Droid Planet.
To install TSLRCM:
To install TSLRCM:
1) Download and install the mod from the official ModDB entry, now at version 1.18.2.
2) Make sure to install the mod at the correct Steam location, where the default location is here: C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonKnights of the Old Republic II (unlike other KOTOR2 mods which fit into the Overide folder).
3) Ensure that the Steam doesn’t accidentally overwrite the mod by disabling updates to the game (Right click on KOTOR2 in the library > Properties > Updates tab > Do not automatically update this game).
4) Mod installation is confirmed if the main menu of the game shows The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod 1.8.1.
Widescreen resolution
KOTOR2 only supports a 4:3 resolution, but ingenious modders from the Widescreen Gaming Forum have come up with a fix which will help you to experience the game in modern 16:9 1920×1080 glory.
These instructions for getting the widescreen mod to work with the Steam version of the game have been tested on multiple hardware configurations:
1) Run the game, and set in-game resolution to 1280×960 (this allows a custom resolution to be selected externally).
2) Download the Squizzy Kotor2 Resolution Patcher. Note: the only use of this download is to extract the kotor2.exe file which is compatible with UniWS, as the exe provided by Steam is not.
3) Extract the kotor2.exe file into the KOTOR2 install directly, overwriting the original file (you might want to make a backup of the old one first, to be on the safe side).
4) Download UniWS, a widescreen patching program. Swift shader download 64 bit.
4) Run UniWS, select ‘Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II The Sith Lords’.
5) Point it to your KOTOR2 install directory, select the desired resolution (e.g. Screen Width: 1920, Height: 1080) and click ‘Patch’.
6) Edit the swkotor.ini in Notepad and edit the following lines:
[Display Options]
Width=1920
Height=1080
Width=1920
Height=1080
[Graphics Options]
Height=1080
Width=1920
Height=1080
Width=1920
Note that the resolution lines need to be changed in two places, and that the width/height entries are reversed in the second instance.
7) Because the game was never designed to run on a 16:9 resolution, forcing a widescreen resolution will cause problems with the minimap. Download updated 16:9 or 16:10 files.
8) Extract the mipc28x6_p.gui from the zip into the Override folder.
Notes
- Those using 1366×768 displays will be out of luck, as the widescreen mod breaks the way dialogue choices are rendered, making the game unplayable.
- This method (the only known method to work on the Steam version of the game) is based on an older exe, which may introduce some minor bugs in areas such as swoop racing, an optional part of the game.
- Unfortunately, UI elements will appear stretched in widescreen, and no fix has been developed for this yet. Personally I can live with the stretched UI, but it might cause compulsive facial tics for others.
Save games
Save games are kept in this folder:
C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonKnights of the Old Republic IISaves
Save game cloud syncing is highly recommended for this game. It’s not supported natively, but can be hacked in using the brilliant program GameSave Manager, whose Sync & Link function will automatically detect savegames and then symlink them to your preferred cloud storage folder such as Dropbox.
Showstopping errors
The most common error with the game is ‘Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has stopped working’. This can happen after the company logos display, or after clicking ‘Load Game’ from the main menu.
The simplest way to fix this is to run run the game in windowed mode. Open swkotor.ini in Notepad:
1) Under the heading [Graphics Options], add the line AllowWindowedMode=1
2) Edit the value FullScreen=0
Unfortunately, hacks to enable borderless fullscreen windowed are unplayable, as they will cause mouse cursor hotspot misalignment.
If running in windowed mode doesn’t work, there are a whole host of other fixes that you can apply, including an Nvidia fix and an Intel integrated graphics fix.
For more guides like this, check out PCGamingWiki, the website which aims to list fixes for every single PC game in a single, user-editable resource. Our Kickstarter project was recently funded in under 6 hours.
I'm pretty new to making backups/copies, so I was hoping someone could provide me with some guidance. I've been trying to make a copy of Knights of the Old Republic, but I've run into some problems.
After a successful install and downloading a no-cd exe, the game crashes unerringly at the menu screen. Since my system specs well exceed the game requirements and I've updated the game and all my drivers, I'm guessing this problem is due to my own stupidity. Again, I don't even know if a no-cd exe is appropriate for this situation, but its always what I've done in the past.
If anyone could give me some advice on this issue, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
By StrifeStrife. Last updated
Heya everyone,
I'm not sure if it was the good section to do this, but I didn't see any other so here I am. As you can see I'm not a runner of this game, not yet, but I have played countless hours on KotOR and I had the displeasure of trying to make it work on Windows 10. Now there are already guides on the internet, but I figured a guide here would be cool for people trying to begin the speedrun and not wanting to revert to windows 7 for one game. So here it comes, ladies and gentlemen, easy fixes for KotOR on the bizarre 10th window.
I'm not sure if it was the good section to do this, but I didn't see any other so here I am. As you can see I'm not a runner of this game, not yet, but I have played countless hours on KotOR and I had the displeasure of trying to make it work on Windows 10. Now there are already guides on the internet, but I figured a guide here would be cool for people trying to begin the speedrun and not wanting to revert to windows 7 for one game. So here it comes, ladies and gentlemen, easy fixes for KotOR on the bizarre 10th window.
Step 1:
Now first thing you need to understand is that KotOR is old. We are talking about a game released in 2003,that was made for Windows XP at the time. So of course there are gonna be problems for next generations of OS. One of the biggest problems you can and will encounter is your game crashing at the very beginning, on the Lucas Art logo. This is an easy fix, you only have to things to do:
1. Go to your swkotor/movies (or Star Wars - KotOR/movies if you have the GOG version)folder, and locate these 3 files: biologo.bik, leclogo.bik and legal.bik. Rename them by changing the extension to .bik.old, and the files won't be run by the game anymore. No more crashes at start anymore, yayy!
2. Now if it doesn't entirely work, you may want to run the swconfig program present in the swkotor, and check the Disable Movies. Of what I remember this should only disable intro movies, not the others, but I could be wrong on that and it could be forbidden in speedruns, so I will ask someone of the community on that. While you are in this program by the way, check that V-Sync is enabled, it's really important to play the game properly.
Now first thing you need to understand is that KotOR is old. We are talking about a game released in 2003,that was made for Windows XP at the time. So of course there are gonna be problems for next generations of OS. One of the biggest problems you can and will encounter is your game crashing at the very beginning, on the Lucas Art logo. This is an easy fix, you only have to things to do:
1. Go to your swkotor/movies (or Star Wars - KotOR/movies if you have the GOG version)folder, and locate these 3 files: biologo.bik, leclogo.bik and legal.bik. Rename them by changing the extension to .bik.old, and the files won't be run by the game anymore. No more crashes at start anymore, yayy!
2. Now if it doesn't entirely work, you may want to run the swconfig program present in the swkotor, and check the Disable Movies. Of what I remember this should only disable intro movies, not the others, but I could be wrong on that and it could be forbidden in speedruns, so I will ask someone of the community on that. While you are in this program by the way, check that V-Sync is enabled, it's really important to play the game properly.
Step 2:
Now another problem you may encounter is your game crashing on any single cinematic, or movie, however you want to call it. Why? Because when the game launches a movie, it launches a video file and in a way creates a second window to the game. When it wants to come back however, Windows 10 doesn't follow and KotOR will end up crashing. To fix that you will need to put your game in windowed mode. It's not optimal depending on your pc or laptop but it's the best available choice. To do so, you will need 2 steps again:
Now another problem you may encounter is your game crashing on any single cinematic, or movie, however you want to call it. Why? Because when the game launches a movie, it launches a video file and in a way creates a second window to the game. When it wants to come back however, Windows 10 doesn't follow and KotOR will end up crashing. To fix that you will need to put your game in windowed mode. It's not optimal depending on your pc or laptop but it's the best available choice. To do so, you will need 2 steps again:
1. Go into the root folder of the game and open swkotor.ini with a program like NotePad or WordPad. Scroll down to [Graphics Options] and find the option Fullscreen=1. Switch it to 0, but no, it's not over, there is more!
2. Then under the [Graphics Options] section, add this line: AllowWindowedMode=1, save, and when you next launch the game, it should be in Windowed mode, and you won't crash on every movie.
3. Lastly, if the game doesn't automatically launch in Windowed mode, you will just have to hit Alt+Enter and it will switch without crashing.
Kotor Keeps Crashing
Now you've done it, you have dodged 90% of the crashes you could encounter with KotOR on Windows 10. If you encounter other problems, some really detailed and complete guides are up on the Internet to help you, but that's the base of it.
Hope you enjoyed the guide,
Strife
Strife