AlaricQelDroma

Hm...Well, there's one way to look at this whole thing that people seem to be forgetting... It's all about training an apprentice to be able to attain Knighthood within a reasonable timeframe...Say...20-30 years from the time they become a child padawan... If the student is difficult because of personality flaws, this can do one of two things: Either the student will become frustrated with his master who is moving too slowly, or the student will learn the truth of the lessons of patience and take the time to genuinely learn from his master(s). Look at real-life martial arts masters in monk-like societies...They spend about 30 years painstakenly training their apprentice, and they do not tolerate insubordination or children who become full of themselves and their weakish abilities and need to be taught a lesson or two. A typical Shaolin Master will not only berate an apprentice who gets out of line, but the master will indeed engage and defeat the uppity pupil repeatedly until the student learns his place. There are SOME Jedi Masters who teach in this way, Dooku and Jinn were two examples, and Windu may indeed be somewhat of an example of this teaching technique as well. Zhar strikes me as the type of master who would have kept Revan in-line until he/she became stable enough to continue learning. If Revan is truly evil, then he is much like Palpatine...He does not endlessly lash out at everyone in the galaxy with barely restrained rage, instead Revan used manipulation and tactics to outsmart and out-maneuver his enemies and the way he conducted himself inspired his allies to follow him, and some of his allies became his students. I do not really consider Malak a true apprentice because he was too busy thinking about his own status and power, he never once stopped to really listen to his master. He let himself dive headlong into his uncontrollable rage and anger (much like crybaby Annie), and ignored ALL of Revan's teachings, and that is why he failed to lead the Sith like Revan did. Revan lost his connection to the Force for a time, as did the Exile, and even Palpidious cut himself off from the Force at one time (supposedly)... Every REAL Sith Lord who truly knew how to lead people around without actually ordering them to do things knew that they had to limit their connection to the Force and the Dark Side, because if they remained shackled to the Force forever, they would become so warped and twisted by the power of the Force that they would begin to lose their core personalities and would end up like their supposed apprentices did. Anakin fell because he ignored Palpidious's true teachings and he embraced his rage and anger instead, and he lost his core personality to the power of the Force. Genuine Dark Lords like Revan, the Exile, Exar, Ulic, Palpidious....They all had one thing in common: Once they reached their maximum power, they unleashed it, and then they cut themselves off from the Force afterwords. I think Palpidious may reach his break-point after he wipes out the Jedi Council, which is why no one ever saw him use his force abilities after the Empire was truly established, up until he revived his connection to the Force when Luke appeared and tried to manipulate him into being a student. Luke didn't succumb because he never had any genuninely life-altering experiences like Sion or Anakin did...Sion and Anakin were gravely injured by their masters, and then they lost their minds to the power of the Force once they were made whole again, and their bodies and minds continued to be over-written by the Force itself as they gave more and more of themselves to their addiction to the Force. Obi-Wan is much like Luke, he was never assaulted by his masters, and he never had any real mental trauma to speak of. It seems to me that the only REAL Dark Lords are people who were injured by their masters so badly that they just barely survived it, only to return years later...Or, they were mentally or emotionally wounded just as badly by something that happend to them in their lives. Hm, now that I think about it: Malak = Nearly killed by Revan Sion = Nearly killed by Traya Nihilius(sp?) = Was hurt VERY badly by someone...Possibly a Jedi Master from the Exar era?? Revan = Nearly killed by Bastilla's ill-timed raid...Malak was just taking advantage of Bastilla's horrendous timing, after all Exile = Nearly killed by Traya before and after Malachor 5...Although I am still not exactly clear on wither it was the Force explosions or Traya manipulating Malachor's force engergies the first time... Exar = Murdered by Jedi Masters at Yavin after slaying Vodo-Baas...Still not exactly clear as to which specific Jedi was the one responsible...Some say it was this Jedi, some say it was another one using the Force to assault him from afar...Sigh. Ulic = Suffered similar fate as Exar Anakin = Nearly killed (well, mostly killed ) by Obi-Wan Palpidious = Unclear at this point who was responsible for his training OR his initial fall...It has been widely speculated that he somehow found Vodo-Baas's Holocron and taught himself, but I really don't beleive that...It just seems wrong, somehow.. We could go through a list of about 50 other Jedi who were nearly killed by their own masters or by their students...But that is un-nessasary I think... I beleive that there cannot be light without dark...Dooku and Jinn were proof of this point. Palpidious was actually a good person at times, EVEN when he was the Emperor, he did do some good to the galaxy, even as the Emperor I think that is what Lucas is trying to convey...Light and Dark cannot exist without one another..Dark Side does not always mean "Evil", and Light does not always mean "Good"

Give me a break. You just blew ANY credibility you *might* of had. Some of your suggestions won't work for a lot of technical reasons too numerous to go into here (like copying the swkotor.ini from KOTOR into KOTOR2 because they are NOT the same engine). And Hades... Stop trolling this forum. You aren't helping and half the stuff that comes out of your mouth (your posts) isn't informative, or remotely helpful. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Oh really? Guess what! I don't really care much at all what you think. All I care about is that I got my own problems fixed, if what I did to fix my problems help you fix yours, then goody-goody! If it doesn't, then don't start a pissing contest with me about it! Got it? I don't have time to listen to your crying attitude because my fixes won't work for your specific hardware.

Damnit, double-post SQL database error...I hate SQL-based board scripts...sigh

Hey Hades, man, I want to talk to you about my little rebalance mod ideas I've come up with recently for KOTOR (I have had my life stuck in XWA all these years, so this game is somewhat new but not unfamiliar to me)...: 1. I like your idea of giving Guardians/Marauders/Weaponmasters 2 feats per level...But I have a new idea... Every three levels, the "jedi soldier" classes get two feats, and the in-between level-ups they get one feat. All solider classes get one force power per level. The "Jedi Scout" classes should have two feats per every four levels, and one feat every other level, and they should get two force powers every 6 levels. "Jedi Politician" classes should get two feats every 7 levels and 1 feat every 3 levels, and two powers every other level. This way, we heavily accentuate each classes' strong points, and ALSO their weak spots...The soliders get hellah feats for combat mastery and physical boosting way beyond the other classes, and the scouts get huge skill progression and reasonable feat progression and power progression, a jack of all trades, but a master of none The master classes...Hoo boy, they may be able to endlessly cast like hell, but not a one of them is going to be able to enhance themselves and their combat abilities as much as a soldier or scout will This way, the soldiers could use ALL of the available feats by they time they hit level 30+, the scouts will be able to hack&slice just about anything that comes their way, and masters will be able to spam powers like mad but won't be able to fight worth a crap. We also should look at potentially changing the enemy's AI a bit beyond what beancounter has done...I have already done some preliminary work with Kreia at the end of the game to make that pre-saber-toss duel you get far more challenging and interesting because she will use a myriad of feats and powers at you until she either runs out of FP's (which can almost not ever happen ), or until you out-fight her as a weaponmaster, or sneak-kill her with a scout-class. Over-powering Nihilus and Traya might prove a much harder challenge, even when spamming crush There might be a way to let the bosses resist the Crush-spam technique that has become so rampantly popular in everyone's playing strategems... For the real bosses, we should add more general force resistance, maybe through a belt or something...I know there is that one belt that adds +14 points of force resistance, if a belt can do that, then a mod could certainly do it Crush spamming needs to be quelled a little bit, because once you get it, the game is just cheesey spamming after that...I hate it when I can spam the AI with a single attack and have it kill abseloutely anything ALL the time Giving the bosses force crush might make things more interesting as well! I will continue scripting AI changes and see what I come up with, I always use the Traya's Arena mod thing to endlessly test these ideas... As nice as beancounter's idea is, it needs further modding to make it REALLY worth the effort When you have an AI that almost NEVER uses a single force power, and when they do, it's almost always the WRONG power(s), all the stat-boosting and hardening you can do to the AI NPC's won't do a damn bit of good. I love your mod, Hades, but I guess what I am trying to say is that I want to uh...Help you. Contribute my ideas and experience and maybe add a fresh method of modding to your cause? You seem to like rebalancing games, which is something I have been doing since I first got X-Wing back in '93....I think if you and I could work on these balance problems as one collective, we may attain a better assimilation threshold...Uhm...Yeah I have some really new ideas that would add a great deal to your changes and beancounter's...Two is better than one, and three is better than two, right?

Well then, it's a fix for people who don't have to insist on the abseloute latest and most expensive stuff I could've bought an X800, but look what I'd have gotten for the trouble! I wouldn't be able to fix my gameplay problems. Hehe...Sorry if you're latest and greatest isn't turning out to be oh-so-great, but I didn't promise this'd work for everyone, now did I?

Why don't you start by telling us how to fix the intermittent gamma issues with ATI cards? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No problem. I have a little program I use to set everything up just right: http://praxisoft.com/pages/products.wiziwyg.html Try that out, if that won't work, use RadLinker to set your gamma levels and so forth...I have never once encountered a single gamma bug...Must be luck, or I'm doing something right that I haven't quite pinned a name on yet

Alright...I just can't help it anymore... Boys...Remind yourselves of this simple phrase: "It's the man, not the machine." Rely on that more than you rely on cheapass marketing catch-phrases like FSAA,AF,TruForm,Shader model xxxx, and every other little piece of SOFTWARE code that gets made every other week by these little coders. IMHO, it's all about what the hardware can do natively, all of these little software code features are just superflous and totally inane to the over-all performance of a piece of hardware. Learn how to properly mod and tweak your hardware, too. Don't rely on modded drivers so much, learn your hardware and how to manipulate it to serve you better. Properly making and running a PC is not all that dissimalar from sculpting a new apprentice

*Clears throat* *Force Screams* *Hands trolling topic creator a nice, big, juicy can of: SHUT THE F*** UP!* Oh, and: *Take two of these little white pills and call me in the morning* Have a nice day

BTW: I really am torn between my ceaseless loyalty to XWA modding and my desire to mod KOTOR at this point...I am not a graphics wizard...Can't hold my mouse-hand steady enough for the art stuff...But I am a scripting wizard and I know a ton about creating storylines within the confines of EUSW and doing missions likewise... I was considering joining Holowan, but I think I'll just stay independant for now...The only two mods I see going on there these days are Hardcore and Ultimate Lightsabers pack...Most of the other stuff is just a load of mass-IMBA scripting that ruins all cohesiveness of the gameplay...Much as I like RedHawke...Ah well. I also like the skinning by Svosh and that new guy...Forget his name now... Ah well, I guess I'll work on my own balance mod and fix the spelling problems while I'm at it Back to work for me.

I know, that's why I made the retort...I've played with many people who are just as elite and experienced as I am...Being the leader of Imperial Intelligence for a league of over 500 people can really twist your mind after enough years of arguing logically with everyone in a massive IRC room for 5 years IMHO, I don't play with the puppies in the yard...I play with the adults who can compete :D

well i went back and tryed that thinking maybe i skipped over that. my game just goes from right before the fight with mira to me in the tunnels with the wookie. i cannot get out from either door?!! i dont know what to do. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> so does anyone have a clue why my game would skip the wookie and mira fight? im stuck now and dont want to start over. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Try this: Use a savegame from when you first entered Nar Shadaa. Totally remove your game from the drive. Re-install and re-configure, now try loading that save again...It may work this time around.\ EDIT: Be sure to move that save folder to another location on your drive!

Crack? nah...I do like pain meds though...All the surgeries I've been through the last two years...sigh..I feel like a Sith Lord...Pah! I might be foolish, I will admit that I have been called a great many things by a great many people, many of them a lot bigger and nastier than you are, my friend... Thanks for fanning the fires though...I'll just sit back and watch...

I know this, I've always known this...I've felt it ever since they rushed XWA out the door without giving it a second thought, then went and shafted Totally Games so they never wanted to make another flight sim for us I've had it in for Lucasfarts for well over 7 years now, ever since they ditched everything they were really working on to make EP1 games that weren't worth the CD's they were printed on I can forgive KOTOR and Republic Commando, because they have been the two notable exceptions on my list of greatest SW games ever, right up next to XWA and TIE Fighter....JK1 will always be better than JK2 or 3...I miss my old LSF days...Sigh. KOTOR 2....It remains to be seen if Lucasfarts will take some time NOW to do the Q&A they should have been doing THEN....Lucasfarts is all about one thing: Credits...Oodles and oodles of creeeedits. They went ballistic making cheap-as-hell prequel games that were console-only because they saw the wide open oppertunities for profit. Lucasfarts has even better business ethics than my favorite Ferengi do, honestly! I admire their ability to capture and eat whole an entire open market that George left wide open for his subsidiary companies to swallow, but I will never forgive them for their rushing their greatest games out the door to make more room for console kids'-playground s*it. I mean, now ATI is making cell phones in 3D...I saw that, I knew right then and there that humanity has reached an all-time low. It's bad enough we've got people talking to their closet uh...Tramps...and ramming into everyone while their attention is diverted, but now we have to go a dozen cans BEYOND a six-pack with 3D Gaming Cellphones? That's going to be like trying to have a laptop in front of you while you're driving! I don't know how things could get any worse...ATI and Lucasfarts must have married each other to be letting themselves use these horrible business ethics....Sigh. It's been a downhill-run ever since '98 or so...First Win98 was kaput, then the mega-consoles started their runs and the rest is history...It saddens me to see the PC gaming industry continuing to take an endless downhill tumble without stopping to catch it's breath first....

Hrm, bit off-topic (but what the hell man? It's like every other thread on this board is off-topic anyway right? ), but ok... Zalman is a maker of high-end cooling solutions for PC components and cases. I myself have heavily re-designed an Antec AMG1000 case for maximum air-cooling, and the Zalman keeps my overclocked 9800Pro to XT at a constant 85F, even when the card is loaded with a bloatware piece like HL2 or D3...Or...K2 IMHO, Zalman just means a really big cooling solution so I could mod my 9800 Pro into an XT with a simple BIOS mod. I did some of these things back in the old original UT days with my ATI and NVidia boards I used back then, and I have been doing BIOS mods ever since...The Zalman is just the latest cooling toy I've gotten You can mod that card of yours with some BIOS editing tools, you know Want to make the Rancor sing, dance, and bake the cake too? But before you do any real hardware mods, you need some real cooling solutions first, but you know this I guess

Hm...I dislike these "soon" things as much as I hate the flame-tramps-trolls that endlessly grace these boards... Instead of "soon", I guess it should say "When you leave us alone so we can get our work done"

Ya know, I've heard that the drivers released yesterday fix the text corruption with XWA....But I won't be doing another vidcard until 512MB is out and tested...I know better than to buy another $400 card with the same amount of memory attached 256MB is all well and good, but it won't have a chance of catching 512MB Ahem, well, I used to have your exact card before I gave it back to the work stockpile and got this 9800 Pro and severely modded it IMHO, I guess I could try to land a 6800 GT and attach this Zalman to it...But I'd never be able to con work into paying $400 for another 256MB card They can see wisdom in allowing an UPGRADE, but when it's just switching the same technology around...Well, you know

Alright, I am getting SICK AND TIRED of hearing this inane babble all of the time when I come here! If you have nothing POSITIVE to say, then please have a nice, big, juicy can of: SHUT THE **** UP! I mean, these people are putting their asses on the line for us by even listening to our problems to try and make a patch. THEY ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO MAKE A PATCH AT ALL! Anyone with any REAL experience in the PC gaming universe KNOWS that there are certain "rules" that pertain to patching a game, versus modding a game. The majority of gameplay exploits and spelling errors can be modded to work better, this is not a patch item as far as I am concerned. The only things that need to be fixed are the slideshows in certain areas of the game, the horrid music quality (a very simple re-encoding and compression to gZip can fix that entire problem faster than an A-Wing can fly), and of course the missing content. The other problems that people are having are either dependant upon ATI/NVidia driver flaws (which can be repaired by people who know how to screw around with their driver files to find a combo that works right), flaws with the gameplay that people have not released mods to fix yet, and other assorted issues that really should not have time wasted on fixing anyway. If you people continue slandering these guys, they may indeed pull these boards off the net and tell us all to be well and get ****ed and have a nice gameplay experience as it is! Let me inform you again in case you've missed my point: If you keep slandering and utterly bothering the devs, they will not have enough time to actually work on these problems, instead they will be worrying about which moderator they can actually trust to get rid of you damned spamming children who insist upon attacking the people who MADE this game in the first place! Stop wasting the devs time, and everyone else who's reasonable time! Pissing and bitchin' about all this is *NOT* going to make them work any faster. The devs have real work to do, and they have become distracted in trying to get rid of all you troll-spam-tramps that grace these wonderful boards with your daunting presence. Stop spamming to get attention and let them work, and this patch may actually see the light of day before the month is over, GOT IT?! I hate to be the devil's advocate here, because I don't really like Lucasfarts much myself, I still blame them for rushing XWA all those years ago to make room for prequel nonsense, and for not even considering making another flight sim since. Don't get me wrong guys, I don't much like Lucasfarts either, but let's face it: If they hadn't taken all this time out of their lives to make a game of this incredible depth for us, where would we be doing now? Playing more JK spin-offs and hopelessly childish prequel nonsense, or even better, pay $200 per year to play Galaxies? PAH! KOTOR is very nearly the Holy Grail of EUSW, because it doesn't cost money per month, and it doesn't have FPS gameplay. These guys deserve more from you people than you think...They really do, and you are doing them a terrible dis-service by attacking them such as you are.

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Ok everyone, I have been doing PC's and games for over 20 years now, and naturally I have learned a few ways to MAKE games work that don't run right normally. So... First, make sure you have a damn good PC to run this game with, if you cannot run KOTOR2 in high-res with 4x AA and 4xAF, don't even bother trying, because chances are you'll hit a high-poly area like Dxun or Dant and end up getting a slideshow, or you'll hit 3 certain areas of Peragus and likewise get a slideshow. First: Get a clean install of WinXP Pro (This step is mandatory if you have not done it already. Trust me, I have a DVD-RW and I backup every week and I can format and restore in 30 minutes, no joke). Second: If you run ATI like I do, you'll need to do some clever driver re-working of your own to get KOTOR2 running perfectly. 1. Download the Catalyst 4.3 Driver from ATI's archive. 2. Extract the download to C:\ATI\4.3 or something like that. 3. Go to where atioglxx.dl_ is, right-click and copy. 4. Download Cat 5.3 and extract to \5.3 or whatever. 5. Go to where the new 5.3's atioglxx.dl_ is, and right-click the folder window and hit paste. This will now put the 4.3 OpenGL file into your 5.3 installation, I will make the reasons clear for this in a moment... 6. Go to where you extracted your 5.3's and hit the setup file and install. Third: Now, download a program called ReForce and a program called RadLinker (2080 is the latest with RL I believe), and install them, and make sure ReForce is set right. Fourth: Make sure RL is set to seperate tabs functionality, and set both up how you like, I prefer 4x AA and 4x AF and VSync on, and then I hit Options and I set certain things to on and/or maximum (I run 9800 Pro 256 modded to XT with a Zalman Z80 Dual heatpipe ). Fifth: Hopefully you have KOTOR 1 installed...You need to copy+paste all of the swkotor.ini from KOTOR 1 into the KOTOR 2 INI file, then edit a few things. Add in the Disable Vertex Buffer option for good measure. There is a reason behind this copy from KOTOR1, mainly in that certain settings from KOTOR1 apply in KOTOR 2, but KOTOR 2's configuration utility does not properly set these settings or doesn't create entries for them at all. Sixth: Now that you've done this, you will have the following: 1. A fully modified 5.3 driver with silky-smooth framerates (Hopefully, it works just perfectly for me, of course I have a sleek install with no lard anywhere in sight), with the 4.3 OpenGL, I have tested the whole Glow thing, and 4.3 is the ONLY OGL that allowed glow to work for me, and 4.11 caused horrid corruptions with hardlocks for me... 2. If you have your settings calibrated JUST RIGHT, you should have 50+FPS in *MOST* areas of Perag (There are three areas that are ALWAYS going to be a slideshow until the patch, mainly the second droid battle you enter into, when T3 enters the area to pick up the Deadly Sonic Mines, and of course when T3 exits the hangar into the fuel depot), and Dant and everything else should be perfectly smooth. Now, I know that people are going to come back and say "It did not work you ******!! You suck ass!", well, go away child, I have no time to play little pissfights with you! There is so much hatred for problems with K2 that I've heard of a few lifeless nerds trying to stage a riot in front of Obsidian's HQ in about 3 weeks if there is no patch release (yawn...), so... However, I have what is now considered to be an "ancient" PC by most people just because Intel doesn't support the motherboard these days: Intel D850EMV2 Intel P4 3.2 PC-1066 RDRAM, 2GB Heavily Modded ATi Radeon 9800 Pro to XT, and overclocked on top of it with zero artifacties SB Audigy 2ZS Plat 10K SATA-133 Seagate, 200GBx2 HP DVD-RW ETC... Oh, and I have been in the X-Wing community for many years, I was there when Lt. Hag cracked the OPT code initially, so yes, I have been around and addicted to SW gaming for much of my 23-year lifespan Ahem...Oh, and I fixed the pixelated movie problems!! I have a widescreen Dell LCD panel that I just got, and it has an option for 1:1 mode in any res/rate, so when I have movies played back, guess what! They are in smaller viewing windows, BUT THEY ARE CRYSTAL-CLEAR!! There are no jaggies that I can see, and all the pixelated nonsense that was there before I set this thing to 1:1 is now GONE. I know, this won't work for a lot of people, but if you have the option on your monitor to do 1:1, do so, because it will eliminate the horrid-quality movie files Hm, and before anyone asks: I have extensively tested 4.11, and I never got it to work with KOTOR 1 or 2, and I tried Omega 4.11 too, no dice either. The only option I have left is to use 5.3 with a 4.3 OGL installation, that way I get full AA+AF with Temporal AA and all that (If you drop 4.3's OGL file into the game's folder, you have to try to set AA and AF through the game, and you cannot tweak how those options are actually processed since that file is not directly attached to the driver's installation itself BTW: I have fully tested this installation with Republic Commando, I am still getting way over 75FPS even with dozens of guns going everywhere..I have also tested with BFront, XWA, and JA, they all work silky-smooth and now I have GLOWS and Frame Buffers that don't look all fake and are buggy as hell I just thought I should offer this option to everyone, because I found it impossible to get things working the way I wanted to when I just dropped the 4.3 OGL into the game directory, the AA and AF didn't work just like I wanted them to, so I just up and created me own installation Oh, and I have not had that install bug where it asks you to switch CD volumes either...Has something to do with certain copy protection schemes not being in effect (IMHO, I used to have Daemon Tools, Nero ImageDrive, and AnyDVD running on my last install and I got the error, so you might want to consider getting a fresh install ). Now, I agree, a patch needs to be done, but I don't really care about bugfixes, because the ONLY tech. bugs I have are the slideshows in certain small areas of the game, all of which are totally confied and I have already reported in about them and why the game crawls in those areas (I have been modding XWA for all these years, of course I know how to dig into KOTOR like a knife through butter ), and they will probably get fixed. IMHO, the only real problems I have now are the cut game materials (some of which I have gotten to work just fine with enough digging ), the mis-spellings, and the gameplay-related bugginess...Heh...There are more than enough gameplay bugs...Thanks to Beancounter and a few others, I now have a decent AI and through my own efforts I have managed to quell quite a few of the major gameplay bugs that K2 always had. This game, in my view, needs two things...No, wait, three!: 1. Music needs to be re-encoded. I could do this, but it would not be very legal if I did, now would it? 2. All of the mis-spellings need to be corrected. I have not seen a single SW game since XWA that had this many grammatical problems, snap it up Obs/Lucasfarts 3. There are a huge number of glaring gameplay errors and gameplay exploits/flaws that need fixing. I have already personally modded much of this to make things work right again, but I don't know if I can/should publicly release this mod yet... If those three are done, I will consider my $50 well-spent, but not until Ahem, technichal issues can be repaired if you have enough knowledge and experience fixing these sorts of issues with previous games of ages gone by When you cannot convince ATI or Obs/LF to fix things, what is left that can be done? Outsmart the game itself by fixing it on your own I think I can fix everything on that list except for the music...I could personally do it, but of course I can't do it publicly, so it hardly matters to you folks. Sorry for the long post, I have a rather notorious habit for doing that Anyway, three cardinal rules with tech issues people: 1. Make sure you have the $$$$$ to buy the right tools to get the job done. 2. Make sure you know what you're doing with a PC *BEFORE* you obtain one. 3. Make sure that you know how to dig your claws very deeply into the game you are trying to repair, because if you know the ins and outs of everything, you can make the Rancor sing and dance and even bake the cake