Derkisreth

So, has anyone tried seeing if the patch fixes compatibility for more intel chipsets than the 915?

Your points about research and reading the box address the issue, but manage to completely ignore some key facts; The original game worked just fine on integrated intel chipsets. The sequel has essentially the same engine, and still works just fine in certain areas. I have no doubt that it would work well in all areas if the likely pointless and flashy graphical effects they added were able to be turned off. Furthermore, Integrated chips are not worthless for gaming; I run World of Warcraft just fine on this system; my only problem is a bit of lag on the initial load of crowded cities, but that is due to inevitable graphics load and a sub par hard drive; the chipset itself is quite capable of handling the graphics. Star Wars has a massive fanbase, with a large crossover with computer users. Not all of those computer users are hardcore gamers, but most of them would probably like to give KotOR a shot, especially if they enjoyed the previous one. Obsidian apparently went out of their way to change the graphics engine NOT to support a large number of chipsets, which as I pointe dout above, shows a lack of research. They simply looked at the technical 'requirements' from the first one, and worked from there, ignoring the fact that a fair percentage of customers from the first game did not meet those requirements, but played for the grace of the previous engine's compatibility. And for the record; at home I have a 'real' video card, to which I will return in a few weeks, and never need to deal with this issue again. But other people are not so fortunate, and I feel sorry for them and frustrated with obsidian and Lucasarts that this is even an issue. I am sure that any regular poster on the original game's technical support forums could have told them what systems can be jerry-rigged to run the game upon. You are correct in that users with integrated graphics are not going to be hardcore gamers; but they are also not going to be looking on internet technical support forums for solutions, so the number of peopel complaining here and on the Lucasarts boards is no doubt dwarfed by the people who do not know how or do not have the time to go mucking around trying to work around artifical limitations and problems that they did not have with the first game. It is reasons such as this that keep pc gaming away from the mainstream, and why consoles are ever growing in market share. Eventually the huge console publishers will arrange exclusivity contracts, or outrigh buy out the popular PC developers, as Microsoft did with Bioware and Bungie, and wind up dumbing down gameplay and features for the console version, and then offering a half-effort port back to the PC, where the game was designed to be in the first place.

I have also attempted to use 3dAnalyze and SciTech GLDirect, both to no avail. 3dAnalyze has very limited functionality for OpenGL; all of the T&L emulation and software forcing are for DirectX. GLDirect 5.0 prevents the game from running at all; it crashes before it gets to the first splash screen, whereas normally I can get all the way into the ebon hawk and run around, as mentioned above. I even tried used GLDirect to force DirectX mode, and then the 3dAnalyze DirectX T&L settings, but GLDirect would still cause it to crash before any screens came up. I will try an older version of GLDirect, and see if that helps at all. If anyone wishes to try their luck, the two programs can be found at the sites below. I take no responsibility for anything that happens to your computer, but they are purely software interfaces and do not affect the hardware directly, so they should be perfectly safe. http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/ent/gld_home.php http://www.tommti-systems.de/go.html?http:...eien/files.html

I picked up KotoR II about a week ago, and played it wonderfully on my Radeon 9700 pro at home, finishing the dantoiine and nar shadda segments. Unfortunately, I then had to relocate to my Aunt's house, where she has a respectible computer that unfortunately lacks a video card, and an agp slot. Amazingly this computer runs World of Warcraft flawlessly, albeit with fairly low settings, so I was hopeful regarding it being able to play KotoR II. When I loaded up my latest save game, aboard the Ebon Hawk, without any problem, I was thrilled. I went about my housekeeping business, upgrading weapons and chatting up my party members, and then went to nar shadda to tie up some loose ends. I exited the ramp and the game loaded up, and my characters were standing there with their idle animations. This is when the trouble began. I ran forward as I normally do, by holding both mouse buttons, and htings were going fine. Then I turned the comera, and after perhaps fifteen degrees of rotation the game froze. Fear and uncertainy clouded my heart. I reloaded and walked forward with the trustworthy "w" key, and managed to get all the way to the end of the platform to where the hallway turns, but then when I tried to use the mouse to turn, the game froze again. On my third trial and abandoned the mouse, and ran all the way to the next area by strafing to get around corners. I continued this tactic in the central area, and seemed to be doing fine. Hoping that the freeze was restricted to the landing pad, I attempted to turn, only to freeze again. I decided to try a different planet, and flew instead to korriban. Woeful fate, the game loaded up to a black screen after exiting the ebon hawk, with sound playing, but no graphics, followed by a crash to desktop. I suppose the point of this story is that the game does indeed play on this chipset, but some manner of short sighted or lazy (time saving perhaps) graphical programming has made some minor hardware texture and lighting features capable of crashing the game, with no option for software texture and lighting, which by its very nature is perfectly capable of doing everything that hardware can do, although with less performance. Seeing as how many were able to run the first game on Intel Extreme chipsets, even though the requirements were similar, it is obvious that some minor graphical 'upgrades' were performed for some reason or another. I strongly doubt that these changed can be retroacted, but it is likely that software texture and lighting can be enabled, either by Obsidian or by Intel. I strongly urge everyone with an intel extreme chipset to email obsidian, lucasarts, and intel with this issue, and hopefully one of the will effect the relatively simple change.