Cord

Yup. Tried the latest version of UniWS. For some reason, it refuses to patch. I select KOTOR2 from the list of games, then the installation directory, and after that it won't let me enter a resolution or patch, so so much for that program. The older version worked, but only on the older version of the game. So much for that.... (I'm trying to get the patched version to work in WS properly, so I don't really care if the old version can be made to work with the old version of UniWS.) I've been messing about with Kotortool. It seems to me that a setting for FOV ought to be hidden somewhere in the 2DA.bif file, but so far I haven't found it. I've skimmed a lot of 2DA's, mucked about with them by creating override 2DA's, but so far nothing has changed the FOV. There is a field search function, but unfortunately, if there is a FOV setting somewhere in the BIF's they didn't call it something sensible like FOV or "Field of View". If I could find the right value to edit I could just send other people the 2da to place in their override folder. It sure would be nice if somebody from Obsidian were to offer a hint on this... Anyways, if I ever do figure it out I'll be sure to post.

I enjoyed this game the first time through a fair bit, although it was marred by all the bugs. (e.g. Not *one* of the swoop races worked for me. My swoop was always stuck 20 feet in the air) Obsidian has had some time to fix some of the bugs, and the new patch looks rather promising, so I figured I'd give the game another run-through if I can get it working satisfactorily. Unfortunately, since I last played the game, I've switched to a display with a 16:9 native resolution. Now, there are .exe patches out there which will take care of this for older versions of the game. e.g. Google uniws and you'll find one. It doesn't handle the latest version unfortunately, and FOV appears to be the one crucial setting locked away in the .exe. I can change the resolution itself by editting the swkotor2.ini file, but not the field of view. (FOV) End result: Everyone looks like midgits. Midgits with light-sabers. Don't even ask what the Yoda-clone looks like. So does anyone know a way to modify the FOV somehow? Heck, if you can even point me at an information site that might give me some clue about how to find and modify the FOV in the executable itself that'd be just grand... I really hope PC game companies clue into the HTPC market soon... KOTOR2 is a wonderfully cinematic game, and I'd love to be able to play it in widescreen, projected 8-feet wide with my surround system. The HTPC market is currently just exploding, and any game without proper widescreen support is going to limit its market share in the future. The fact that a third-party was able to add decent widescreen support to the previous version shows just how easy it is. Why hasn't obsidian added it themselves? Heaven only knows. I would assume they don't read these boards, but oh well.

When you think about it, KOTOR1 has already delved into some pretty nasty territory with all the slavery, torture, etc. Drugs and druggies are practically a romp with mickey&pluto by comparison! So long as drug-use is treated in an anti-drug manner I can't see any PR/Lucasarts problems for OE. Heck, there's already oodles of drugs in SW novels! Pimps and ho's might be difficult to slip past lucasarts unfortunately... George Lucas is an american after all, and they're pretty puritanical about anything sexual. "Massage therapists" don't seem to be a problem however, even if they're slaves. P.S. I hope there are a few closet-pervs at OE who are willing and capable of slipping more names like "Gerlon Two-Fingers" past Lucasarts!

My vote is for a Mon Calamri NPC, just for the sake of all the obvious seafood jokes.

Having a higher level cap doesn't necessarily mean you'll have to spend time powerlevelling to reach it. You may start the game off higher than level 10 or encounters might be tuned to give more experience than in KOTOR1. It's safe to assume that you'll level up sufficiently fast to complete the game just by sticking to the plot. If it's possible to gain a few more levels after that, bonus! It's not an obligation however. One quote did seem a little odd to me though...

I have to agree that, in KOTOR1, the Sith and the evil options in general were somewhat less than cerebral. However, I could settle for less. Heck, I'd be happy with the Sith if they were at least occasionally funny. In that spirit, I nominate "Dark Helmet". "I see your schwartz is as big as mine!" P.S. Just Kidding. Hannibal Lector comes to mind as being a more appropriate model for a villian. Civil, cerebral, and knows how to garnish human liver.

There is one non-combat aspect of the Force that was largely ignored in KOTOR1. Telepathy. Yes, I know telepathy is normally quite annoying, but you have to admit the mind-reading in ROTJ was really well done. It added immensely to the struggle between father and son. They touched on this a little with the link between Bastilla and Revan, but a lot more could be done with the idea given the right circumstances. This would all be purely in the dialogue of course, so no extra code would be required. The only issue would be avoiding cheese. (A very dangerous pitfall when dealing with Telepathy!) Alright, I confess. I just want to be able to start a sentance with, "Your thoughts betray you..." :D

You'd think a homicidal droid with no respect for the lives of organic "meat-bags" whatsoever would get you into trouble occasionally. In KOTOR1 he considered taking out unspecified targets for his previous masters to be "showing initiative"! It would be highly entertaining if HK backslid into his older habits instead of remaining a socially reformed shadow of the psychopath Revan built. I mean, is one kill-crazy murder spree in a Cantina too much to ask? :D Barkeep: "Hey. We don't serve their kind here!" You: What? Barkeep: "Your droids. They'll have to wait outside. We don't want them here." You: Why don't you wait outside by the speeder. We don't want any trouble." HK-47: "Negatory: I heartily disagree with you sir. PREPARE TO SUCK BLASTER MEAT-BAGS!" BZZZZZAAPPP!!! <screaming and bloody carnage ensues>

Well, people from OE have said that there will be situations when your team is split up and you'll have to play with a subset while the rest do their own thing. Ostensibly this is to make sure the less powerful/useful characters get a bit of play-time instead of being stuck on the back-benches from the moment you acquire them until the final credits roll. However, instead of periodically breaking momentum to catch up on what the "other" team is doing in cut-scenes, it would add a real sense of immersion if you were in semi-regular voice contact with the team you're not controlling directly. This would be an ideal application for the communicator idea. It would be pretty sweet if the two teams were working cooperatively towards a common goal. This seems like it would be a fairly easy thing to script too.

You have to expect a little back-sass when you use the "arrogant bastage" persona. No hard feelings though. :D

It is silly, but it would get rather frustrating if you went deep into an area without a character that can pick locks and then found yourself blocked by a couple of locked doors/chests you couldn't bash open. The current system avoids this frustration while providing a motivation for players to act in a realistic manner most of the time. (i.e. Save time by being/bringing a scoundrel to pick locks.) Sure, this system isn't the most realistic one possible, but it's the lesser of several evils. Try NWN out to see how useless lock-picking is there. A magic missile spell or two opens anything in the game. (And keeps you from getting fried by traps at the same time!) I think the idea was to force players to use just the grenades they find. If you're good at getting by without using grenades, you can sell some to buy body armor, crystals, etc.. Lowering the price would penalize some players and reward others. It's a tradeoff. Don't just assume everyone plays the game the same way you do. One of my BSC's is in CPSC actually. Let me try to explain this better for you. You can't load every model in the game into memory at the same time without having rather restrictive system requirements or a very simple game. The obvious solution is not to load everything. True, some models (e.g. player models) have to be available at all times. (Sometimes these are called global models) However, most other models (e.g. the buildings in Taris) only have to be around in one level at a time. (i.e. local models) You have to make sure that the memory used by local+global models never exceeds the system memory available. (Paging to disk would be brutal even on a PC with a nice fast RAID, let alone the crappy drive that comes with Xbox's!) This means that if you add more droid models to the global models, you effectively reduce the maximum complexity of levels that didn't have those droids in them to begin with. Remember, you're planning for the worst case scenario here. If someone managed to collect several different droids and then went to a really complex level their XBox would slow down to a crawl and people would think the game engine is total crap. There are obviously a lot of different ways for engines to deal with memory management, but there's no getting around making trade-offs when you want to have a whole lot of complex models on screen at the same time. Size and and human-like are two different things. Note that the juvenile rancors were not a problem with existing animations. Hacking at a monster's belly as it towers over you *is* going to require new animations however. I liked the cut scenes actually, and I'm not alone. They did an excellent job of establishing setting and fit in well with the games cinematic feel. Apparantly you didn't like them, and that's fine. Live with it. It is unreasonable to expect OE to cater to your tastes alone. BTW, your mother probably had a good point when she told you about the differences between honey and vinegar.

That particular mechanic is in there specifically to make the security skill worthwhile. Who would waste points on lock-picking if you could just bash your way through everything in the exact same ammonut of time? That was what happened in Neverwinter Nights anyways. Overall, I'd say KOTOR1 got this particular game mechanic right. They have double the critical range of a two-bladed saber. (19-20 instead of 20-20) If you combine that with maxed out critical strike you score a crit on rolls of 12-20 instead of 16-20. 60% crits can be rather nice, perhaps even better than an extra attack per round. (i.e. with flurry) Most CRPG's have items like these. They're nice and powerful, but in short enough supply that you can only use them in the toughest fights where you need a bit of help. If they were cheap and plentiful it would make the game too easy, but having a limited supply of them turns them into a sort of strategic reserve. This is a tried and true mechanic that isn't likely to change soon. Actually, in KOTOR1 there were a couple very nice uses of droids for non-combat purposes. For example, in the Vulkar hideout you could reprogram a droid to ram the hanger doors to gain access to an area with a nice fight and a big stack of credits. At another point in the base you could program a droid to detonate itself in a pool to get rid of a toxic leak that would make going in there yourself a pain in the arse. (Possibly, but not nearly as easy as blowing up the droid) I'd love to see a few more of these. However, you should also recognize that the droids were in there to balance scoundrels in the early game. They might not be a huge asset for a soldier, but a scoundrel could definately make use of them in a few situations. In KOTOR2 I expect we'll see more non-combat uses for droids. It would be great if you could corrupt a droid and turn it into a remote scout (i.e. The Player takes control of the droid) to allow you to explore dangerous areas or retreive items from impregnable or inaccessible locations. (e.g. Reprogram a small droid and then use it to crawl through the ventilation ducts to spy on an enemy elsewhere in the building, pick up secret plans, etc.) As for getting droids to follow you around... I am betting that a lot of droid models are level-specific. (i.e. Not global) Odds are that even if you wrote the code to allow them to zone with players you'd run into memory limitations. (on the Xbox at least, if not on the PC) Allowing them to follow you around within a given level might not be a bad idea. Putting a droid into "follow and defend" mode should probably cost a lot of parts though. I'm pretty sure they already have plans to do extensive feat balancing. Hit the ESC key. They might as well add Karaoke while they're at it, complete with a mic plug-in to detect when you're singing out of key and zap your character. Better yet, add some nice malware for webcam users to grab video of you during the DDR/Karaoke-a-thon and distribute them to the good folks at www.starwarskid.com. I'd be utterly amazed if improving NPC pathing wasn't already on their todo list. It's going to look very cheap when you start hacking at a Rancor's toes and it eventually dies from what would probably ammount to a manicure. Fighting giant mobs is probably out unless the animators have a lot of extra time on their hands. (i.e. Don't count on it.) Why find new party members when you can just corrupt and turn your existing members to the dark side? (This is what they are currently implementing) I thought Czerka was quite well incorporated into the back histories of Kashyyk, Tatooine, and HK-47. Sometimes material is just there to give the illusion of depth. That's one thing KOTOR1 did very well. Let's not jump to conclusions just yet... Who knows what it will come in handy for just yet? Heck, for all we know some of the evil/good alignments will wind up being random. (similar to replicant status in Westood's Bladerunner)

Here's a bit I wrote in another thread on the "Last man standing" mechanic. (i.e. If a party member's hitpoints are reduced to 0, he goes unconcious until all nearby enemies are defeated.) I thought it might be worth repeating here since it'll be a bit more on-topic. Another feature of KOTOR2 which sounds intriguing is the new and improved light-sabre customizations. One thing that would be nifty, if it hasn't already been thought of, would be for components to have different effects based on your alignment. This would make the powers of a sabre more personalized for each character. It would also be a nice alternative to using light-side/dark-side item restrictions. If you wanted to restrict an item to the light side, for example, you might just make it's dark-side effects negative. This would mean that a character who suddenly decides to sell out his own mother and turn to the darkside might suddenly find that his trusty sabre has turned on him... An interesting dynamic to be certain! You needen't necessarily limit these to a simple light-side/dark-side toggle either. You could implement them as a sort of slider where you get both light and dark-side effects at the same time, but the ammount of each depends on your alignment. An extreme-dark side character might get 100% of the dark-side effect and 0% of the light side effect, and vice-versa, but a neutral character would get 50% of both effects. Getting back to the light-side/dark-side restrictions again... You could actually limit items to pure-light and pure-dark this way too by putting a highly negative effect on the undesired alignment. For example, you could make an upgrade that offers a huge bonus to 100% light-side characters that has harsh and debilitating effects the moment they commit one dark-side act. A sort of paladins sword, so to speak.

Personally, I just assumed she bit it with the rest of the Jedi on Dantooine when the place got pummelled. (If you turn her before Dantooine gets wasted she winds up outside the Jedi acadamy) Perhaps she'll show up in the ruins of Dantooine in KOTOR2... Then again, Obsidian might try to avoid recycling characters like Yuthura. She's a relatively minor character with a highly uncertain fate in KOTOR1. If the questions in the opening chapter about Revan's past actually get down to the level of Yuthura they are going to seem like an interrogation! I suppose they could find a subtler way to ask about her fate on Dantooine though.

So far the releases have indicated that they expect it out in February of 2005. I honestly don't know what B.I.S.'s release estimates are like. (Perhaps someone who followed the development of some of their earlier games could help me out here?) However, it is possible they have an internal goal of Christmas 2004. The Ferbruary date might just be there to keep whiny fan-boys (like us) off their backs if the unforseen happens and they miss their target. This is all pretty speculative, but I think it's safe to say that the "end of summer" is right out.

It will still be the Last Man Standing system a la KotOR1. If you'll entertain a suggestion for a moment, I felt there was room for improvement with this particular game mechanic... First of all, it does tend to jar you out of the game a bit when your party-members quietly sit a battle out and then get up, without fail, the moment the last enemy bites the dust 20 feet away. It would feel more immersive if those party members needed help to get back up. This help could take the form of using a medkit on them or simply giving them a leg up off the ground, however, it would have to take a couple moments to do this so it wouldn't be too exploitable in combat. It would also introduce a new strategy element to longer battles such as the ones on the Star Forge in KOTOR. If your buddy goes down, do you try to fight it out without him/her, or do you position your party so that one person is free long enough to get him back on his/her feet? This sort of system would also neatly sidestep one of the bugs in KOTOR. I remember in one level (Possibly the Sith Acadamy) a member of my party went down and stayed down without an enemy in sight. I had to hunt through all the nearby passages for the little sucker that got away so I could get mobile again. I couldn't zone with him layed flat out in the middle of the level. I'm not sure how common this particular bug was, but it jarred me right out of the game and was one of the few times I can recall thinking of Bioware as a bunch of idiots. (Which they most certainly aren't!) With the above change in effect you could get your party member back on his feet without a problem. Of course, implementing this would make a few other changes necessary. What happens if you forget where your party member wentl down or simply don't help him/her up? A good solution would be to set a time-limit on how long a character stays down without help. When they get back up they'd catch up on their own and, possibly, give you heck for not helping them up. (Just a verbal whine and maybe a rude gesture for some characters. There's no need to cut to the dialog interface.) If you attempt to zone with a party member down somewhere, the game should let you zone and have the party member come out with you, although, preferably giving you heck as if he/she just caught up after getting up on his/her own. As for the animations required, physically helping the other character up would involve contact between models which I'm sure your animators would flat out refuse to do. However, just having a character kneel next to the fallen fellow and perhaps wave a hand around a bit in a authoritative medical looking fashion would serve almost as well and be relatively simple to implement.