Questions to Devs - PC Style

[Hydrogen]

I have closed the threads in the General forum and have started this one, as there could realistically be questions which are differences between the two games. I cannot promise that the Dev's will look at or respond to this thread, but at least it centralizes the questions for when they have a few minutes or a day to play on the boards.

 

If you get upset because the dev's aren't answering your question, please look back at the other threads, as it might have been answered before.

 

 

these are in the General forum:

Questions to the Devs (the original)

Questions the the Devs - Take 2

Questions to Devs, Take 3

Questions to Devs, Take 4

Questions to Devs, Take 5

 

 

If there are questions that didn't get answered from the previous threads, please feel free to restate them, or link the old question to this thread.

[GhostofAnakin]

Here's a pretty obvious question that's popped up a lot on this forum: Are you guys (the devs) working on the PC version to try and iron out the issues that seem to be plaguing the XBox version? Are those problems XBox specific issues?

[mkreku]

How many people are working on the PC version? Will you have time for some bonus material for the PC version? Are you redoing the interface for the PC version, to take advantage of the mighty mouse controls?

[Naso]

Will it work any better with ATI cards? Please??????

[iamthelorax]

NASO, didn't a dev already say that the game was running fine on his ATI card?

 

I've spent hours reading nearly all the "dev" forums so I am nearly positive none of this has been answered, and mostly not even asked. My post count is misleading; I've lurked extensively.

 

Copied and Edited from Q's to Dev's Take 5:

 

1. AKARI, as a corollary to your comment on engine efficiency: is part of the framerate disparity between K1/2 and Halo on XBox because Halo was programmed very specifically for XBox in addition to KotOR's programming being more 'lazy'? On my 2yr old PC for which the CPU is the bottleneck, K1 ran fine at 1280x960 except during particle effects like smoke and grenades, while Halo PC, which has no nifty effects like grass blades and speed blurring (frame buffer FX) and rarely has necessarily high-poly surfaces like human faces, ran poorly at 1024x768 whenever there was anything reflective around (which was a good chunk of the time). No FSAA on either one and 32 bpp on both, as I recall. I noticed the fps drop during combat when getting movies with fraps, so I don't think I'm just pausing too often to notice.

 

2. Oh yeah, and can ya'll make higher-res textures for the blasters for K2 PC? K1's looked terrible, as do what I've seen of XBox K2's. I realize its third person, but jeez! Are you assuming that better textures would make the low weapon poly counts (e.g. square or hexagonal 'cylinders' as I recall) so obvious that the blasters would still look bad?

 

3. I have only seen this asked once and never answered, but it is quite important: will the targeting system ignore mines when enemies are about (you couldn't target enemies with mines in your l.o.s.).

 

4. I realize that a retreat command would be hard to implement, but what about a hold command? Is that included in defensive 'stance?'

 

5. Will there be an option (in .ini file perhaps) to choose the res. of the HUD instead of having its scaling locked in? The K1 HUD at 800x600 takes up far too much screen real estate; at 1280 'twas was fine, probably best at 1024. I would literally wait for a mod for this before buying K2.

 

6. Will we be able to get to game menus from minigames and game-rendered (non-PC dialogue) cutscenes? (I remember seeing someone, but not a dev, say no, while devs said the cutscenes simply wouldn't be annoying) KotOR was the only game I ever had to regularly exit by killing it with the task manager. <_<

 

7. Will Alt-Tab'ing (or the game in general) be stable? Will K2 not randomly create corrupt/invalid auto and quicksaves? Don't get me wrong, I loved KotOR, but it was despite a lack of polish/debugging. At least the 'empty' box moniker shows you've on the right track in the polish department.

 

EDIT: OK, so from after forum reading it seems that many PC'ers had huge bugs (esp. on ATI's), and many had absolutely none. My bugs, however, were on an internally compatible, well-cooled nVidia/AMD system. So very varied hardware-specific testing seemed to be lacking. I am assuming that OE is using these 2 mo. between XBox and PC data being given to manufacturing to do just that this time. *Fingers crossed*

[Ludozee]

Will KotOR 2 have difficulties with Win XP SP 2?

[DSLuke]

Will KotOR 2 have difficulties with Win XP SP 2?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why did you had any difficulties with other games?

[Darth F@nboy]

Why will the American and European PC versions be realesed the same day?

The european one needs alot of lanuage to be installed, the american don't...

Therefor is it only logic that the american should come a little while before...

[GhostofAnakin]

Why will the American and European PC versions be realesed the same day?

The european one needs alot of lanuage to be installed, the american don't...

Therefor is it only logic that the american should come a little while before...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That would be logical if it applied for both the XBox and PC version. But since both PC versions (North American and European) are being released in February, that theory doesn't really hold.

[DSLuke]

Will there be a DVD release?

[iamthelorax]

Only LA can control the manufacturing. If they wanted to know how important a DVD release is to people, they would probably run an official poll on their forums, since from what I understand they don't pay any attention to their boards in general. But I suspect that more people have DVD drives now than had CD Drives when Myst came out, and CD Drives were quite expensive then iirc. So it is inexcusable.

 

KotOR is supposed to have problems with SP2, as are several other games and many websites. Thus I haven't installed it.

 

What happened to the penguin, DSLuke? You're avatar isn't unique anymore.

[GhostofAnakin]

KotOR is supposed to have problems with SP2, as are several other games and many websites.  Thus I haven't installed it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That is not good news for me then.

[DSLuke]

Only LA can control the manufacturing.  If they wanted to know how important a DVD release is to people, they would probably run an official poll on their forums, since from what I understand they don't pay any attention to their boards in general.  But I suspect that more people have DVD drives now than had CD Drives when Myst came out, and CD Drives were quite expensive then iirc.  So it is inexcusable.

 

KotOR is supposed to have problems with SP2, as are several other games and many websites.  Thus I haven't installed it.

 

What happened to the penguin, DSLuke?  You're avatar isn't unique anymore.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I wouldn't worry about it. Since the game will be released much later than the SP2, I would only hope that it will be completely compatible.

 

My avatar was changed back into this because of the war against the pink side of kazic and Darth (Pinkth) Gandalf.

 

Maybe it is high time to restore the penguin.

 

It's official Tux is back.

[homestar]

Would it be possible this time to turn off particle effects (dust, smoke, etc.) for those who experienced major slow downs during those moments?

[DSLuke]

Would it be possible this time to turn off particle effects (dust, smoke, etc.) for those who experienced major slow downs during those moments?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Then how would you know if a grenade exploded? Only by sound?

[Naso]

(talking about KotOR 1): Well after the new catalyst it worked fine for me, including SP2, but my buddy just got the game, has a laptop, he can't play 10 minutes before it locks up and he has to do the whole powerbutton, scandisk, reboot thing... He's very angry, and I can't say I blame him. I know it was fixed in an ATI release, but I really have suspicions that it was Bioware's fault, not ATI. I mean for such a high profile game, I can't believe ATI would not fix it sooner if it were not questionable coding, seeing how they've been so quick for everything else, and considering Bioware's track record. That said, I'm very concerned for KotOR 2 using the same engine......

[Ludozee]

Will KotOR 2 have difficulties with Win XP SP 2?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why did you had any difficulties with other games?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, but that might also have been my A7N8X -E / Radeon combination...

Anyway, Since I have SP 2 installed, it could have been SP 2. I don't know what the SP 2 problem was supposed to look like, so I don't know

[Master Jedi]

is it at all worrying that no devs have posted in the questions to the devs thread

[Master Jedi]

how much support will obsidian provide for patches for the PC

[Naso]

Corollary question: O Devs, why have you forsaken us?

[Astatine]

I think most of them might be taking a well earned holiday

 

(Random offtopic comment: Came back to hang around these forums again -- got bored -- expecting to have to smack my eyes shut immediately and -- no spoilers at all yet! Wow )

[Akari]

How many people are working on the PC version? Will you have time for some bonus material for the PC version? Are you redoing the interface for the PC version, to take advantage of the mighty mouse controls?

I don't believe there will be bonus material. The timeline we were given to finish the PC version is pretty short and does not include time for making changes to the interface other than fixing any bugs QA finds.

 

Will it work any better with ATI cards?  Please??????

Should work fine with ATI cards. So far we've been able to fix any ATI-Specific issues that have been found by either fixing the engine or helping ATI fix the problem in their drivers. Using the latest ATI drivers when KotOR2 comes out will be important, as some changes to their drivers over the last six months were in direct response to issues found in KotOR2.

 

1. AKARI, as a corollary to your comment on engine efficiency: is part of the framerate disparity between K1/2 and Halo on XBox because Halo was programmed very specifically for XBox in addition to KotOR's programming being more 'lazy'? On my 2yr old PC for which the CPU is the bottleneck, K1 ran fine at 1280x960 except during particle effects like smoke and grenades, while Halo PC, which has no nifty effects like grass blades and speed blurring (frame buffer FX) and rarely has necessarily high-poly surfaces like human faces, ran poorly at 1024x768 whenever there was anything reflective around (which was a good chunk of the time). No FSAA on either one and 32 bpp on both, as I recall. I noticed the fps drop during combat when getting movies with fraps, so I don't think I'm just pausing too often to notice.

That's pretty much the gist of it, yeah.

 

2. Oh yeah, and can ya'll make higher-res textures for the blasters for K2 PC? K1's looked terrible, as do what I've seen of XBox K2's. I realize its third person, but jeez! Are you assuming that better textures would make the low weapon poly counts (e.g. square or hexagonal 'cylinders' as I recall) so obvious that the blasters would still look bad?

The PC version will have higher res textures all around, but I don't know if the weapons were done.

 

3. I have only seen this asked once and never answered, but it is quite important: will the targeting system ignore mines when enemies are about (you couldn't target enemies with mines in your l.o.s.).

Unfortunately, I don't believe there will be any change with that.

 

4. I realize that a retreat command would be hard to implement, but what about a hold command?  Is that included in defensive 'stance?'

The Stationary AI mode makes it so that the NPCs hold still in combat and won't move forward to engage.

 

5. Will there be an option (in .ini file perhaps) to choose the res. of the HUD instead of having its scaling locked in?  The K1 HUD at 800x600 takes up far too much screen real estate; at 1280 'twas was fine, probably best at 1024. I would literally wait for a mod for this before buying K2.

The scaling for the main HUD is still locked in. It would be one of the easist things for someone to mod with a GFF Editor though.

 

6. Will we be able to get to game menus from minigames and game-rendered (non-PC dialogue) cutscenes? (I remember seeing someone, but not a dev, say no, while devs said the cutscenes simply wouldn't be annoying) KotOR was the only game I ever had to regularly exit by killing it with the task manager. <_<

Well, you can forfeit out of Pazaak. In KotOR1 that was done by just hitting Esc. In KotOR2, there's an actual forfeit button.

 

The ability to forfeit out of the Swoop Races was also added.

 

There is no forfeit for the turret-like games still though, so I guess if you really have to quit during one of those, you can alt+f4 it.

 

Will there be a DVD release?

No idea. I doubt it though.

 

KotOR is supposed to have problems with SP2, as are several other games and many websites.  Thus I haven't installed it.

 

KotOR1 was included on the distributed list of games that had issues with SP2 by mistake. It was actually another L.A. title that was supposed to be on that list. KotOR1 should work fine with SP2. Not to say individuals won't have problems running it on SP2, but that's almost a given any time there's a major OS change.

 

-Akari

[Ludozee]

Where did that post go?

[Akari]

Where did that post go?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I set it invisible for a minute while I worked on fixing the Quote boxes. Guess I quoted too many or something. I don't know how this stuff works, I'm just a programmer-... er.

 

-Akari

[Ludozee]

Where did that post go?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I set it invisible for a minute while I worked on fixing the Quote boxes. Guess I quoted too many or something. I don't know how this stuff works, I'm just a programmer-... er.

 

-Akari

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ahh, never mind, it's back! Many thanks for answering our questions