Buyers advice : DON'T !!!

[ulukai]

Yoohoo, got the KOTOR2 the day it appeared in the shops.

Let's install it.

 

Bummer... After disc 1 I have to put disc 2. Easy isn't it?

Then the fun begins: When I change to disc 2, it starts to install, then suddenly it needs disc 1. No prob. Put disc 1 in. Hmm, error. Now it needs disc 2 again. Put disc 2 in. Nice, it continues... for a little while. Then again: error. Needs disc 1 instead of the next disc (disc 3). Put disc 1 in. Errr, error. Needs disc 3. Put disc 3 in. Errr, needs disc 1. To make a very long story short: when I finally get to disc 4 the installation crashes. Oh, never had this much fun in years.

 

After some searching it appears that some program from Norton is the culprit. Hmm, disable everything Norton. Install again. nice, two hours after my first try the game is installed. Woohoo!!!

 

So on to the action. To be on the safe side, I leave Norton out. (It's not because every single other game I have works without problems with norton that a new game should, isn't it?) On to the configuration: I let KOTOR2 check my machine. Hooray, my specs are optimal! No worries...

 

Start the game, drooling like a sick puppy. Hmm, seen better intro movies than this (like in virtually every other game I own) Resolution of movies looks like super low. The movie stops. I choose a character. Now we are rolling !!!

 

Errr, another low res movie, and then : yes, yes, i can hear the beautifull music already. The game will start any moment now. Yes, it will. Sure... Well, it won't.

I try not to throw my laptop through the room. I don't. Begin to fiddle with the videosettings. Put it high, put it low, put it everywhere it goes. Enable hardware mouse, disable hardware mouse. Movie works, game won't; Fiddle some more with the graphic settings, in game this time. Somehow, after a long, long while I'm in the game. Finally!!! So let's play!!!

 

I play a while than save it. As I have a good graphic card and good specs, I turn the resolution up. Strange: now it does work. Nice, looks a lot better. Play some more. Stop playing. Save. Do something else. Open save game. Here we go again.

Fiddle, fiddle, and fiddle some more. Somehow (don't ask my how) after a little hour I manage to load my savegame. play through tutorial level. Woohoo, on to the station. See another crappy movie. And then, same problem again. Game freezes after the movie. Get a little bit angry. Throw the laptop through the room. Wife does a termendeous save, and manages to catch the laptop (I love that woman).

 

Go to Obsidian forum. Blimey, I'm not the only one with problems. Almost every PC owner has simular experiences. Especially those with a ATI card. Look again at the package. Read specs. Supported cards: should have no problem.

 

Can't install latest ATI driver as I'm on a laptop. Search for Omega drivers then. Uninstall ATI drivers and panel. Install latest Omega driver. Open savegame. A miracle it works,... I think? Movies still look crappy. Get thrown back to desktop, back to movie, back to desktop, back to movie, and so on. What a lousy experience KOTOR2 is. Somehow I get to next crappy movie, and I awake from a tube.

 

Now the adventure can begin. I hope. Wonder what will happen next. Not about the story, but about the glitches. Am bored sick already with this game.

 

Conclusion: if you have too much money, an incredibly amount of patience, sado-masochistic tendencies, too much time on your hands and an ATI card, by all means, rush out to buy the game.

 

If not, buy anything else. Wonder about installiations that run flawless, look at movies from older games which run a lot smoother on higher resolutions. And put the KOTOR2 game where the sun doesn't shine.

[Drakoth]

funny, i didnt have any problems at all.

[Goldwolf]

That sucks that you had those problems, but I never had one at all. Installed fine, plays fine (at high res also) and loads fine. Hopefully someone will be able to hep you out!

[ulukai]

That sucks that you had those problems, but I never had one at all. Installed fine, plays fine (at high res also) and loads fine. Hopefully someone will be able to hep you out!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Happy 4 u, but something says me you don't have an ATI Radeon 9700?

Look at the topics in this forum. I'm not alone...

 

Anyway, glad some can actually play KOTOR2. (That's, strange as can be, what one expects if you buy a game)

 

PS: have HL2, Doom3, KOTOR1, Pirates, RON, Vampire:masquerade, Chronicles of Riddick, Far Cry, AO, Hearts of Iron2, Silent Storm (+sentinels), Morrowind, Nexus: the jupiter incident, Beyond Good & Evil, Homeworld 2, starshatter, Massive Assault and Sacred installed on my laptop.

They all work like a charm, installed without a glitch and do what they are supposed to do...

[Mr. Teatime]

The whole thing's a mess with ATI cards. Now the game just has white for all textures apart from the main character. The game is unplayable.

[Volourn]

Ha. Install has corrupted for me as well. Bah.

[hawk]

I am so very very happy with my Nvidia Geforce card now

Well, that is after I buy it tommorow and it installes correctly (hopefully)

 

And no, I don't own a Laptop. Fortunately

[Mashiki]

I'll put it simply. Don't use a laptop to play PC games, core componets in mobile chips that are in desktop chipsets are missing to save power. Two points for the disc's, either they are bad or something is wrong with the laptop but if you are 'throwing' it around like that you don't treat your hardware worth anything to begin with so it shouldn't be a surprise.

[JamieKirby]

ok, the guys with ATI graphic cards, you are getting glitches right?

 

which drivers you using?

 

I should be getting my game tomorrow.....you should try the latest drivers if you haven't already because the developers said that the latest ATI Drivers is a big must since all the ATI specific bugs and glitches found during the bug fixing were fixed either by repairing the engine or by ATI with the help of Obsidian...so try the latest ones.

 

4.11, 4.12, 5.1 and 5.2

 

Right now, i have 4.11 installed, i plan to try them all. (if they have a problem)

[WingcommanderIV]

I'll put it simply.  Don't use a laptop to play PC games, core componets in mobile chips that are in desktop chipsets are missing to save power.  Two points for the disc's, either they are bad or something is wrong with the laptop but if you are 'throwing' it around like that you don't treat your hardware worth anything to begin with so it shouldn't be a surprise.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yup everyone kept telling me the same thing. Don't use laptops to play PC Games. Well GO STUFF IT!!! I have a laptop, ver powerful, 3 gig pentium, 704mb ram, and a Radeon Mobile 9000 (The weakest link, as usual). The game refused to work, and I was all down, as everyone was saying The game will not run on a laptop, the same tune as you're singing. Even Omega wouldn't help. I was gonna give up, when I say a post about how it works fine with older ATI drivers like 4.11. Since I have a mobility chip, the drivers won't install, but old Omega drivers will. I found Omega Drivers based off of ATI Catalyst drivers 4.11, and sure enough, it now works like a charm, at high resolution and everything. To all those people who gave me grief about playing it on a laptop, and for callign me stupid, my reply is, SCREW YOU.

[Mashiki]

ok, the guys with ATI graphic cards, you are getting glitches right?

 

which drivers you using?

 

I should be getting my game tomorrow.....you should try the latest drivers if you haven't already because the developers said that the latest ATI Drivers is a big must since all the ATI specific bugs and glitches found during the bug fixing were fixed either by repairing the engine or by ATI with the help of Obsidian...so try the latest ones.

 

4.11, 4.12, 5.1 and 5.2

 

Right now, i have 4.11 installed, i plan to try them all. (if they have a problem)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've I'ready done driver drops into the KoTOR directory, 4.11's to 5.2's are the only ones which will work in a 'solid' way. Anything lower then that and you'll get a speed increase...but it will introduce massive instability into the system.

 

If you are unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, with OGL games, you can take a copy of the OGL extender from a driver set and place it into it's directory. In most cases it will then be forced to use the first OGL driver it finds. I did I write up on how to do it on the bioware forums a few months agowhen the 4.12 cat's re-introduced the slowdown problem, and the older cat's were the best solution. This doesn't work on x800 series cards unfortunatly...but does work on all the older chipsets. So if you find one driver set which works really nice then you can just use that.

 

I'll be fully installing the 5.2's tonight when I get a few mintues tho.

[Mashiki]

Yup everyone kept telling me the same thing. Don't use laptops to play PC Games. Well GO STUFF IT!!! I have a laptop, ver powerful, 3 gig pentium, 704mb ram, and a Radeon Mobile 9000 (The weakest link, as usual). ....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you want to attack those people then do so, I did not say anything to you like that. In that light...grow up. Omega's 4.11 cats are a mixture of two different driver sets, I can't remember which two however since I don't keep track anymore. What you have is 'luck' nothing else. What works for you may not work for someone else, that is reality.

[AnakinSolo2002]

all I can say is this:

 

"Laptops are for space saving, carry-on baggage people who have sticks shoved up their butt's when they walk, they buy their laptop, not knowing **** about computers, and they whine and whine because certain games don't work."

[starkiller]

I got my copy yesterday in the mail.

 

I haven't played yet.

Why??

 

Because the game is taking so long to install. I've been trying to install for about, oh, 16 hours at least between yesterday and today. Its like I was trying to use a single speed CD-ROM drive on a 286 to install, which I'm not.

 

I've got a 1.8gHz AMD AthlonXP, 512MB RAM and over 50GB of hard drive space.

 

This is insane.

[Darth Makaan]

never play games on laptops.

 

do ya see anyone with these types of problems with a desktop?

[ulukai]

For those people with a huge reading problem: Every game I have (and I have lots: see installed games in my previous post) works like a charm. I also have 3 'normal' PC's, but as the one with the highest specs is the laptop I use this one.

 

With absolutely every (for those deaf ones out there I repeat: ABSOLUTELY EVERY) game I have it gives the best performance. It used to be the case that laptops were bad for games. But times are changing. So don't give me the laptop is no good bulls***! This is 2005, not 1999...

 

The only problem with laptops regarding games I experienced, is that you can't install the official ATI drivers. The omega drivers fix that.

 

My point is that I don't consider it normal, that I have to install new drivers, change all settings for this one game (and possibly screw up a setup that works with every other major game to date) to be able to play one single game (KOTOR2) which looks almost the same as KOTOR1, when more demanding games like HL2, Chronicles of Riddick, Doom 3, Nexus, the Jupiter Incident, etc... have no problem running.

 

To me, this proves that it was a bad port from X-box. That the code smells like dead fish.

 

I'm quite adept at fiddling with configurations, as I work with PC's since the first ones came on the market. I have a lot of friends though, who can't do that without screwing up their PC.

 

Just imagine buying a car, which doesn't drive without extensive tinkering, although they advertise it should. I think you wouldn't be happy either! And you would ask your money back...

 

I'm happy for those for which the game works without a glitch, but a little browsing on this forum shows I'm not the only one by far with these problems.

 

The game market releases unfinished games, pressed by market economies, then releases patches who work for some, and don't for others. Am I alone to believe that a game release should be flawless and tested on the configurations the company advertises? If the own configuration tool of the game examines my machine, and concludes that the game should run perfectly on my PC, is it then weird that I get pissed if it clearly doesn't?

 

I THINK NOT !!!

[Synaesthesia]

all I can say is this:

 

"Laptops are for space saving, carry-on baggage people who have sticks shoved up their butt's when they walk, they buy their laptop, not knowing **** about computers, and they whine and whine because certain games don't work."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Alternatively, laptops are for people that need to take a computer away from their desk/home for work or school.

[AnakinSolo2002]

simply put.... Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic "1" AND "2" have issues running on Laptops, especially having ATI mobility chipsets, and I wish it weren't true but it is, and there is and will be NO WAY around that.

[Volourn]

"do ya see anyone with these types of problems with a desktop?"

 

Yes, me.

[ulukai]

Latest update:

 

And it goes on and on and on...

 

I last left you when exiting the tube. Meanwhile I installed the latest Omega drivers. Everything worked ! ... for a little while. I check the computer of the morgue. When exiting the menu, new mayhem:

 

Now the screen becomes a lot of random garbage. It flicks on and out, and the game is unplayable AGAIN.

 

Any ideas, apart of murdering the whole development crew of KOTOR2?

 

[ulukai]

The saga continues:

 

I keep you posted, so here is the latest.

 

As I concluded from own experience that tinkering with the graphic settings doesn't change a thing (and after browsing most of the threads here), I decided it's time for illogical tinkering. So I disabled hardware sound in the advanced options of the sound menu. Loaded my latest savegame, and no flickering until now.

 

Wonder how long it will last, and if the changes in the sound departement have anything to do with the sudden stable run?

 

Any ideas? Suggestions?

[Synaesthesia]

You don't perchance have an Audigy, do you?

[ulukai]

You don't perchance have an Audigy, do you?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

No, it's a Realtek AC97 Audio...

[WingcommanderIV]

So you people are still going on about the laptop crap. Yes, a lot of people on desktops are having just as many problems. The only difference between a desktop and a laptop, is that a laptop is easier to upgrade. Anakin, you were the guy going on and on about how A Mobility 9000 is more like a 6500 or something like that. You were full of ****. The entire problem rested on the shoulders of obsidian, and their terrible job at squashing compatibility issues. This laptop is stronger than a majority of the desktops out there that people have, and laptops are not to be underestimated. Since I fixed the problem, the game has been much more solid, then it seems to be with many the rest of you, Desktops and Laptops. All you Laptop owners, don't fret, as long as your system meets the minimum requirements, you do have hope left.

[AnakinSolo2002]

So you people are still going on about the laptop crap. Yes, a lot of people on desktops are having just as many problems. The only difference between a desktop and a laptop, is that a laptop is easier to upgrade. Anakin, you were the guy going on and on about how A Mobility 9000 is more like a 6500 or something like that. You were full of ****. The entire problem rested on the shoulders of obsidian, and their terrible job at squashing compatibility issues. This laptop is stronger than a majority of the desktops out there that people have, and laptops are not to be underestimated. Since I fixed the problem, the game has been much more solid, then it seems to be with many the rest of you, Desktops and Laptops. All you Laptop owners, don't fret, as long as your system meets the minimum requirements, you do have hope left.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Hey man I never really meant any offence, well I'm glad you got it to work, I just know that laptops usually have lots of trouble with this series, so yeah. I know there is no laptop out there better altogether than my computer. You are still wrong about the laptop/desktop difference, there are a heck of a lot of differences, even the RAM it's self is different, LT ram and DT ram are not interchangeable, completelly different sizes. Ever wonder why everything doesn't heat up as much in a laptop as a pc? it's because everything is dumbed down a bit so that not as much heat is produced. the processors are even different, wonder why there is an 'M' now on the info for laptops processors? They had to optimize it so it was cooler without killing performance too much, but there is still a difference. you need to realize there IS a reason why a destop is a desktop and a laptop is a laptop, you could never make a laptop out of PC parts, It would burn up.