Major Issues That Need Fixing ASAP

[Master Dahvernas]

I realize patching a game isn't as easy as 1-2-3, since patching one thing may damage something else...

 

However, The Sith Lords has 19 pages of Bugs (see Bugs Thread) and some of them are more prominent than others across all video cards and hardware specs.

 

Here are some of the ones I think should be fixed in the next technical patch (or patches):

 

Frame Rate Optimization:

 

I know this may depend heavily on graphics card (Nvidia; ATI) and drivers, and some say the game now runs better than ever after this first patch... But there are major areas where the frame rates still drop to single digits and become uplayable:

 

-Peragus Fuel Depot (w/T3)

-Peragus Mining Tunnels

-Dantooine

 

Also, while I this isn't a First Person Shooter where you need 100+ FPS to be playable... But this game doesn't even deliver close to 30 FPS on a consistent basis which is the bare minimum for smooth, fluid, non-jerky gameplay and that IS a problem I feel needs to be addressed sooner than later because it also effects cut-scenes and in-game dialogues with NPCs.

 

Scripting Errors

 

Most of these are Quest/Storyline and Trigger Event/Sequence related. Most notable are:

 

-Telos Academy (can't leave; cut-scenes don't play)

-Red Eclipse on board Ebon Hawk (they never appear)

-Invitation from Exchange (Message never arives)

 

-Returning to Dantooine Second/Third time - This is a big one in that if you leave Dantooine and return a second time (or more than this) and you've killed or want to gather the Jedi Masters... The game crashes and or just locks up and cut-scenes and other things aren't triggered properly.

 

This is a game-stopping bug (like the others) that prevent a player from finishing the gmae even after reloading a save.

 

Gameplay and Other Technical Bugs

 

-Defense Bonuses not stacking

-Upgraded items disappearing from work bench

-Party Member AI Attack Behavior doesn't work (Bao-Dur is the worst)

-PC just stands there even after you qeue up multiple combat feats/moves

-Party Members standing around and not joining PC in battle

 

-Etc, etc.

 

What do you guys (forum posters) think needs to be addressed ASAP before anything else?

[jkletellier]

Im with you on the FPS thing. Thats GOT to be a high priority. Also, i think better detection of the video cards would be a priority. The patch helped, but didnt solve the whole problem.

 

EDIT: BTW, your performance tweak posted the other day did help my performance, thought only slightly. But ill take what I can get! Thanks!

[Smilodon]

The DS/LS Mastery of your party members is still bugged. It is simply gone once I reload a game. Alignment shifts of my companions when entering a new area was very common in my games as DS character (again especially DS Bao-Dur, but also with some other companions). That's usually solved by removing and then reselecting him/her. This doesn't work in certain areas as you might know, however.

And even if they hit Mastery, the bonuses doesn't seem to stack, at least they are not shown on the character screen.

[JamieKirby]

why not just redo the game in a new engine. :D

[jkletellier]

why not just redo the game in a new engine. :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

(w00t) :"> :ph34r:

 

Such practical realism.

[MaglorD]

Frame Rate Optimization:

 

I know this may depend heavily on graphics card (Nvidia; ATI) and drivers, and some say the game now runs better than ever after this first patch... But there are major areas where the frame rates still drop to single digits and become uplayable:

 

-Peragus Fuel Depot (w/T3)

-Peragus Mining Tunnels

-Dantooine

 

Those 3 areas you mentioned have no problems on Nvidia cards. The problem lies with the interaction between ATI cards and the Odyssey engine. When I played on the Nvidia, I did not notice any specific lag in those areas but it was impossible to miss on the ATI. If you enable the Vertex option in the ini file, Dantooine is perfectly smooth. However it doesn't fix the obvious but bearable problems at the Fuel Depot with T3.

 

As for the mining tunnels. the only slowdown I encountered was in the area of superheated steam(reddish orange area). This was encountered on the Nvidia too but it's such a small area that it's minor to me.

 

There are several other small areas where the ATI encounters slowdowns.

 

There seems to be a memory leak at the Telos residential area that causes slowdowns for both Nvidia and ATI. It doesn't happen all the time though.

[Master Dahvernas]

Those 3 areas you mentioned have no problems on Nvidia cards. The problem lies with the interaction between ATI cards and the Odyssey engine. When I played on the Nvidia, I did not notice any specific lag in those areas but it was impossible to miss on the ATI. If you enable the Vertex option in the ini file, Dantooine is perfectly smooth. However it doesn't fix the obvious but bearable problems at the Fuel Depot with T3.

 

As for the mining tunnels. the only slowdown I encountered was in the area of superheated steam(reddish orange area). This was encountered on the Nvidia too but it's such a small area that it's minor to me.

 

There are several other small areas where the ATI encounters slowdowns.

 

There seems to be a memory leak at the Telos residential area that causes slowdowns for both Nvidia and ATI. It doesn't happen all the time though.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I had major slow downs using a 5900 Ultra and those with 6800 GTs and Ultras have also reported similar slow downs.

 

As I said in another thread, I think the big reason the smoke slows everybody down is because it is rendered in the CPU instead of the GPU.

 

Also, and this may not be fixable at this point, but I still think the engine doesn't cull objects you don't see and is rendering every single thing -- Walls, Surfaces, NPCs, Doors, Triggers, Entities, etc. -- And that is also why people, regardless of video card, are getting slow downs as well on some of these levels... Like the Pergaus Fuel Depot that has a ton of verticies given the cubicle nature of the level and its depth.

[vortexwx]

I definitely think the influence issue - mainly Bao-Dur, as you said - is a big one. It is really annoying to gain influence with him and then 30 seconds later it is back to where it was before.

 

Lagging in certain areas...Dantooine was bad in both Kotor1 and2...I have not had much of a problem since I switched from an ATI 9200 to a GeForce 5500. I lag badly every time I walk by the airspeeder at the docks in Nar Shadda.

[MaglorD]

As I said in another thread, I think the big reason the smoke slows everybody down is because it is rendered in the CPU instead of the GPU.

 

Maybe, but the Fuel Depot with the Force Fields and T3 does not have any smoke that I can remember but has slight frame rate issues with ATI.

 

Dantooine doesn't have any smoke either and yet experiences extreme slowdowns with ATI unless you have Vertex Shader Objects disabled.

 

The only place with smoke cited is the Mining Tunnels and I get the same slowdown on both Nvidia and ATI at the Reddish Orange area, so this one could be due to the CPU.

 

Jekk Jekk Tarr and Malachor V(poison area) are full of smoke but I didn't get slowdowns with ATI(Vertex Shader Objects disabled) or Nvidia.

 

You also mentioned that the Aurora/Odyssey could be built on the Quake 3 engine. Funny thing is when I played Jedi Academy(uses Quake 3 engine) on my ATI card, I had zero issues and the frame rate was 90 consistently(probably CPU limited) with all graphics options maxed and resolution of 1280x960 and far superior graphics. So yes, the Aurora/Odyssey is rather crappy in comparison to Quake 3 graphics-wise.

[MaglorD]

I definitely think the influence issue - mainly Bao-Dur, as you said - is a big one. It is really annoying to gain influence with him and then 30 seconds later it is back to where it was before.

 

Lagging in certain areas...Dantooine was bad in both Kotor1 and2...I have not had much of a problem since I switched from an ATI 9200 to a GeForce 5500. I lag badly every time I walk by the airspeeder at the docks in Nar Shadda.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I actually thought the influence thing with Bao-Dur was a feature. Yeah, it was irritating getting light mastery with Bao-Dur and then losing it after a while for no apparent reason.

 

The lag at the airspeeder only occurs after you destroy Goto's yacht. I'm not sure if you still remember but did you experience it with the ATI or Nvidia or both? I got the impression that it only happened with the ATI and with the Nvidia, there was no airspeeder at the docks after destroying Goto's yacht.

[vortexwx]

I definitely think the influence issue - mainly Bao-Dur, as you said - is a big one. It is really annoying to gain influence with him and then 30 seconds later it is back to where it was before.

 

Lagging in certain areas...Dantooine was bad in both Kotor1 and2...I have not had much of a problem since I switched from an ATI 9200 to a GeForce 5500. I lag badly every time I walk by the airspeeder at the docks in Nar Shadda.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I actually thought the influence thing with Bao-Dur was a feature. Yeah, it was irritating getting light mastery with Bao-Dur and then losing it after a while for no apparent reason.

 

The lag at the airspeeder only occurs after you destroy Goto's yacht. I'm not sure if you still remember but did you experience it with the ATI or Nvidia or both? I got the impression that it only happened with the ATI and with the Nvidia, there was no airspeeder at the docks after destroying Goto's yacht.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I experienced it with the GeForce/nVidia before and after Goto's yacht...not with the ATI Radeon.

 

....of course, I did crank my graphics up a bit.

 

also, I forgot. The biggest annoyance for me (more than Bao-Dur) is the choppy laggy crap right after saving. When I save, I get up and go do something for a few minutes before I start playing again.

[MaglorD]

I experienced it with the GeForce/nVidia before and after Goto's yacht...not with the ATI Radeon.

 

....of course, I did crank my graphics up a bit.

 

also, I forgot. The biggest annoyance for me (more than Bao-Dur) is the choppy laggy crap right after saving. When I save, I get up and go do something for a few minutes before I start playing again.

 

OK in that case, it's a game bug. I probably did not encounter it with the Nvidia because I failed to complete fixing the airspeeder...got invited by the Exchange too soon for that game.

 

As for the saving bit, sorry but I don't notice any lag while doing that on both Nvidia and ATI. Could be a hard disk thingy as I'm running on SATA drives.

[vortexwx]

I experienced it with the GeForce/nVidia before and after Goto's yacht...not with the ATI Radeon.

 

....of course, I did crank my graphics up a bit.

 

also, I forgot. The biggest annoyance for me (more than Bao-Dur) is the choppy laggy crap right after saving. When I save, I get up and go do something for a few minutes before I start playing again.

 

OK in that case, it's a game bug. I probably did not encounter it with the Nvidia because I failed to complete fixing the airspeeder...got invited by the Exchange too soon for that game.

 

As for the saving bit, sorry but I don't notice any lag while doing that on both Nvidia and ATI. Could be a hard disk thingy as I'm running on SATA drives.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I am using ATA as well........it hard to explain. It is like the game "ticks" or something. It only lasts for about a minute or so. I am just really impatient

[Reveilled]

Also important is the skipping dialogue bug. It affects a lot of people to different degrees. Some just get T3-M4's lines skipped, some get all lines skipped after a few hours of play, and some get every line skipped all the time, rendering the game unplayable.

[BattleCookiee]

* When in the inventory, some of the same items do not stack, if you select one of these it says: "No description available" and when re-entering inventory after being in the game again they finnaly stack...

* Sometimes when entering combat you click to attack, but the character does not respond and just stands about

* Sometimes when entering combat you click to attack, only to find your character run to the enemy and forget his actions (4 flurry), if you click the enemy once again the combat line re-appears and your character starts fighting

* DEFENSIVE BEHAVIOR STANCE and TRANSIT TO EBON HAWK do not appear anywhere in the game

* Bao Dur stopped responding (I gave Bao-Dur a 2 attack on person A and after that 2 on B, but he kept hitting A, dying and leaving B behind with active shield, who could kill the entire party because not even VIBROBLADES (who should penetrate shields, like on Nar Shaddaa fight ) could hit them, and he hit almost all times, quickly dispatching us)

More: In Freedonn Nar's tomb I ordered Bao-Dur to attack (critical stike), and the WHOLE fight he didn't do a thing.

Any attack order got ignored, he just keep standing doing nothing.

I've ordered him to Force Heal, no effect. He doesn't heal, but does sets some other Force powers behind the Force Heal, which he can't cast because he wouldn't cast Force Heal in the first place.

So I decided to cancel his combat, let him walk outside enemy-saber radius and then order Heal again.

But yet again: Nothing!

He became mobile and active only after all enemy's were down...

* Lightsaber crystals are bugged. The rewards do not stack, causing too low stat bonusses or multiple keen giving the double-bladed lightsaber not 17-20 like it should, but still 19-20...

* NEED TO CONFIGURE SWOOP BIKE SHIFT KEY!!!

* After switch from Jedi Sentinel to Jedi Watchman I can't choose Vitality Regeneration anymore, also an other cross-class to class skill is available, while the so called cross-class still needs 1 point to upgrade.

* Enemy Jedi/Sith almost never use the Force

* The Galactic History:Bonus Mission gets stuck in your journal forever if you don't talk about it to Kreia after leaving Peragus

* The Big droid tank at the plane: Lost quite a few times because my teammates and PC got orders to attack, but did not attack..., but they kept in his line of sight (and arms) and got blasted to death before even walking to the droid (they would only attack if the attack order was giving standing infront of his nose. Walking? forget it!

* The Twi'lek there (military base) has a lack of pathfinding and doesn't even follow when right infront but a little bit further than him. That guy surely had a short LOS. Even IN LOS, but just a little bit further and he wouldn't follow. Quite strange that your teammates have a decent following AI (except they also hang sometimes, but not every 5 seconds of walking) but not this Twi'lek.

Sometimes I walked next to him, he would follow for 0.1 sec and stand at my old location again when I had proceded half the room.

* The Smuggling side-quest (Telos) says it gives DS points but actually doesn't

* B-4D4's theme does not play when being B-4D4

* When completing the "Find bodies in Enclave and bring them to me" quest, the woman dissapears after delivering the bodies, and comes back acting like she meets me for the first time. I still got the bodies in inventory and never saw the items of the forged will

* One word: REDEMPTION

* On Dxun I fixed the droids on the way up, but now 2 droids walked into each other and won't move anymore, blocking the entire road

* After saving the Queen there are about 12 remains all through the palace room, but there is no way to pick them up, before you talk to the master walking to the remains tells you to talk and sets you back and after the conversation you leave immediatly

* In Iziz, when the turrets started, my Jedi refused to Destroy Droid the turrets who were higher than ground level if not in Force Power range, and refused to do anything else. Had to manually run him into the correct range or he wouldn't use the attack, even when shot at (the turrets range is longer than the Destroy Droid one)...

* A refugee wanted to see her husband and my character could tell her I saw him and send her to her husband, But I Killed Him!!! Now I can still visit his house to hear to woman say thanks for bringing me to her husband, not there because I killed him...

* After you talk to Vogga about Goto you're not able to dance for him anymore, can cause Vogga's Horde quest to get stuck (and one less saber for the player)

* The "Fuel for Telos" quest is seriously bugged, casuing Telos having no fuel during attack Ravanger, no money for it from GO-TO and nobody tells Telos makes it through with the new fuel support.

* Sometimes during the Swoop Races you start and the swoop gets attached to the roof, now you don't have to jump (improved time) but you can't hit any accelerator-pad except the first (and without those, you never get a good time)

* After the main plot was done and Telos was under attack by the Ravenger, the TSF leader told me of the fuel problems they still had (pegasus down, no new souce), but I made an agreement with Votta at Nar Shaada!

* The "escaped criminals quest" is bugged to the limit. First 2 games saw them at Czerka, not at surface, and now (third time) not even at Czerka

*Failed Fry/Freeze by enemies still cause you're task bar to go empty, PC stops responding untill given actions

 

JUST A SMALL GRASP OF THE WORST BUG I HAVE FOUND

For full list Glitches

[BlackJaguar]

I experienced it with the GeForce/nVidia before and after Goto's yacht...not with the ATI Radeon.

 

....of course, I did crank my graphics up a bit.

 

also, I forgot. The biggest annoyance for me (more than Bao-Dur) is the choppy laggy crap right after saving. When I save, I get up and go do something for a few minutes before I start playing again.

 

OK in that case, it's a game bug. I probably did not encounter it with the Nvidia because I failed to complete fixing the airspeeder...got invited by the Exchange too soon for that game.

 

As for the saving bit, sorry but I don't notice any lag while doing that on both Nvidia and ATI. Could be a hard disk thingy as I'm running on SATA drives.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hmmm...I don't have this problem. Two days ago I reinstalled KOTOR2 and applied 1.0b patch. I have two SATA hard disks and I have no slowdowns even after savings. I'm also playing on 1280x1024 AA x4 and Anisotropic filtering set to x8.

 

AMD XP 2700+, 1GB 333DDR, SB Audigy 2, Asus nForce 2 Ultra

MSI FX 5950 Ultra (71.89 drivers)

 

Windows XP Pro + SP2

 

How much memory you have ? Are you running anti-virus in background ? Perhaps too many services are running as well...just of top of my head

[Quonous]

I was unable to access the cave on Korriban at all, no matter what settings or party members I had. Whenever I went in it would just crash to desktop. Most annoying as I understand I missed some good stuff.

 

Also, My Darth Nihlus never said anything. An alien language sound sample played when he was talking but I got no accompanying text. It was ambiguous if I was meant to be able to understand or not, but checking with a friend who played the XBOX version he was apparently meant to speak. If my Character is not meant to understand then obviously disregard this.

 

The three HK-50s that appear in a cut scene in the in the Telos base's spoken lines didn't match the subtitles at all, no subtitle played for the first string of dialogue and then continued from the beginning so it constantly lagged behind. It was a little disorienting.

 

This:

All the time on the Ebon hawk, with the Exile and Atton, and the Sith Troopers had similar protrusions at the end of the game.

[vortexwx]

Hmmm...I don't have this problem. Two days ago I reinstalled KOTOR2 and applied 1.0b patch. I have two SATA hard disks and I have no slowdowns even after savings. I'm also playing on 1280x1024 AA x4 and Anisotropic filtering set to x8.

 

AMD XP 2700+, 1GB 333DDR, SB Audigy 2, Asus nForce 2 Ultra

MSI FX 5950 Ultra (71.89 drivers)

 

Windows XP Pro + SP2

 

How much memory you have ? Are you running anti-virus in background ? Perhaps too many services are running as well...just of top of my head

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Since we have a similar setup, I decided to do some digging around in device manager and found that my primary IDE channel was running in PIO mode instead of DMA...well, I uninstalled the primary IDE chan. and rebooted and now I am running at ultra DMA mode 6. Somehow I think that will make a huge difference. PIO is so slow!!

 

Just to answer your questions....I have a 60 gig HD with 47 gigs free. I run nothing in the background when I am playing.

 

AMD Sempron 2600+, 512gb 333ddr, sb live! 5.1, GeForce FX5500 256mb 8x, MSI kt4a-v with the latest drivers.

 

xp pro sp2

[BlackJaguar]

Hmmm...I don't have this problem. Two days ago I reinstalled KOTOR2 and applied 1.0b patch. I have two SATA hard disks and I have no slowdowns even after savings. I'm also playing on 1280x1024 AA x4 and Anisotropic filtering set to x8.

 

AMD XP 2700+, 1GB 333DDR, SB Audigy 2, Asus nForce 2 Ultra

MSI FX 5950 Ultra (71.89 drivers)

 

Windows XP Pro + SP2

 

How much memory you have ? Are you running anti-virus in background ? Perhaps too many services are running as well...just of top of my head

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Since we have a similar setup, I decided to do some digging around in device manager and found that my primary IDE channel was running in PIO mode instead of DMA...well, I uninstalled the primary IDE chan. and rebooted and now I am running at ultra DMA mode 6. Somehow I think that will make a huge difference. PIO is so slow!!

 

Just to answer your questions....I have a 60 gig HD with 47 gigs free. I run nothing in the background when I am playing.

 

AMD Sempron 2600+, 512gb 333ddr, sb live! 5.1, GeForce FX5500 256mb 8x, MSI kt4a-v with the latest drivers.

 

xp pro sp2

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well changing your IDE channel from PIO mode to DMA should help a lot and should pretty much resolve your problem. If you have two HDs I would put windows swap file on non-game HD that should help as well.

[vortexwx]

Well changing your IDE channel from PIO mode to DMA should help a lot and should pretty much resolve your problem. If you have two HDs I would put windows swap file on non-game HD that should help as well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, that didn't help at all. In fact I spent the rest of the 19th and all day yesterday dealing with major crashing - and not just during the game. I tried derfagmenting because all my kotor files were trashed. Apparently they were corrupt enough that when defrag got to those save files it locked up my computer - twice. I had to shut it off manually both times, which would happen farily often while playing. So, I decided to uninstall the game. 2 check disks, 4 blue screens and over 200 errors later it started running a little better, and now it is fine. No viruses or trojans caused this. I think it was the combination of the patch and cheats. I had no problems with each individually. I reinstalled the game, only this time, I did not download the patch, and it seems to work fine....comparatively speaking. I think I am going to leave the patch out of the game. All the 'fixes' are for problems I have never had anyway. I am keeping DMA mode, of course.

[vortexwx]

I was unable to access the cave on Korriban at all, no matter what settings or party members I had. Whenever I went in it would just crash to desktop. Most annoying as I understand I missed some good stuff.

 

Also, My Darth Nihlus never said anything. An alien language sound sample played when he was talking but I got no accompanying text. It was ambiguous if I was meant to be able to understand or not, but checking with a friend who played the XBOX version he was apparently meant to speak. If my Character is not meant to understand then obviously disregard this.

 

The three HK-50s that appear in a cut scene in the in the Telos base's spoken lines didn't match the subtitles at all, no subtitle played for the first string of dialogue and then continued from the beginning so it constantly lagged behind. It was a little disorienting.

 

This:

All the time on the Ebon hawk, with the Exile and Atton, and the Sith Troopers had similar protrusions at the end of the game.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

erm...can you say "The Omen?"

 

heheheeeeh

[Guest Lakmoots]

I was unable to access the cave on Korriban at all, no matter what settings or party members I had. Whenever I went in it would just crash to desktop. Most annoying as I understand I missed some good stuff.

 

Also, My Darth Nihlus never said anything. An alien language sound sample played when he was talking but I got no accompanying text. It was ambiguous if I was meant to be able to understand or not, but checking with a friend who played the XBOX version he was apparently meant to speak. If my Character is not meant to understand then obviously disregard this.

 

The three HK-50s that appear in a cut scene in the in the Telos base's spoken lines didn't match the subtitles at all, no subtitle played for the first string of dialogue and then continued from the beginning so it constantly lagged behind. It was a little disorienting.

 

This:

All the time on the Ebon hawk, with the Exile and Atton, and the Sith Troopers had similar protrusions at the end of the game.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ohhhh.... THANK GOD!!

 

I knew someone else had to have it too!!

 

I have this damn bug... only with my main character, though. I *CANNOT* get rid of it, and it is so majorly frustrating.

 

As far as I am concerned, it makes my game unplayable. I *CANNOT* attempt to play this game without the immersion factor dropping to zero... it is just way too silly

 

If this graphic issue is not resolved, then I will never play the game... which is sad