bignick277: I'm making this post to hopefully help some who will likely have some issues running this game in widescreen/running this game on a modern Windows 10 OS.
First of all use this guys method. Do not use Flawless Widescreen. It's too much of a pain and it's results, while it works, has bugs of it's own. Use the Universal Widescreen method as outlined by this guy. It's far more reliable and requires far fewer hoops to jump through once you get it set up. I will edit in some additional information into this guys post too.
MisterBlack: Here's some info for anyone confused on how to get this game working in widescreen (1920x1080) and have the movies work as well.
This is what I did step by step using the Universal Widescreen Patcher (Not the Flawless Widescreen program):
Homepage:
http://www.wsgf.org/article/star-wars-knights-old-republic 1. If you already have unsuccessfully patched the game restore your backup of the original EXE if you haven't already, if you don't have a backup on hand then uninstall and reinstall the game.
2. Make sure you ran the game once before patching to create your default configuration.
3. Download the Universial Widescreen patcher from the site above if you haven't already
4. Download the Hud Correction files for your resolution, the one I specifically used since I want to run 1920x1080 is
1920x1080 (Updated by nix3r) 5.6.7.
My EDIT: Don't bother with these steps. The issue of blacked out videos is due to a bug in the game, not the format the game forces the videos to play in. Removing those lines of code from uniws script will not fix blacked out videos. In either case, so you know exactly what's happening, this issue actually only affects a couple of the videos in game, not all of them. Sometimes it happens randomly, but there are only 2 instances in game where this will happen nearly 100% of the time. And that's the very first video of the game just after you finish setting up your character, and a video on Manaan underwater when you make your choice while interfaced with a computer. It's something to do with the way the game transitions from menu's straight into a video. But in most situations when it transitions from game level to video, videos play fine 99% of the time. But for all instances of blacked out videos, there's an easy way to fix it. If you get a black video and you can tell it's video, simply hit the Windows key on your keyboard OR Alt+Tab out. Same difference. Then once you're on your desktop, click the running game icon on your taskbar to bring the game back to full screen. The game will automatically restart the video from the beginning and play through properly. That's all you have to do. You see a black video, Alt+Tab out then click the running game icon on your taskbar to restart the video. 8. Run uniws.exe, choose Star Wars: KOTOR (1024x768 interface), doesn't matter what resolution you ultimately plan on running, that's the one you need.
My EDIT: In case anyone's confused, he's referring to the 1024x768 interface option that's in the "drop-down menu" that's at the top of the uniws GUI. The two typable boxes on the bottom of the uniws is where you type the resolution you "want" your game to play at. But in the drop-down box you select 1024x768, because that is the resolution option in game that your new custom resolution will be replacing. 9. Browse to your KOTOR installation in the game installation folder section. Afterwards, set your screen resolution in the New Resolution section, I made mine 1920 for screen width and 1080 for height. Once you are finished go ahead and hit the patch button and exit the program.
10. Extract your fixed hud files. (mine being kotor-1920x1080_updated.rar) Extract them to your KOTOR/override directory, under the default installation path, that would be: C:\GOG Games\Star Wars - KotOR\Override
(My Edit: Do not copy the folder with the HUD files into the Override Directory. Copy the "contents" (the actual individual files) for your HUD correction into the Override directory) 11. Edit swkotor.ini (This is in your game's installation directory) . We need to change the resolution still since it won't be able to be changed in game to the widescreen resolution and the patcher doesn't actually seem to change it for us. Find the section
[Graphics Options] in swkotor.ini and set your resolution with the Width and Height variables. You can also set your refresh rate as well here.
12. (Optional) I recommend disabling the Frame Buffer in game. If it's enabled on my AMD Radeon 270x the game seems to lock up before it finishes loading the first level with Frame Buffer and anti aliasing enabled. You can disable the Frame Buffer in the advanced graphics options in game or disable it in the swkotor.ini file in the
[Graphics Options] section by setting
Frame Buffer=0 . This may not be an issue on nVidia cards so I would probably only change this if you have any issues.
My EDIT: Antialiasing is fine and has no issues. On AMD cards, the only two settings you need to disable are Frame Buffer Effects and Soft Shadows. Both are in "Advanced Settings". Everything else is fine. Hope this solves some of the issues some people have been having with the game, these are my findings and experience so far. Once the game is setup though, it seems to run great has no issues so far.
Here are some new things I'm putting up here in case anyone wants them.
Upscaled Videos: I've taken the time to upscale all of the videos in the game to a couple more modern monitor friendly resolutions. Most modern monitors do well enough, but some just seem to have issues with certain resolutions once they go below a certain threshold. And some just don't like to constantly switch. So I've made upscaled versions in 1440p and 1080p. I made the 1440p version originally for my play through (I have a 4K monitor), and planned to share it, but I know most people only have 1080p monitors so I went ahead and did them again in 1080p as well so I can share them here. But even if your monitor doesn't have issues in this regard, I do recommend the upscaled videos in either case as there is still a considerable quality improvement as a result of the upscaling.
To install, simply copy and paste the files into the \GOG Games\Star Wars - KotOR\movies directory. When windows asks, select overwrite and replace all files.
1080p Upscaled Videos:
https://mega.nz/#!HuRgBb7Y!HWeiTjYRiCEi-1XWlLDpKj_7cQ0Vpd8lGt7Gyam0reQ[/url]
1440p Upscaled Videos:
https://mega.nz/#!i6oxwRoT!KdW2JMJbJnh3xlkZgsZYoFiXYgUdo3bfa8J4fa5Ixes[/url]
1440p HUD Files As the guy I quoted mentioned, you will need to download files to fix the HUD in game. But the site he links, doesn't have any HUD files for 1440p or 4K resolutions. After some digging I was able to find HUD files for 1440p. Sharing it here in case anyone else wants the 1440p files:
1440p HUD files:
https://mega.nz/#!riYRgAaQ!woLhYVmOX8rPN50EU-GrygkiAfDu-sTrFKj-UyjAgNA[/url]
Those of you wanting the 1080p HUD files, just go to
http://www.wsgf.org/article/star-wars-knights-old-republic and download the nix3r updated version.
Grass Fix I ran into this issue on my run through of the game on my 290X, but I don't know if Nvidia cards have the same issue. If you Nvidia users are also having issues with grass, try this as well. Basically once I got down to lower Taris, I was having a lot of issues with the grass. It wasn't properly blending with your characters nor NPC's. Looking transparent, yet not. It's hard to describe, but essentially the grass was cutting off the legs of your characters and NPC's because the transparency effects weren't working properly. Or at least, that's how it appeared in game. I managed to find a fix for it and will post it here. Simply copy and paste "opengl32.dll" and "opengl32.ini" into the root level of your KotOR installation directory. I've already pre-configured .ini file to enable the fix for the grass so it will render grass correctly in game.
Grass Fix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xysp8GRDXWyxpHngs6IU52TF-XJRlNbL/view?usp=sharing I hope this helps any remaining stragglers who were having issues getting this game to run properly.
Also, these upscaled videos I've made available (1080p = about 4GB / 1440p = about 6GB / 10GB total) are taking up a fair chunk of my google drive (I only have the free 15GB max storage limit). So if anyone's willing, I would appreciate it if someone else who has online storage to spare, could grab those videos and make them permanently available for others to download. If anyone's able and willing to do that, I would really appreciate. I'll keep them on my drive for a couple months or as long as I can, but I will eventually have to remove the upscaled videos at the very least. The other files such as the grass fix and 1440p HUD files, I should be able to leave there for quite awhile without issue.
EDIT: Hi everyone, after almost 4 years of managing to keep them available, I'm afraid I need to take down files from this post. I'm sorry, but I need the space back. I've updated the links in this post to reflect the alternative download links @Ominousrobot has made and kept available so everyone can still get access to these files for KotOR. Please make sure to extend a thank you to @Ominousrobot for continuing to host these files.
Thank you @Ominousrobot. I really appreciate you keeping these files available for download.
Hopping in here to add to this AMAZING post. A grass fix oh my gosh! Not to mention you're hosting the bink conversions online, thank you so much that can take a WHILE and utilizes tools I just don't want to hunt down again after a backup loss. So I'm adding my own recommendation to this list: A lot of people on the forums here seem to be discussing the HUD fix not working when I think there's a distinction difference here. The HUD fix on the WSGF site where you can get uniws appropriately adjusts the location of the HUD items but doesn't fix a scaling issue whenever you're on the main menu or pause menu. Now this ultimately turns into an either/or situation where you'll have to pick your preference. But if you want things scaled better so the in-game menus take up your whole screen at *numerous* different scales, I'd recommend the High Resolution Menus patcher (linked here:
). It is
you already ran uniws and copied the HUD fix files over to your Override and then are performing additional changes and copying some more files over to Override. Perfect? No. But if you hate the lack of upward scaling to 1080 with the menu interface and buttons, I'd recommend you use this one. Follow the instructions closely and it should work out well. I'm on 1080 and I chose "Yes' on the letterbox option of the batch file.
