After the 3 year wait to play it I finally have a computer that will run it. I've had a computer capable for over 2.5 years, but it's been a bunch of really silly bugs that have been preventing me from playing the game.
The initial problem was that I did not have access to a computer capable of running KOTOR:TSL at a consistent frame rate. My computer at the time was an aging P4 with an MX440 graphics card, which wasn't really suitable for anything really. (I did manage to play half-life 2 on it, which amazed me.) So I just didn't care. KOTOR didn't exist if I couldn't play it.
Then a few months later, I got a new computer with a graphics card, processor, and the right amount of ram to run Kotor. I tried to run the game, and I got a frame rate that was even worse than what I got with my old computer. How peculiar! (I later found out that there was a bug in the NVIDIA drivers that causes this.)
So, once again, KOTOR didn't exist to me. Now, I have a new computer. It's much much faster than my old one. Strangely enough, this one wont' run the game either. I think the graphics card driver is the culprit again. Either that or Windows Vista doesn't like it very much. I think it's a bit of both. I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong, but I believe Auroa Engine which Powers KOTOR and KOTOR2 uses openGL. I get random corruption all over the screen. I got sad, because I wouldn't be able to play this ancient game.
Then I had thought. "Woudln't it run perfectly fine on Linux?" Since OpenGL works great in linux. So I decided to fire up WINE and see how it works. In order to install it I had to download a PlayOnLinux which is a gui for configuring and installing software in wine. I got everything installed and was about to play to experience KOTOR, until, the game crashed as soon as I started it. For some reason WINE didn't like my graphics card either.
The Solution to this problem was a lot simpler than I thought it would be. When I installed my graphics card drivers, I only installed the 64bit drivers. Wine is a 32bit program, so it could not use the 64 bit drivers. I installed the 32bit compadability drivers and WINE works perfectly now.
It's ironic when games are more compatible with WINE than Vista isn't it? (Even if the real culprit may actually be NVIDIA)
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1 comment:
Well said.
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