Widescreen Gaming Forum

Did UniWS not work for you? Making the hex edits manually is the hard way.

Yeah it just keep searching for the SWKOTOR2 folder when it already found it and when i selected the folder it wouldn't let me launch the program to change anything =(

I just setup KOTOR 2 today.

o0zink0o: As stated in the original post, the hex edits are unfortunately for a no-CD (cracked) version of KOTOR 2. You will not find the appropriate hex strings to modify in an uncracked version. Took a little bit of work to find a no-CD crack. You'll have better luck searching for just "no cd" and then searching for the game on the first two sites that come up as opposed to searching for "KOTOR 2 no cd" directly.

------

As far as fixing the interface: it's going ok, but just ok.

Right now I'm just trying to get the map sorted out. So I've got the map rendering in the appropriate sized box (ignore the border for now), but it appears that the map itself is still stretched.



I'm not sure I can get that map sorted out. The interface in KOTOR 2 works fairly differently than it did in KOTOR 1 and the map particularly is special. At the very least though, I should be able to "unstretch" the rest of the interface.

---Update 1---

Fixed the map stretching. Editing the hud for KOTOR 2 is a bit confusing. Basically, because the hud ends up stretching, I have to decrease the width of the hud elements for widescreen. Problem is I can't just do a uniform adjustment to the width of everything (which is the cause of the mistmatch of the border in the picture below), because the X coordinates are also affected by the stretching. However, the amount the X coordinates are affected isn't uniform either, it's a linear function of how far they are from their appropriate side of the screen. Basically, fixing up the entire hud is going to require parts of my brain that haven't been used in far too long ;)

Well it looks like it's going to be quite a lot of work to completely fix the huds. As in, I probably won't have it done this month even; apart from this brief week off (during which I would like to spend some time relaxing) work is killing me. So for the time being, here are huds which have fixed maps only. The area the map is shown in will still be wider, and the arrow will distort a bit as it spins, but the map itself should be centered and size correctly.

Simply download the appropriate file for your aspect and put in the Override folder found under the main game directory.

Thank you so much for your info Steve and your work you did on the map it looks awesome, I will look for the No CD version of the game. I was wondering why non of the guides matched what i was looking at in the Hex Strings.. I was going crazy lol

Hello all,

After some searching, I've seen that some people are still having trouble with running this game in widescreen.
I was one of those people, but after some digging around I found an old patcher that did the job for me.

Just to clarify, none of the files provided were developed or created by me. The patcher was created by Squ1zzy (username on widescreengamingforum.com) and all credits go to him (assuming Squ1zzy is a male :) ).
Credits for the Vista fix go the names listed at the filefront site.

I'm basing this on what I had to do to get the game running in widescreen for me. I take no responsibility if anything goes wrong.
Also note that this was done with the latest official patch for the game.

Here are two files that are needed:
http://www.2shared.com/file/3808838/18020571/Squizzy_Resolution_Patcher.html

AND

http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/TSL_Windows_Vista_Fix;85439

Steps for installation:
1. Backup your swkotor.exe and swkotor.ini files
2. Backup your mss32.dll file in your KoToR2 directory.
3. Extract the new mss32.dll file from the Windows Vista Fix in to your KoToR2 directory, replacing the one that is already there.
4. Extract the swkotor2.exe and the resolution patcher exe file in to your KoToR2 directory.
5. Run the resolution patcher from your KoToR2 directory, set the resolution you want, and patch.

That should do it. Be sure to check your swkotor.ini file and see that your wanted resolution is in there. If not, change it.


I hope this is clear enough for you all. If you have any questions, just post them here :)

Well it looks like it's going to be quite a lot of work to completely fix the huds. As in, I probably won't have it done this month even; apart from this brief week off (during which I would like to spend some time relaxing) work is killing me. So for the time being, here are huds which have fixed maps only. The area the map is shown in will still be wider, and the arrow will distort a bit as it spins, but the map itself should be centered and size correctly.

Simply download the appropriate file for your aspect and put in the Override folder found under the main game directory.

Truly awesome work. I think we can live with the rest of the HUD stretched for now. The map is the important part.

Thanks.
---------
Unfortunately I have bad news. Doesn't look like I can fix the rest of the hud. Technical explanation below:

KOTOR 1 uses absolute hud placement. Meaning if the X position for some hud element was 960, then that hud element was drawn at pixel 960. Because of this, fixing the hud for widescreen was a simple matter of adding the appropriate difference in resolution size to the X/Y coords of the hud elements. More importantly it meant only the starting X/Y coords needed to be changed - the height and width of the hud element itself didn't need to be changed. Something with a 50 pixel width was still 50 pixels in a widescreen resolution. So to fix the huds I bascially just had to add a constant amount to all the X coords of hud elements on the right side of the screen. Very easy and I could do all the edits in one shot without worrying that things wouldn't line up right.

KOTOR 2 uses relative positioning. All resolutions use the 800x600 hud and resize it accordingly. This means you need to work with a meager 800x600 coordinate space for all resolutions; worse, it also means that widths are relative are well - hence the stretching. In order to compensate for the stretching, I basically have to make everything thinner than it would normally be. So that when the hud is stretched they end up look correct. How much thinner depends on the aspect. For 16:9 I need to the make the elements 25% thinner or in other words 75% of their original width.

So let's say the normal width of something is set to 50; 50 * .75 = 37.5 Therein lies the problem; KOTOR's GUI system only accepts integers (whole numbers) for hud cooridinates. So I'd need to go with 37 or 38.

That slight inaccuracy doesn't sound like a big deal, but the problem is that each little hud piece is several elements. The action buttons on the bottom left for example are 4 parts each - the button itself, the up and down arrows, and the border. Because the adjusted widths are inaccurate - matched parts don't line up correctly. E.g. say the widths of two parts of the same hud element have a width of 50 and 53. That's 37.5 and 39.75 when adjusted accurately. However I'd have to make them 38 and 40. That means there's a .5 offset for one element and a .25 offset for another - hence they don't match up.

The end result of these mismatches are ugly little gaps or overlaps between parts. I did try fixing a couple and in my opinion, the stretching was vastly preferable to hud elements that are close to correct width, but don't line up correctly.

The one screenshot from my post above shows the problem. You can see I tried adjusting the width of both the map and the border, but there's a little gap between the two. This is why, in the fixed huds I posted, the map window on the hud is still stretched (only the map itself is not). What I changed was the coordinate space used in the background to draw the map into - this is separate from the visible hud itself.

[quote]Truly awesome work. I think we can live with the rest of the HUD stretched for now. The map is the important part.

Thanks.
---------
Unfortunately I have bad news. Doesn't look like I can fix the rest of the hud. Technical explanation below:

[...] I just tried out your work. Works perfectly. I always found the map to be quite helpful so being able to have it in widescreen too is great.

Btw. what tools do you use to extract these gui files and what elements would need to be changed for Kotor 1 (if it uses the same file structure) to perfect the GUI in there? Now it's slightly off, not that it really matters, but if I have time I wouldn't mind optimizing it for 1680x1050 and upload it here. :) And if that works I might try doing it for other WS resolutions. :)

Kotor 1 is already fully fixed for all major widescreen resolutions. Downloads and install instructions here:

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/WSGF_Hacks_for_SW:KOTOR