[Jeyl]

I just started playing Knights of the Old Republic again on my new Intel machine and downloaded the intel patch from macgamefiles.com to see how the game runs. After a few rounds here and there, I started noticing some kind of sound issue with the game.

It's kind of like a degrading issue. Some sound effects will just stop playing all together after a certain period of time. First the ambiance will go, than the menu sounds and soon after that, voices. I have to restart the game just to get the sound back but it will all start to go away again after 15 minutes.

Anyone encounter a problem like this?

[Jeyl]

Two Aspyer Support Tickets later, still having issues.

I think a lot of it has to do with the saving feature. Some sounds will cease to play after I've saved most games.

Another area where the sound hurts the most is when your manning the turrets to the Ebon Hawk and fighting off the Sith Fighters. The turret firing noise will the first to go, and when you hit a Sith Fighter, the explosion sound effects are muffled, loud and unnatural.

Some in-game scenes where the characters talk to each other also shows some flaws. Sometimes the music won't play there won't be any background noise. You'll just hear the voice work and nothing but.

[Jeyl]

Still having issues. Going to see how it runs on Snow Leopard. Fingers crossed.

[Jeyl]

SNOW LEOPARD Update

Well, this has turned into an interesting problem. The game not only runs at half the frame rate it used to under Snow Leopard, but some texture details are darker than others.

Remember how shiny and reflective the Sith trooper armor looked? If you play Kotor on Snow Leopard, it's like someone toned down the brightness of their armor by like half. It looks totally different. And when you crash land on Taris and chatted with Carth Onasi for a while, looking out the window makes the city look incredibly dark compared to when you actually walk outside on the streets.

And unfortunately the sound issue was not resolved under Snow Leopard. Looks like Knights of the Old Republic is fading away from playability.

/sad

[teflon]

What's the intel machine you've got?

The new graphics problems are likely down to Apple modifying their OGL and driver support. Recently we've seen them dropping some older functions from ATI cards which has led to CoD2 going up the chute.
Its annoying that Apple keeps breaking older games, and frustrating that the porting houses don't have the time or resources to chase things up and fix bugs.

Unfortunately for KotOR, Brad Oliver is moving over to Feral, so wont be able to keep plugging away at the few issues that are cropping up here and there. So yeah, KotOR is slowly but surely going to stop working...

[ltcommander.data]

Jeyl, on September 12th 2009, 09:22 AM, said:

SNOW LEOPARD Update

Well, this has turned into an interesting problem. The game not only runs at half the frame rate it used to under Snow Leopard, but some texture details are darker than others.

Remember how shiny and reflective the Sith trooper armor looked? If you play Kotor on Snow Leopard, it's like someone toned down the brightness of their armor by like half. It looks totally different. And when you crash land on Taris and chatted with Carth Onasi for a while, looking out the window makes the city look incredibly dark compared to when you actually walk outside on the streets.

And unfortunately the sound issue was not resolved under Snow Leopard. Looks like Knights of the Old Republic is fading away from playability.

/sad

What GPU are you using? I've been wondering about potential KOTOR performance issues with the ATI X1000 series and Snow Leopard in another thread. http://www.insidemac.......st&p=378383

ATI HD2000 series and up had performance troubles in Leopard for KOTOR because they no longer support the ATI_text_fragment_shader extension used by KOTOR. In Snow Leopard, Apple has removed that extension from all ATI GPUs including the X1000 series, which could destroy KOTOR performance for all ATI Intel Macs.

[Jeyl]

Oh, excellent! Days of nothing and now two replies!

ltcommander.data, on September 12th 2009, 04:24 PM, said:

What GPU are you using?

I use a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT.

My machine is a 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon with 5 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM.

[Doc Savage]

I had encountered a sound issue of a different kind. There was no sound at all until I went in to the sound preferences and selected "Force Software." That fixed my sound problems.

Have you tried the 1.03e beta patch? This appears to be quite new and lists Snow Leopard graphics problems among the fixes. Video is much smoother for me now.

[Jeyl]

Doc Savage, on October 4th 2009, 11:02 AM, said:

Have you tried the 1.03e beta patch?appears to be quite new and lists Snow Leopard graphics problems among the fixes. Video is much smoother for me now.

xxLINK!xx

EDIT: Found it, got it, installed it, and so far so good! I'm gona give this baby a clean start tomorrow and I'll post if this patch resolves the issue.

[Jeyl]

It works. Holy shoot, it works! The sound is constant, the graphics are back to their original state and I no longer have to quit the game every 10 minutes just to reload the sound!

Few things though.

- The cursor is now just the regular mac cursor instead of the KOTOR in-game cursor.
- Background level music will continue playing during a cutscene where before the background music would just stop.

[Jeyl]

....bad news.

The sound issues remain. It didn't start happening till I got to Taris. First the interface buttons didn't make any noise, and opening doors didn't make any noise either.

Why is it that some sounds just stop working after 5-10 minutes? The only way they come back is if I quit the game and restart again. Doh, I feel so hopeless. I thought I FINALLY had the solution to not relaunching the game every 10 minutes to fix a problem.

[Jeyl]

*UPDATE*

I decided to get a different copy of the game since the disc I use appears to be scratched up. I delete my KOTOR folder, reinstall it onto my applications folder, download the update for "Snow Leopard", open the game and pray to the gods it works.

Unfortunately it did not. The moment Taris comes into play, all the button noises cease to make any noise and the interface beeps just stop beeping. And as I've mentioned earlier, more and more sound will cease to play as I progress in the game including character voices, blaster sounds and doors.

This situtaion sucks. I've tried two updates, a different game CD, installed it on a brand new OS, turned on the sound efx "whatever" it's called, followed Aspyrs instructions on reducing the sound bits via the utilities folder and the sound just keeps dying.

>

[bobbob]

Sounds like a leak of some kind, maybe sources or buffers. Hah.

[pmorrison8522]

I would suggest you not to play this, if you are having a problem. This may be harmful for your machine.

[Jeyl]

pmorrison8522, on October 16th 2009, 09:05 AM, said:

I would suggest you not to play this, if you are having a problem. This may be harmful for your machine.

...........

Knights of the Old Republic is harmful to my machine? That's beautiful. I've never heard of this application causing trouble in general for the Mac, and Aspyr still has interest in the game with the release of the Snow Leopard patch. Why would it be harmful when only the game is having these issues and nothing else?

[the Battle Cat]

Jeyl, on October 16th 2009, 08:17 AM, said:

...........

Knights of the Old Republic is harmful to my machine? That's beautiful. I've never heard of this application causing trouble in general for the Mac, and Aspyr still has interest in the game with the release of the Snow Leopard patch. Why would it be harmful when only the game is having these issues and nothing else?

I'm not saying KotOR can be harmful to your machine, I'm just commenting on your logic that I've bolded. Replace "game" with "virus" and it reads, "Why would a virus be harmful when only the virus is having these issues and nothing else." Some software can harm your system, some software intentionally and some of it unintentionally. I think a more logical argument would be that, in your experience, it is extremely unlikely that KotOR would harm your computer simply because it can't play sounds correctly. Most of us would agree with with that, me included.

[Jeyl]

Dangit. I just want to play this game without resetting every 5 minutes.

[the Battle Cat]

I hear you bro. If I could make it so, I would. Aspyr's KotOR guru Brad Oliver who was very responsive to user problems here is no longer working with Aspyr. Glenda Adams who was a huge help here has also left Aspyr. It is looking sort of bleak for you. Keep complaining to Aspry support. If one ticket doesn't help, try another.

[Jude]

Where can I find the 1.03e patch? Thanks.
Jude

[Doc Savage]

Jude, on October 17th 2009, 05:42 AM, said:

Where can I find the 1.03e patch? Thanks.
Jude

http://support.aspyr...&...t=77&id=645