Please do your part to prevent KotOR-related suicides

dIRECT0R · 04-11-2013, 11:10 AM

Hi everyone, first post here, signed in hoping there's a fix. Really depressed right now. Playing this unbelievable game for the first time, really trying for the full experience.. I have 96 hours and 23 minutes invested in the playthrough. Went through the planets by the book (Tatooine, Kashyyyk, Manaan, then the Leviathan), and now I'm on lovely Korriban.
So I finished the entire Sith Academy thing, I've spared the Sith Twi'lek and the Academy is all friendly towards me. I'm getting ready to leave for the endgame (never played it, very excited). I'm standing in front of the exit of the Sith Academy, the exit leading towards the "Sith Academy Entrance", leading back towards the colony and the ship.

And I cannot leave! The loading screen appears, says its "Saving", the bar fills up about a fifth of the way - then my cursor appears, the menu music starts and the game kind of freezes.
I say "kind of" because I can still exit the game normally with Alt-F4 (the "do you want to exit" prompt appears like normal) and the Task Manager says its "Running". Its not unheard-of apparently; some fellow even uploaded a video showing it (saw it earlier, will try to link), so I'm hoping it has been solved.

I tried loading a previous save, but to no avail. I'd lowered my graphics settings all the way down, and I uninstalled what few minor mods I had.

I'm running the game as an administrator, in compatibility mode for WinXP Service Pack 2. I essentially installed it like this. The thing worked perfectly fine until now. My machine is an Intel Core 2 Quad, with an nVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 (1GB) graphics card, 8GBs of RAM (if additional information is required I will be happy to post it immediately).

I'm assuming its some kind of save-related issue. Please oh please don't leave a fellow gamer hanging on this. 'Been googling for hours and couldn't find a solution: if I sound desperate, its cuz I am. Help me LucasForums, you're my only hope!

P.s. I've been exploring the matter somewhat. The loadscreen says "Saving" when it freezes, but it would seem by the progression on the bar (compared to other successful area transitions) that the game successfully finishes "Saving", then is unable to start the phase it describes as "Loading". When I try to load the autosave produced by the impossible transition, the game returns me to an unresponsive Main Menu (one I'm still able to leave normally with Alt-F4).

Vindikorr · 04-11-2013, 11:38 AM

Hi, this isn't really a fix but it should get you where you need to be.

First off, go to your kotor installation directory and open the file swkotor.ini

It should open in notepad, from there scroll down to the line that reads [Game Options]

Make a new line underneath and type in: EnableCheats = 1

Then save, you may need to save to the desktop and copy it back into the directory as the folder will be read-only

Open up the game and load your save. Then press the ` key (directly above tab) to open the cheat console.

Type the following: warp korr_m33aa
Then press enter

It should load the module you first go into on korriban, from there hop in the Ebon Hawk and fly off to end game

PS: This is not a fix, and utilises the game cheat console. The only side effect of this is you will see yellow text on your save file in-game which will read "Cheats Used"

Hope this helped

dIRECT0R · 04-11-2013, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vindikorr

Hi, this isn't really a fix but it should get you where you need to be.

First off, go to your kotor installation directory and open the file swkotor.ini

It should open in notepad, from there scroll down to the line that reads [Game Options]

Make a new line underneath and type in: EnableCheats = 1

Then save, you may need to save to the desktop and copy it back into the directory as the folder will be read-only

Open up the game and load your save. Then press the ` key (directly above tab) to open the cheat console.

Type the following: warp korr_m33aa
Then press enter

It should load the module you first go into on korriban, from there hop in the Ebon Hawk and fly off to end game

PS: This is not a fix, and utilises the game cheat console. The only side effect of this is you will see yellow text on your save file in-game which will read "Cheats Used"

Hope this helped

First of all, thanks a lot for taking the time to reply. Any help here is immensely appreciated.

Tried warping just now. Unfortunately the result is the same as when I exit out the other door to the 'Valley of the Sith Lords' and try transiting back to the Ebon Hawk. The game instantly returns me to the Main Menu, which is unresponsive. The Menu music is on, and when I try to leave via Alt-F4, the prompt appears normally and I can close the game. In fact, if I click on "cancel" in the Alt-F4 prompt, the Menu even becomes functional again and I can reload. It seems like this isn't a real "crash" per se. The game just really really wants me to stay and study Sithology for the rest of my life, or at least another 96 hours, 23 minutes (which kind of feels like a lifetime right now).
I also tried warping somewhere else (Manaan), with the same results.

P.s. Found another thread with this exact same problem, it appears to have been kind of abandoned. The YouTube clip provided by photon_man62 shows the problem exactly. Except I can go into the 'Valley of the Dark Lords', but can't leave towards the 'Sith Academy Entrance' area. For the record, I found that thread earlier and also unsuccessfully tried the fixes suggested therein. Surely there must be something that can be done short of giving up KotOR altogether?

Vindikorr · 04-11-2013, 12:33 PM

Can you post your system specs please. If you search for dxdiag in the start menu then when it loads click on Save All Information at the bottom. Then copy the text file that gets saved onto here. This will give us all the information we should need if it's a hardware issue.

Also you could try finding the swkotor.exe file, right clicking and opening properties, then on the compatibility tab click on reduced color mode and set it to 256.

dIRECT0R · 04-11-2013, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vindikorr

Can you post your system specs please. If you search for dxdiag in the start menu then when it loads click on Save All Information at the bottom. Then copy the text file that gets saved onto here. This will give us all the information we should need if it's a hardware issue.

Also you could try finding the swkotor.exe file, right clicking and opening properties, then on the compatibility tab click on reduced color mode and set it to 256.

Here's the info under the "System Information" heading:

Show spoiler

And here's the entire file, just in case

Show spoiler

Also, my KotOR installation is not located on my "main" (Windows installation) drive, but on the second 2TB drive.
I tried setting to 256 colours, no effect.

Vindikorr · 04-11-2013, 12:56 PM

A few ideas.

1) Try setting the cpu affinity to 1. Open the game and in the menu press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to bring up task manager. Find swkotor.exe under processes, right click, set affinity and uncheck all but one processor.

2) In swkotor.ini go down to [Graphics Options] and add the following line: Disable Vertex Buffer Objects = 1

3) Try running windowed. Again in swkotor.ini, go down to [Graphics Options] and find the line FullScreen=1. Change this to read FullScreen=0 and try again.

EDIT: Are you having this issue with any other modules?

EDIT 2: Also try warping directly to the Ebon Hawk (warp ebo_m12aa) Again not a fix but it might work

dIRECT0R · 04-11-2013, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vindikorr

A few ideas.

1) Try setting the cpu affinity to 1. Open the game and in the menu press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to bring up task manager. Find swkotor.exe under processes, right click, set affinity and uncheck all but one processor.

2) In swkotor.ini go down to [Graphics Options] and add the following line: Disable Vertex Buffer Objects = 1

3) Try running windowed. Again in swkotor.ini, go down to [Graphics Options] and find the line FullScreen=1. Change this to read FullScreen=0 and try again.

EDIT: Are you having this issue with any other modules?

EDIT 2: Also try warping directly to the Ebon Hawk (warp ebo_m12aa) Again not a fix but it might work

Tried all four suggestions, in order and all together: no discernible change

. The warp to the Ebon Hawk produced the same results as previous warps (as described above). The same thing happens when I attempt to transit there from the 'Valley of the Dark Lords'.

I've not encountered anything like this before.

Vindikorr · 04-12-2013, 03:47 AM

Well if this is happening on multiple modules there's either something broken with your game or something wrong with your hardware. First off, just try warping back to a module you know should work (warp danm13 is the jedi enclave) and if it doesn't work I'd try just reinstalling the game, making sure you follow this post to the letter.

Also make sure to back up your saves (C:\Program Files\LucasArts\SWKotOR\saves) before you uninstall. There's an option in the uninstall wizard but I don't trust it

Unfortunately, I can't be much more help than that I'm afraid.