MOD:KotOR High Resolution Menus

[ndix UR 218]

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KotOR High Resolution Menus

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Bubbling up from the font of dark knowledge, ndix UR presents KotOR High Resolution Menus, a UI mod package providing full high resolution menu and UI support for Knights of the Old Republic. The tyrrany of 640x480 menus and 6-item lists is over.

Normally, when you increase the game's resolution using a widescreen patcher like UniWS, the menus stay very small in the middle of the screen and the borders get larger. This package is designed to be used *after* the widescreen patcher has done its work. It scales the menu screens up so that they fill the screen.

This package requires modification of the swkotor.exe file using a supplied patcher, and is only known to work with GoG, 4-CD, and macOS (x86) versions of the game. It should be compatible with any Steam version that uses UniWS.

The main content of the package are sets of GUI files (.gui), scaled for specific resolutions. The package contains GUI files for over 30 common resolutions with the following aspect ratios: 4:3, 16:10, 16:9, 21:9, and 32:9. Here is a list of the currently supported resolutions:

 

4:3
800x600,
960x720,
1024x768,
1280x960,
1400x1050,
1440x1080,
1600x1200,
1856x1392,
1920x1440,
2048x1536,
3200x2400,
4096x3072,

16:10
1024x640,
1152x720,
1280x800,
1440x900,
1680x1050,
1920x1200,
2048x1280,
2304x1440,
2560x1600,
2880x1800,
3840x2400,
5120x3200

16:9
1024x576,
1152x648,
1280x720,
1360x768,
1366x768,
1600x900,
1920x1080,
2048x1152,
2560x1440,
3840x2160,
5120x2880,
6016x3384,
7680x4320,
8192x4608,
15360x8640

21:9
1280x1080,
2560x1080,
3440x1440,
3840x1600,
5120x2160

32:9
1920x540,
3840x1080,
5120x1440,
7680x2160

 

Installation

Find the gui.WxH folder matching your resolution, modify your executable using the supplied patcher, copy the GUI files to your Override/ folder.

The details for this process can be found in the package README.pdf file. Read it. Follow the instructions therein. The documentation includes everything you need to know to manually patch your EXE if the patcher does not work for your version.

 

Uninstallation

Remove the GUI files, restore the original backed up version of your swkotor.exe file.

 

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. This is not a resolution hack or widescreen patch, such as you get from using UniWS. You should already be successfully running the game at the resolution you are trying to get menus and UI for. Nothing in this package will give you any additional resolutions available. That is not what this does.
2. If you are trying to get high-res menus for one of the resolutions supported by default (800x600, 1024x768, etc.) there is probably no point to using the GUI files named 'mipc*' provided by this package (mostly the in-game "HUD"), however, this scenario is untested.
3. There are a few of the GUI files in this package you can use without modifying your executable. Here is that 'safe' list, in case you are unable to modify your executable:

 

confirm.gui
fade.gui
maincg.gui
maininterface.gui
mainmenu.gui
mainmenu10x7.gui
mainmenu12x9.gui
mainmenu16x12.gui
mainmenu8x6.gui
mi8x6.gui
mipc10x7.gui
mipc12x9.gui
mipc16x12.gui
mipc210x7.gui
mipc212x9.gui
mipc216x12.gui
mipc28x6.gui
mipc8x6.gui
tooltip10x8.gui
tooltip12x9.gui
tooltip16x12.gui
tooltip6x4.gui
tooltip8x6.gui

It gets you the main menu, some dialogs, and the in-game HUD elements.

 

Thanks
DarthParametric for testing, contributing a double-clickable thing for Windows users, and prompting me to finally figure out the needed EXE modifications.
tk102 for GFF2XML and XML2GFF source code, which made it a lot easier to get this up and running.

 

Known Issues

1. The patcher is currently incredibly limited, making no effort to search for values, only looking at specific locations where they are in the executables I have access to.
2. This package does not contain any higher resolution artwork. At high resolutions, menu backgrounds will be blocky, and the striped list backgrounds are unlikely to line up with list items. For numerous reasons, you will want to get a high resolution menu art package.
3. The game's initial character selection screen does not lay out the selectable characters properly according to GUI file field values. It is useable, but not perfect. The blue hilight borders had to be removed from around the characters to maintain a clean look.
4. The map screen is scaled up, but the map itself is not. Furthermore, the position of the map within the frame is somewhat random/poorly understood. The map, however, is completely useable, and the points of interest and player indicator are all positioned accurately relative to the map.
5. Some of the 3D models in menus, such as on the character stats or character generation screens, display line artifacts over them. This is caused by the very low quality graphics being scaled up to provide the border overlays. Extracting the graphics as TGAs, scaling them up, and placing them into Override/ sometimes solves these problems.
6. This package omits statussummary.gui and dialog.gui. Scaling them up cause problems. The files don't behave as expected, and it seems to not require a customized version in order for them to work as one would want.
7. You might notice 1280x1080 in 21:9 even though it is not 21:9. It is for split-screen on 21:9 monitors.
8. Rescaling the dialog/cut-scene letterbox (which is optional) seems to introduce occasional issues with letterbox placement, particularly when the letterbox animation happens. This may be fixed at some point in the future.
9. There is no scaling on font size, and as far as I know no one has figured out how to do it, so users on TV/couch setups may not find the help they are looking for with this.

 

Upgrading
1.4 to 1.5:

• If your resolution was not previously supported, copy new .gui files to your Override/

Upgrading
1.3 to 1.4:

• If you have Polish version, you can run EXE patching process
• If you have 32:9 display, copy new .gui files to your Override/

Upgrading
1.2 to 1.3:

• Copy all the .gui files to your Override/

Upgrading
1.1 to 1.2:

• Repeat the EXE patching process on a backup EXE if you want letterbox scaling

Upgrading
1.0 to 1.1:

• Remove dialog.gui from your Override/
• Copy 1.1 pazaakgame.gui to your Override/

---

• Submitter
  ndix UR
• Submitted
  10/29/2017
• Category
  Mods
• K1R Compatible
  Yes

 

[Guest]

Halleujiah! !!!

[l2daorch 19]

Dreams do come true after all. Thank you so much! This will change the way I play kotor forever.

The fonts become pretty crappy if you change the size, I kinda gave up after playing around with the nw font software that is available here. But I never thought we'd see the menu upscaled to full screen so maybe the fonts will follow some day. What a day to be a kotor fan.

 

EDIT: So I just had to install it. Thank god I was too lazy to uninstall Kotor after my latest playthrough. The screenshots don't do it justice. You have to see this for yourself. It is so beautiful. Oh and I can confirm that this works just fine with Kotor Collection, which is probably because I use the same "uniws compatible exe" I would for 4CD. Afaik you can use that same exe for the steam version as well.

[L0ki194 82]

Thank you very much!

A few things might look a little weird at the moment, but I ain't complaining. It works, and that's all I need.

[Guest]

This didn't quite work and I'm not sure why, my EXE was already modified with UNWIS and then I applied this but certain elements of my HUD are all over the show.

 

Everything is skewed off to the right hand side and I don't understand why. 

[Mutilator57 140]

The screenies have a particularly 'stretched' look about them. Got to try it myself before I pass judgement of course; there've been a tonne of spectacular mods that I wouldn't even have, had I not ignored the bad screenshots!

[ndix UR 218]

@Lucy, it is likely that the patch did not apply properly, or that you're not running the EXE you think you are. The way you describe your issue is consistent with what happens without the patch. Screenshots would help me tell for sure.

 

And yeah, the package screenshots are horrible by design. I downsized them by 50% and JPEG'ed the heck out of them. This way when you run it on your own machine you're extra happy.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

I have made some quick and dirty placeholder replacements for the save/load, inventory, and equipment screens to remove the painted in lines that no longer match the dynamic GUI elements. Nothing fancy, just solid blocks of colour. They were for my own use, but I figured others my find them useful as well. They should remove the most distracting elements until someone creates a proper high res background repaint.

 

K1_WS_Save-Load_Equip_Inv_Screens_PLACEHOLDERS.7z

 

Some of the 3D models in menus, such as on the character stats or character generation screens, display line artifacts over them. This is caused by the very low quality graphics being scaled up to provide the border overlays. Simply extracting the graphics as TGAs, scaling them up, and placing them into Override/ solves these problems.

I found scaling up beyond a certain point (I think maybe it was a width of 1024?) caused the game to crash. But even going to the maximum stable size (768x96 seems fine), repainting the alpha channel, and trying various TXI semantics like clamp and downsamplemax I still get the line.

 

And for those wanting to play along at home, lbl_c_topm is the texture in question for the party screen. I'm not sure what the character creation screen texture/s is/are.

[Kexikus 994]

Awesome! I didn't expect a mod like this to be ever released. So glad you managed to get it working and I'll definitely be using it for my next playthrough.

[Guest]

 

 

Some of the Menus look fine too, but the ability to actually select the functions with a mouse is completely F'd up, I've tried patching it twice btw. Maybe I'm missing something? 

[ndix UR 218]

@Lucy, thanks for posting the screenshots. That second shot shows exactly what you get with an unpatched EXE. This is useful info for anyone else experiencing any problems. Either the patch is not happening when you run the hires_patcher.bat and put in your information (this would be indicated in the patcher's output text), or you're not running the patched EXE that it is producing.

 

Another way to tell if the patcher worked is if it produces a swkotor.bak.exe backup of your executable. If there's no backup, it didn't make any changes and was not successful.

 

I found scaling up beyond a certain point (I think maybe it was a width of 1024?) caused the game to crash. But even going to the maximum stable size (768x96 seems fine), repainting the alpha channel, and trying various TXI semantics like clamp and downsamplemax I still get the line.

And for those wanting to play along at home, lbl_c_topm is the texture in question for the party screen. I'm not sure what the character creation screen texture/s is/are.

 

That is interesting. All I did when I was testing is extract the TPCs, convert to TGA, scale up by 4x, and place in Override/.

 

I just did some math and my resolution does happen to be 4x the default (in the horizontal direction). Not sure if that's a factor--it wasn't intentional. It is interesting though because my lbl_c_topm texture is 1024 in width, so maybe it gets cranky about down-scaling? That would be unfortunate. That particular GUI element for lbl_c_topm is 259 width base (texture is 256 width base), your res of 1920 is 3x, so the element itself is 777px at your res (1036px at mine). I would expect your 768 version to work flawlessly though...

 

Here's what I'm looking at:

 

 

 

The other textures in play there are lbl_cg_mcgtopl, lbl_cg_mcgtopm, and lbl_cg_mcgtopr.

[Guest]

@Lucy, thanks for posting the screenshots. That second shot shows exactly what you get with an unpatched EXE. This is useful info for anyone else experiencing any problems. Either the patch is not happening when you run the hires_patcher.bat and put in your information (this would be indicated in the patcher's output text), or you're not running the patched EXE that it is producing.

 

Another way to tell if the patcher worked is if it produces a swkotor.bak.exe backup of your executable. If there's no backup, it didn't make any changes and was not successful.

 

 

That is interesting. All I did when I was testing is extract the TPCs, convert to TGA, scale up by 4x, and place in Override/.

 

I just did some math and my resolution does happen to be 4x the default (in the horizontal direction). Not sure if that's a factor--it wasn't intentional. It is interesting though because my lbl_c_topm texture is 1024 in width, so maybe it gets cranky about down-scaling? That would be unfortunate. That particular GUI element for lbl_c_topm is 259 width base (texture is 256 width base), your res of 1920 is 3x, so the element itself is 777px at your res (1036px at mine). I would expect your 768 version to work flawlessly though...

 

Here's what I'm looking at:

 

no-lines.jpg

 

no-lines2.jpg

 

The other textures in play there are lbl_cg_mcgtopl, lbl_cg_mcgtopm, and lbl_cg_mcgtopr.

 

Didn't make any backup. So now I know, can't see how to make it work tho. I did enter my info but nothing happens. 

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Here's what I'm looking at

I wonder if vcard/driver is a factor. There is also things like that black line on faces, where someone with the same card as me gets it, but I don't, so it seems like variability is fairly high.

[Guest]

Got it, had to run it in the installation folder.

[N-DReW25 1,332]

What does this mod do? All it does it cut the borders out introduced in Widescreen and makes the text really small.

[Guest]

Uh...

 

Really?

 

Look at the screenshots it doesn't "just" do anything, it's the most worthwhile mod since TSLRCM- it makes KOTOR playable again. Have some respect for the hard work on display.

 

 

To the mod author, working on getting the map fixed? Lol

[runrun395 2]

I'm trying to get 3440x1440 working and everything is great except that the dialogue is cutting off at the bottom. I followed all the directions exactly (UniWS Patch, HiRes Patch, override guis). Is there a fix for this?

 

 

And yes, there's supposed to be a prompt on this one and others. For some I can blindly hit Enter, but obviously for others that's not a feasible way of playing the game. 

Edited February 16, 2018 by runrun395

[ndix UR 218]

I have a 21:9 also, and there's no fix currently available. However, lucky for you (and me), I just figured out how to fix it like two days ago, but it does require a modification to the EXE file. Particularly, it involves changing a certain value that is some kind of screen proportion number. I am still trying to determine the correct value for different screen proportions, it's not something very simple like 3/4 or 9/16 or like that.

 

It should be in the next update though...

[runrun395 2]

I have a 21:9 also, and there's no fix currently available. However, lucky for you (and me), I just figured out how to fix it like two days ago, but it does require a modification to the EXE file. Particularly, it involves changing a certain value that is some kind of screen proportion number. I am still trying to determine the correct value for different screen proportions, it's not something very simple like 3/4 or 9/16 or like that.

 

It should be in the next update though...

 

Let me know if you need a beta tester at 3440x1440 and 2560x1080. I've got enough computer literacy to muck around with binaries.

[Zoonix 1]

On 2/16/2018 at 4:17 AM, ndix UR said:

I have a 21:9 also, and there's no fix currently available. However, lucky for you (and me), I just figured out how to fix it like two days ago, but it does require a modification to the EXE file. Particularly, it involves changing a certain value that is some kind of screen proportion number. I am still trying to determine the correct value for different screen proportions, it's not something very simple like 3/4 or 9/16 or like that.

 

It should be in the next update though...

That sound great! I got the normal gui working on 3440x1440, except the dialogue (from what I could test)

If anyone's interested in my files...

mipc210x7.gui

tooltip6x4.gui

[TransRebel 0]

I am having an issue with this, where no matter what i do, the game doesn't seem to scale the HUD up. I'm running the 1920x1080 version, I've patched everything, it just doesn't seem to work. The menus and such are fine. But the map and HUD are way too small.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

As per the instructions/readme, the map does not scale. That's not controlled by the GUI files, it's controlled individually by each module.

As to the GUI itself, it doesn't scale it, it positions it properly to fit a widescreen resolution.

[TransRebel 0]

The problem is that the HUD isn't positioned properly. It's all bunched up in the upper left corner. its positioned as if the game were running at a lower resolution. I checked multiple times to be sure i put the right files in as well. I apologize for not effectively getting my point across the first time.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

You patched the exe with UniWS and ndix UR's patcher?

[TransRebel 0]

I did, I even had a fresh .exe that I tried so that i was certain it was fresh. every other menu looks perfectly fine, i even tried using the HUD patch on WSGF, both separately and together.