Problems with installing TSLRCM on Aspyr's Linux port w/o Steam Workshop

[BabylonAS 1]

After zero success with making a heavily modded Legacy PC version playable via Wine past a certain point, I was going to revert to Aspyr’s official Linux port because, for all its flaws, it might be the only stable working alternative. However, I found that TSLRCM’s installer (which runs without a hitch under Wine) does not understand how directories are arranged in TSL on Linux.

On Linux, “/home/<username>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Knights of the Old Republic II” — which kinda corresponds to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Knights of the Old Republic II” on Windows — does not directly contain the files and folders affected by TSLRCM’s installer. All of them are located in the “steamassets” subfolder instead. However, TSLRCM’s installer, which apparently takes care of locating the required folder by itself, does not recognize this difference and installs everything in the main “Knights of the Old Republic II” folder, as it would on Windows (where this would work fine, because dialog.tlk, Override, StreamVoice etc. are in their supposed places). Unfortunately, I have no idea on how to manually choose the folder for installing TSLRCM (and whether is it really possible), and the only other option I think of is some symbolic link hacking and manually moving a few files.

I know I could use Steam Workshop to install TSLRCM but not only it’s one out of several dozen mods I’m going to install, it’s not even the first one — the first one is going to be ShiningRedHD’s Ultimate Character Overhaul. Workshop’s unsuitability for complex TSL mod builds is well-known. Is there a way to force TSLRCM’s installer to unpack files into the folder I need, instead of the folder it chooses automatically?

[BabylonAS 1]

While waiting for the answer to my question, I’ve successfully tried out the workaround with symbolic links. The course of action is quite straightforward. In the “Knights of the Old Republic II” folder, I’ve created symlinks to Data, Lips, Modules, Movies, Override, StreamMusic, StreamSounds, StreamVoice and TexturePacks folders in the steamassets subfolder (though some of these links might not be necessary — I’ve made them just in case), named identically to the respective targets. With these symlinks, the installer works as usual, unpacking its files into the needed folders. Once the installation has finished, I manually copied the loose dialog.tlk file to the steamassets, overwriting the original one. Upon launch, I saw the TSLRCM banner on the main menu, suggesting that the trick worked fine, though I think there could be some subtle issues related to case-sensitivity of the Linux filesystem (this means dialog.tlk and DIALOG.TLK are two different files on Linux, and I don’t know how Aspyr’s Linux port handles this).

[JCarter426 1,215]

I believe all of TSLRCM's files are lowercase. For other mods, you do need to correct this. More information can be found here.

[BabylonAS 1]

So I can't just rename everything in Override to lowercase?

 

EDIT: I have just taken a look at the Linux commands provided in the link, and they do in fact rename everything to lowercase — which is what I have indeed anticipated. I've already written a shell script to do just that, so I guess it would not be much of a problem.

[BabylonAS 1]

Well, the game seems to work this way, though I’ve encountered some issues. For starters, the Harbinger, Visas & Nihilus, and Kreia cutscenes (latter remade as an in-game one with a certain mod) don’t have their music files playing. In the Coruscant Jedi Council scene, my character’s hands were empty — she was inserting an invisible lightsaber into the stone; later on I find the lightsaber (silver double-bladed one, by the way) in my inventory, before Bao-Dur gets a chance to assemble one (I did not use the “cheaty” ’saber until that point though). Now, the Onderon swoop race is not working — after talking to Qimtiq, all I get is a black screen, with no sort of “load screen” and only Alt+F4 key combination working. I did not experience anything like that on my first TSL playthrough, which was also on Linux and only had TSLRCM installed through Steam Workshop without anything else. I could send a full list of the mods I use (and a few modifications to the files) but it would take some time to put it in a nice format.

EDIT (2022-07-05): I think I had simply forgot to change the associated .mod file’s name to all-lowercase, as I did not use the auto-rename script on the modules folder. While I abandoned the Onderon swoop track without ever racing on it, I encountered the same issue with a certain scene involving Sion and Nihilus, which is guaranteed to appear, thus blocking the game until I renamed the relevant .mod file to lowercase. So far I am making good progress, having made it to Malachor V.

Edited July 5, 2022 by BabylonAS
I have figured out the reason for the Onderon swoop problem

[Shaboom 1]

On 6/29/2022 at 1:18 AM, BabylonAS said:

While waiting for the answer to my question, I’ve successfully tried out the workaround with symbolic links. The course of action is quite straightforward. In the “Knights of the Old Republic II” folder, I’ve created symlinks to Data, Lips, Modules, Movies, Override, StreamMusic, StreamSounds, StreamVoice and TexturePacks folders in the steamassets subfolder (though some of these links might not be necessary — I’ve made them just in case), named identically to the respective targets. With these symlinks, the installer works as usual, unpacking its files into the needed folders. Once the installation has finished, I manually copied the loose dialog.tlk file to the steamassets, overwriting the original one. Upon launch, I saw the TSLRCM banner on the main menu, suggesting that the trick worked fine, though I think there could be some subtle issues related to case-sensitivity of the Linux filesystem (this means dialog.tlk and DIALOG.TLK are two different files on Linux, and I don’t know how Aspyr’s Linux port handles this).

I'm trying to do this same dance but I'm not sure what you mean by the loose dialog.tlk file.  Where is this found?

 

edit: nevermind, now I understand what you were really doing with those symlinks.  I aimed everything over from the wine zone and things make sense now.  Thank you so much for your post, I was banging my head against the wall.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Shaboom