Projects

KotOR 1 & 2 beta restoration mods

The original Knights of the Old Republic had a lot of beta / unused stuff and KotOR 2: The Sith Lords, so many fans decided to work together to create a couple of mods for the PC version of the game to be able to play some of those beta elements that were changed or removed before the final version!

The KotOR 1 Restoration is an attempt to restore almost all the content that was cut from the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic by BioWare Corp. Of course, these restorations will be within reason and things that were cut because they did not fit with the plot, and cannot be made to fit with the plot, will most definitely NOT be restored. Remember, this is only the demo, not the full mod.

Most of the content that has been released in this demo is from Taris. However, there are few pieces of restored content that pertain to Dantooine as well as a difficulty option restoration.

– Impossible Difficulty, a cut option for difficulty that is harder than the Vanilla “Hard” difficulty
– Carth dialogue when the PC first awakens on Taris, Carth makes a few comments about the PC’s injuries. (Thanks to zbyl2 for this!)
– Lower City, numerous restorations to the Lower City
– Under City, numerous restorations to the Under City
– Restoration of the Black Vulkar Base Sublevel
– Restored Droid Items
– Restoration of some dialgoue with Niklos in the Uppper City Cantina
– Restoration of the Duel Ring announcer in the Taris Upper City Cantina. The announcer will be available to speak to in between fights.
– Zaerdra Swoop Platform Dialogue, Zaerdra will make some final comments to the PC on the prototype accelerator before intitiating your first run with it
– Sith Base, numerous restorations
– Sarna and Yun Genda are available to talk to members of the same sex and can be used to further the plot of Taris. Albeit, in different ways than they normally do.
– Iriaz Restoration, returns the Iriaz to the plains of Dantooine. (Thanks to Seamhiann for this!)
– Garrum and Tar’eelok Restoration, returns a cut padawan and master to the Jedi Enclave. (Thanks to Seamhiann for this!)
– Restoration of cut items within the Jedi Enclave
– Shen and Rahashia Indecent Proposal, the PC can make a rather indecent, and awkward, proposal to either Shen or Rahasia depending upon the PC’s gender.
– The file called plc_glowpudl.utp had the name of “Glowing Puddle” however when placed in game it looked like a blood puddle. The model file and textures have been changed so now the glowing puddle placeable makes a glowing puddle of green liquid. It can be seen in the new module, tar_m03ac, or the swoop platform non-racing version.
– Modified Iriaz from Seamhiann’s modules so there were less of them, they fought against the Kath Hounds, and usually stayed in their small areas.

The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod (TSLRCM). This mod’s intention is to restore much of the cut content to The Sith Lords, that was lost to the main game due to a rush to release the game. This rush also left the game with a plethora of bugs (some of which also blocked out content, so not everything restored was really “cut”, for example the quest ‘Corrun Falt’), this mod should seriously decrease the buginess that plagued TSL. 

Knights of the Old Republic 1 Beta Restoration Update

ZM90 is back with a update for his latest project, the KotOR 1 Restoration! If you don’t know the KotOR 1 Restoration is a project that aims to bring most of KotOR’s beta content back into the game. Here are a couple of new (well new to U64) teasers.

There you have it folks. From ZM90’s estimation the project is 50% complete and no release date has been given. 

[Project] The Axel Project: Half Life 2 beta restoration

Founded in 2009, The Axel Project aims to recreate the original Half Life 2 beta leak story line as envisioned by VALVe circa 2003. Their upcoming binary patch features numerous fixes to engine stability as well as the addition of retail engine features (such as background maps, bloom). For a full list of features and fixes, see The Axel Project blog!

Some key highlights:

* Updated water shader

– Fixed blackness

– Improved refraction

* Fixed several engine exploits

* Improved rendering performance

* Updated VGUI (transition effects and improved stability)

* Added FP16 HDR

– With luminance-based bloom

– Controllable via ConVars

* Fixed terrain morphing

* Added background map support

* Updated post processing shaders

* Fixed all reproducible bug reports from Alpha 1

* Fixed BSP V19 and V20 loading algorithm

* Improved overall security of engine and closed several exploits

 

The cancelled Titan A.E. game is almost restored

Based on the animated film with the same name, Titan AE for the playstation and PC was in development in 1999 by Blitz Games, but it was never released. Only a 1-level demo was somehow leaked online, but thanks to John Doom we can now play some more beta levels that were still hidden in there!

  • Tau14 (the original demo level)
  • Trade
  • Vigo 1st Prime
  • Drej Ship
  • Derelic ship

To activate these lost levels, you can download John Doom’s patch. Check the video description for more info.

Q:What is “A.E.FULLGAME_v1.ppf” ?

A:It’s a specific patch file for the psx demo disc “Titan A.E. Demo [U] [SLUS-90082]”

Q:So how can I patch the demo?

A:You need the program “PPF-O-MATIC” and a BIN image of “Titan A.E. Demo [U] [SLUS-90082]”. You guessed it! (I hope…): select the demo image in “ISO File” and “A.E.FULLGAME_v1.ppf” in “Patch”. Ok, now press on Apply and… GG! the demo is patched and now you can play 5 levels!

 

[Project] The Advent Rising restoration

As we read in the Advent Rising beta article, there were a lot of stuff planned for the game that never made it into the final, especially in the PC version. Advent Revising is a fan-made patch  that aims to restore the cinematics of Advent Rising to their intended quality. This English patch adds back thirteen movie files cut from the PC version of the game, corrects cases of desync and playback errors present in cutscenes, corrects and retimes all of the game’s subtitles, enables full 4:3 display with Vsync and trilinear filtering, and adds additional functionality to the player such as teleportation and level skip.