PC Interface Mod

[Nur Ab Sal]

Hi this is a post of my fellow user from Obsidian Forums. Since these are exactly my thoughts, and I was planning to discuss this issue here anyway, I decided to paste his words:

 

"aerowars617

 

Ive just got this game for the PC after finishing the first one, which was great, but i must question the interface.

I played KOTOR 1 with a screen resolution of 1280x1024, and the menu screen was displaying in 800x640, so the game wasnt "stretched" whenever you entered the menu. However when you were in the game, all the icons such as the map in the top left hand corner of the screen were smaller, which was great.

The problem is that in KOTOR 2, i select 1280x1024, but the game menu and the in game play are "stretched". this means that all the icons on the screen, like the map in the top left hand corner are now Large, bulky and take up half my screen! also the charecters, especially T3 M4, look bigger than in KOTOR 1!

I was hoping there was a way to make the scale of the interface like KOTOR 1, but more so that you understand what im on about. The only thing stopping me from playing KOTOR 2 is this screen issue, as it is sore for my eyes . I hope to show screenshots comparing the two, if you can do that on these forums.

I have an unpatched version of the game, but ive read the patch readme files and it dosnt note this issue. I tried "Set Small Text=1" or some command like that in the .ini file but the game wont even open. Any help will be smashing

Cheers

 

Side Note: Personally from what ive seen so far, i prefer KOTOR 1 PC Interface to KOTOR 2, as the KOTOR 2 PC interface is the same as Xbox's"

 

Nur Ab Sal's comment: now I want to make a mod that will resize the interface in the 1280x1024 resolution (mine) so I could admire the sights instead of... the interface

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

If it's possible, try setting your monitor's aspect ratio to 4:3, it streches between resolutions, for instance, my desktop is 1280x720, but my monitor switches to 1280x1024 when I start the game.

[Nur Ab Sal]

That's a decent way I guess, but I prefer making a mod.

[Darkkender]

That would be something outside the scope of what we could mod. For various reasons. First and foremost that would require decompiling the game code itself and applying an outright hack which would be in violation of the EULA in which case could not be discussed at Lucasforums. The screen resolutions and how the images are displayed and rendered are something entirely hardcoded within the gameengine itself. I'm having first hand knowledge of 3D game engine development so I'm speaking from my own experience.

[Nur Ab Sal]

No one speaks about messing with resolutions themselves. I want to make a small mod that will trick the game: in 1280x1024 resolution the interface would have the 800x600 resolution. So I speak about making interface smaller

and that cannot be illegal.

[Darkkender]

Actually to make the type of changes you are refering to would require breaking open the gamecode. The GameEngine itself reads in the settings and then internally scales all of the models and images to match the settings. The only way out of game to tweak thing would be to go with Jmac7142 suggestion as changing your monitors aspect Ratio would not affect the gamecode itself.