KotOR 2 - Restored Content Mod v1.4 Public Beta

No, not Team Gizka's project but an alternative while Team Gizka is in some sort of strange limbo after all but one contributor left the project, as I understand it. A couple of the other developers reformed for the TSL Restored Content Mod, which is now available as a public beta.
Read this thread for the files and installation details and the FAQ is worth a visit. Here's a snip:

TSL Restored Content Modification FAQ

Q: What is this?
A: This is a mod for TSL that restores almost all of the cut content of TSL.

Q: Is this a theft of Team Gizka's work?
A: Not in the slightest. All of this mod, minus the Rebuilt Enclave by jinger (who gave permission for it to be used in this mod), was done by Stoney and Zbyl2 and SWfan28.

Q: How can you prove that?
A: Have a look at the scripts.

Q: How come you got it done so quickly then?
A: We already had Zbyl's previous content and Jinger's mod plus SWfan28 had some stuff he gave us which had been done. As well as the Dantooine Restoration we did previously

Q:Will the original M478mod be compatible with it?
A:As it is now no it is not compatible. It will either need to be patched or wait for M478EP.

Q: What does this mod restore?
A: We tend to look at as "what does the mod NOT restore?", so here's a list of what was not included:
M4-78 - The Droid Planet is still a part of Stoney's M4-78RP and M4-78EP. The M4-78EP will be compatible with the TSLRCM.

"Darth Atris" - There was too little material left to properly restore this aspect of the ending.

GenoHaradan - Again, too little content left. However, Lord of Hunger is currently designing a storyline for a heavily expanded version of the GenoHaradan Side Quest. It will be released as a fully compatible patch.

Nihilus vs. Sion - Essentially part of the GenoHaradan Side Quest and will be part of Lord of Hunger's storyline.

Sell Vrook into Slavery - Again, too little content. Also conflicts with the storyline.

Dustil Onasi - No content to work with, or a reason to restore.

Ravager Crashing Into Telos - Does not fit the storyline as it would most likely result in the destruction of Ebon Hawk, thereby conflicting with later events.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Prime Junta!
More information.

Wow that's a shock for me about Team Gizka. I thought it was nearly done. Has anyone got any more information on the Gizka project?

That project was doomed to fail from the begining, i never trusted them, they just seemed extremely unfriendly overall.. I'm glad a was a sceptic and didnt sit on their forums year after year getting all hyped up for nothing heh.....

I've been following it, on and off. Here's the story, in brief.

The team went pretty silent around a year ago, as everyone drifted off, other than Dashus, the coordinator. Then he went pretty silent too. The mods continued to squash any speculation about the state of the project. Then, last spring, Dashus posted a message titled "Two weeks…" with their WHEN IT'S DONE smiley as content.

In two weeks, they released… a trailer. From 2008. With a release date: "Summer 2008."

Then, silence.

The peasants on the board started grumbling, and the mods started locking threads big-time. They were hinting mysteriously that some of them were in touch with Dashus, although he personally didn't feel like posting.

Then, a month or two ago, DarthStoney and gang surfaced with this competing mod, apparently near completion. The team-gizka boards went apeshit. One of the beta testers threatened to leak 1.0b11, the latest released version, unless Dashus posted some kind of update about the state of the mod. He did: he surfaced only to say that he's found a new girlfriend and hasn't work on the mod for two months, but hasn't abandoned it, "because he's done that all too often."

Needless to say, that didn't go down too well.

So here we are — the Team Gizka boards are split between fans and former lurkers who are extremely upset at Dashus's behavior, and mods who are treating them with sneering contempt. Meanwhile, DStoney and gang released their mod, which, by all accounts, is just about as good.

About the only thing the Team Gizka partisans have to say is a plaintive "But it doesn't have the lean animation."

My take? IMO Dashus has been behaving like dick. That's his prerogative, of course — technically, he doesn't owe anyone anything. However, he's not the only one who contributed to the mod, and if I was one of the other contributors, I'd be extremely upset at having my work disappear up his black hole.

Edit: As an aside, I'm installing TSL as we speak, but it appears I may have ruined Disc Four. I tried cleaning it and reinstalling; we'll see if it goes any better…

Edit edit: False alarm! Install went through the second time. Now, to see if I can get it to run on Vista...

Thanks very much for the info Prime! I haven't followed the forums there much at all but I did check their status page at least once a month since it started.

Since I've not followed it as closely, what is the "lean animation" you mention. As simple as it sounds: an animation for leaning? (Unless it's a spoiler - I actually haven't played KotOR2 yet - I'm just currently replaying KotOR for the second time w/ Solomon's Revenge in prep for finally playing KotOR2.)

Thanks again.

Edit: Oh and I'm glad you got your disks working. I hope mine are okay, I never did open the box.

Yup, it's an animation... for leaning. Atton, I take it, leans against a wall in some scene or other, where otherwise he'd just stand around in his usual idiom.

I often wished that someone of Obsidian themselves would contribute to some of these efforts … Or even make a "director's cut" themselves …
I wish the new boss at LucasArts would allow that …

^Yeah, keep dreaming.

I've always been apprehensive about this stuff. I'm glad something got released, but it's not like I'm ever r gonna get hyped up over anything like this. I mean, it's good to play a game that's near what they wanted to do and couldn't because Atari doesn't like having finished games (and that's why I NEVER buy Atari), but it's fan made, and it's buggy, probably. I'm only going to play this a year or two from know, when everything has settled down and there's not many more bug fixes to be made.

Is this pretty much complete, PJ? Or are there other things to be added? I'm kind of thinking of holding back until they've patched it so the other mods they mention work with it.

I didn't see this coming that's for sure and thanks for the extra info, Prime Junta.

Last I had heard, within the last year there was a closed Beta (maybe late Alpha) and someone leaked (think it's on the web, iirc), then everything seemed to change. However the times I did go and check status, maybe read a post or two, they talked like work had resumed after the leak and progress was being made.

Gratz, to the TSL Restored Content Modification team on release.

I think I will wait till for the M4-78 - The Droid Planet compatibility, since I would like to experience it as a whole.

@Rith: Pretty much, but yes, there's more to come. Specifically, they want to integrate DStoney's M4-78 mod to the work they've done, and they'll certainly fix bugs found during beta.

Either way, I'm tired of waiting and am going to give it a spin, if I can get it to work. So far it's looking good; I had to jump through a few hoops but I got the plain, patched to 1.0b version up to the character creation screen at least -- haven't looked any further yet.

Awesome, thanks for that! I'm probably going to hold off due to school and play it in a few months. Let me know how it is!

I've just played through Telos and arrived on Nar Shaddaa. So far, not a whole lot of new content -- the differences are subtle, just a few loose ends tied up, a few lines of dialog here and there. As it should be, in fact. I'm sure there will be more later.

There are a few bugs that don't appear to have anything to do with restored content, though, and nothing game-breaking so far; for example, swoop racing on Telos was so badly broken it's virtually unplayable. There are also some Vista-related hiccups -- the game crashes on start nine times out of ten, but then starts up fine the tenth time, only in a window which I have to maximize to get to full-screen. (No, replacing mss32.dll didn't fix it.)

I also had to find... a way... to get rid of SecuROM 7, which isn't Vista-compatible.

If GoG picked up TSL as well as KOTOR, cleaned it up, and made it fully Vista-compatible, I'd buy it from them again, just to get rid of the aggravation.

Prime Junta said:

If GoG picked up TSL as well as KOTOR, cleaned it up, and made it fully Vista-compatible, I'd buy it from them again, just to get rid of the aggravation.

Click to expand...

Agreed! I'd also love for them to pick up Dark Forces and it's children that just came out on Steam. I bet they'd have done it right and not left little things out like music tracks and Vista compatibility. I mean seriously, what's a Star Wars game without at least a few John Williams tracks?

(I should point out that it's possible Steam fixed those things since release, I haven't been following it.)

Okay, I played far enough to come across some genuinely new content. Kaevee, a whole new character, with a whole new voice -- which is amazingly good for a fan-made mod like this, at least as good as most voices officially in the game. So far it's a remarkably polished experience -- a few awkward cuts here and there, but no more than what's already there.

Only trouble is, I find myself getting a bit bored with the whole game, meaning that I might just let it drop for now.