KOTOR patch coming Tuesday

BioWare is planning to release the first official patch for the PC version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic next Tuesday. The game's release presented some gamers with technical issues that this official patch will address.

While BioWare did put together a beta patch immediately after KOTOR was released (and made it available to those gamers requesting support within 24 hours of the game's release), the upcoming official patch will be more widely available.

The patch will address issues as detailed in an official post on BioWare's KOTOR Web site. The fixes included in the patch are as follows:

• Added two new "swkotor.ini" sound options: Environment Effects Nonstreaming=1, Environment Effects Streaming=1. The Environment Effects Streaming=0 option was added to fix a problem with sound pauses while playing the game with an Intel i845 or i850 chipset motherboard and a 100MHz Front Side Bus.
• removed the awareness penalty when running.
• Fixed "Disable Vertex Buffer Objects" option in "swkotor.ini": Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1 to solve random graphics issues.
• Fix to the Enable Hardware Mouse option when disabled to remedy crashes with ATI Radeon 9600 video cards.
• Made a fix to a display issue with Small Fonts.
• Fixed to a gamma issue after movies finish playing.
• Removed the display of Force Points on portrait tooltips for non-Jedi characters.
• Fixed bug where some objects in the game would give a sticky mouse indicator like they had an inventory when they did not.
• Fixed an issue where if you changed appearance while Force Speed was active your movement rate would return to normal.
• Fixed an issue with droid animation when the item they were using ran out or their target died.
• The turret mini-game should no longer have the blur visual effect if you enter it with that visual effect turned on.
• The Security option no longer displays for doors which a key is required.
• Fixed a rare bug where the game could get stuck if an autopause was triggered at the exact same time as an area transition.
• Fixed a rare crash that could happen when a Dark Jedi dies at the exact same time as he deflected a blaster bolt.
• Fixed a rare crash on startup under Windows 98.
• Fixed a few memory leaks.

GameSpot will offer the patch for download as soon as it becomes available.