Graphics issue

[PadawanGirl]

Thanks for the help on the healing thing, now I have just one more teensy thing.

It happened in the first copy I purchased, but not until I'd had it for a long while.... The brightness is way down, so that you can barely see the menu screen. But I check the Graphics menu and the slider is right at the brightness setting I put it at. (as in almost totally bright) I have to slide it down then back to that setting I had put it to every time I start the game. Basically, I adjust the brightness and when I boot up the game again it's back to dark even though the slider is where I put it. What is up with that? It currently keeps my brightness during and after cutscenes (which the other copy did not) but still, it's a bit irritating to have to fix the brightness every time I boot up the game.

[Star Admiral]

Are you running Vista or Win7? Sometimes if you don't run the game as an administrator, the game forgets to properly save your preferences in between games.

- Star Admiral

[PadawanGirl]

XP pro. I had this happen before, also on xp. It is also not keeping the brightness during the movie cutscenes.

Originally Posted by Star Admiral

Are you running Vista or Win7? Sometimes if you don't run the game as an administrator, the game forgets to properly save your preferences in between games.

- Star Admiral

[N**]

Yes, that obviously wasn't the problem if the slider position is being saved.

Did you install the updates? I think 1.01 or 1.02 changed the brightness feature.

Otherwise the display driver might be resetting the monitor brightness when it enters full screen mode.

[PadawanGirl]

I have all patches downloaded. It's always in full screen mode - I've never played it windowed.

Originally Posted by N**

Yes, that obviously wasn't the problem if the slider position is being saved.

Did you install the updates? I think 1.01 or 1.02 changed the brightness feature.

Otherwise the display driver might be resetting the monitor brightness when it enters full screen mode.

[Star Admiral]

I don't know if this would help, but try setting the brightness manually in the swkotor.ini file in your main KOTOR directory. Under graphics options, set the Brightness to 60 or 70 and see if the game will accept it.

- Star Admiral

[Sol Nexus]

I had this same problem. I was running WinXP with an ATI 1650. When I put in a Geforce card it stopped.

[N**]

Originally Posted by PadawanGirl

I have all patches downloaded. It's always in full screen mode - I've never played it windowed.

I bolded the important part of my reply. If it did work in windowed mode that would attest to a display driver complication.

No portable way exists to control the screen brightness level. K1 uses the Win32 API function ::SetDeviceGammaRamp() which is implemented by the display driver and isn't reliable across hardware.

K1 tries to change the screen gamma settings at startup before it switches to full screen mode. Now, if the adjustment works while in fullscreen and windowed mode (i.e., while playing the game), but fails at startup, that leaves several causes: (A) the gamma ramp is too low/high and aborted; (B) gamma correction is not being remembered between [full screen] mode switches.

The answer to A is to try a more moderate brightness level. The answer to B is that there is none*, it could be a display driver or hardware fault, and the best that can be done is to try updating the graphics drivers.

* An ATI user can create a new game profile or set up global hotkeys that adjust system brightness.