Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Guide

Star Wars: Kights of the Old Republic is the first installment of the series developed by Bioware released in 2003. Lead your party in skirmishes against the Sith, Travel to planets across the Galaxy, follow an epic story as you encounter many characters and alien races.

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the Steam version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Other versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.5
Wine: 1.6.2

Wine Installation

Note: Versions of Wine older than 2.0.2 and Wine 2.12-staging no longer work with Steam

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 1.6.2

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.6.2 is installed and you can close this window

Downloading Steam

Go To: http://www.steampowered.com
Click Install Steam

Do not click "Install Steam Now"
It will automatically install Linux Steam
Select Windows Steam instead
click "Windows" under the green button

Navigate to your desktop
Click Save

Setup PlayOnLinux

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "Install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name you virtual drive: swkotor

Click Next

Select all three options:

• Use another version of Wine
• Configure Wine
• Install some libraries

Click Next

Select Wine 1.6.2
Click Next

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Configure Wine

Applications Tab
Windows Version: Windows 7
Click Apply

Graphics Tab
Check: Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows
Check: Emulate a virtual desktop
Desktop size: 1024x768
Click Ok

Install Libraries

Check the following libraries:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_tahoma

Click Next

Installing Steam

Click Browse

Navigate to your desktop
Select: SteamSetup.exe
Click Open

Click Next

Click Next

Check: I accept the license...
Click Next

Click Next

Click Next

Click Install

Click Finish

Updating Steam

More updating, extracting and installing

When Steam is done installing the login screen will pop up. You probably won't see any text because there is a font bug.
Click the "X" to close Steam login

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select Steam.exe
Click Next

Name your shortcut: SW: Knights of the Old Republic
Click Next

Click Next

PlayOnLinux Configure

Back to PlayOnLinux
Click Configure

General Tab
Arguments: -no-dwrite -no-cef-sandbox
This fixes the missing font and store problem

Note: Click the + to download other versions of Wine. Click the Down-Arrow to select other versions of wine.

Display Tab
Video Memory Size: Select the size of Memory your video card/chip uses

Close Configure

Launching Steam

Select "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic"
Click Run

Note: Click Debug to see errors and bugs.

Click "Login to existing account"

Login

Steam Overlay

Steam overlay has been known to cause problems launching games.
Click Steam menu
Click Settings

Select "In-game"
Uncheck "Enable Steam Commuinty In-Game"
Click OK

Installing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Select Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Click Install

Click Next

Click Next

Click Finish

Wait as the game downloads
When its finished
Click Play

Optmization

Click Options

Click Graphics

Select Resolution

• 800x600
• 1024x768
• 2048x1024

Enable/Disable:

• Shadows
• Grass

Click Advanced Options

Adjust:

• Overall Quality
• AntiAlias
• Anistropy
• Frame buffer effects
• Soft shadows
• V-Sync

Rule of Thumb:
High settings = More detail, lower frame rates
Low settings = Less detail, higher frame rates

Custom Resolution

Unfortunately the game does not support high resolutions or widescreen resolutions.
You can force it to run as high as 1600x1200

Navigate to the swotor directory:

/home/username/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/swkotor/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/Common/swotor

Note: Username is where you put your Linux login

Open swkotor.ini with a text editor
Enter:
High=1200
Width=1600

Click Save

Set your Linux desktop for 1600x1200 and then launch Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Now it should appear fullscreen in a high resolution

Conclusion:
Knights of the Old Republic should run well on just about any computer with Linux. Since its a 2003 game, the spec are really low and even laptops should be able to run it.
It ran very nicely on my GeForce 550 Ti and was able to crank all the video settings to High and run on a fairly high resolution.
I tested Flawless Widescreen in PlayOnLinux, but it would crash the game when loading. So I had to resort to 3:4 ratio resollution.

Gameplay video:

Screenshots:

 

Good game and very good guide as always

 

Thanks MrDeathJr!
I hope some day you might do some guides for us as well.
You have plenty of experience and knowlege. It would be easy for you

 

Wanted to add this in here.
I installed just as stated here, except I went ahead and used Wine 2.8
Made sure the game was working fine at 1024x768 and then used the below linked suggestion to do widescreen. I did this one because I also couldn't get flawless widescreen to work.
This one is working great so far for me.

http://www.wsgf.org/article/star-wars-knights-old-republic

 

Thanks Graywolf.theheathen!

What was the problem with widescreen before you tried wsgf.org?

 

I didn't have any crashes like some people have reported. Flawless Widescreen ran fine actually. It just wouldn't "grab" the game when launched.
If you have used Flawless Widescreen then you know that with it running when you launch the game it says "injecting" and then detcets the running game and does the modify. Well it never went past "Injecting", it wouldn't ever "grab" the game if that makes sense.

 

Oh, I didn't realize you were using Flawless Widescreen. I played it in 3:4 ratio because that was the only option I had too. If you mean "grab" as in the mouse wasn't working in the fullscreen game, then I think I understand.
Could you at least see the game?

 

No the game ran fine. Mouse was fine. By "grab" I meant the process of Flawless Widescreen doing its DLL injection. It would just sit there. It would never do the injection letting the display get changed to widescreen.

 

That kinda makes sense since we are not really using Windows. Widescreen application probably has some dependencies to initiate.