It's been awhile since I played either one. I don't remember much about any bugs, but since this thread started, I thought about re-installing it.

What do the bugs do, crash to desktop?

It's an issue with ATI cards and VBOs. What KOTOR is probably trying to do is cache geometry data on the video card, in a VBO, and then read it back again. It results in severe performance degradation to the point where the game will not function. Incidentally, this also doesn't 'work' in the sense that the data the game gets back from the card might not be correct, especially if the game isn't written properly (since that sort of operation is done asychronously) so any algorithms written to use that data (like collision detection) will not work.

The actual framerate is much higher than the update rate, actually. As in the scene is rendering normally, but the game does not update camera or object positions.

It looks bizarre.

Ah, see, I have/had an Nvidia card. I do remember slowdowns on the outdoorsy parts of Dantooine, but that's all I remember at the moment.

Come to think of it, the last time I bothered with KOTOR on my X1300, Dantooine would randomly lag like hell when it was going just fine a few seconds earlier...

My X1950 is going along fine. No Dantooine yet though.

dantooine can be a little laggy

So, From what i read it's because the engine is really odd and not the cards fault, Right?

Yeah, I can't get it to start up.

I guess that's the good thing about having the Xbox versions. I haven't had any performance issues. The only frustration I've had is the "what do I do now" type.

Technically it's because the engine programmer used little-known and rarely-used optimization techniques which were painted over by ATI's team of alcoholic driver engineers but sure

So, The fault is split between the 2 groups?

I got it to start up, and it loads awful fast, an I haven't run into many issues, but I forgot how slow the game was, and also how deterministic everything is. This is one of those games where I really feel like I should be using a walkthrough so that I can have a perfect everything.

Are there any RPGs that don't have perfect setups? For once I'd like to play a game where I can feel free to just explore and make mistakes and do whatever. Oblivion was like that, but only because there weren't any options.

KOTOR is easy enough that that shouldn't happen. To do that for an RPG you would have to make it very easy or take away the depth of the game.

Things tend to happen slightly different on occasion, but that's an understandable consequence of the way you choose to play. That's why playing the game as Dark instead of Light (or vice versa) was so much fun to compare between the two. Light-siders definitely gives you the opportunity to exercise your Samaritan muscle, but Dark side gave you a Hell of a lot of fun chances to mess with peoples heads

"Give me all of your money."
"Yes, master."
"Now, jump into the central pit."

No. It is ATI's fault.

Yeah, but lag usually goes away when you look at a wall or something, I had to reload a save game to get it to go away.

Not that the rest of the many problems with the game aren't the developer's fault.