Baldur's Gate: The Beginning

xSamhainx · June 2, 2008

Baldur's Gate 1&2: The Beginning (possible spoilers)

One of the first games I bought for my pc - Baldur's Gate.

Here again, after losing my stride in NWN2 after years-old save and deciding to start over - i'm deciding to really start over and play thru the Baldur's from square one.

Thankfully, it installed and patched without a hitch and seems to run fine. I'm not seeing the
[Program Options]
Path Search Nodes=4000

entry added into the ini as the patch notes say it was, so I'm just scanning around the internet and going to add it manually i think. I have no doubt there's some tips and tweaks out there for it. Anyone have any tech advice for a new adventurer firing up this old classic on XP?

edit - "Baldur's Gate 1&2: The Beginning (possible spoilers)" title revision since this has become my BG thread in general, I may reveal some things as I blab about my BG2 experiences as i play. It happens

Zaleukos · June 2, 2008

Cant you change the path search nodes setting in the external configuration program (but not in game)? Not that it helps as only five out of six party members will find the shortest path even with max settings

Otherwise the most logical tweak is to use Tutu, for the higher resolution and "pause on trap found" if nothing else.

I also prefer to cheat and give myself 2000 xp with an editor. It doesnt make any difference in the long run but it does give me an extra early hit dice and saves some reloading due to lucky wolves in the beginning...

EDIT: one more reason to use Tutu is that it makes the party interactions a bit more visible. There are some NPC-dependent events in BG1 but they are a bit understated (a pause and a text message would for instance make it more obvious why certain NPCs try to kill each other).

EDIT2: Cant say much for getting the game to run on XP, as I never had any problems with that. BG2 on the other hand refused to cooperate on one XP box (but worked after a later reinstall of the same XP version on the same machine, go figure).

Elwro · June 2, 2008

I recently had the same idea. I started with TuTu, just to have the TAB key highlighting the usable spots on the screen, but uninstalled it after a few hours and started a new, "normal" BG1 game. I've finished the game before and something just didn't feel right to me when playing with the BG2 interface. Also, I think there are some changes regarding spells and I've read reports of people encountering many bugs, the more the further they got into the game. So I'm sticking to vanilla BG1. If Avernum 3 permits me to return to it anytime, that is

xSamhainx · June 2, 2008

The path nodes thing is solved. I'm sticking w/ vanilla BG for the time being, tho having some annoying black box-like graphical glitches when it comes to transparency (at least that's the way it looks) when it comes to certain creatures and blood on enemies.

Looks like I'm going to have to mess w/ it a little all, Ive seen so far is people saying to turn on/off a combination of the basic blt transparency and such options and turn down the color to 16. Compatibility mode totally locks the program up, not helping. So, i'll just do a setup for the game in nvidia's control panel tomorrow, it's prolly something to do w/ anti-aliasing settings or something

JDR13 · June 2, 2008

Mmmm, I never had any problems with BG on WinXP. I would definitely make sure that settings such as antialiasing, anistropic filtering, etc, are set to "application controlled" in your control panel.

narpet · June 2, 2008

xSamhainx said:
Looks like I'm going to have to mess w/ it a little all, Ive seen so far is people saying to turn on/off a combination of the basic blt transparency and such options and turn down the color to 16. Compatibility mode totally locks the program up, not helping. So, i'll just do a setup for the game in nvidia's control panel tomorrow, it's prolly something to do w/ anti-aliasing settings or something

Sammy - I just recently played through BG and I had the same problem. I'm using an nVidia 8800GTX and no matter what I did I could not get that particular problem to go away (butterflies, birds, etc with black all around them). I tried changing every setting there is, and multiples thereof... but nothing got rid of that artifact problem.

If you figure it out let me know.

Arma · June 2, 2008

Hmm. I had the same problem with BG2, btw, and couldn't find a solution after tweaking a bit and several reinstalls (at first I thought it was a mod that had messed up something).

On another note, I believe that there was a mod that changed the interface of Tutu from the BG2 one into the other one, if that will be of any help. To anyone.

blatantninja · June 2, 2008

Yeah, I am playing that Tutu mod with the original interface. The only issue I ran into at all was when installing BG1 with the full install, it didn't recognize all the space on my harddrive and said there might not be enough room, but I installed anyway, and it was fine. Since then, no problems at all.

Stanza · June 2, 2008

narpet said:
Sammy - I just recently played through BG and I had the same problem. I'm using an nVidia 8800GTX and no matter what I did I could not get that particular problem to go away (butterflies, birds, etc with black all around them). I tried changing every setting there is, and multiples thereof... but nothing got rid of that artifact problem.

If you figure it out let me know.

Coincidentally, I reinstalled BG1 a few weeks back and also ran into the transparency problem with an 8800GT. I had to set a combination of software blit options -- turning on only software blit, but leaving the 2-3 other options turned off. The transparency problems went away, but frame rate is very sluggish. I'd have to double-check exactly which options were set, since I can't recall off the top of my head.

Apparently this is a problem with 8000-series boards for BG1 and IWD2. IWD1, BG2, and possibly Torment are different (I think due to OpenGL option).

xSamhainx · June 2, 2008

I've looked all around, and unfortunately it seems like it's one of those things that's individual to each person's setup - no one ini fix or something will take care of it. Have to fiddle w/ it some more tonight when I get home.

Actually, this is becoming a full-on nostalgic experience for me. Not only firing up this old game, but also fighting to get it to work right! :lol:

Stanza · June 3, 2008

For what it's worth, these are the settings I had to use to get BG1 working on my system. Turns out I was misremembering things when I posted earlier.

I had to have exactly this combination of blit options, and it had to be running in 16-bit mode. Changing the transparent shadows flag, any of the blit flags, or the bit depth causes black boxes all over the inventory screen and sometimes in the game window as well.

narpet · June 3, 2008

Stanza said:
For what it's worth, these are the settings I had to use to get BG1 working on my system. Turns out I was misremembering things when I posted earlier.

I had to have exactly this combination of blit options, and it had to be running in 16-bit mode. Changing the transparent shadows flag, any of the blit flags, or the bit depth causes black boxes all over the inventory screen and sometimes in the game window as well.

For some reason I never tried taking it down to 16-bit... that's why I couldn't get rid of those black boxes. Thanks Stanza... I'll use this info on my next play through....

xSamhainx · June 3, 2008

Stanza's settings seem to work on my system, but as the great thespian and poet Bret Michaels once put it, "every rose has it's thorn", and indeed this is no exception - the drawback is that the game runs quite sluggish for me as well.

The second option is to go into display>settings>advanced>troubleshoot and crank down acceleration to about halfway. It runs full speed w/ no boxes, I was jubilant at first.. but alas my heart sank again - it's not without a price. The cursor everywhere but on the main screen creates a mess of trails everywhere.

compatibility modes offer everything from complete lockup to nothing at all, and nvidia card settings dont seem to do anything - only disabling of acceleration altogether helps but it messes up cursors. I may mess w/ the windows compatibility toolkit like I did w/ Dungeon Keeper and see if that does anything.

xSamhainx · June 13, 2008

Leaving town for 2 weeks soon, so I installed BG on my 2GHZ XPS w/ an older 6800 card - bam works like a charm, no weirdness of any kind, runs full speed, all good. I think my XPS Gen2 has now officially crossed over into the category of totally outdated!

xSamhainx · June 21, 2008

things were a little crazy so I couldnt game for a while, but Ive been playing BG on the road here on my laptop.

I swear Minsc is one of the most worthless characters, I rarely let a character die - but I finally decided to leave him where he lay. People generally seem to like him, i think he's nothing but an absolute drain on the party. Yeah, his little hamster schtick is cute from an RP perspective, but I'm sorry, a range-less Ranger who cant do fuck-all but suck up my healing spells left and right is a liability...

I'd comment on his berserk being dangerous to the group, but since he couldnt hit the broadside of the Friendly Arm w/ a halberd, it's more pathetic than anything!

JDR13 · June 21, 2008

You really think so? I think Minsc can be an pretty good tank if used the right way, although I hate his stupid dialog.

xSamhainx · June 21, 2008

oh absolutely, I think he's awful. Branwen's better on the front line than him fer crissake

zahratustra · June 21, 2008

Haven't you worked it out yet guys? It's Boo who is the brains of this outfit! :biggrin:

Maylander · June 22, 2008

I think you must've been unlucky when Minsc was rolling for hitpoints, because he's supposed to get a ton of it - the only one with more hitpoints (and therefore being a better tank) is Kagain (the evil dwarf, he's got 20 constitution, which gives him a ton of hitpoints, and also regeneration).

Branwen can certainly get a higher armor class than Minsc, but due to low hitpoints, anyone actually hitting her kills her a lot faster. Especially casters (a few acid arrows/magic missiles, and she's as good as dead).

blatantninja · June 23, 2008

JDR13 said:
You really think so? I think Minsc can be an pretty good tank if used the right way, although I hate his stupid dialog.

I love it. He cracks me up.

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