Baldur's Gate - whole series for ten quid

[Tale]

:sad:

 

 

Thanks. just be glad you don't have to put up with my ghastly wheezing.

Little reprieve, we still have to put up with you.

[Walsingham]

:sad:

 

 

Thanks. just be glad you don't have to put up with my ghastly wheezing.

Little reprieve, we still have to put up with you.

 

This is true. But surely a me less mucus is superior?

[Wistrik]

In fact I remember talking about the quality of said banter pack a few months back when I was playing the game... I had said I couldn't even tell which banters were Bio-made and which were added with the mod, intending to commend the quality of the modders' work.

I guess it depends on the player; I can almost always spot the difference in writing style. The thing that caused me to finally ditch the mod was when NPCs started referring to Lilarcor as "Larry". It sounded like something out of 20th century Earth, not Faerun.

 

Ah, but now you're referring to the BG2 banter pack, as that talking sword was found in BG2, not BG1.

I crossed games in mid-thought, pardon me.

 

 

It's too bad Black Isle was disbanded so soon after IWD2's release; there are a number of engine bugs that are a bit aggravating. And on my computer any floating text (text displayed in translucent boxes over the game world) severely reduces performance, something screen full of spell casters can't even do. Even the smallest bit of floating text does this.

[Dark_Raven]

Engine bugs is a Bioware issue since it's their engine.

[Wistrik]

Engine bugs is a Bioware issue since it's their engine.

Not in the case of Black Isle's games, since they licensed Bioware's engine and modified it, rather extensively in some cases (PS:T, IWD2). That's my understanding anyway. The floating text performance issue doesn't exist in Bioware's version of the engine for Baldur's Gate II, and Black Isle was the last group to have their hands on the IE's code.

[Tigranes]

Completely pointless to point out the triviality - by that time Bioware was done with their last IE involvement and they knew it. They weren't going to come in and make engine fixes for some other company's game.

 

Just so I'm not one-line-posting, IE in the end was burdened with some 'inevitable' issues that were never resolved and probably were never worth resolving. It still ended up being a pretty darn good engine though, for all intensive purposes. It was and is beautiful, generally works well and didn't have particularly horrible memory leaks or whatnot.

[Hassat Hunter]

Hmmm... yes; the PS:T variation of the IE engine had severe issues with me as well...

 

Altough not with floating text (that was all fine)

 

The only sollution was to downgrade drivers to 22.xx or so; so I rather sticked with it; considering I was a fighter anyways...

[Wistrik]

I like the IE overall, just not the performance loss with the floating text in IWD2, as was my original point. The BG and IWD series otherwise run great on my computer.

 

Finally got around to installing EasyTutu last night. I also installed the BG1 GUI mod, the water degreenifier, and Tutufix v17. There were a few glitches in the EasyTutu install*, but once I fixed those the rest was painless. I fired up the game and created a character, and boom, Candlekeep at 1024x768 with BG1's dark gray stonework GUI skins. Awesome. They tweaked the EXE to play the intro movie with Sarevok, but there is still the static TSR logo (I prefer BG1's animated dragon logo), and Bioware's logo is replaced with BG2's WOTC logo (yuck). I can fix that with a hex editor.

 

 

*The EasyTutu installer failed hard if AUTOPLAY.INI and BGATE2.MPI were not present in the main BG2 folder (it's a bad idea to make assumptions...). I'd removed several files that were nonessential for configuration and singleplayer gaming, but thankfully I had snapshots of the original main and override folders so I was able to restore the required files and get the install to continue.

[Walsingham]

I like the IE overall, just not the performance loss with the floating text in IWD2, as was my original point. The BG and IWD series otherwise run great on my computer.

 

Finally got around to installing EasyTutu last night. I also installed the BG1 GUI mod, the water degreenifier, and Tutufix v17. There were a few glitches in the EasyTutu install*, but once I fixed those the rest was painless. I fired up the game and created a character, and boom, Candlekeep at 1024x768 with BG1's dark gray stonework GUI skins. Awesome. They tweaked the EXE to play the intro movie with Sarevok, but there is still the static TSR logo (I prefer BG1's animated dragon logo), and Bioware's logo is replaced with BG2's WOTC logo (yuck). I can fix that with a hex editor.

 

 

*The EasyTutu installer failed hard if AUTOPLAY.INI and BGATE2.MPI were not present in the main BG2 folder (it's a bad idea to make assumptions...). I'd removed several files that were nonessential for configuration and singleplayer gaming, but thankfully I had snapshots of the original main and override folders so I was able to restore the required files and get the install to continue.

 

*Walsingham peers at Wistrik like a caveman being shown how to field-strip an MP5*

[Dark_Raven]

Baldur's Gate mod talk Walshy.

[Walsingham]

Beer foamy. Fire bad.

[Barzarel]

It's well worth the price, considering it's hard to find in the local stores. I bought the Bladur's Gate Collection, which was BG, TotSC and the soundtrack about three years ago and have not seen it in the store since.

 

Well BG series is without a doubt a classic, i remember spending a dozen hours replaying it over and over again, alot of atmosphere nice level of npc interaction with group members each, and rich storyline i really enjoyed it still have the whole series on my shelfs ^^

[Pop]

A dozen hours? That many?

[Dark_Raven]

Should be days.