[OS X] Somewhat stabilized BGII - ToB with 3D acceleration!

[Guest Eric P.]

Hello,

 

The consensus on disabling 3D accelerationi for BGII in order to increase stability has always bothered me. Why would the programmers include that option if it resulted in problematic game functioning? After living with this feature turned off for the longest time, I decided to revisit it, and see if there was an external component that would help. I turned to the ATI Displays preference pane, and set it up to use the best quality graphics acceleration (?) for BGII specifically. Then, I enabled 3D acceleration in BGConfig, launched the game, and...viola! I now have nicer-looking graphics in-game, and not an annoying number of CTDs to report thus far.

 

I'm not counting on this to be the ideal solution; if it turns out that I still get problems with game performance, I'll simply disable 3D acceleration again. For now, anyway, things are working well enough. So, if anyone out there in OS X land has the ATI Displays preference pane, and wants to give this a try, I recommend it.

 

Happy gaming,

Eric

(Who forgot to log in...again...)

[Gorilym]

I've been playing Tutu and BG2 with 3D acceleration enabled ever since I upgraded to a G5; never suffered any real loss of stability due to it. IIRC the serious problems are only apparent with Nvidia-card configurations, even my now-ancient G3 (also with ATI-card) ran BG2 OK with 3D acc. enabled - it did so sloooowly , but there was no noticeable increase in crashing.

[ericp07]

I've been playing Tutu and BG2 with 3D acceleration enabled ever since I upgraded to a G5; never suffered any real loss of stability due to it. IIRC the serious problems are only apparent with Nvidia-card configurations, even my now-ancient G3 (also with ATI-card) ran BG2 OK with 3D acc. enabled - it did so sloooowly , but there was no noticeable increase in crashing.

 

My card is an ATI RADEON 7200. The OS reads it as a 7500. Those crashes I get with BGII always appear mod-related, and I've noticed that game behavior is virtually identical whether or not I have 3D enabled...but I do like the look of things better with it enabled At times, the timekeeping pendulum swings quickly and smoothly, while at other times it hesitates mid-swing for a split-second. This may be due to how "busy" the current area is.

 

All is well in BGII land on my system now, except for a problem with Adventurer's Mart (may be Domains of Dread that's causing it), but that's something for another post

 

Happy gaming,

Eric

[devSin]

and I've noticed that game behavior is virtually identical whether or not I have 3D enabled...

The problems with 3D acceleration have always been mostly performance-related (you may get a few more random crashes or crashes when doing things like manipulating inventory or whatnot), which can be offset by a faster CPU.

 

Strange that adjusting the application override has any effect (the 3D drawing is pretty unspectacular, so it's not like the override should really cause any difference in behavior), but good to hear that it works (at least for people with an aftermarket ATI board without access to Mac OS 9).

[ericp07]

and I've noticed that game behavior is virtually identical whether or not I have 3D enabled...

The problems with 3D acceleration have always been mostly performance-related (you may get a few more random crashes or crashes when doing things like manipulating inventory or whatnot), which can be offset by a faster CPU.

 

Strange that adjusting the application override has any effect (the 3D drawing is pretty unspectacular, so it's not like the override should really cause any difference in behavior), but good to hear that it works (at least for people with an aftermarket ATI board without access to Mac OS 9).

 

Just shows to go ya that things work differently with different hw configurations. It's nice when the behavior is wanted, and not unwanted I see that the difference in visual elements is subtle between 3D and 2D, and as long as I remind myself to save very frequently, I don't sweat a crash when moving to another area map or manipulating spells or whatnot.

 

I'll have to take a close look to see what, if any, differences there are with my game between OS X and OS 9. It does work both ways, thankfully, but the only reason I run it under OS 9 is to create new, single-class, kittable characters without the dreaded CTD. Export the new character, and it's ready to play under OS X

 

Happy gaming,

Eric

[devSin]

Just shows to go ya that things work differently with different hw configurations. It's nice when the behavior is wanted, and not unwanted I see that the difference in visual elements is subtle between 3D and 2D, and as long as I remind myself to save very frequently, I don't sweat a crash when moving to another area map or manipulating spells or whatnot.

People usually say that it doesn't make any difference, but the blending for the fog of war/inactive overlay and water alpha is pretty. I swear the lighting is just a touch softer with 3D acceleration, but what do I know.

 

I'll have to take a close look to see what, if any, differences there are with my game between OS X and OS 9. It does work both ways, thankfully, but the only reason I run it under OS 9 is to create new, single-class, kittable characters without the dreaded CTD. Export the new character, and it's ready to play under OS X

It always works and performs well under Mac OS 9.

 

Recent testing suggests that you may be able to work around the kit selection crash by moving your Baldur.ini to the desktop and using a default Baldur.ini from a fresh install (you may need to adjust the CD paths under the Aliases section, but it can otherwise remain the way it is without launching BGConfig). I've had luck with it in the recent past (spending time on BG/TotSC lately, so it's been a while since I've needed to pay attention to BG2), but I wasn't willing to narrow it down to a specific setting (or mess with it enough to differentiate between a true panacea and snake oil). Obviously, you'd just move your old .ini back after creating your characters and continue playing on.

[Guest Eric P.]

Just shows to go ya that things work differently with different hw configurations. It's nice when the behavior is wanted, and not unwanted I see that the difference in visual elements is subtle between 3D and 2D, and as long as I remind myself to save very frequently, I don't sweat a crash when moving to another area map or manipulating spells or whatnot.

People usually say that it doesn't make any difference, but the blending for the fog of war/inactive overlay and water alpha is pretty. I swear the lighting is just a touch softer with 3D acceleration, but what do I know.

 

I'll have to take a close look to see what, if any, differences there are with my game between OS X and OS 9. It does work both ways, thankfully, but the only reason I run it under OS 9 is to create new, single-class, kittable characters without the dreaded CTD. Export the new character, and it's ready to play under OS X

It always works and performs well under Mac OS 9.

 

Recent testing suggests that you may be able to work around the kit selection crash by moving your Baldur.ini to the desktop and using a default Baldur.ini from a fresh install (you may need to adjust the CD paths under the Aliases section, but it can otherwise remain the way it is without launching BGConfig). I've had luck with it in the recent past (spending time on BG/TotSC lately, so it's been a while since I've needed to pay attention to BG2), but I wasn't willing to narrow it down to a specific setting (or mess with it enough to differentiate between a true panacea and snake oil). Obviously, you'd just move your old .ini back after creating your characters and continue playing on.

 

Outstanding! I'll give that a try. BTW, is it possible to switch back and forth between the game and the Desktop/Finder under OS X, when playing in full-screen mode?

 

Thanks,

Eric

[devSin]

Command-M should swap you to windowed mode (it's a little clunky, but I don't think Command-Tab swaps out like BG/TotSC does).

[ericp07]

Command-M should swap you to windowed mode (it's a little clunky, but I don't think Command-Tab swaps out like BG/TotSC does).

 

Your advice in these matters is, as always, golden.

 

Much obliged,

Eric

[Guest Guest]

Eh? On my G5, BG II doesn't really work at all, it has one crippling glitch - once you've selected a character it takes 3 or 4 attempts to get them to obey orders - most of the time if you click to move or attack they just stand there...

[Guest LoveWarCoffee]

Eh? On my G5, BG II doesn't really work at all, it has one crippling glitch - once you've selected a character it takes 3 or 4 attempts to get them to obey orders - most of the time if you click to move or attack they just stand there...

I run into this problem frequently as well in my Macbook Pro 17" 2GHz core duo, although I found that whether or not characters obey orders depends on the distance of the enemy or point you want them to attack or go to: if it's more than about 4 or 5 character distances away, the pathfinding algorithm hangs and no one moves.

 

Supposedly this was fixed in the 2.1 patch, but it happens quite frequently in 2.1.2; quick-saving, quitting the app, re-opening and re-loading always fixes the problem. For me at least.

 

The failure to load an area seems to be fixed by bypassing the autosave and using CLUAConsole:MoveToArea(*arcode), but I've yet to find a complete list of areas and characters needed for plot development. (For instance, I do not know the area code for the location where Saemon Havarian spawns after completing the Shadow Thief/Bodhi quests; nor is it clear which variables need to be set to spawn the ship, etc. before warping to Brynnlaw, so many of my games simply end before Brynnlaw).

 

For some reason, the location always seems to load if the path to Saemon is the "Paladin" path, introduced by the Saerileth mod. That confuses the hell out of me.

 

LWC

[devSin]

Eh? On my G5, BG II doesn't really work at all, it has one crippling glitch - once you've selected a character it takes 3 or 4 attempts to get them to obey orders - most of the time if you click to move or attack they just stand there...

This is a bug with all IE games (BG2, ToB, and IWD) under Mac OS X 10.4 or later. As LWC says, you should be able to just save, quit, and relaunch the game to get things running again.