340 replies to this topic

[the bigg]

Here is a list of the issues you'll encounter when playing any of the IE games with a NVidia 8 series card, and their resolution. It is possible that similar issues might arise even with other NVidia cards (apparently, 58xx and higher), but I haven't any experience with them, so I can't guarantee that they'll help
For all these games, I use the most powerful settings in the "Hardware" sliders (if you have a NVidia 8 series card, you likely have a 300 Mhz CPU

BG2 and HoW (TotLM) are fixable directly from their config program:
BG2(SoA+ToB, including Tutu, Classic Adventures, and Big Mods): there are various graphical issues (black boxes and/or randomly-colored lines across the screen), which are solved with the following tweaks in BGConfig: Hardware -> Enable 3D Acceleration. Display -> 32 bit. 2d & 3d options: enable 3D Animations, 3D Acceleration and 32 bit textures, disable the Disable Vertex Padding option.
IWD1+HoW(with or without TotLM): I don't know if there are issues in this game; however, Graphics -> enable all save Sprite Mirroring didn't cause glitches.

For fixing BG1, IWD1 (without HoW), IWD2 and PST you can install this fixer utility (programmed by Eddy, WeiDUed by me):  nvidia_fix.zip   703.43K   37642 downloads
If you use this fixer utility, don't forget to remove the application profile in the Compatibility Manager (if you're using it, remove the profile like this: start -> programs -> Microsoft Application Compatility Toolkit -> Compatibility Administrator -> Installed Database -> right click and remove on the item you created) or stop using the .vbs launcher.

Ghostdog suggests to use a program called D3DWindower instead of the fixer - however, said program is not fully in english, and requires you to run said program every time you want to play. See instructions here.

Additionally, if you set up a profile for all applications in your Forceware Control Panel, you might want to set up a rule for your IE games so that every graphical option is "Application controlled" (for example Anti Aliasing) or Disabled (Triple Buffering).

Many thanks to the people who have provided solutions (even if they were later obsoleted):
Modron (VBS launcher)
Dazzle (Compatibility Administrator)
Eddy (.dll fix)
Ghostdog (D3DWindower)

Edited by the bigg, 23 December 2009 - 11:59 AM.

[berelinde]

This applies to the Baldur's Gate series, the Icewind Dale series, and Planescape: Torment.

[Dinkleberry]

Hi, I'm going through an IE phase at the moment and I've just completed BG (First normally, then in Tutu, doing the ToTSC quests) and started on Planescape this morning. I'm running a 1.4Ghz Core 2 Duo Dell Vostro 1500 laptop with a Nvidia 8400 GPU. I'm having visual transparency issues which seem are resolved by the above method of turning on Software Transparency. However, doing this make the game quite sluggish - but only in full screen mode. When it's windowed I find it annoyingly small, but it works ok. Is there any hack to make it less jerky in full screen with that option enabled? I've just tried the Widescreen mod but it didn't seem to change much.

[the bigg]

Sorry, not much that can be done - Software Transparency Rendering is CPU bound, so there isn't much chance of this not being irreparably slow

[Dinkleberry]

Ok doke. Cheers for the quick response. I'll dig out an old PC at some point and play it on there.

[Dinkleberry]

I just downloaded some graphics drivers that are only a week old and they seem to have fixed a lot of the transparency issues I was having. Instead of the inventory being almost unusable, there are black boxes bounding item icons - a minor issue. The clock in the lower left of the UI also used to look messed up but it has improved a little. The only major problem seems to be the fog of war occasionally becoming solid black squares, but flipping the map view on and off solves it. I recommend others to check the drivers out but as I'm on a laptop, the NVidia drivers were only available from the dell site for that laptop (NVidia have got a funny policy regarding drivers for portable cards).

[the bigg]

Disable Vertex Padding=0.

[the bigg]

The games work fine with my brother's 4200Ti, and I only have a 8800 to test on, but I remember reading reports as back as the 58xx.

[the bigg]

Software rendering works, but makes the game run painfully slow in places, which boggles my mind as I've got a Core2 Duo, and this game has minimum requirements of around a PII 300mhz.

Well, there's an abyssal difference between softare (CPU) rendering and 'normal' (GPU) rendering. Your PII uses GPU rendering, which means the CPU tells the GPU to copy the 144x78 sprite starting at address 0x12356 into the image buffer at 234x432 and then goes on to calculate that monster's AI (and the GPU has multiple cores specialized in copying sprites, meaning that it'll do its work quickly), whereas in CPU rendering it's the CPU that has to copy the sprite in the correct position inside the image buffer and then send it all to the GPU (which takes a long time, and, to make matters worse, IE games don't take advantage of multiple cores and thus lock the 'smart' CPU in doing the 'stupid' GPU's work).

Regarding affected games, BG1 (w/ and w/o expansions), IWD1 (w/o expansions), IWD2 and PST use 2d rendering only, which is buggy in NVidia drivers and requires the slow workaround. BG2 (w/ and w/o expansion) and IWD1 (w/ expansion) has the option to use the non less buggy 3d rendering, thus making the games play great without too much tweaking.

[the bigg]

I'm pretty sure that the documentation for WSM says explicitly what you do and don't get.

[the bigg]

You need to fully read the readme and the stuff it links to.