52 replies to this topic

[Arlaya]

I have a weird issue with BG1 part of the Big World - the longer I play it, the more lagged game becomes. It's not about graphic or my hardware (it's good, even for today and I checked the Illasera fight where everyone was spamming spells and using improved AI - all went smooth). It seems like Baldur.gam in the later saves of BG1 (dunno about BG2, haven't got there yet) causes it to lag, because earlier even the fights with dozens of enemies worked great. I'd be really greateful for any help provided, the project is amazing, other than this thing I spotted no bugs whatsoever! It doesn't even crash randomly with 169 mods installed at once!

And all the lagging stops while game is paused. On every screen, as well game, character sheet, map and inventory. When on loose mouse lags there too, not only characters and map scrolling. It never lags on the load/save or options.

[Himself]

"the longer I play it, the more lagged game becomes."

Do you mean that after loading a save the game runs fine, and after some time it starts to lag?
Or do you mean that it lags the more you progress during the game, kinda independently from save/loading ?

I hope you're somewhat familiar with stuttering, please read this:

http://forums.blackw...?showtopic=3830

What you described doesn't seems like a stuttering but, from my past experience this kind of lag normally is caused by scripts, even a silly, small script can be a pain if the code within it is bad or becomes erroneous.

You could try traveling to an early game area, and then killing your characters one by one to see how this lag behaves.

Hopefully the other users will help you more as well

Edited by Himself, 15 June 2008 - 04:00 AM.

[Arlaya]

As to answer the question - it lags the more the game progresses. Saving, loading, restarting computer and other things change nothing. Hm, I'll try the killing thing, thanks.

Oh, and it's not stuttering as far as I've read in this thread. They're walking fine, just lagging same way mouse and screen scrolling does.

Okay, I killed them all in Gorion's Rest and even after ressurection by code lags were gone (they came back when I picked up items). But when I loaded last save in Cloakwood and did same, they were still there even with all the folks dead. I don't get it at all lol

Edited by Arlaya, 15 June 2008 - 06:34 AM.

[Himself]

Okay, I killed them all in Gorion's Rest and even after ressurection by code lags were gone (they came back when I picked up items). But when I loaded last save in Cloakwood and did same, they were still there even with all the folks dead. I don't get it at all lol

I didn't get this part.. sorry about my english eh

It appears you got rid of the lag doing something, is that right?


If you kill a certain party member and the lag stops, its probably a script related to him/her.

If you leave a certain place and the lag stops, it could be an area script or a script assigned for someone (a trap, a person, etc) in that area.

If you drop all your items and the lag stops, its probably related to an item you are carrying, or some script that is trying to detect a particular item among all the others you carry.

If I do remember right, the game checks all your items when a script tries to find something in your belongings.

Example of what that means:

If you have a stack of arrows with 1200 arrows in it, and a script asks "see if anyone in the party has the item POTN05 -> Potion of blablabla", the game will check each of these 1200 arrows individually and all other items carried by your group as well, including any other stacks you may have.

If you don't have the POTN05 -> Potion of blablabla, its quite likely the script will ask the game to check again, after a small period of time..

Anyway those are pretty much some of the things that could be happening

That was a lot of IFS

Edited by Himself, 15 June 2008 - 07:19 AM.

[Altomar]

i experienced the same problem and i haven't solve it yet. in my case the game is started to became more lagged after i finish the nashkel mines. maybe the reason is that i have only 512MB RAM and i play a heavy modded BG1/BG2.

[Hoppy]

@Arlaya et all,

If you defragment your hard drive and then restart, it may clear up a lot of lag. It seems like you have tried a lot of the normal tricks so I don't have any more to offer. I had an irritating slowdown in Bonehill areas and thought it was NPC, item or script related. None.of them. A good cleanup with a defrag and shutdown and restart made my save games like new.

Hope that helps!

[Arlaya]

I have 2GB ram, so I don't think even mods could do such a mess. In the fragment of mine you quoted I meant that the lags stopped when I killed all party members in the area next to Candlekeep. And the lags weren't present even after I resurrected them in same place with a code. But during picking up items lags came back.

I tried same trick in the Cloakwood, but the lags never stopped. So it's doubtful it either character or item, because they should stop there as well. And well, if it's location I have no idea as well. It lags in every area, just in a few of them it stops when everyone is dead. It escapes my logic

Sorry for messing up, I tend to speak and write chaotically, it's not your English's fault

I'm not sure if it all didn't start after Nashkel Mines, but it indeed is quite possible!

EDIT: hm, worth to try I guess, this defragmentation thing. I haven't do this in a while because I had format not long ago, but I guess reinstalling BG several times in few days span could do some mess. Thanks for the idea.

Edited by Arlaya, 15 June 2008 - 09:32 AM.

[Hoppy]

Oh yeah if you have done a few reinstalls, that will do it. When I had the slows, I checked my other testing mod installations and they too were unusually slow. Totally different contents and same performance. Especially if you have been using your computer a lot, which sounds like we all do with our Big World installs

[Himself]

I've also heard cases in the past where antivirus or maybe other 3rd party programs would deny or cause slow access to game files.

This may be just an urban legend though.

Also another thought: The Infinity Engine was probably never designed to run with the power of hardware we use these days, when the code in the game gets bad or something, its likely the game engine will fault before our processors and memory can get a sweat, I'm not much of a computers expert though

Edited by Himself, 15 June 2008 - 09:55 AM.

[Arlaya]

Well done defragmentation, didn't work unfortunately. As for too good hardware... yeah. First thing clean BG1 did after installation (with Big Picture too, only TuTu seemed to deal with it fine) was crazy black squares everywhere, reparable only by checking the option which cause the lags ten times worse than those I have now (unplayable). It was enough to turn off special graphic card options, but thing still amuses me. Too good hardware to work fine lol.

I had tried turning antyvirus and every other program working in the background but lags still stayed.

Any other ideas? Everything but format C is worth to try xD

[Himself]

I meant that the lags stopped when I killed all party members in the area next to Candlekeep. And the lags weren't present even after I resurrected them in same place with a code. But during picking up items lags came back.

You probably wasn't carrying items with you main character as well, right?

After all you've tried, I don't know anything else that could cause this type of lag except a bad script, they can be tricky though...

Try placing an empty copy of the baldur.bcs (is that the main script for BG1 as well?) in your override to see how it goes, that is, if you understand a bit about files anyway.


I'll check here later, bed soon

Good luck!

[Azazello]

Try placing an empty copy of the baldur.bcs (is that the main script for BG1 as well?) in your override to see how it goes, that is, if you understand a bit about files anyway.

Arlaya, Please don't do that.

Edited by Azazello, 15 June 2008 - 11:08 AM.

[Arlaya]

Okay, I won't. My knowledge about those files is equal to 0 so I'll better not mess with those, eh?

Btw, I wondered is you nick from Master and Margarita? Or coincidence?

[Hoppy]

Try turning the ambient music all the way down in SOUNDS? That helped me once and then I saved and reloaded, then turned the ambients back up and presto, slowdown gone.

[Arlaya]

Nope, that didn't help either... I guess I'm condemned to play through BG1 with those damn lags... I just hope BG2 won't do same trick, it would be much harder since there are much more difficult battles with tactics and all the back-running to dragons when blown away. Thank you all for trying to help though, I really appreciate it.

[Miloch]

I have a weird issue with BG1 part of the Big World - the longer I play it, the more lagged game becomes.

This is a known Bioware issue actually. It's symptomatic of the behaviour described at the bottom of this page, for which they produced the 26499 beta patch. However, that patch isn't generally recommended. Still, you could try it I guess - just make sure to back up your BGMain.exe first. If you've patched the .exe with any mods (Widescreen, Charm Fix, XP Fix) this will probably revert those. In your case, it might be an issue with too many variables in your baldur.gam or something too. Note that even though you are playing the BG1 portion of the game, you are using the BG2 engine in BGT (or Tutu for that matter).

[Himself]

Try placing an empty copy of the baldur.bcs (is that the main script for BG1 as well?) in your override to see how it goes, that is, if you understand a bit about files anyway.

Arlaya, Please don't do that.

I know this may sounds like an evil recommendation, but given her comments she seems like a smart girl, so I doubted she would do that without having some knowledge of what this means, or without backing up a copy of baldur.bcs first

[Azazello]

Try placing an empty copy of the baldur.bcs (is that the main script for BG1 as well?) in your override to see how it goes, that is, if you understand a bit about files anyway.

Arlaya, Please don't do that.

I know this may sounds like an evil recommendation, but given her comments she seems like a smart girl, so I doubted she would do that without having some knowledge of what this means, or without backing up a copy of baldur.bcs first

Smartness can be elusive. You should err on the side of extreme caution when giving troubleshooting advice to the user with a lower post-count than you, or the user who supposedly knows all there is to know about DnD -- but obviously nothing about BG.

Edited by Azazello, 10 July 2008 - 05:35 PM.

[Himself]

I should correct it then

Basically, if you want to test that Arlaya, do the following:

1 - Check your override folder, see if theres a file named baldur.bcs

2 - If there is, make a copy or backup of it, if there isnt, don't worry

3 - delete the baldur.bcs, again if there isn't such a file inside the override, don't worry

4 - create an empty new.txt file, rename it to baldur.bcs, this empty baldur.bcs must stay inside your override folder

5 - open your game and test your lags

6 - exit the game, regardless of the results, delete the empty baldur.bcs in the override folder

7 - rename/place the copy or backup of badur.bcs back to the override, in case there never was one inside there, again don't worry (the game knows where to look for it)

I hope the problem is not within this file though, as it is one of the most complex and important game scripts

Edited by Himself, 16 June 2008 - 07:54 PM.

[Arlaya]

Well I may not know anything about modding itself, but I do know the backup rule very well lol. Otherwise I would still be installing modded games instead of actually playing. I'll try it, thanks Himself

And I don't know that much about DnD either. Just what was in BG and NWN xP

About patching... I'm not if that's wise thing to do after the installation of The Big Picture. The order of doing things seems pretty straight and I have that golden saga edition. In many places it was said not to patch BG1 with that one.

EDIT: now that's impressive. There was no such file, so I did as you told me and put blank one there. And voila! No more lags! Thanks! /hugs

Edited by Arlaya, 16 June 2008 - 02:37 AM.