34 replies to this topic

[mk.fg]

Playing through BGT-BG1 as a mage and doing a lot of spellcasting, seem to have bumped into the same thing soon enough.

 

I've noticed that a lot of times when game freezes, marker changes to "casting something on self", even though it never corresponds to what actually happens.

That, and a frequent (esp. in battles) "can not cast multiple instances of the same contingency spell on yourself" messages led me to issue, known as "Turumbar's contingency bug", which is annoying as it is (with these bogus marker feedbacks and messages), so I've disabled it as suggested in other (easily googleable) topics - by firing up NearInfinity and editing baldur.bcs and baldur25.bcs to comment out (they disappear after compiling/saving these scripts) lines with "TUDRWUD" in them.

 

One surprising effect seemed to be that I went through two areas now w/o a signle freeze, while it was insanely common before.

About the only other change I've made slightly before that today is disable party AI (untick icon in bottom-right corner of UI) - got tired of it, but I've got a few freezes after doing that and before commenting out contingency casts.

 

I'm not a modder myself by any stretch of imagination - please take this with a grain of salt, but as far as such gameplay issues go, it really makes the game much less playable, so I thought I'd share it nonetheless.

I'll try to edit this msg out of existence if I'll get similar freezes again.

[Darpaek]

HEY!  Look buddy, I invented #22 and IT REALLY DOES WORK!!!  Don't ask me why.  It doesn't make any sense.  But I ain't fixing what ain't broken!

 

On topic though, I've had the same problem tooling through the Nashkel Mines in Chapter 3.  It happened on level 2 near the east side of the map with the big kobold fight over the rock bridge over the circular pond and it happened on level 3 during the fight with the dark dwarves and during the lvl 3 bridge fight in the middle of the map.  I was going to post something about this issue, but I didn't because it wasn't behaving like your standard script stutter.

 

I went into BGConfig and turned the dials all the way to super low to get through the Nashkel mines and I made it through without the 10 minute freeze.  Obviously, turning it all the way down shuts off lots of stuff like the animations, transparency, and ambient noise so I can't pinpoint exactly what the cause of the problem was.  But it did workaround the issue for me.

 

EDIT:  The freeze came back in the Ulcaster school.  It also froze once in the Jovial Juggler.  Even with everything on low.  I don't like this issue at all!!!

Edited by Darpaek, 20 February 2013 - 03:49 AM.

[mk.fg]

Did you try authentic patented #21? IT REALLY DOES WORK!!!

[Jarno Mikkola]

Did you try authentic patented #21? IT REALLY DOES WORK!!!

Let's hope you realize Darpaek is referring to this list of lag medicine, and his part in the #22. Yes, it was know, but he raised the fact that it wasn't in the original list 0-9.

[mk.fg]

 Let's hope you realize Darpaek is referring to this list of lag medicine, and his part in the #22. Yes, it was know, but he raised the fact that it wasn't in the original list 0-9.

While I was aware of the list from this very thread, the recipie in question looked confusing enough to be discarded as a "#22 reference" (and as I looked for #22 elsewhere, I found it to be id of the message, so thought that he might refer to that instead), so nope, didn't really realize it until now.

Still, so far mines and +4 areas and no freezes (otherwise occurring in nearly every serious fight), so don't know why (some loop condition prehaps?), but here's what seem to be an alternative.

[Darpaek]

It still happens every now and then but it's not common with everything set to low.  Of course, this rather dated game is even more dated with everything off.  It doesn't lock the whole system because Alt-Tabbing or C-A-D work fine, I think it's a graphics thing.  I'm guessing it's eiher the Widescreen mod, the new Infinity Animations, or it has something to do with that ToBEx wraparound thnigie.  This is an entirely new issue for me.  I've played a Tactics megamod on this same computer, but these are the three new things on my megamod since the last time I played BG.

[Jarno Mikkola]

...  I'm guessing it's eiher the Widescreen mod,

The Widescreen mod it self doesn't cause much anything, but of course the screen size itself can cause re-occurrences of problems... like say the ambient sound freaking in more than one place... you all did use the #2 ????

And the Infinity Animation mod need the Generalized biffing mod... as do all there mods if you use the BiG World Trimpack: NEJ, TDD, SoS, CtB, TS-BP, BGT-WeiDU, NeJ2 for the BG2, DSotSC, NTotSC, SoBH, Drizztsaga and BG1NPCmusic. ...installed as the last mod.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 24 February 2013 - 01:28 AM.

[Darpaek]

Of course I'm biffed.  This mess would be like swimming through mud without it.

 

Like I said, it seems to be a graphical error.  I've gotten this error a couple times when it crashed during the freeze:

 

 

ASSERTION FAILED!

File: ChVideo.cpp

Line: 8641

 

Exp: surfaceDesc.lpSurface != NULL

 

Msg: no msg.

Run Debugger?

 

 

I kinda have a feeling it's the Widescreen mod too.  I've had problems with the Widescreen mod before so I don't normally use it.  Besides, I play in 800x600 because I'm old and my eyes are lousy.  I don't need it.  This is the first time I've installed it.

 

I'm thinking about debiffing and completely removing the Widescreen mod to see if the problem goes away.  The freeze is so uncommon though that I'm too lazy to go through all the effort to debiff and rebiff.

[Darpaek]

The freeze seems to happen most commonly when the new Web effect goes off.  I think it's the IWD2 web effect?  I dunno.

 

Now, I'm not blaming the animation because it doesn't happen EVERY time.  Just more often then not, it seems like the freeze happens when a Web happens.

[Darpaek]

I hadn't think to look at the TOBEx Console before, but on this most recent freeze I noticed there was an error in the console that said:

 

DETOUR_CEffectPoisonResistMod::DETOUR_ApplyEffect():: invalid effect.nParam2 (78)

[Darpaek]

I've finally found a spot where the freeze is repeatable. TT3001 at some point during the battle with the Auril druid the game will always freeze. I'm tearing this apart in NI but I still haven't the foggiest idea what is causing it.

[Darpaek]

Well, I'm probably jinxing myself by posting this, but I think I've solved the problem. I went into BGConfig and turned on 3D animations and used OpenGL as the renderer. Im going on two hours now without a freeze.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Well, I'm probably jinxing myself by posting this, but I think I've solved the problem. I went into BGConfig and turned on 3D animations and used OpenGL as the renderer. Im going on two hours now without a freeze.

Well, that's know --- for NVidia Cards, what GPU do you have ? Yeah, and the thread is linked in my post... as it's more of a correct configuration, to remove black boxes, incorrect fog of war borders etc.

[Darpaek]

A cheapy onboard NVIDIA thing that came with this bargain bin laptop 5 years ago.  But it doesn't matter.  It froze again.  Now - turning on 3D animations DID help the game run a LOT more smoothly and I can have all the neat effects and animations on.  So this was definitely a plus.  Who knew that turning UP the graphics settings would make something work better.

 

But I digress.  The freeze came back.  BUT it was a lot more infrequent.

 

So, I tried renaming TOBEx.dll so that the TOBEx console wouldn't load.  Now, I really miss the extra weapon slots and the spellbook arrows, but I've been playing for an hour and a half without a freeze.  Not only that, the hiccup I would get (even after turning on 3D animations) every few minutes is gone too.  This is running as smooth as an elven arse.

 

So, what did I break by disabling TOBEx?  Is my game going to kapizzle or can I reasonably play the rest of the game without it and not worry albeit without extra weapon slots?