Hey there all, just recently stumbled across this website and after some dithering decided to take the plunge and buy BG and BGII. I installed both games and started them both up to see if they worked okay.

I was having the common issue with black blocks appearing around objects in BG (graphics card), but I read that this wasn't a problem with 2, and so I decided to check out BGTuTu (which was my plan from the start).

The game looks fine with TuTu running, and I'm enjoying it greatly. But I'm finding terrible problems with it slowing down massively whenever there's a lot going on. This was a problem with the unmodified BG as well, so I don't think this is a TuTu issue. I've turned off ambient sounds and played about with the graphics settings, and occasionally find a combination that seems to improve things but nothing with any significant benefit. So far the worst instances are where spells are cast - entangle turns the game into a sporadically moving slideshow for example.

I read that installing to progame files might be the problem, so I reinstalled both games and TuTu to a GOG directiry which is in my root drive, but again no real benefit.

I know my rig should be comfortably handle this (it can run Dragon Age for example) so I presume its a vista / bg thing, and was wondering if the community here can provide any advice / tips. Any help greatfully received!

[Also (and this is probably down to me being mollycoddled by newer games) but its quite difficult isn't it? I'm having to reload quite a bit to get around my team members dieing. Is there anything you can do to salvage them once hp goes below zero, or is that the end of that?]

In regards to character death:

For a price you can raise fallen party members at temples (most major towns have one - the Beregost temple is to the east of the town proper rather than in town though). The price increases with the characters level [the character to be raised level - eg: level 1 = 100g, level 2 is more, etc]

Note: This only works if the party member is killed without a critical hit and still has their portrait in the party bar on the right side of the screen. If they are killed by critical damage you cannot raise them and they are gone forever unless you load an older save [you can tell if you get critical damage because the character will explode and their portrait will be removed from the party bar].

Edit: just wanted to add this - there is a penalty for raising party members [in vanilla BG 1 only - TuTu uses a different engine and ruleset]. Each raise will cost that party member 1 point of Constitution [meaning less HP on level up, less resistance to poison, lower derived stats that use CON, and at 0 permanent character death {I believe, never let it go that low}]

Thanks for the helpful reply there carlosjuero, it's good to know that there's still something I can do if a team member dies. (I'd become so used to newer games where after a fight any fallen members simply pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and away we go.

As for my other question about slowdown - can anyone provide any help on this over and above what I've tried, or does it reach a stage where you just have to live with it?

I honestly haven't noticed any slowdowns w/ BG on Windows 7 x64 [I don't remember if I had any when I ran Vista though, sorry].

A side note: The black blocks issue is something to do with dithering/transparency when the game is running at a lower graphics bit setting [eg 8/16 bit]. Most of the time you need to mess with the settings [changing color mode to 32 bit if possibe, and using the compatibility check boxes for transparency and Mirror BLT]. Tutu solves it because the BG 2 engine supports more graphics types. I still get the issue now and then with the older Infinity Engine games like IWD 1 and PS:T - sometimes the compatibility checks work,sometimes they don't :/

The slowdowns with lots of stuff going on may be related to your video card/drivers - I don't know what sort of settings would be useful to fix it though. Maybe go into your ATI CCC or nVidia Control Panel and try forcing AA to off for the game [it may be trying to use it even though it isn't supported - most of the time its a non-issue, but some older games are finicky]. I will see if I have any links left during my initial phases of getting older games to work on my new system - you could also try changing the game to using Software BLT [results may vary depending on system] which can usually be changed in game or via the out of game config utility.

The BG Config utility (BG Config in the Tutu/BG install folder) has quite a few compatibility options not normally needed. Some things like No Large Static Animations [may help w/ Entangle issue] as well as No Static Animations are described in the config as options to use if noticing a slowdown when lots of animation is going on.

Might try changing the game cache size as well - mine is set to 300MB and seems to be just fine, maybe set yours higher/lower and see what the effect is. Also see if the game is running in 3D graphics mode rather than 2D

Lovely stuff, and thanks again for the fast response. I seem to be getting some joy with that BG config utility - I tried an exploratory casting of entangle (albeit not in a battle situaiton) and it seems to be running better. I guess I won't know for sure until I'm next in a large battle and the spells are flying, but I've plenty of more settings to play around with now!

And, while I'm in questioning form, can I ask about the Chapter transitions - the game just clicked over to Chapter 2 on me; can i still purse the Chapter 1 quests, as it appears that my journal has been reset?

Chapter transitions come at odd times in BG 1 and most of the time when you aren't expecting them (you will be on Chapter 3 before you even begin to finish up the quests gotten in Chapter 2 usually).

No matter the chapter of the main quest you are on, you can go back and complete quests from earlier chapters no problem. In the quest log there are arrows on either side of the book [in vanilla BG 1 they are at the top near the chapter title, in TuTu and BG 2 they are on either side of the pages] - the back arrow scrolls the quest log back a chapter, the forward arrow forward a chapter.