BGT is wonderful!

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OK I have been an Easy TuTu user for some time. Just decided to go for a BGTrilogy game, with a lot of mods. Installing BGT took a lot time, and was surely much more tiring than installing Easy TuTu, but result is...wow. I will explain below.

What I loathed about Easy TuTu was, I don't know if this happens to others, but it happened to me lot, that in some areas, the game became extremely laggy and slowed down when ambient sound effects were on. This has happened every time on different installations, on different locations. I have no idea what caused this, maybe some area of sound related files randomly got corrupted or something. In different installations, sometimes it was Nashkel, sometimes Gnoll Fortress, mostly Cloakwood areas. The game would slow down to a crawl if I kept ambient sound on. If I turned it off it was normal, but all the life got sucked out of the game's atmosphere, like blowing wind, chirping birds, cascading...cascades, that sort of things. This was quite a bummer for me.

Now, as I have been plying BGT, I was pleasantly suprised that this problem never showed his ugly face, despite the fact that I had same mods I had when playing Easy TuTu (and even more, for BG2 part.) The game ran fluently, smoothly and superbly, all my mods (and I have tons, both for BG2 and 1 parts) seemed to work without problems. (not that I had any bugs in TuTu games, just that annoying slow down problem) I also noticed a slightly better loading time. And once again, no annoying slow downs in game areas!

Other differences I also noticed, random monster spawns are handled quite differently in BGT. In Easy TuTu, you get a huge number of one critter species, say 8 gibberlings or 8 xvarts, or 12 taslois or whatever. In BGT I encountered mostly mixed groups of monsters, in smaller numbers too. Like one tasloi, one dread wolf, and one hobgoblin archer, all together. There seems to be a little randomization too. It is refreshing than 'oh it is another horde of gibberlings, or small army of xvarts, or just two wolves...wow' and I appreciate it.

Also, flesh golems were correctly immune to backstabs, whereas they were not in Easy TuTu. I was pleasantly suprised and had to change my tactics.

Now, Easy TuTu is very practical, extremely user friendly and easy to install/uninstall, and has been my favourite. But now BGT has won my heart. I don't know if anyone was experiencing my problems, and I wonder the cause to this, but for now I contend myself to play and enjoy the wonderful world of BGT. I wonder which one do you usually prefer and why, and if my game will continue to be bug free when (and if) I go BG2 part. Will be a fun ride nevertheless, no doubt.

 

Can you list your mods? If you are having a good experience with no issues, I, for one, am very, very jealous and would like to experience some of that wonderfulness as well.

 

The huge number of low level monster spawns is one of the things that annoys me about Easy TuTu. I'm currently sixth level in my game. How many Gibberlings do I have to kill just to get across one Wilderness Map?

 

Is it somehow related to this thread?

I can't say I've run into the bugs Silverstar mentions but it looks interesting.

Regarding Easy Tutu and BGT, which one takes the least HD space? In that respect Easy Tutu seems very efficient but I have no experience whatsoever with BGT.

I actually like that. It makes the game challenging in a fun way but I understand that it may annoy you.

 

OK I tried it but the boards tell me it is too long (32634 characters) and won't let me post it. You can get the picture though. I installed BG2 mods before installing BGT and in correct order, after official and unofficial fixes ofcourse. I also had an unmodded BG game. BGT did its magic, although it had a very long casting time and then I installed my usual TuTu mods on top of it. I mostly have difficulty enchancing mods (SCS I&II), quest mods, 1PP and its unofficial components (like unique thief avatars and sparkling chain mails, too cool to miss stuff!), Ashes of Embers mod (to try all weapons, for something different) usual G3 tweaks, and item randomization mods to boot. I also have BGT version of Dark Side of Sword Coast and Northern Tales of Swordcoast, which I anticipate to play. So far, I am about to enter Cloakwood mines and no bugs. (taps the wood)

I know your pain. It gets tedious fast, and a group of monsters, they are all grouped together, back to back (so you can't even backstab them!) , waiting for party to come. I don't like the concept.

Nope, as I understand it, that thing auto-downloads and installs some of the most used mods on BGT installation. I took my own initiative and installed my own mods. Takes more effort but it is more personal like.

Weird. I wonder if I am the only one encountering this annoying slow down problems in Easy TuTu. And it is so very common for me too. I tried and tried new installations (since it is so easy to install/uninstall) but no, each time a random area got corrupted or something.

 

First post here, hi all

I wanted to say you're not alone Silverstar! I am experiencing a similar slowdown with EasyTutu in the Cloakwoods region a bit, and also in the Cloakwood mines (in rooms with many enemies). I just so happened to transfer my saved game over to my laptop before entering these areas for the first time, so initially I thought it was something to do with the new hardware I was running EasyTutu on. Once getting past these areas though, there is no perceptible slowdown. Needless to say I was relieved

 

Aha, welcome to the boards!

I am interested. Have you tried to disabling ambient sounds to see if it helped? It usually really improved my game play speed in troubled areas. (Cloakwood, Hamadryad area especially, was slowed down to crawl and my characters occasionaly stopped to appear at the edge of the screen when I commanded them to walk there) Somehow I believe that the background voices are bugged or causing a conflict in my installation. Ofcourse, now I have BGT installed, I don't have such annoying problems. And I can play Dark Side of the Sword Coast and Northern Tales mods since they are only BGT compatible. (TuTu not supported.)

 

Thanks for the warm welcome

I will experiment with toggling ambient sounds on/off in the Cloakwood area and report back tomorrow night (along with Computer/OS specs for what it's worth).

You got me looking into BGT - I didn't really explore options before, and I went with EasyTutu assuming it was the better of the two. Based on your post, that doesn't seem to be the case! I'm sticking to a mostly unmodded game for now, but next run thought I'll give it a closer look.

Just a little background - I got BG way back in the day when it came out, but for some reason it didn't hold my interest long enough to even get through Chapter4 (let alone play through BG2 either)! So I recently started back up, and committed to my first full run through of both. I have always been a caster at heart (playing Mage more than anything), and I had never experiemented with Dual/Multi classing, so I went with a Cleric/Mage Multiclass. So far so good I still need to learn the melee aspects of the game...guess I'll have to keep putting it off, lol.

Sorry for the derail - back to regularly scheduled programming!

 

Again, the problem I was having was a large frame rate slowdown in the Cloakwood regions (for me, only during combat)

Toggling ambient sounds off and on had no discernible effect on performance for me. For what it's worth, I'm on a new-ish Macbook 13", 2.66Ghz Dual Core, 4GB Ram, onboard video (NVIDIA GeForce 320M), running Windows7 Pro 64bit. I looked at task manager during the low FPS, and noticed my CPU usage was at 50% stable, implying it was using up the entirety of one of the cores, and none of the other.

There's my data point!

 

Hmm, thanks for the little test. This is getting weirder, and I still don't have any idea as for what causes this. Still, at least few other people experience this issue too, so I am not alone.

Oh if you have time (and patience) for the installation, why don't you give BGT a go? Granted, it takes more time to install but is very stable (I had quite a few crashes to desktop while usin' TuTu, only one with BGT, and that's due to a mod I installed) and lag-free. There are few in-game changes too, the low level critter groups I mentioned above, but also I battled trolls near Firewine Ruins the other day. I don't know if any other mod puts them there, I suspect Northern Tales, but since it is impossible to have without BGT...

It was sure interesting to battle BG2 foes there. Not that they are overly difficult for a level 5-6 party, a good tank can delay them while others pelt them with missile weapons, and since nasty kobold commandos nearby drop tons of fire arrows, well, I had no trouble at all! (sweet 1400 xp per troll is awesome when compared to non existent xp values of kobolds and commandos, how I despise them all!)

 

Must be a hardware problem with your PC. I play EasyTutu all the time without any difficulty.

 

^Maybe you are right. However, I run BG1, IWD, IWD2, BG2 and BGT without this problem on my system and it only happens in TuTu in certain areas only, so I thought... Ah well, more incentive for me to use BGT.

 

Giving BGT is definitely on my short list of things to try out. I've only gotten back into BG for about 2 weeks, so I'm still working on my first run through using EasyTutu.

So I looked at my BG Config settings, and realized that I had "Use 3D Acceleration" unchecked. After turning this on, switched some of the load from the CPU to the (albeit onboard) graphics, which cleared up a lot of the low-FPS issues I had experiences before. I feel silly for not having noticed this before - I'm still getting my bearing with everything

I had been playing with the 800x600 resolution. For whatever reason, with 3D Acceleration now turned on, the 800x600 resolution now cuts off about a third of the bottom and rightmost sides of the screen - unplayable. Luckily, both the 640x400 and the 1024x768 options work fine. I wish 800x600 would work though, cause the look of it is more reminiscent of the BG that I was remember

In summary, turning on 3D Acceleration (caveat: off by default) seems to have solved all my problems - I'll report back if I experience any more issues!

Been enjoying Edouard, my Gnomish Cleric/Illusionist multiclass thus far. I still need to push myself to really learn how to fully utilize melee characters! I think my next run through will be with a melee-based PC. I'm still unsure whether I should carry through Edouard into my first playthrough of BG2+Expansion (I'm lvl 6/6, and headed to Durlag's soon), or whether to run through BG1 with a new character first.

 

I found what was wrong with my Easy TuTu installations. Since I have so many mods, my override folder gets so cramped it causes a slow down. So I used a biifer mod from SHS and it biffed my override folder, compressing lots of files into easier to access forms. And it worked wonderfully! There is no lag no slowdown nothing, the game runs smooth as you please! I can't believe I have not found this solution before.

In the light of this new evidence I am unsure about which to choose, Easy TuTu is easier to set up and play, and I have found BGT only mods not as cool as they first sounded...and now I have fixed the annoying slowdown problem, so yay!

 

Great, I'm glad you figured that out Seems like a very obscure problem, I'm surprised you were even able to track is down (not to downplay your out-of-the-box thinking!), haha.

Work has picked up recently so my Berserker's (going to dual to Cleric I think, in BG2) party is still stalled in the city of Baldur's Gate! Only memorable problem I have had so far with BG Tutu has been I cannot access the Low Lantern in the harbor. I'm not sure if I'm just...not finding the entrance, but I can't get down there

I do agree with you that the ease of install of BG Tutu is a big plus, and the NPC Kit selection is the only real mod I added on top, but this provides more than enough customization for me so far given I have never completed BG1 before!

 

Ha, I am glad too. And I am suprised no one ever said such a method to stabilise mega-mod installations existed, as it seems like a mandatory process if you have tons of mods, and a common problem. I searched and found my own solution, oh well...

You know, I could not find the entrance to Low Lanter waaay back in my maiden voyage in Baldur's Gate (non TuTu-non expansion)

Here is the entrance, right under Low Lantern sign on the ship near the down-right edge of the map.



If you still can't find the entrance (bug?) , try enabling the cheat console and type:

CLUAConsole:MoveToArea('FW0133') this will teleport you to the first level of the Low Lantern, you can find your way to down levels for quests and such.

 

Perfect, I will give it another go! I appreciate the screenshot