Massive slowdown in certain areas

[RoryD]

I've just installed BGII + ToB on my new WinXP machine, and for the most part it works just fine. However, in certain areas (so far, the second level of Firkraag's dungeon, the second level of the d'Arnise Hold and the first level of Watcher's Keep) the game slows down to the point of unplayability over the course of a minute or so. The mouse stops working, and after a few minutes like this it crashes to the desktop. In the former two cases, the problem was eventually solved only by revealing the entire map, Ctrl-J'ing to all of the large (iron/adamantine) golems in the area and killing them with Ctrl-Y, so I assume that the problem was tied to them. I haven't yet attempted to solve the problem in the Keep. Turning down all of my configuration settings to their minimum values has no effect.

I have installed the official ToB patch, as well as several mods (in order of installation):

Bg2 Fixpack
Gibberlings Three Anniversary Mod
Amber NPC
Flirt Pack
Oversight
Unfinished Business
Item Upgrade
DOQuestpack
Banter Pack
BG2 Tweaks

Anyway, any help/advice here would be appreciated, this is getting quite irritating.

[EDIT: I forgot to mention, this was a full install]

[ 05-08-2007, 02:39 PM: Message edited by: RoryD ]

[ZFR]

what video card are you using? Dry disabling the 3d acceleration and turning down all the graphics/video options in the config program and the in-game options and see if it solves anything.

[RoryD]

I'm using a 768MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce PX8800GTX PCI-E card.

I've tried turning all of the options down to the below-minimum specs in the config. Are there any potentially troublesome settings that are unaffected by the slider bars? In terms of in-game setting, I've turned off transparent shadows to no effect.

If its any help, I have got the Software Standard BLT option enabled, as I get a tremendous amount of graphical glitches with spell effects and inventory icons if it is not. Could this be related?

[Harkoliar]

besides the video card dont forget to turn off your ambient sounds.

its more of one of your mods is doing some heavy calculations that slows your computer down in those areas.

I would do suggest check the module forums but it cant hurt to post your weidu log here.

[SixOfSpades]

True--all of the areas you mention have creatures using the GOLEM_LARGE avatar, and since you say that killing those creatures seemed to fix your problem, then it certainly sounds like a corrupted install, where not all of the animations for GOLEM_LARGE got saved correctly. To test this: Enable the CLUAConsole in your game (if you don't know how to do this, just ask), select one of your party members, and use CTRL-6 and CTRL-7 to cycle through the various creature avatars. If your computer suddenly has issues with GOLEM_LARGE, you've found your culprit, and I would suggest an uninstall & full reinstall, to try to get those animations copied correctly. If that fails, you could use Shadowkeeper to edit the files of all Iron/Adamantite/similar Golems, to make them use some avatar other than GOLEM_LARGE.

I doubt that mods, or any of your settings, are at issue here. None of the mods you list alters Golems in any way that I can recall, your 3D Acceleration and Sound settings would be affecting the entire game, and as for computation slowdown, you would need a hell of a lot of stuff to see any noticable lag. I've only experienced that once, in a mod battle that involved roughly 150 enemies, each with their own AI, charging at my party simultaneously. On a Duron 750 CPU running Windows ME, that caused nearly total freeze--your computer (whatever it is) should have no trouble at all with the first floor of Watcher's Keep.

[RoryD]

Thanks for the help! I've already tried reinstalling the game, but SKing them into a smaller avatar worked a charm. At least, until the next level of Watcher's Keep, at which point I had to do the same for the Ice Golem that shows up eventually. Anyway, I've changed both of the golem's avatars, so I shouldn't see this cropping up again, although I still haven't a clue why it happened in the first place.

[Laurentius]

Got the same problem (DeArnise Keep).

The advice in the last comment solved it:
http://forums.pocketplane.net/index....&topic=23992.0

[Harkoliar]

shapeshifting paw cannot be dispelled mod is the issue after searching in other forums.

[ 05-16-2007, 02:16 AM: Message edited by: Harkoliar ]