[Katsunami]

I've probably mentioned before that I still play Baldur's Gate (1) once in a while. I've finished it in 1999, and in 2001, and then tried to play it for 5 years using different mods and always got stuck somewhere because of some game-breaking bug. Between 2006 and 2015, I've restarted BG1 several times, installing only the minimal mods needed (FixPack, Unfinished Business, one to up the resolution to 800x600, and an alternative GUI to match). However, I always got distracted somehow, forgot what I was doing, and then restarted.

My latest attempt was started in 2015, when I decided to replay my old RPG's once more, from start to finish, before shelving them... probably forever, as some of them are getting very hard to run, and harder to look at, with 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions.

I wrote down every quest I encountered and ticked it off when finished, because the BG1 journal is not searchable; it's basically just a scroll. I did everything there was to do before going to Cloackwood, except for the Firewine Ruins. Started them... got stuck in the middle of 5 million kobolds, got bored of fighting myself through the maze, and... now it's 2017. Two years later.

Yesterday I decided to pick up the game at that point, installed it (to get all the registry entries and stuff), removed the folder, and replaced it with my old one so I'm 100% sure the mods are exactly as I left them. (Mixing mods and savegames is a very BAD idea.)

BG1 is getting hard to run; there are several mods to work around DirectX issues, and I spent all evening trying to figure out why the game wouldn't run without graphical glitches, stutters, and characters getting stuck. It did, on the laptop? On the computer before it? It's got exactly the same install...... no... wait.

I remembered that GOG.com has incorporated some of graphics-fixing mods at one time or another to fix these issues, and one of them was an installation of a setting called "ForceDirectDrawEmulation", which can be done using a mod (they used that in the past), or by installing a database with the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit. They also used that in some installers of the Inifinity Engine games, such as Planescape Torment.

On Windows 10, I found out two years ago, ForceDirectDrawEmulation doesn't work anymore, neither as a mod, nor as a setting in the ACTK, so I removed it, and replaced it with a different mod. (Strangely enough, enabling one of the software rendering options in BG1 also fixes the problems, something that works on Windows 10, but not on Windows 7. Also, on Windows 10, all compatibility settings for the executable can be disabled.)

So, I loaded the ACTK, and there it was: a GOG.com-created database, setting ForceDirectDrawEmulation, which was probably messing up the game. I removed it, re-instated the mod I had been using on the laptop, and now the game seems to run as it should. At least, I've wandered around a few maps, and up until now, I saw no glitches. It _seems_ the game runs... but last time, I got stuck in at a game-crashing spot in Cloackwood Forest, and couldn't finish it. I hope I can get through and finish the game once more, for the third time, almost 20 years after release, so I can finish up Icewind Dale 1 (at 80% now), and Jade Empire (also around 80%) and get some of my gaming past done forever.

Oh, and the rant? Yeah. How would someone who HASN'T jacked around with these Infinity Engine games for 20 years know where to look to get it to run? At around 2007 these games got problems, when MS and nVidia/AMD/Intel started dropping old DirectX stuff from the drivers, and there is a heap of tips online on how to get it to run, but that is information up to 10 years old, and out of date. On Windows 10, _ALL_ compatibility options need to be disabled, _ALL_ ACTK settings need to be removed (for BG1), and only one mod, or switching to software rendering works to get the game to run. Nobody but a hard core fan from the old days, or a determined "I want to play the old version" player would be able to discover this on his own.

Now, let's see if I can fight my way out of Firewine, and then finally continue the game's story. *IF* I ever play it again (probably in a Win98 or XP virtual machine by that time), I'll probably skip that 'story'. There's nothing there except millions of Kobolds and an Ogre Mage that has some loot I don't need at this point.