The random RPG thread

[frogbeastegg]

For random discussion of various RPGs, old and new, classic and ... not so classic.

I'm currently replaying Baldur's Gate and the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion. Originally I intended to play the game as-is but I experienced problems with sprite overlays being surrounded by black boxes, so I installed Baldur's Gate II and Throne of Bhaal and ran EasyTuTu to port the BG content over to the BGII engine.

I have never replayed Baldur's Gate, and my original playthrough was done way back in 1999. It's proving to be a different experience in some ways, and very similar in others. BG was my first introduction to AD&D rules and I didn't get on with them, being dyslexic enough I couldn't work out what all the 3d2+1 for 5 rounds business meant. 11 years later I have sufficient hard-won understanding to get along without any major problems. That's the difference; I'm not wandering around bewildered, confused, vaguely irritated, and needing to cheat to survive (25 con for every party member was something of a necessary crutch back then).

The similarity is all the rest. The game retains its atmosphere beautifully, and the feeling of being thrown out into a wild, dangerous world and needing to scrabble to survive. Tiny things like looting your first set of decent armour feel fantastic. Baldur's Gate is an adventure on the lower, more human scale, and it's refreshing change of pace from the grand adventures and epic loot that RPHGs have been giving us for the last decade.



While I was setting up EasyTuTu I thought I might as well go the whole hog, and set up an install of Planescape: Torment with all the tweaks and fixes listed in this guide. My ... sixth? fifth? replay of my tied-for-favourite RPG is going to be done in style.

[Meneldil]

Heh. I remember during my first playthrough, I used the Drizzt cheat almost every time I had to fight. Ridiculous. Then I played in easy, managed to beat the game more or less legitimately (though I add gold manually).

I think the reason why many people thought the game was hard was because a level 1 character can easily get killed by a wolf or a hobgoblin. Things actually get easier once you reach level 4 or 5 and can take a few hits before falling down. But by then many people were convinced the game was "too hard ffs "

[Ser Clegane]

set up an install of Planescape: Torment with all the tweaks and fixes listed in this guide.

Thanks for that link - I think I will try that stuff out ... now

[frogbeastegg]

My party of level 1s just got slaughtered by some spiders, and it booted me back to the desktop. Hope my save games are ok and that this isn't the infamous Beregost bug.

I think the reason why many people thought the game was hard was because a level 1 character can easily get killed by a wolf or a hobgoblin.

At one point in my new game Imoen got one-shotted by a diseased gibberling. I had to reload since I had no way to pay res fees to bring her back.

Thanks for that link - I think I will try that stuff out ... now

If you're going to try out the Torment mod then the instructions for setting up a full install are wrong. Or at least they did not work for me. Use this method instead:

Set up a folder called tormentdata in the Black Isle folder.

Copy the folder cd2 from your second disk into tormentdata, the actual folder and not just the contents.

Likewise for cd3 and cd4.

Edit torment.ini so it looks like this:
[Alias]
HD0:=E:\Program Files\Black Isle\Torment
CD1:=D:\
CD2:=E:\PROGRAM FILES\BLACK ISLE\TORMENTDATA\CD2
CD3:=E:\PROGRAM FILES\BLACK ISLE\TORMENTDATA\CD3
CD4:=E:\PROGRAM FILES\BLACK ISLE\TORMENTDATA\CD4
CD5:=D:\CD5\
Where E is the letter for your hard drive and D is the letter for your disc drive.

Keep disc 2 in your drive because that's the one the game asks for randomly to check you do own the game. Load the game up, start a new life and test it out. I found that the method on the site left the game asking me to insert disc 2 into my hard drive when it tried to do the disc check.

If you have the version of Planescape: Torment which comes on 2 CDs then the process is the same.

And a tip: when choosing your resolution for the widescreen mod don't go too crazy. I went for my monitor's native res (1280x1024) and even with the interface mod some of the elements are tiny. The buttons for opening the journel etc are smaller than this big. It's ok if you like to use hotkeys but not everyone does.

[Scienter]

I don't remember the Beregost bug but I had the wyvern death animation bug on several of my play throughs. I ended up having to completely reinstall the game a few times.

[CrossLOPER]

I'm waiting to get the expansion before I continue. I have a pretty good party, with the exception of a very low-level spell caster. Baldur's Gate is a lot more fun when you don't die every ten minutes.

[seireikhaan]

Demon's souls. Currently have beaten around 1/3 of the bosses. Putting a lot of points into strength and endurance to wield the Dragon Bone Smasher sword. Game is hard, but fun. Good atmosphere, some pretty nice level design, and just some real nice quirks thrown in, like the flame tossing captains. All of the bosses are fun in their own way, and with two exceptions thus far, they've all presented a unique challenge. It was immensely satisfying to man up and fight the flamelurker demon straight up with a shield and sword, and beating him. Highly recommended.

[The Wizard]

I still play Baldur's Gate II every now and then... it's my favorite game of all time.

That being said, I must say I never got further than Cloakwood Forest in the original, even though I own both games and their expansions... I should install EasyTuTu. Is it different than BGTuTu? That mod intimidated me last time I checked it out (read: three-four years ago), and so I didn't try it out.

[TinCow]

EasyTuTu is just what the name says... easy. IIRC, you install BG, install BG2, download EasyTuTu, and run EasyTuTu. The program does all the rest of the work for you.

The GOG announcement thread has made me think about Temple of Elemental Evil again. That game was certainly very buggy, like all Troika releases, but I personally consider the game engine in ToEE to be possibly the finest RPG engine I've ever seen. It's essentially Infinity Engine 2.0, and the design and interface are very clean and intuitive. ToEE managed to incorporate the FULL 3.5 edition D&D rule system, complete with 5 foot steps, etc. I consider it one of the great tragedies of gaming that the ToEE engine was never used to make other RPGs.

[frogbeastegg]

EasyTuTu is reasonably easy to use provided you are aware of a fact that I was not, and subsequentally had to hunt down: the full installation option of BG does not provide a full install. At all. So the EasyTuTu installer will quit with error messages.

What you need to do is install BG with the full install option, then locate and copy over every single file the installer tells you your install is missing. In my case I had to manually transfer ~150-200 files from CD to hard drive, sourced from 5 different CDs.

Then you install Easy TuTu.

Then you download and run the EasyTuTu degreenifer unless you want graphical glitches which turn all water bright green.

Then, if you have a Nvidia video card that's an 8800 or newer, you install the nvidia graphics fix unless you want problems with sprite overlays.

To do all of this you will need lots of hard drive space, around 15GB worth. You can tidy up a bit afterwards to get space back.

There are optional mods you might like to apply to take fuller advantage of the BGII engine's features, such as giving NPCs kits.

Took me around 2 1/2 hours to do it all, with no extra mods.

It is worth it. Baldur's Gate has aged fantastically well, and is proving to be immensely playable. Exploring the wilderness, dying in two hits, struggling to work my way up from the bottom of the food chain - it's a real change of pace from modern RPGs, like drinking tea when all you've had for the last year is coffee. The dialogue and story telling are quite wonky and brief, the party members are shallow cut-outs compared to Dragon Age's, the inventory system is annoying, and I still don't like AD&D. Other than that, it's all good.

Just remember the quick save key, and use it regularly. Like after every fight. And before resting. And travelling. Or arriving at certain locations. Or walking too close to bears. Or when poking around in an area where there might be traps. Or when entering buildings. Baldur's Gate likes to kill you.

The GOG announcement thread has made me think about Temple of Elemental Evil again.

Never played that one; the reports of bugs put me off at the time and I couldn't find a copy later on. Same with Arcanum, except I found a brand new, factory sealed copy of that in a random shop last year. Still not played it yet.

[TinCow]

Never played that one; the reports of bugs put me off at the time and I couldn't find a copy later on. Same with Arcanum, except I found a brand new, factory sealed copy of that in a random shop last year. Still not played it yet.

ToEE itself is nothing special. It's essentially a near-perfect translation of a PnP module into a cRPG. The entire party is character created and the story is a one-off bit that is relatively short, with a level cap somewhere around 10. It's not epic in any way, it's just a DnD module. For me, it's really the engine that makes the game interesting. IMHO, it's the best isometric engine ever made. It's visually gorgeous, it uses an intuitive radial command system that is light-years ahead of the poor PS:T version, and the UI has so many bells and whistles that is makes tactical combat amazingly good.

Take this screenshot for example. What you see there in the main window is someone targeting an area of effect spell, likely fireball. The UI shows you the exact radius of the spell for precision placement (like in the later Aurora engine games), but also numbers every single enemy within the impact radius, so that you can easily see how many of them you are going to hit. If an ally was within the radius, their number would be a different color for easy spotting. The series of portrait icons along the top is the combat sequence. All the turn-based isometric games use initiative and combat sequence to determine who moves when, in accordance with DnD rules. However, only ToEE actually shows you what the exact line-up is at any particular moment. The portraits shown are the PCs and NPCs in the combat (compare to the info portraits of the PCs in the bottom left). The action moves from left to right, and as a character completes a turn, their icon is removed and shuffled to the end of the line. In these screenshots, the yellowed area around the monsters are their range. Anything within that circle can be hit by the monster, and any character moving through it will incur an attack of opportunity. A very simple and easy to understand representation of a somewhat complex rule.

Seriously, just drink in the UI in those screenshots. That game implements nearly ALL of the 3.5e rule set, but has almost no screen clutter with icons and menus. It's just a superbly designed engine. I will always be sad that I'll never get to play the BG epic with that kind of engine.