Baldur's Gate 2 Slow Performance and the Alt Key

[Urphanomen]

I was going to post something on Bioware's technical support forums but the Baldur's Gate 2 forums are now closed. I thought that somebody here might be able to help me. I just bought the GOG version of Baldur's Gate 2. I'm playing it on an eeePC 1000h with 1gb or ram and a 1.6ghz processor. For no apparent reason the game seems to be running in slow motion. The characters move as if they were suffering from a slow spell, and the pointer is very sluggish. I tried increasing the frame rate in the config but this made no visible difference until . . . I pressed the alt key. You see, I was trying to work out if there was a key to make your characters run rather than walk because they were going so slowly. I discovered that when I clicked to move somewhere and then pressed the alt key, the game suddenly sped up noticeably. My characters moved at about twice the speed, they attacked faster, I even noticed that when I held the alt key while in the inventory, character screen etc. the mouse point went from being floaty to being super sharp and quick. This shows that the computer is clearly capable of running the game at a decent speed, but I have no idea why pressing the alt key has this effect. Anybody know what is going on, and more importantly, what I can do to make this mysterious alt effect permanent?

 

[Xi]

Is your netbook in power save mode or performance mode?

 

[Urphanomen]

My netbook is in Super Performance Mode so it's not that. Something is definitely happening with the alt key though I don't know what. When I set my frame rate up to 60 in the config it made no difference, but when I clicked to move, or attach an enemy and then pressed the alt key in the middle of the action, the characters were zipping around as if they were hasted.

 

[Karmapowered]

Not sure if I can be of any help, since I have never seen the ALT key doing whatsoever in BG/BG2 (did you customize your in-game hotkeys ?).

What I do know is that I leave the default config options on (especially the pathfinding nodes and ambient sounds) when the game first installs and runs. I never try to mess with those, because I only ever got worse results performance wise on my rig. If you changed them, it might be worth deleting your baldur.ini file, so that the game can recreate it from scratch.

Also, try to disable the game folder from the scrutiny of your anti-virus, if you can.

You should check the background services running on your computer, maybe is there one that keeps doing weird stuff while your game runs.

I see you already have posted over at the GOG's forum, which is what I would have advised you next.

Finally, as much as I dislike advertising for their forums now, this forum still remains active on Bioware's site.

 

[MicoSelva]

If I recall, You have to disable hardware acceleration (pseudo-3D) in BG Config.
If that doesn't help, You might want trying to disable hardware graphics acceleration at Windows level.

 

[Urphanomen]

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried disabling hardware acceleration in the BG2 config, and for windows but neither did anything. The alt key still does the trick, everything runs fast and responsively as soon as you press the alt key, there is no mouse lag etc. Very mysterious. Also, the alt key is not mappable in the config so you can't set it to do anything in BG2, which makes it even stranger that it is clearly doing something. This is really annoying because the game is not playable, or at least no fun to play, at this level of performance.

 

[waywardOne]

go here:

http://www.shsforums.net/index

of the ie mod communities, this one has more technically oriented people.