Poor performance > Baldurs Gate 2 (OSX)

Ifrit

Ifrit

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Recently I purchased the mac version of Baldurs Gate 2. I know my ibook G3 700Mhz isn't excactly a "performace beast" in the gaming category, so I thought it shouldn't have any problems with a infinity engine based 2D game.
But unfortunally the opposite is true. Baldurs Gate 2 OSX is sluggish like a nightmare. More than 5 characters and some effects on screen and the action slows down to a crawl. Normally I wouldn't make a buzz about bad performance, but BGII is my favourite game and it would be great to experience it "on-the-go".

My system:

ibook white G3 700MHz (purchased 2003)
640MB RAM
System: OSX 10.3.2

Things I tried to correct the problem.

Full (2.6 GB) installation
Turned of 3D acceleration
Switched the display mode to 16bit ingame
Disabled 32bit textures

Nothing could stop the sluggish behaviour.
Did anybody experienced the same problems? I dunno... Whats the problem? My specs are (high) above the minimum system requirements.

on a sidenote: The game was ported by macplay and is OSX native, I am not trying to run the game in classic mode.
 
Check for a patch if you haven't already. I got it to run decently on my 500 MHz iBook with the patch at 800x600.

Of course, I haven't tried it on 10.3. Last time I played it was somewhere in 10.2.

Good luck.

Doug
 
The patch consists of new executables for the BG II game. But unfortunally it didn't fix my performance problems. I tried running the game in OS9. Although I got slightly better fps the game is still (really) sluggish if enemy caracters and spell effects are displyed at the same time.
 
It is already turned off, its the first thing I did 'cause BGII's 3D accelaration also causes problems in the Windows version.

edit: BTW read my first post more carefully ;)
 
I have the exact same problem, and I'm playing it on a dual 867 MHz G4! If anyone knows how to fix this curse (And yes, 3D acceleration is off) please tell me! I desperately want to be able to enjoy it more!
 
Are you running it in classic OS9 from OSX or booting into OS9 and running it?
I have played the game when booted into OS9 with no problems.
G4 450mhz
1gig ram
ATI radeon 8500
 
I have tried both, Lord-Chin.

There are OS9 executables AND OSX executables. As I already stated I tried classic, OS9, and the OSX version of the game.
Playing the game in OS9 (by booting into it) made not much difference, performance wise.

Compared to the PC version on my (3rd computer) old Athlon 450Mhz the mac version's performance is just terrible, on both mac OS, (OS9, OSX).

Its not the case that the game stutters, but the movement, the animation and the navigation ingame is so sluggish/slow it isn't fun.
 
I played it in OS9, and it runs much better! I have been able to bump up all the graphics, and it still runs like a dream... which it damn well should. Thanks everyone!

(BTW, I eMailed Macplay about the OSX version not working for me, and apparently they're taking steps to fix it... *Crosses fingers*)
 
Just another suggestion, that just occured to me. Keep in mind though, I've only played Baldurs Gate II on the PC and not on the Mac. On the PC, there was the option of setting the number of nodes to be searched by the path-finding algorithm. This basically controlled the automatic movement of your characters. I think there was a slider for it somewhere in the options, and definitely on the screen when you first start up.

Try playing about with that. I remember when I was playing on a celeron 433, I set the number of nodes down, and it improved quite a bit. The only trade off is that my characters became a little more 'stupid', getting trapped in corners, etc. No real harm as you could just tell them where to go.
 
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