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Baldur's Gate Mod Lets You Play Original On Sequel
Anthony Boyd writes "The Baldur's Gate series has seen a lot of official expansions and unofficial mods. The latest one is fairly impressive: in about 750k, the BG1tutu team has delivered a file that completely moves your Baldur's Gate 1 games over to the Baldur's Gate 2 engine. According to the readme, it means you can play BG1 with screen sizes of 1024x768 or larger, you get more auto-pause options, and all spells and creatures have been converted to the updated BG2 rules. Best mod ever!"
This is great, the 800x600 resolution restriction of the original Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast is part of what can make is seem so much older than Baldur's Gate 2. The additional auto-pause options are also welcome, no more pounding on the space bar! Glad to see "new classics" like Baldur's Gate are still being supposed through 3rd-party mod's like this one.
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I'd like someone to port it to the NWN engine. It'd involve lots more work, but you'd benefit from 3D gfx and 3rd Ed rules. I'd really like to see what the new engine can do other than make some hacknslash that was the NWN single player campaign.
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Just downloaded this and been trying it out for a while. My impressions so far:
:/ I am unsure about in game movies - I was able to skip the Friendly Arm Inn movie, but not the Beregost one, weird. Having NPCs with kits is cool (provided you choose what you want upon installation).
The installer is nice and clean, the readme covers everything and there were no problems. Character creation is ala BG2 - this is both good and bad. Kits are available, but be careful with weapon proficiencies - no stores have been changed (e.g. no katanas or other BG2 weapons). Rules for proficiencies are broken - a fighter can put all of their points into one weapon (wasn't a problem in BG2 due to the starting at level 7 or above). Mages should grab Find Familiar in their spells as the extra HP is nice, and you can't buy it.
In game, the graphics look sweet at a higher res. Spell effects, armor, avatars etc all use BG2 models. Use of the BG2 engine fixes any DirectX problems (playing BG1 under DX9 was prone to crashing - it was written for DX6). The 1.5x walk speed is in. So is the enemy ability to follow you between areas - old tactics don't always work anymore
After a few hours of playing, I have come to the conclusion that this is a good thing for BG1. It breathes some life back into an RPG classic. If you enjoyed playing BG1, enjoy it again.
Here is a summary of what I've experienced after about 10 hours of gameplay (using beta 3). First, it's far more crash-prone. In the non-modded BG1, I could play for about 8 hours straight before it started to slow or get crash-prone. In BG1tutu, it crashed about 6 times in 5 hours. That's not so bad, as I make saved-games about every 5 minutes (the Q key works for quick saves). But it is buggy. Also, some areas spawn a whole lot MORE monsters than before, and my characters ended up fleeing to the Friendly Arm after getting mobbed. Also, the quest log is mostly toast. You'll get notes in the journal, but nothing is showing up under the completed quests area or pending quests area. So I'm having a tough time keeping track of what to do. But I'll print out a quest list from a Web site and it'll be fine. Finally, some characters have weapons that don't match their proficiencies. For example, Minsc is specialized in two-handed swords, AND wielding two weapons at once. Huh? He has 4 arms? But no biggie, the game works fine.
The good stuff is that it really works to play at 1024x768 (and even bigger). My fights have been a whole lot more strategic because of this, already. The "kits" for NPCs are useful. I really like some of the changes I've seen to a few of the characters. Khalid is now a better NPC to have. Garrick is still lame -- I should have selected a kit for him (I left him un-kitted). Another nice thing that doesn't have to do with BG1tutu (much) is that I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the low-level character stuggles. I've visited temples a lot for resurrections, scrimped for enough cash just to get a potion, and really thought hard about what 2 wimpy spells would possibly keep my character alive longer. Although, here's a cool trick: since you can hit "tab" to highlight items in BG1tutu, it's easy to find the ring of wizardry near the Friendly Arm. And since you can play a sorcerer now, try it with the ring. You get 6 spells on level 1. Nice. You might actually survive.
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You mean you haven't been using them? Oh man, I envy you. It would be great to play through all the mods for the "first time" again. There are banter packs that add NPC dialogues, flirt packs that give some NPCs much more romantic text to say to your character, bug patches, completely new NPCs that can join your group (such as Solaufein and Kelsey), and more. Go here now.
Be careful. Some mods, like Dark Side of the Sword Coast, are buggy. It's best to find a mod that looks interesting, and then go to groups.google.com and type it in to see people's comments about it. If it sounds stable, try it.
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