Baldur's Gate?

[Painted Lady]

I've only played a couple of CRPGs. Started with Eschalon (hands down wonderful) then went to Avernum. So, here is the question. I have a Mac and run Parallels on it, and I have an old laptop with Win XP on it.

I keep hearing how great Baldur's Gate is and would love to give it a try. The web site says it has to run on Win 98. When I checked some forums it seemed that Win XP in compatibility mode was dicey for running BG. Does anyone have experience getting BG running using Win XP compatibility? Or, any other ideas about a way to run the program today............

[CrazyBernie]

Hmmm... I'll dig around when I get a chance and see how it loads on my XP install...


There was a Mac version however.... http://www.amazon.com/Baldurs-Gate-Mac/dp/B00002CFA0

[Painted Lady]

As far as I can tell, the Mac version won't run on new machines with an Intel chip and Snow Leopard. Thanks for the help though.

[geishaboy]

I have run it with no problems on both windows xp and vista. It takes a little trail and error with the compatibility settings, but it is totally doable and it runs perfectly

[Painted Lady]

Thank you so much! I'll give it a try

[ManusDei]

Once some patch is installed (don't remember exactly which one), it runs smoothly on Vista and Seven, in fullscreen only.

[MyGameCompany]

Wasn't that an old DOS game? Could you try running it with DOSBox?

[Evnissyen]

I've been wondering for some time now: Tales of the Sword Coast . . . is this just an add-on for Baldur's Gate that nevertheless works as it's own game if you want to start at level 1? True: in the castle where you start, all the trainers (and the character background) suggest almost incontrovertibly that this is a game unto itself, but: the seeming fact (based on the saved characters near end-game in the copy I got from a friend) that you can only gain a few levels throughout the game seems to suggest otherwise.

...Or is Tales of the Sword Coast actually Baldur's Gate + expansion? In other words: what I have is actually Baldur's Gate + the TSC expansion?

All this time I've been guessing the latter, but I'm still not sure.

[GuideBot]

Tales of the Sword Coast is an expansion and cannot be played without Baldur's Gate. If you're starting a new game you must have Baldur's Gate as well (Tales of the Sword Coast would likely not install without Baldur's Gate being already installed). I suspect you have Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga, or some such. As far as I'm aware Tales of the Sword Coast hasn't been sold in a stand alone format in probably 10 years.

If the game you're playing starts in a castle, has an innkeeper who proclaims his inn to be as clean as an elven ass, and has you the foster child of Gorion then you are definitely playing Baldur's Gate.

Tales of the Sword Coast integrates in to Baldur's Gate and adds some optional areas to explore, some gameplay tweaks, and ups the maximum character level but doesn't meaningfully alter the base plot.

[Evnissyen]

Yeah, that was my guess. I have Baldur's Gate I with the TotSC expansion.

When you open it up it says "Tales of the Sword Coast" . . . to show that you're playing it with that expansion.

[Painted Lady]

Well, almost 4 months later I'm finally getting started on Baldur's Gate. Found the disks on Amazon and have installed BG1 + TOSC on an old laptop. I found a web-site that told me how to set Win XP to run as Win98, and everything seems fine so far.

Am struggling with the fighting system, particularly with more than one player. I totally get using the space bar to pause the action, but I can't seem to get multiple people to do what I want. It's going to be a real slog if I don't get this figured out soon!

I really miss turn based combat

[sirdilznik]

Personally I usually only controlled my main character in BG and let my companions act on their own according to their AI except in really heated/important battles where I had to micromanage a bit. The best way micromanage and get your companions to do exactly what you want them to do is to temporarily turn the AI for the given companion (or the entire party) off, then you can have full control over them and they won't override your commands after a while. Just remember to keep issuing commands to them or to turn AI back on after a while or else they'll just stand there picking their noses.

[Painted Lady]

So, if everyone is happily running around doing their own thing, how do I get involved? Do I fight without direction too?

Basically, how do I interject myself into the battle? How do you know what order things are happening in - or do you just set yourself up to do something and then wait for it to happen whenever your turn rolls around?

This is so weird!

[sirdilznik]

The game is real-time. There are no "turns" per se... well not in the traditional turn-based sense.

You can choose to control one character in real-time and let the others act on their own according to their AI scrips, or you can micromanage, which sounds like what you want to do. With that in mind, pause the game, select each character and assign them a command, one by one. Then unpause and they will all attempt to fulfil their assigned actions more or less simultaneously. Then lather, rinse, repeat. Always repeat.

Of course you could also try to control multiple characters or even the whole party in real-time but that would get super hectic and require some inhumanly fast clicking around.

Essentially turn the AI off on any character you want to control yourself and turn the AI on for any character you want acting on their own.

[Evnissyen]

I remember a couple of evil guys deciding to join the party, then the first time a wolf appeared, jumping in to commit suicide. (One of them being a mage, he should've known better, duh, mages don't do melee.) I couldn't save them. After they were dead (just a second or two, at least it was quick?) I just shrugged my shoulders and thought, "Oh, well."

I sort of wondered how they managed to survive so long. I guess joining the party was a bad idea.

I'll get back to BG after I finish the other games I still haven't finished, plus Arcanum and Temple of Elemental Evil... and probably Avadon as well.