I have to Rant. I am so angry at the game's support

TheRaven476

So BG EE was one of the best things ever done. It was basically the original game but better in every way. I played the entire series start to finish again in 2014 though the EE and couldn't have been happier.

I decided to come back again and give it another go. I was appalled at what has happened.

First off, the game refused to start. I'm running windows 10 now and got DLL errors. I find out that the game has issues with 64 bit operating systems now? How SUPIDLY short sighted is that. So I have to scour the internet for solutions, manually download a .DLL file....... run the game in compatibility mode just to open it up.

I thought the whole point of the game was to make it just work on modern operating systems. Now we're at this state only a few years after it's release? How ridiculous is that....

Secondly. And this is where i'm really going to loose it.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SPRITES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I was watching Noah's video on the BG series I was wondering why his sprites looked so bad. Now I know. They are HORRID!!!! I can't stand looking at the game right now. They are so incongruous to the background that it's terrible. I even tried changing the "Nearest Neighbour" setting but it's still not the same. Something is seriously wrong with their rendering and it doesn't look like it's going to be fixed.

I don't understand how they could release patches that make things so clearly worse. I don't get how something like that can happen. As a fellow Edmontonian.....

WHAT THE HELL MAN!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxGNvA4bUJo

This is what the game is supposed to look like. Now the sprites seem so bulbous and have odd colouring's to them, they stand out so much.

Why was there not an option for the old rendering method? I thought "Render with Direct X" option at the bottom instead of open GL might have fixed it but shocker the game just wouldn't start after I selected that option.

Is there any way to get this game to a previous version?

I don't understand how crap like this can happen................ This is no longer the definitive edition in my mind. Until we get a way to get the game back to looking like it originally looked in the video I posted, my friends have now been told not to buy this product, but to DL the original and mod it.

This is completely unacceptable.

megamike15

you can turn those off in the options settings. you're not the first person to complain about the sprites and it's getting really annoying that this has to be stated every single time someone talks about the new sprites.

TheRaven476

megamike15 said:

you can turn those off in the options settings. you're not the first person to complain about the sprites and it's getting really annoying that this has to be stated every single time someone talks about the new sprites.

Fail in reading comprehension.

I said in my post that changing the settings still doesn't return the sprites to what they looked like originally. They look "Closer", yeah i'll give it that, but they still have the low rez, bulbous, oddly coloured look about them.

The video I posted was the original look, adjusting the setting still doesn't return the game to it's original look.

ThacoBell

I run windows 10 and have had zero problems.

Raduziel

Wish I was Beamdog's PR.

Luckly I'm not.

TheRaven476

So it looks like Beamdog made GoG.com remove the original versions of the game so that the EE ones are the only ones people can buy....

Wow....

You start out by actually trying to bring the BG experience to people in the best way possible. AChieve that......

Then make a bunch of changes no one asked for so you can push out your crappy SJW expansion, make the games worse, remove any way to digitally buy the original versions of the game, so that you're new crappier version is the only one that can be bought.....

Just incredible...... can't even finish hat sentence in a way that won't get the post deleted.

TheArtisan

*facepalm*

megamike15

it's times like this i wish there was a down vote option.

edit: oh and for the record you can still get the originals off gog. they are just packaged with the ee. it's like what they did with the broken sword games.

Noon

I don't see how your the sprites in your video are different from mines

ThacoBell

Ugh, so...much...ignorance. *cough* Can't breathe *hack*

AndreaColombo

TheRaven476 said:

They look "Closer", yeah i'll give it that, but they still have the low rez, bulbous, oddly coloured look about them.

The reason is probably that Nearest Neighbor was not, in fact, the original rendering/upscaling algorithm employed by the EEs. As mentioned in this thread, the algo used was Catmull-Rom Bicubic filtering, which is better than Nearest Neighbor by several orders of magnitude.

Not sure why an option was added for Nearest Neighbor and not for Catmull-Rom Bicubic filtering instead, but there's your difference.

EDIT: Fixed the spelling on "Catmull-Rom".

One additional weirdness is that the option to apply Nearest Neighbor only affects sprites, whereas selection circles and backgrounds are still handled by the (blurry) bilinear filter. This is an odd choice, as it would be more intuitive to have Nearest Neighbor apply to everything to maintain visual consistency across the board imo.

Then again, the best case scenario would be to replace the current Nearest Neighbor option with an option that enables Catmull-Rom Bicubic for everything (sprites, selection circles, backgrounds, UI when the scaling option is ON.)

James_M

I can't find the original games for download at Steam, GOG, or Gamersgate, however Amazon has the (4) originals for about $10: https://www.amazon.com/Baldurs-Gate-Box-Set-Compilation-Pc/dp/B002TOKQH2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1474858505&sr=8-2&keywords=pc+Baldur's+Gate

On ebay I recently bought the big box versions.

Keep your older computer for a while if getting a new one. Don't always "upgrade" - they sometimes do a downgrade instead. I'm still at EE 1.3 - it's fabulous, no complaints really.

sarevok57

I still have 1.3 on my laptop