Does changing the frame rate affect game play in anyway?
Pingwin
Member Posts: 262
I'm currently playing with the framerate increased slightly. I assumed that this would make everything run slightly faster but does it break anything, e.g. do spell durations etc. all change with the framerate, or does something that would last say 10 seconds with the default framerate still last 10 seconds when you've sped up the game or is the duration reduced to take into account the increased framerate?
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that means if you are playing at 60 fps then a round is 3 seconds
i've been playing 60 fps for ages ( i even used to play 90 in vanilla bg2 ) dont really find it a problem
except when i see people play at 30, oi does that nauseate me hahaha
60fps is too fast for me but I do have it boosted slightly to increase the walking speed of the party.
So can you fully confirm that there are absolutely no adverse effects ?
Also little bit offtopic, but what is the deal with actions per round ? I know you can cast only once per round, and hit melee 1, 3/2, etc according to your APR, but once in a while I notice that a character performs both a melee hit and a spell cast in the same round (for fighter-mage classes). But I am not able to time these.
Obviously if a spell has casting time of 10, character will be casting it during the whole round, but what if the casting time is just 1 ? So does it mean you will cast it quickly in the round thus allowing you to perform a melee hit in the remainder of the round ? And vice verse, hit quickly in the opening round and then interrupt the character to immediately start recitating a quick spell in the same round ?
And finally I am completely unable to say in which round I am in a given battle. Am I in a new round, or am I in the previous round still ? The game does not give information during combat in which round I am, or even in which segment of the round I am.
Some classic RPGs have round systems too, but they implement in addition action points per round which tells you clearly in which segment of the round I am. For example DOS is such a system. It does not only allow you to be in control of the rounds but further allows you to tactically use the action points and transfer some to the next round. It is a rather smart system. But sure DOS is a modern advanced rpg engine while BG engine is archaic but would have been nice to have some kind of control during the rounds in order to max and get the most of your available options.
As for spells, well, every time you do magic, your aura becomes clouded, and you cannot do any more magic until your aura clears up again. You can still do other things though, such as attacking or running away. Spells with long casting times can be chained to each other with almost no break in-between because the game tracks when you START doing magic, not when you finish it. If you try to chain spells with short casting times, your character will spend most of the round just standing around. So you may want to have the character do something else while waiting for the aura to clear up.
Mages and sorcerers will ultimately be able to acquire a spell that will allow them to completely negate the aura clouding for a short period of time. This will permit them to cast very many spells and finish major battles within a few seconds.
In order to keep track of the rounds, you could try to use the auto-pause function.
So is it fair to say that in a single round you can cast magic missile with casting time 1 and also make a melee hit with a weapon with speed factor less or equal to 9 ?
I am equipped with a mace with speed factor 6 and have available Armor of Faith with casting speed 1.
Scenario 1 - Casting spell first
Immediately cast Armor of Faith - as soon as the spell is cast (which happens as soon as you press the cast button) the game pauses automatically. So it means that the end of my round immediately. Thus you CANNOT cast a spell (no matter how fast a spell it is) and then perform a melee hit in the same round. Casting a spell immediately ends your turn.
Scenario 2 - Make a melee hit followed by a spell cast
It turns out that now you can perform 2 actions. This time I open the battle with a melee hit and immediately cast Armor of Faith once you see the weapon swing. So I wait to see when will the game auto-pause trigger. And it triggers after I cast Armor of Faith. So this means first melee and then use a spell performs two actions in a round.
It would be interesting to see if you can do 3/2 melee hit (with a dagger) and cast Armor of Faith in the same round. But my test character is a Cleric/Mage and has no skill to do 3/2 attacks in order to test this.
Scenario 3 - This is where things start to look really weird. This time I will melee with 6 mace followed by Doom with cast time of 9. Obviously 6+9 = 15 so I should expect the auto-pause to trigger somewhere in the middle of casting Doom. But it triggers after successfully casting Doom ! Which means you can exploit this system by first melee and then cast 9 or 10 speed spell. Somehow the game "compacts" the actions in a single round, thus you gain extra dimensional time. This might be a bug.
While I was testing my build, as explained above, casting Armor of Faith (speed 1 spell) automatically ends my turn.
However, if I first melee and then cast AF, you have to keep an eye as of what your opponent is doing.
Behold my opponent casts both Mirror Image and Horror at the same round ! So how does it becomes possible for enemies to cast 2 spells in a round while my round ends as soon as I cast AF ?
Autopause: "end of round" is a combination of "end of round", "spell cast", and "activated item".
There is no option to autopause strictly on the "end of round".
You can perform up to 4 different actions in the same round, provided you don't spend too long on any of them:
Move - Attack - Cast spell or Activate Item - Modal
Probably easier to do it with a bow than a melee weapon as a bow naturally attacks twice per round.