Where is satisfaction?

When this game first came out (2003?), I read nothing but lackluster reviews about it.

One of the condemnations of it had to do with a poor game engine. Here are some review quotes: “…action gets jerky in large battles…†and “…engine is terribly sluggish…†and “…engine can really bog down with this many characters on screen…â€

So I didn’t buy it.

More recently I’ve read how player-created patches have improved it. So having just bought a hot new gaming rig (FX-55, 2 NVidia 6800 Ultas in SLI, 2 GB of RAM, and a Western Digital Raptor that spins at 10,000 RPM), I bought The Temple of Elemental Evil.

I’ve been playing it with patches 1 & 2, the C of 8 patch/mod, and Liv’s mod.

Guess what?

Even at a humble resolution of 1024x768x16, this game gets jerky in battles, it is terribly sluggish, and the engine can really bog down with many characters on the screen.

Is there any way to be genuinely satisfied in this world?
:blegh:

 

Co8 has corrupted me and made me evil, kind of. I do custom portraits now, edit .dlg and protos files, and I cheat like hell using the console. BUT, I'm having fun and enjoying the game. Sure, there still bugs and problems but the game still plays pretty well. With all the recent mods the game is even better. With co8 and temple.dll and Drifter's mods(neat) you can play a good game. I get a lot of satisfaction seeing my beautiful(Royo24) Fruella critical hit a bugbear with her cleaver. I"ve seen her kill 4 bugs/gnolls at one time with Scather. I'm having fun. If it's not fun, then find something that is.

 

I apologize, Agetian. The purpose of my post was not to condemn the game. There was a possibility in my mind that someone might sooth my worrying about whether or not my system was performing up to specifications, that someone might say something like, "Hey, brother, don't worry. There's no PC in the world that can play this game at a high resolution without some jerkiness and bogging down during the bigger battles or in the lava fields of the fire plane."

I started TOEE at 1280x960x32. It was without a doubt the very best looking RPG I have ever played (and I have played dozens). But during the battle versus Hedrack and Iuz with all the pyrotechnics and all those characters on the screen, my system bogged down. When I tried to move the screen, there was much jerkiness. And I had a hard time trying to save, even with my 10K hard drive.

At 1024x768x16, there is some jerkiness, and I have to wait a few seconds to make a save. Even at this resolution, though, it's the best looking RPG I have played. (I have finished the game, but I have reloaded to do more exploring.)

I am sorry for not being satisfied. I paid something over $4,000 for my machine, and having it slow down while playing a two-year old game.... It was a disappointment.

I believe it is impossible to love--in an unqualified and absolute sense--a game that has shortcomings, though all games have them and TOEE is no exception. I mean, you can't love the shortcomings.

Besides the surpassing graphics, the TOEE version I've been playing has many commendable traits. One I was especially pleased with was the ending. Some of the games I've played have unpredicatable endings, but almost always, if not always, I know when the game is about to end. TOEE's end caught me by surprise, and it was a refreshingly original surprise. :yes:

 

Hey, brother, don't worry. There's no PC in the world that can play this game at a high resolution without some jerkiness and bogging down during the bigger battles or in the lava fields of the fire plane. Chill :smoke:

 

Your new PC is a Mercedes compared to my old Chevy, but ToEE runs fine on my PC...with the exception of bogginess in the Fire Temple, again on Level 4, and then in the Nodes. Satisfaction is where you find it, so tweak your settings until you get something you can be satisfied with. No one here can do that for you. Although someone was working on the lag-in-the-nodes, or had a quick fix, as I recall...

Chevy specs:

AMD Athlon 1.7
1GB DDR Ram
64 MB Nvidia GeForce
Windows XP

 

Yeah I have to agree with Lord_Spike. The only place I have problems is in the fire node and I have just learned to be careful about moving around there. Big battles are not a problem for me at all, no jerkiness whatsoever. And my system isn't even equal to his:

AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (which reads as ~1426 MHz in system info)
Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400 with 32 Megs
768 266MHz DDR Ram
Windows XP Home Edition

I actually upgraded my memory to 768 from 256 because of the slow down in the fire node and it has not made a bit of difference as far as I can tell. Even with only the 256 I had no problems other than in the fire node.

The 768 has been an advantage however as now when I am modding I can have dozens of programs running, including the protos editor, a bunch of notepads, an MS visual studio or 2, Firefox with mutiple tabs, ToEE world builder and can still run ToEE to do my tests and still not have any significant lag except in the fire node.


Darmagon

 

In the fire node if you use protection from energy(fire), it really slows down but you need to go REAL slow there anyway. Save up the rings of fire resistance and potions, if you can. Don't get in no hurry in the fire node and put Scather away. Cone of cold, Icestorm, magicmissile, etc work best.

 

well my only problem is that the refresh rate doesn't fix itself proply after movies play, eg the starting movie, opening aligment movie, finding the temple etc, but I just change it to a different one (any it doesn't matter) and off I go.

never had problems in the nodes yet, or lags in the game, I've got an old computer (bout 3 or 4 years) don't know what's inside probly an undead gerbil on its wheel.

 

Thank you for your encouragement, Zebedee and Gaear. I have finished the game and thoroughly explored all planes and levels, so right now I'm not concerned with tweaking my system in order to play TOEE as well as it can be played. It was a good game, lacking the scope and grandeur of Baldur's Gate II, but it was a good game.

I don't know if I should believe Lord Spike and darmagon. It seems that I have the hardware, but they have the performance. Certainly I buff my characters to the max before a battle, which means that with all those spell animations and the big guardian characters, there's a hell of a lot taking place on the screen. I ended up playing on 800x600x16. The game still looked great. Even so, there were many incidents of choppy screen movement, even some short freeze-ups. :rock:

 

I did 2 things that really helped my games, increased memory and an upgraded video card. A faster cpu should help? In the fire temple/node, and level 4, where there is a lot of activity and a whole lot of data is moving. If you pace yourself and don't get in a hurry it will run a lot smoother.