Those damn bugs Options

[gooman]

Hello there,
why is the Insect Plague spell so extremely hardware intensive (and why are there blue circles in the insect swarm)?

Is there a way to tone down the effect so that the fps become somewhat stable? The game does not crash when the spell is active, but my fps become 0. If I pause the game, they're at 30 again.

I am using a 2x2.6ghz tablet pc with Intel Dynamic Video Memory 5 and 4GB DDR3. A lilttle bit shocked that my hardware can't deal with those effects at 800x600!

Also, Web and Ice Storm do not produce their effects after the casting. They're active though. Could that be a compatibility problem between Spell Revisions?

[Galactygon]

Hi gooman! It's highly possible ice storm and web do not play graphics (but otherwise work fine) because of the hardware issues you mentioned. Have you turned hardware acceleration off?

Insect plague uses the invisible .cre trick, so you might see foot circles for a split second, but they shouldn't be visible after that. The insect swarm effect is graphic intensive in that it shows insects being summoned from different corners of the map rather than flying from the caster to reflect the PnP nature of the spell as a summoning spell.

There shouldn't be compatibility issues with SpellRevisions as long as you install SpellPack after revisions to replace individual spells.

I do not understand tablet pcs nor have I used them before, so am therefore not in a position to give any hardware-related explanations. However, I have asked someone more knowledgeable who provided some possible explanations:
1. The new version of DirectX used in the tablets does not go well with old games that use DirectDraw calls of older versions of DirectX. Therefore, you might see slowdowns in other parts of the game untouched by SpellPack.
2. The official drivers and integrated Intel chipsets are suboptimal to heavy graphics. Possible solutions are installing new unofficial/community drivers.

Hopefully this will not be an issue by the next BG(II):EE compatible version.

-Galactygon