Hi,
Just registered as I thought you people might be able to help me.
I've just finished Dragon Age and really enjoyed it. My thirst for another RPG has led me to PsT. My elder brother played it and loved it. I remeber watching when I was about 13 or 14 years old, but I never actually played it myself.
I think I still might even have the discs at home.
I was wondering if Vista 64 will support it and if I need to download anything to patch it etc?
Hopefully the 2D graphics wont deter me - up until a few months ago I was still playing Diablo 2 due to the Diablo 3 excitement.
Thanks for your help.
Planescape on Vista 64
I've tried out a Torment install on a 32 bit Vista machine... and it worked. I am now tempted to try and install it on my brother's 64 bit vista machine. You see in addition to my newer stuff, I have maintained an "old-school" gaming machine with a 17" crt monitor just for games like Torment, Diablo, Baldurs Gate, etc. The problem, as I see it anyways, with newer machines is that if you get it working, you still have the problem with the newer high resolution lcd monitors. You see PST's native resolution is 640x480 (I think). So playing it on my laptop, for example, which has a native resolution of 1600x1050 is horrible because lcd's don't scale well and only look good at their native resolutions. So you can either play it on a CRT monitor, which do scale well and most of them naturally have lower native resolutions anyways, or there is a widescreen mod which allows the game to be played at higher resolutions. I tried this out on my laptop to see how it looked and it looked good except that the text was very small... there might be a fix for this but I'm no expert because I have just stuck with using my old pc... at the very least, install the official 1.1 patch, however.
here is a useful site to get you going on the patches:
Useful Files & MODs for Planescape: Torment - Bootstrike.Com
There are several "fixpacks" and mods but I have never used anything on the game outside of the official patch and the widescreen mod test. (when I originally played the game, they weren't out... When I get around to playing it again, I will try out some of these fixpacks)
Hope you get it working because it is awesome! If you like Diablo II, graphically speaking, then PST shouldn't be a problem. Thing is, with the 2d graphics, it has that classic "painted" feel. Torment features a very unique art deco throughout and, at least to me, is still visually appealing. (as long as you can mod it up to your monitor size, or play it at or close to its native res with a CRT, you should be good)
EDIT//
I have a few more resources for getting up and running with the game.
First of all, here's a concise blog entry that goes through, step by step, a whole process for installing, updating, and modding PST... it is a little better (more up to date) than the bootstrike guide:
http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/200 ... odded.html
Next... here is a specific guide on installing/using the Ghostdog widescreen mod which optimizes the The BIGG widescreen mod (which you would install first) for certain resolutions and can also increase the text size:
http://www.shsforums.net/index.php?showtopic=37219
Next... if you are playing at 1024x768 then you can skip the above Ghostdog mod and install this specific mod, which also uses The BIGG widescreen mod for a base. NOTE: If you are using the "Fully Loaded" install guide, it doesn't mention this mod which means that if you want to install it, then install it in place of the Ghostdog mod (step 3b on the fully loaded guide):
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24932
Yeah... so I haven't test any of this out except for The BiGG widescreen mod. I will try the whole process, proabably tomorrow on a 64bit machine to see how it goes...
Good luck
here is a useful site to get you going on the patches:
Useful Files & MODs for Planescape: Torment - Bootstrike.Com
There are several "fixpacks" and mods but I have never used anything on the game outside of the official patch and the widescreen mod test. (when I originally played the game, they weren't out... When I get around to playing it again, I will try out some of these fixpacks)
Hope you get it working because it is awesome! If you like Diablo II, graphically speaking, then PST shouldn't be a problem. Thing is, with the 2d graphics, it has that classic "painted" feel. Torment features a very unique art deco throughout and, at least to me, is still visually appealing. (as long as you can mod it up to your monitor size, or play it at or close to its native res with a CRT, you should be good)
EDIT//
I have a few more resources for getting up and running with the game.
First of all, here's a concise blog entry that goes through, step by step, a whole process for installing, updating, and modding PST... it is a little better (more up to date) than the bootstrike guide:
http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/200 ... odded.html
Next... here is a specific guide on installing/using the Ghostdog widescreen mod which optimizes the The BIGG widescreen mod (which you would install first) for certain resolutions and can also increase the text size:
http://www.shsforums.net/index.php?showtopic=37219
Next... if you are playing at 1024x768 then you can skip the above Ghostdog mod and install this specific mod, which also uses The BIGG widescreen mod for a base. NOTE: If you are using the "Fully Loaded" install guide, it doesn't mention this mod which means that if you want to install it, then install it in place of the Ghostdog mod (step 3b on the fully loaded guide):
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24932
Yeah... so I haven't test any of this out except for The BiGG widescreen mod. I will try the whole process, proabably tomorrow on a 64bit machine to see how it goes...
Good luck
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willsanders84
- Posts: 99
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- Contact:
I decided to do an install of PST on a newer 64 bit Vista running machine. My purposes are two fold: 1) Make sure it runs on 64 bit Vista and 2) See how The Bigg's widescreen mod and Ghostdog's UI mod work on my 1440x900 native resolution lcd monitor.
I am more or less following the "Fully Modded" guide by Johnny Walker found here:
Alphabetti Spaghetti: Planescape Torment - Fully Modded! - The Random Ramblings of ThunderPeel2001
My point isn't to just copy his guide (why else would I have put it up) but to go more in depth into the aspect of modding the game for current generation widescreen monitors. It is an experiment in testing it out on my specific monitor size and to see how well it performs on 64-bit vista. I do however touch on the topic of a full install which many folks have already gone through in other places. This is so that one could potentially set up the game without having to link out of here.
The computer I'm testing this out on runs on an AMD Phenom x4 9759 Quad Core processor and an ATI Radeon HD 3650 video card.
I am running a 64-bit version of windows vista. (home-premium)
My monitor is an LG 19" widescreen that runs at a native resolution of 1440x900.
I am using the 4 disc original version of the game.
I installed the game... my chosen installation path looks like this: C:\Games\Black Isle\Torment
I then installed the V1.1 Patch because I have the 4 disc version.
Since the installation basically just installs the core components off of the first disc you will be doing a lot of disc swapping so I will now do the "full install".
So I copied the contents of each disc to inside of my Main "Torment" game folder... remember that each disc contains one actual folder and inside of the folder are a bunch of .bif "files".(they are actually archives) DON'T put the .bif files, by themselves, into your Torment folder, rather just copy the folder -- which contains the bifs -- into the Torment folder.
So for example, on the second game disc there is the "cd2" folder and inside that folder there are maybe a 100 .bif files, well just copy the "cd2" folder to your main Torment folder.
Repeat for discs 3 and 4.
Okay, finished that up. Now I need to make it so that the game knows where these folders are when it needs to load from them. To do this I opened up the Torment.ini file which resides in the main Torment folder. In Vista, if the "show file extensions" is off, which it is by default, you won't actually see the .ini part but it is easy to find because on the "file type" column it is listed as "configuration settings". Now just change the file paths for each cd to where it was you put the cd.(this is the very first part of the .ini file) For example, with cd 2, it looked like this CD2:=E:\CD2\ but after changing it, it looks like this CD2:=C:\Games\Black Isle\Torment\CD2\
Also, as per the "Fully Modded" guide, I changed the "cache size" to =1, the path search nodes to =32000 and the "maximum framerate" to =40
I tested the game up to this point to make sure everything is working so far. It does. Also, before getting into the widescreen mod, I took a screenshot of how the game looks played at its native 640x480 resolution when scaled up to my monitor's native resolution. (the link is towards the bottom of this post) Note: The screen capture tool I used actually captures it at its true 640x480 resolution without taking into account the scaling that the graphics card performs. This means that I had to scale the image up manually in my image editing program to 1440x900 but by experimenting with different resampling algorithms, I was able to get it to look nearly identical. All in all, the picture is almost exactly how the it looks while playing the game without any mods. IMO, it's not acceptable.
I installed The Bigg's mod using the following specifications (as per the "Fully Modded" guide): 1280x720. Note: I tried using my native res of 1440x900 even though it is unsupported by ghostdogs mod, and the graphics were very messed up...
I need to make note of the fact that not all "widescreen" monitors have the same aspect ratio which can be problamatic. You see my widescreen doesn't proportionatly scale down to any of the Ghostdog supported resolutions: 1280x800, 1280x720, 1280x768, and 1280x1024... so in a way I'm screwed. I'm not a resolution expert and don't know exactly how The Bigg's mod works so I just tried different ones until I found one that kept everything on the screen. (note, the menus will be top left justified regardless... you actually have to start a game to see) So experimenting around is really the only thing I can recommend... Ideally, my resolution would be set at 1280x740 but The Bigg's widescreen mod doesn't support this, neither does Ghostdog's mod.
The best I could do, ultimately, while still staying "supported" by both The Bigg's and Ghostdog's mods, was 1280x720. This still is unacceptable, however, because it clips off a portion of the screen on the right...
Here's a before pic:
NoModsJPG.jpg (image)
And the after: (Note that you can not see the cut-off on the right side of the screen because my screen capture software captured the full image without taking into consideration the scaling, and subsequent cut-off, that my video card produced.. but trust me, it cuts off about 20 pixels or so)
WidescreenJPG.jpg (image)
So there you have it... it works great, but only on SOME widescreen monitors. If your widescreen monitor can scale 1280x800, 1280x720, or 1280x768 properly, i.e. no clipping, then you should be good to go. If not, I'm not sure if there is a solution. If anyone out there knows of a solution PLEASE share. What happened, I think, is that The Bigg's mod was created "back in the day" when there wasn't as much diversity in types of widescreen monitors... but times have changed.
I wish I was smart like The Bigg and could go in and create a fix to it but, well, that probably won't happen anythime soon...
p.s. I didn't go over installing any of the other available mods out there... but they should be pretty simple to set up and you wouldn't install them until you have set up the above mentioned resolution stuff first anyways.
http://primematerial.blogspot.com
I am more or less following the "Fully Modded" guide by Johnny Walker found here:
Alphabetti Spaghetti: Planescape Torment - Fully Modded! - The Random Ramblings of ThunderPeel2001
My point isn't to just copy his guide (why else would I have put it up) but to go more in depth into the aspect of modding the game for current generation widescreen monitors. It is an experiment in testing it out on my specific monitor size and to see how well it performs on 64-bit vista. I do however touch on the topic of a full install which many folks have already gone through in other places. This is so that one could potentially set up the game without having to link out of here.
The computer I'm testing this out on runs on an AMD Phenom x4 9759 Quad Core processor and an ATI Radeon HD 3650 video card.
I am running a 64-bit version of windows vista. (home-premium)
My monitor is an LG 19" widescreen that runs at a native resolution of 1440x900.
I am using the 4 disc original version of the game.
I installed the game... my chosen installation path looks like this: C:\Games\Black Isle\Torment
I then installed the V1.1 Patch because I have the 4 disc version.
Since the installation basically just installs the core components off of the first disc you will be doing a lot of disc swapping so I will now do the "full install".
So I copied the contents of each disc to inside of my Main "Torment" game folder... remember that each disc contains one actual folder and inside of the folder are a bunch of .bif "files".(they are actually archives) DON'T put the .bif files, by themselves, into your Torment folder, rather just copy the folder -- which contains the bifs -- into the Torment folder.
So for example, on the second game disc there is the "cd2" folder and inside that folder there are maybe a 100 .bif files, well just copy the "cd2" folder to your main Torment folder.
Repeat for discs 3 and 4.
Okay, finished that up. Now I need to make it so that the game knows where these folders are when it needs to load from them. To do this I opened up the Torment.ini file which resides in the main Torment folder. In Vista, if the "show file extensions" is off, which it is by default, you won't actually see the .ini part but it is easy to find because on the "file type" column it is listed as "configuration settings". Now just change the file paths for each cd to where it was you put the cd.(this is the very first part of the .ini file) For example, with cd 2, it looked like this CD2:=E:\CD2\ but after changing it, it looks like this CD2:=C:\Games\Black Isle\Torment\CD2\
Also, as per the "Fully Modded" guide, I changed the "cache size" to =1, the path search nodes to =32000 and the "maximum framerate" to =40
I tested the game up to this point to make sure everything is working so far. It does. Also, before getting into the widescreen mod, I took a screenshot of how the game looks played at its native 640x480 resolution when scaled up to my monitor's native resolution. (the link is towards the bottom of this post) Note: The screen capture tool I used actually captures it at its true 640x480 resolution without taking into account the scaling that the graphics card performs. This means that I had to scale the image up manually in my image editing program to 1440x900 but by experimenting with different resampling algorithms, I was able to get it to look nearly identical. All in all, the picture is almost exactly how the it looks while playing the game without any mods. IMO, it's not acceptable.
I installed The Bigg's mod using the following specifications (as per the "Fully Modded" guide): 1280x720. Note: I tried using my native res of 1440x900 even though it is unsupported by ghostdogs mod, and the graphics were very messed up...
I need to make note of the fact that not all "widescreen" monitors have the same aspect ratio which can be problamatic. You see my widescreen doesn't proportionatly scale down to any of the Ghostdog supported resolutions: 1280x800, 1280x720, 1280x768, and 1280x1024... so in a way I'm screwed. I'm not a resolution expert and don't know exactly how The Bigg's mod works so I just tried different ones until I found one that kept everything on the screen. (note, the menus will be top left justified regardless... you actually have to start a game to see) So experimenting around is really the only thing I can recommend... Ideally, my resolution would be set at 1280x740 but The Bigg's widescreen mod doesn't support this, neither does Ghostdog's mod.
The best I could do, ultimately, while still staying "supported" by both The Bigg's and Ghostdog's mods, was 1280x720. This still is unacceptable, however, because it clips off a portion of the screen on the right...
Here's a before pic:
NoModsJPG.jpg (image)
And the after: (Note that you can not see the cut-off on the right side of the screen because my screen capture software captured the full image without taking into consideration the scaling, and subsequent cut-off, that my video card produced.. but trust me, it cuts off about 20 pixels or so)
WidescreenJPG.jpg (image)
So there you have it... it works great, but only on SOME widescreen monitors. If your widescreen monitor can scale 1280x800, 1280x720, or 1280x768 properly, i.e. no clipping, then you should be good to go. If not, I'm not sure if there is a solution. If anyone out there knows of a solution PLEASE share. What happened, I think, is that The Bigg's mod was created "back in the day" when there wasn't as much diversity in types of widescreen monitors... but times have changed.
I wish I was smart like The Bigg and could go in and create a fix to it but, well, that probably won't happen anythime soon...
p.s. I didn't go over installing any of the other available mods out there... but they should be pretty simple to set up and you wouldn't install them until you have set up the above mentioned resolution stuff first anyways.
http://primematerial.blogspot.com
Ok so it's Saturday morning and I just found the discs to install (4 discs).
I pop in the first disc, hit install and it says "Error starting SETUP.EXE"
I'm no computer wizz to say the least, I really have no idea what to do
I thought something would go wrong, but I at least thought I'd be able to install it!
Any ideas?
Ok nevermind, seems my disc drive is playing up. Tried it a 5th time and now it's installing. Strange.
I pop in the first disc, hit install and it says "Error starting SETUP.EXE"
I'm no computer wizz to say the least, I really have no idea what to do
I thought something would go wrong, but I at least thought I'd be able to install it!
Any ideas?
Ok nevermind, seems my disc drive is playing up. Tried it a 5th time and now it's installing. Strange.
-
fable
- Posts: 30676
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- Location: The sun, the moon, and the stars.
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Disc drives can show intermittent problems when they're starting to go. If you encounter this again, try copying all the files on the disc and running the setup executable from your hard drive.Chezdon wrote:Ok nevermind, seems my disc drive is playing up. Tried it a 5th time and now it's installing. Strange.
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
Unfortunately it wouldn't let me copy any of the files from discs 2, 3 or 4. I made a directory in the Black Isle folder "CDALL" and tried copying all the .bif files but it just wasn't happening.fable wrote:Disc drives can show intermittent problems when they're starting to go. If you encounter this again, try copying all the files on the disc and running the setup executable from your hard drive.
Can't be sure if it's my disk drive because it still recognises Dragon Age and other things
Sucks because I wanted to play this today.
Not sure if you already did this, or if this is the problem, but Vista has an error when autiomatically opening the autorun executable on the torment disc.. so you have to manually open up the disc and click on the autorun icon...
EDIT: somehow I glazed over the post on copying the contents of the cds to the hardrive which if THAT didn't work, then it's not the aforementioned problem... (sorry for the irrelevant post)
EDIT: somehow I glazed over the post on copying the contents of the cds to the hardrive which if THAT didn't work, then it's not the aforementioned problem... (sorry for the irrelevant post)
Well I'm trying it on my main PC, which is windows 7. Just did the main install and no problems, going to start with all 4 discs now.
If it doesn't work I might buy the 2 version disc on Amazon that says it's for Vista/XP.
Thanks for your help guys!
The data transfer from CD2 to CDALL folder is working fine, at 3mb a second so I'm pretty sure it must be my Vista disc drive.
How many hours gameplay is this? I might just play it on his PC instead of my Vista one.
If it doesn't work I might buy the 2 version disc on Amazon that says it's for Vista/XP.
Thanks for your help guys!
The data transfer from CD2 to CDALL folder is working fine, at 3mb a second so I'm pretty sure it must be my Vista disc drive.
How many hours gameplay is this? I might just play it on his PC instead of my Vista one.
I just reinstalled Torment on my new computer, modded and patched, and it works great, minus one problem. When spells are cast, the screen slows, flickers a bit, then continues. Once, I casted two spells at the same time and the game had a weird crash. Any advice?
*Edit-It's only my party's spells that cause this, not the enemies.*
*Edit-It's only my party's spells that cause this, not the enemies.*
"That dead... whatever that thing was, is really gross, but Hawaii is still very nice."