GameBanshee Forums

I've been trying to find a nice lan game to play at home with my girlfriend. I've never played the BG series over a network, so I am looking for some general info on that.

How well does it work?
How does online play affect installed mods?
Can BG1 Tutu be played on a lan too?
What's it like playing BG with others?
How do saves work?
How do you go through dialogues with other people present?

etc.

Any info is welcome.

It works just as well as the unmodded version, for Tutu that is, however, all players participating in the game need to have tutu installed.

From my experience, Baldur's Gate (the first one) has issues with joining through GameSpy. I would recommend a client such as Hamachii to assist in connecting to other games.

Unless all participating players have the same mods, you might encounter bugs, crashes and desynchronization.

BG1 Tutu CAN be played over LAN.

I think it's fun, especially if it's just one character per person. You could say that it's a bit difficult since (depending on permissions) they can barter, unpause and initiate the dialog as well. Don't forget that you no longer control the entire party.

Saves work the same way as in the normal game. The game is saved, and when the players rejoin they will have to choose their characters again (pick their screen-name next to the desired character).

Whoever instated the dialog (depending on permissions) gets to make the choices, unless they're specifically directed at the Bhaalspawn.

I've only ever played the vanilla SOA/TOB on a LAN, it was great fun, I'd love to be able to do it again some time, closest I've come to the 'real thing' (table top AD&D that is).

The thought of incorporating mods makes me shudder somewhat, although it would be difficult for me to play with out some of them now. Raises some questions, does everyone have to have the same load order for example?!

I would think that Tutu would work, as long as everyone has the same version; but I don't know. I'm hoping someone can answer these questions in a positive way, I'll be waiting with bated breath!

Thanks for raising the subject Tricky, let us know how it works out.

... now, can I find five friends who all want to play Blades .....:laugh:

Heh, well I haven't exactly brought it up with my girlfriend yet. We have played a couple online games together in our home, the last one being Civ 4. I haven't really found anything yet that I really liked though. I think she can appreciate a game that has a major focus on story, a lot of the MMO's fail there. People seem to have forgotten about lan gaming. One of her best friends used to play Baldur's Gate, so she has heard about it. Chances are that she'll come to like it a lot.

As for load order, well I think I have a solution for that. I still need to hunt down a second copy of the Baldur's Gate series, but once I have that it should be easy. I can install it on her computer, then clean overwrite her copy with my own directories. That should ensure we end up with identical installations. The only thing I worry about (a bit) is Weidu. It's a strange program. It's quite good at whatever it does, but once something goes wrong with it, it usually goes quite badly wrong. I am not sure if it will like being copied to another computer, rather than installed.

A few questions just came to mind. First one is simple, the pause key.

Either player can just pause and direct the game whenever they want? Is anything stopping them from directing characters that are not their own?

If 2 players decide to recruit Minsc, who gets to control him? Can, by extention, a specific player control only npc's gained through the dialogue he/she initiated, or are obtained npc in parties at all times accessible to all players?

Oh.. and if there are more than one bhaalspawn, is it mentioned during the course of the games? 'Imoen, and her two fellow, but slightly older students from Candlekeep ', etc

If vanilla indeed doesn't take multiple people into account when displaying dialogue, has anyone ever modded-that-in?

galrean: Five Blades? I didn't know you played bards!

I don't think the load order would matter very much, as long as none of the content is overwritten.

Tricky: Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Tutu let you play the game without a CD? I can't remember if it was so, or if I had modified the game to do so.

There are permissions which you can set that lets only certain players pause, or only the host.

If we played together, and I went to the character generation screen (where you add your characters to the multiplayer party) and replaced your screen-name with my own, then I would control the character. Any NPC that joins will be under the host's control by default, though you can reassign the character to a different player.

Interesting.

Oh, with my previous post - it turns out I wasn't quite done writing. I was still editing-in questions after you posted your response. Just a headsup - I'm sloppy.

I would love to hear your thoughts on them as well.

The way it works, is that the host is always the Bhaalspawn. The other players are just "friends". So if you die, the game still ends.

As far as I know, no such mod has been made, but I would look around anyway. I barely use mods, so I'm not in the know about what's been done.

Oh, now I understand. I can see how that would work out. Especially during things like the dream sequences - it would just mess up the audio dialogue if there was more than one. The host's gameplay experience for BG2 must be quite different from the other players then also.

So.. does this allow for more than one stronghold, or can only the host gain one?

Only one stronghold. Only the host gets to choose.

So, for the full experience, you may want to let your girlfriend be the Bhaalspawn.

The game plays almost exactly like it would in single player, except that you can have custom characters and that they can do (almost) whatever they want.

I wasn't able to find any kind of multi-bhaalspawn mod for the entire series. It's okay though, I don't think being a Bhaalspawn has that much added value to a base class. Would be rather fun to watch her make sense of the story, for the first time.

Anyhow, thanks for the tips. I'll be pouring myself over modlists in not too long.

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