GameBanshee Forums

I downloaded the BG2 exp cap remover, and when my characters leveled beyond the cap it started taking forever to save and load. So long that it is now impossible to play. Otherwise the game runs fine, so it can't be my system, or the BG2 settings. My other games work fine. Even really old BG2 saved games from when I was really weak work fine. But none of my recent saved games save/load regularly! I have a really high end system: Pentium 3 800MHZ, 128 meg RAM, Voodoo 5 video card with 64 meg SDRAM, SBLive sound card. Does anyone know what I should do?

that's wierd, but in fact I really don't know what to do about, I only noticed another glitch when I'm playing multiplayer (for playing a whole party) the game takes even longer to load the further I am in story (like chapter4). never had problems in single-player through the whole game even with the XPcap-remover...
do you play single-p or multi-p?

[This message has been edited by Elenias Nal'nair (edited 12-23-2000).]

An interesting thing might be to check the filesizes of the savegames. Open your windows explorer, and go to your BG II directory, and then either the 'save' directory, or the 'mpsave' directory, depending on what type of game you play.

How large are the SAV files?? Just curious!

Well it works fine on my comp... wanna trade?

I'm playing single player, and I'm in Chapter 6 I think. I recently killed Bodhi, and will soon return to the elven camp. I did check the saved file sizes, and I did notice that the file sizes increased as the saved files got more recent. One of them that worked had a .sav file size 678K, and a .gam file size 183K. My most recent .sav (really slow one) is 864K, and .gam 197K. The size difference seems negligible though. If anyone has more suggestions I am all ears, and thanks for responding Elenias and Maurice. If it helps, my main character mage is level 18, and just acquired 9th level spells. Almost everyone in my party is above the cap, Minsc is level 18. I also have Jaheira, Aerie, Imoen, and Nalia in my party.

By the way, I noticed during my reinstallations that the override folder had grown drastically in size from its original, installed size. Could all of these overrides be slowing it down somehow? I tried playing from the overrides that were originally in there, like it is when first installed, but still had no luck. Does that help any?

finally got an idea what it might be...
-I remember reading about the game's settings changing at random if you install patches/removers and other things (which blow your override-folder as well, like you stated Magusg. my override-folder currently holds 282 files at a total of 16MB, but I don't think it's the mass of files, so let's stick to the original intent)
-it COULD be, that your settings specially for cache-size are drastically increased and your computer now starts caching Gigas for whatever reason. so check the cache-size and hold it down at maybe 400MB (300 worked fine for me in multi-p and single-p)

I checked the cache, and it was set at 300mg. I went through my saved games, and observed that save/load times get steadily slower as they get more recent. So I finally just gave up and picked one in the middle, where I will not lose too much, yet will not have the save/load times too long. Thanks anyway for your help. It's greatly appreciated.

The sizes you mentioned come in the range of what I have myself. In other words, the savegames themselves appear to be in order (since I don't have these slowdowns).

In that case, I can put it simple: I'm stumped!

Does the problem really start with the cap remover or did you enter new unexplored areas ?
In multiplayer of BG2 is a setting to control how much of the area is loaded to memory upon entering an area the first time.
If you put this value high and you dont have enough RAM compared to it (128 meg is NOT enough to put that setting to 100%) , then this could slow loading (and saving!) on some larger areas.

Or maybe it's not the game itself, perhaps its something with your computer.
What about free disk space / fragmented files ? When did you defragmented your disk last time, a lot of saved games can cause nice things to loading / saving time. Same happens if your disk is nearly full.

Currently no other ideas, if nothing helps we could exchange computers, on my old machine game runs fine (333Mh PII )