Icewind Dale 2 resolution and "fixes" questions...

[Jarpie]

The scaling should be better as long as you keep the aspect ratio the same with your monitor, if your monitor is 16:9, then 1280x720 should look fine without blurring. When I bought my monitor 10 or so years ago, I made sure that it has proper scaling features, can't remember what the name is now, but I can check it later when I'm at home.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I thought it was more about the interpolation that occurs when a resolution is not an exact multiple or division of the native resolution. Like 1080p looking blurry on a 2k screen but not on a 4k one.

 

[newtmonkey]

Lyric Suite
You are right, if you can do a perfect integer scale the upscaled image will look nice and sharp. People have been begging Nvidia and AMD for integer scale options for some time now, but nothing really has come of it.

However, here's a good freeware option for anyone interested:
http://tanalin.com/en/projects/integer-scaler/
I verified it works with Baldur's Gate 1/2, Planescape Torment, Diablo 2, Jagged Alliance 2 (needs unofficial patch to enable window mode), and Fallout 2. Basically any game capable of running in a 640x480 window will work. It will scale the game up by an integer of 2 into a 1280x960 borderless window in the center of your screen. It looks fantastic, perfectly sharp without any blurring or scaling artifacts.

Another option is the Lossless Scaling app on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/993090/Lossless_Scaling/
I found this to work with more games "right out of the box" (for example, I could not get IntegerScalar to display Icewind Dale properly even when the game was set to 640x480). It also has non-integer scaling options if the game won't fit your native res at 2x (for example, scaling up Icewind Dale 2 or Arcanum 1.5X from 800x600 to 1200x900 borderless window). You can even set it to apply AA to the upscaled image if you really want, though I don't like how it looks. Non-integer scaling is not ideal, but it's still sharper than what you'd get if you just let your video card/monitor handle the upscale.

 

[Brancaleone]

However, here's a good freeware option for anyone interested:
http://tanalin.com/en/projects/integer-scaler/
I verified it works with Baldur's Gate 1/2, Planescape Torment, Diablo 2, Jagged Alliance 2 (needs unofficial patch to enable window mode), and Fallout 2. Basically any game capable of running in a 640x480 window will work. It will scale the game up by an integer of 2 into a 1280x960 borderless window in the center of your screen. It looks fantastic, perfectly sharp without any blurring or scaling artifacts.

Thank you so much for mentioning this one, I had tried so many possible solutions in the past in order to be able to play IE games on my potato netbook, and none of them worked. This works perfectly!

 

[newtmonkey]

Brancaleone
Great! Glad to be of help.
Just for future reference, you might need to run Integer Scaler as admin for some games. I'm pretty sure that was the case for Icewind Dale anyway.

 

[Sykar]

I use Fixpack and Ease of Use mod. Nothing else, Don't mind the native resolution.

 

[Elex]

i have problem with keyboard imput (not a laptop) someone have idea how to fix it?

 

[Xeon]

Like lag? or just no response at all? if lag, then it seems its always there, didn't manage to get rid of it no matter what. some times there are no responses.

Maybe check the config program to see if the key binds are still there or not.

 

[Elex]

Like lag? or just no response at all? if lag, then it seems its always there, didn't manage to get rid of it no matter what. some times there are no responses.

Maybe check the config program to see if the key binds are still there or not.

yes like lag, i need to press it multiple time.

 

[pomenitul]

I've been using aqrit's ddwrapper, which gets the game up and running, but I'm still experiencing quite a bit of lag whilst scrolling, whether I do so with my mouse or my keyboard. For what it's worth, this is also an issue in IWD1 and BG1 – but not BG2 or PS:T, for some reason. Any tips?

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

I've been using aqrit's ddwrapper, which gets the game up and running, but I'm still experiencing quite a bit of lag whilst scrolling, whether I do so with my mouse or my keyboard. For what it's worth, this is also an issue in IWD1 and BG1 – but not BG2 or PS:T, for some reason. Any tips?

The GOG version is already patched and doesn't require aqrit's ddraw.dll.

If you're running Win 10, just delete or rename the ddraw.dll and see if it runs now.

 

[pomenitul]

The GOG version is already patched and doesn't require aqrit's ddraw.dll.

If you're running Win 10, just delete or rename the ddraw.dll and see if it runs now.

Thanks for the help, but I did try that as well and it's still choppy. Not unplayable, mind you, just annoying.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

AFAIK, this game like all other non-EE IE-games has always been a scroll chopper. Enjoy the nostalgia.

 

[pomenitul]

BG2 is silky smooth, though, and always has been as far as I can tell. That said, my memory is getting fuzzy – BG1 in particular has been out for more than two decades now!

I'll post a video later so we can compare notes.

 

[Lilura]

IE-games has always been a scroll chopper. Enjoy the nostalgia.

The funny thing is, but it's actually dead serious: mainstream hardware and coding routines existed for silky smooth hardware scrolling in 1986.

 

[pomenitul]

Where do the fake news come in, pray tell?

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Alright, I took the time and have fiddled around with IWD2, and found two satisfactory solutions (albeit each with a small caveat) to the jerky scrolling and boxy fog issues:

Solution 1:
Download this:
https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper/releases

1. Extract ddraw.dll, dxwrapper.dll and dxwrapper.ini into the IWD2 main folder (where the *.exe is located). Don't bother with the other files in the zip.
2. Change following options in dxwrapper.ini:

[Compatibility]
Dd7to9 = 1

[d3d9]
EnableVSync = 1
FullscreenWindowMode = 1

Don't bother about the rest. I tested everything in this is it. This will make the game run smooth, fog is fixed, buuuuut the downside is the mouse cursor will flicker. This may, or may not annoy you.

Solution 2:
Download this:
http://bitpatch.com/ddwrapper.html

1. Extract ddraw.dll and aqrit.cfg into IWD2 main folder.
2. Change aqrit.cfg

NoVideoMemory = 1

This is the one option that speeds up the jerky scrolling and solves the fog, just as Solution 1. It also fixes the flickering mouse cursor, buuuut it introduces a small graphical glitch ingame at the bottom screen. It's very subtle and may or may not annoy you. If you're lucky, it's just with my PC and you may not get this.

Try each solution. I'm using the latest Windows 10 btw.

 

[pomenitul]

I appreciate the help, thanks. Solution #2 is what I'd been using all along but I hadn't tried #1 yet. I'm sad to report that the end result is the same: playable, with no Tetris-like fog of war nor any flickering yet scrolling remains a problem.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

use wine

this fellow seems like he's on the up and up, you should listen to him

 

[pomenitul]

Wine on Windows? I replayed IWD2 on my Macbook a few years ago and it worked perfectly but Catalina doesn't support 32 bit apps.

Anyway, maybe I'm just mismembering and/or being too picky. Here's what it looks like:

https://streamable.com/c6ycu

 

[DalekFlay]

Anything lower than 120fps looks a little choppy to me now, but that seems... fine?

 

[pomenitul]

Over the years I've tried: aqrit's ddwrapper and ddrawfix, ddrawcompat, DxWnd, dgVoodoo, Windows' built-in compatibility mode, plus a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting, yet edge-scrolling remains choppy. It's not game-breaking by any means, but I came across a couple of Twitch streams that don't have this problem and asked one of the guys about it. He said the GOG version worked straight out of the box on his rig, which happens to be very similar to mine, whereas I have to either delete the ddraw.dll GOG provides or – if I don't want the fog of war to be block-like – replace it with the dll that comes with aqrit's ddrwrapper. The latter solution works best, but the scrolling issues persist, and they do annoy me. Any extra tips? IWD1 is also affected.

 

[A horse of course]

Imagine spending more time trying to get IWD2 to run properly than Sawyer's team spent making the stupid thing in the first place.

 

[Gargaune]

Over the years I've tried: aqrit's ddwrapper and ddrawfix, ddrawcompat, DxWnd, dgVoodoo, Windows' built-in compatibility mode, plus a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting, yet edge-scrolling remains choppy. It's not game-breaking by any means, but I came across a couple of Twitch streams that don't have this problem and asked one of the guys about it. He said the GOG version worked straight out of the box on his rig, which happens to be very similar to mine, whereas I have to either delete the ddraw.dll GOG provides or – if I don't want the fog of war to be block-like – replace it with the dll that comes with aqrit's ddrwrapper. The latter solution works best, but the scrolling issues persist, and they do annoy me. Any extra tips? IWD1 is also affected.

Are you sure that those streamers' installations aren't choppy and it's not just the video algorithm smoothing it out? I've had to try a couple of different DDraw configurations for IWD2 over different machines, and I've never had it not be choppy on panning the camera. But then I'm also getting a slight bit of pan jitter even in Beamdog's EEs, so I just assumed it's the nature of the IE beast and sucked it up.

 

[pomenitul]

Possibly, but I remember being struck by how smoothly GOG's Wine port of IWD2 ran on my MacBook Pro (pre-Catalina, i.e. back when OS X still included 32 bit support) compared to the PC version, which seemed odd. Not to mention that BG2 and PS:T are both ripple-free for some reason (BG1 is somewhere between those and the IWDs in this regard).