OK, I have the latest version of Easy TuTu, with the usual mods installed, Herbs&Potions, Ease of Use, Tweaks, BG1 NPC, Grey Clan, SCS I, etc.

The game was a blast until I noticed very annoying lags in certain situations and areas.

For example, gnoll fortress is extremely laggy and my characters can not even walk straight, it lags too much and ofcourse combat is a big no-no even with lowly critters like xvarts (those smurf-like guys!) My PC is new and I have never experienced such a thing before in any IE games. I tried closing 3d acceleration, turning of special effects and dropping all options to low, even playing in 640x480 (ugh, my eyes, my eyes!) to no avail. However, when I turned off the ambient sound from options, it stopped. Just like that. When I turn it on, even a little, it lags, when it is closed, it stops. I do not have EAX sound enabled and never had, by the way.

It also happens in a few other areas, one level of Nashkel mines, one part of Cloakwood forest, but all other areas are OK and work fluently with ambient sound and all other options enabled.

Do you have any idea why this might happening? I am throughly confused and do not know what to do! :confused: Ambient sound files are corrupt for some areas? (if even such files exist?)

Another problem: When my party casts Horror on enemies, the game slows down to a crawl and lags a lot if even a few enemies are affected by the spell and are panicked. For example, a horde of kobolds come, we release a Horror spell, bang, nearly all of them get panicked and an extremely painful lagging begins, which lasts until all of the panicked creatures die. (which takes so much time and effort with massive lags so I just pause the game and CTRL+Y the critters. Agh!) If this continues to happen I never will use Horror again, which is a shame as it is a good debiliating spell...Oh well, gotta wait for the confusion then, hope it does not lag like this.

Any ideas or reccomendations are welcomed!

Turn off all ambient sounds.

BTW if you use the latest version of EasyTutu, then remember HardTime by Macready - it's really great.

Yes, that seems like the only solution for now, but I am still curious why this happens all of a sudden, and only in certain areas? Weird. When I finish this current run I will reinstall TuTu again and see if such a problem exists.

Why yes I have Hard Times mod and it is fun! My guys are lvl 5-6 and I still could not find a magical longsword. (which sucks as my berserker is going for true grandmastery in longswords) Had to use what is in my hands, quarterstaff+1 and hamer+2 from certain bosses, etc. Life is hard, the prices are so....well, pricy, had to pay 9k gp for an amulet of protection +1 with 20 reputation and 21 CHA! :eek: And I was only able to find a fireball scroll in bandit camp recently, though since I have wild mage additions mod, and a wild mage protagonist, (who will not go for spellshaper route this time) all new and spiffy wild spells are so much more fun...and disastrous! :p

There are a couple of threads on the lag problem scattered across several forums - the summary is that just like the Tutu Beregost Crash, there is no consensus on what is really going wrong. Best guesses from experienced folks seem to center on the engine processing ambient sounds in very heavy sound areas just plain bogging everything down (an engine problem not fixable) even on really fast processors, or some kind of corruption that happens to those sound files (like the Beregost Crash, which Ascension64 has a patch to fix, where somehow random .cres or ambients become corrupted in the save).

Basics, as indicated by the other folks here - turn of antivirus, turn off ambient sound in heavy areas with water and wind (upper coastan maps, Wyrm's Crossing, Gnoll Fortress, and sometimes other areas), and turn 'em back on for other maps. The horror one, though, I have had as well. I have turned off battle music and ambients and had some success in reducing the lag. Hope it helps :)

Thanks for the answer, it kinda clears many things for me. But I noticed something. I have never experienced any of these problems before I installed the latest version of Easy TuTu. All my previous easy TuTu installations have been without any problems. So I am guessing that maybe, someway, somehow, the new version of TuTu is to blame?

Thanks for the answer, it kinda clears many things for me. But I noticed something. I have never experienced any of these problems before I installed the latest version of Easy TuTu. All my previous easy TuTu installations have been without any problems. So I am guessing that maybe, someway, somehow, the new version of TuTu is to blame?

No. The aforementioned troubles excisted before the latest version of EasyTutu.
I'm fairly sure that these troubles have nothing to do with Macready's Easytutu, but SCS is more or less to be blamed. Trouble is: noone will miss SCS anymore (at least after they've tried it :) )

You both are absolutely right. Last night I made a new, seperate installation of Easy TuTu, with the identical mods, and this new installation had zero lags in the same areas. Weird, the game was much more stable in speed and performance as well...guess I would have to play this one, do not blame the chronic restarter in me, I hate it soo much when such a relatively old game lags and slows down in my PC, whereas most of the new games with shiny graphics work just fine.

You both are absolutely right. Last night I made a new, seperate installation of Easy TuTu, with the identical mods, and this new installation had zero lags in the same areas. Weird, the game was much more stable in speed and performance as well...guess I would have to play this one, do not blame the chronic restarter in me, I hate it soo much when such a relatively old game lags and slows down in my PC, whereas most of the new games with shiny graphics work just fine.

berelinde often say something about too much stuff in your override folder can cause severe lags... I don't know much about that, but atleast try to avoid too many NPC whom are heavy on wav files.

You are right! D'oh, I can not believe how utterly stupid I have been. In my last TuTu installation I had all the NPC mods. Now I don't have any and it never ever lags. Praise be to you and Berelinde, I will avoid NPC mods I will never use from now on. Thank you thank you thank you!

I'd still use Gavin :)

Or even better, install all the NPCs you want, then go to the override folder and delete their .wav files. The game won't care - if it can't find the sound reference, it skips it and moves on.

berelinde often say something about too much stuff in your override folder can cause severe lags... I don't know much about that, but atleast try to avoid too many NPC whom are heavy on wav files.

Question: too much stuff in general or just too many big files like .wavs?

Question: too much stuff in general or just too many big files like .wavs?

She said last time too much stuff, but the talk normally goes of wavs.

berelinde said somethinh about "biffing your override" to make it faster, but I've no idea what to do..