Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Hotfix #4 - 4.1.85.5707 (PC) 4.1.85.6028 (Mac)

Adventurers! We have just released a hotfix for you.

This hotfix addresses Windows 7 start up issues, the most common DX11 crash and a possible crash when using a Revivify scroll.

Thank you so much to everyone who has submitted feedback so far in Early Access, we appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your experience so far!

Ah, so I guess you finally figured out why the game only starts up properly on Windows 7 if you're holding down the Shift key.

Windows 7 has expired--Microsoft has finally sent it off on a burning funeral pyre, floating off into the sunset, drifting on the ocean currents, a smokey trail in the sky its only remaining trace. Well, at least Larian isn't trying to support WinXP--hope not, anyway...;) It's very difficult for me to see what people get out of running an OS no longer supported by the parent company--past its EoL date. Like spoiled milk...;) I enjoyed Win7 a lot in those long-ago days--but I have to state my opinion: next to Win10x64 it is crude and rude, indeed.

And the thing is for almost two *years,* if not longer, Microsoft *gave Win10 licenses away free* to all takers in most countries globally. My wife and I took 'em up on it and traded in our retail licenses of Vistax64 and Win7 for two separate retail Windows10x64 licenses that a) cost us nothing, and b) will never expire, as Microsoft has pledged to honor retail licenses for the *life* of the licensee (me!)--so the Win10 licenses follow us--not our motherboards. I've already migrated her through two motherboard swaps and myself through three motherboard swaps--and the *retail license* activation follows me in perpetuity. OEM Win10 licensing doesn't, however--it dies with the motherboard it is licensed to.

I'm not going to talk about how technically superior win10x64 is to Win7x64--it's not really a contest as Win7 is far behind--nor will I talk about how lots of Win7 code and its drivers do not support the latest in CPU and GPU developments--but that's what you would would expect from an OS already burned through its EoL dates!

I can't advise anyone at this time to hold on to Win7. There's simply no future in it. And to think of the people who could have had retail licenses to Win10x64 in perpetuity for as long as they shall live--and who thought their old, dying OS was a "better deal." Deals like the one Microsoft gave out with Win10x64 are few and far between. Indeed, I don't know of any other OS license that matches it. Best OS deal I've had in 35 years, without a doubt!

I don't remember saying "what do people think of Windows 7, and also please give me a long lecture." I do remember the Steam page for Baldur's Gate 3 says "Minimum: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit."

Microsoft gave out the free upgrade to Windows 10 primarily to get people off the embarrasing Windows 8 as quickly as possible, and to try to get everyone using UWP apps from the Windows store, the latter of which has failed for the most part. The majority of people do not construct their own PCs, so most people will pay for an OEM Win 10 licence every time they buy a new device anyway ( not that OEM licences are particularly expensive ).

Windows 7 is clearly not a good choice on new hardware as driver support is unlikely. But similarly, Windows 10 is not a good upgrade on older hardware as the Microsoft OS model can be poor at hardware backward compatibility. I have several devices which simply have no workable Windows 10 driver options.

So there are solid reasons for not upgrading from Windows 7, quite apart from the Windows 10 privacy violations, forced updates and general disdain for user choice.

Personally I run both as options on some devices; Windows 7 as an occasional dual-boot option on a 7 year old desktop that contains devices that simply don't work under Windows 10, and Windows 10 on a cheap browser/storage laptop that goes on vacation and can afford to be lost/stolen.

Mostly, I don't use Windows at all any more. Ubuntu ( Linux ) is as good as Windows in most cases, with a much more predictable kernel/driver model, very little of the annoying behavioural manipulation commercial entities seem to so enjoy, and no need for software licencing ( you can donate if you want and buy support if you need it ).

Not for everyone, I'm sure, but everything I want to do ( including running games like BG3 EA ) is possible. Sometimes it works better than Windows 10, sometimes worse. I'm grateful that there a viable, cooperative alternative to the controlling lock-in mentality of the big tech companies.

> This hotfix addresses Windows 7 start up issues

It is crazy that Larian are supporting Windows 7, given that it is EOL.

Than again, they're supporting OSX and Linux. According to the Steam hardware survey, which is a sufficient statistical analog for market share for gamers, there are more users running Windows 7 than OSX and Linux combined so I guess it does make sense.

At some point though they really should leave Win 7 in the past, it is likely why they support DirectX 11 instead of 12. Which means new DirectX 12 Ultimate features won't be on the table, for now.


https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Win 7 x64: 4.48%
Win 7 x86: 0.23%
------------------------
Total: 4.71%

OSX: 3.46%
Linux: 0.94%
------------------
Total: 4.40%

I'm happy that Larian is supporting low end machines and operating systems without integrated spyware. Even though I'm running win 10 because I need the drivers I'll be curious to see if the game runs on my old laptop when complete.

What? Windows 7 hasn't expired at all, Microsoft is still supporting it through some programs, and is still issuing updates (at least for Pro versions). I'll keep it as long as I can, to avoid all the bloat and nonsense they added in Windows 10 (though it has some nice features too).

Anyway, the startup problem is also happening on Pro versions of Windows 10 from what I read in the forums.

I'm not sure if this in intentional, but my copy of BG3 on gog had to effectively do a full reinstallation to download this update.

That's what I had to do for the 2 previous updates as well. You may contact the support at GOG, they are pretty responsive. I described the multiple update failures in the recent updates, and they indicated which logs to show them should that happen again. I also have to re-install everything because the last "update" corrupted the installation yet again, and for now I'll save the bandwidth, we are in lockdown and other people than me need the bandwidth.

What's even more annoying is the fact any update or installation requires another 80+ GB of free space on the same disk. My SSD has some free space, but for reasonable update procedures, not something like that. If at least we could have the temporary files stored on another disk, it would help a lot.

@ Larian, is that possible to consider this? - temporary installation files on another disk (separate directory), and if possible, a way to update without having to reinstall everything each time?

Not sure they're reading the posts though, never had a reply here. They're too busy for that.

@Redglyph The issue with the installation is known and we are aiming to fix this issue with our next patch.

Any chance that this hotfix causing causing general PC (win 10) issues? e.g., skill roll lockup during dialogs?

Make sure you enter dialogue with your player character, not a companion character and this should help with rolls not working. Verifying game files has also helped some people, too.

The patch from 10/27/20 causes the problem. There are possibilities to be able to bypass about 30%. To do this, you need to know when to roll a conviction. Before that, save the game and then again via F5.

You have the choice either to try it out or to quit the game completely. Start again and choose in the launcher Vulkan from start game and then try the dialogue. If it works well, then manually save again. and quit the game again and start again select DX 11 in the launcher and start. If everything went well the game should start running, but it can also happen that your game freezes after loading. Then check the file in Steam and try again. I use a simple rule of thumb for myself: Patch day no play day. Or, in other words, start a new game after each patch or load all important save points and save them again but do not overwrite.

The main issue i have on my very decent rig is increasing stops and freezes, that happen more often the more i play. CPU gets about 80% - 90% usage, which isnt that strange. But my ram gets to 14,5 out of 16 Gigs.
Changing any of the graphic options doesnt seem to have any effect at all. From the looks and feel of it it seems that the ram gets clogged, and then moving the camera or rotating it causes these freeze - lags. Although technically it shouldnt because the whole area im playing in is loaded. Exiting the game and starting it again removes this effect for a short while, but then it just starts happening more and more again until you get a five - six seconds freeze every two seconds. Its worse in some locations but happens everywhere. Although not so much in smaller interior locations.

Would be very nice if the future patch or fix would atleast lower this effect.

...but they haven't done anything to support low-end machines, they're just devoting resources to out-of-date operating systems.
There hasn't been a single fix or patch to address the host of issues that people at even their minimum specs are having.
The Divinity 4.0 engine is a mess.

I'm still shocked that they've decided against integrating a standard fog of war option for the environment.
People at the minimum recommended specs would see an immediate and massive improvement when the entire world isn't being pointlessly rendered for miles just for the sake of screenshots.

Although I've mostly enjoyed my ridiculously rocky experience, I'd have gotten the game refunded by now if not for the fact that I've spent 5 out of my 100+ hours of playtime just fiddling with settings to make it playable.
So as it stands, I'm stuck with a $60 pile of data that I may be able to use in a year if it's somehow optimized and sensible design decisions are made and the game truthfully adheres to its minimum specs at some point.

The problem is not in rendering the world for "miles". My rig is perfectly fine with Witcher 3 open world maps on very high settings. It just needs more optimization of how it uses ram.
Im not an expert but it seems as that well known and fairly standard issue with early releases.

I'm just drawing a comparison between D:OS2, which intelligently uses fog of war, and this game. Fog of war should at least be an option because it would help low-to-mid tier PCs tremendously. Of course they're different engines, but something tells me that optimization isn't going to somehow take the game from being an absolute monster of a resource hog making minimum specs near unplayable, to a smooth experience at something like medium settings. I really hope that I'm wrong and that the disparity in performance will dramatically improve by the time we get a full release, since I'm willing to bet that at least half of the current BG3 playerbase isn't playing on an absolute titan of a computer.

There is already a setting for how much of distant stuff the game renders. Does nothing to alleviate this particular problem. And if it is what i think it is the fog of war wouldnt help either.
It seems that the ram doesnt remove the stuff it doesnt need anymore but just keeps adding until it cant work properly. I think thats general called a memory leak, or whatever. I dont think we will need to wait for the full release to see improvements of this kind.

There's a huge difference between "a lot of detail isn't rendered far away" and "no detail is rendered because it's black, therefore adding no additional load to performance."
But I hope you're right. Maybe this muddy slideshow will improve in a year's time.