The "bad" startup shows all the splash screens (including the ATARI one) centered properly, and
the game will have already switched resolution to 800x600 (or whatever you have chosen).
When this happens you have no choice but to reboot. NWN will not start up if you see this sort of behaviour.
When you see a "good" startup, DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING until the movie starts.
If you press a key, or click the mouse prior to the start of the movie then
you will just end up with the blank screen syndrome or no mouse, and you'll have to kill it
with CTRL-ALT-DEL and start again.
When the intro movie starts playing, press the SPACE bar. You should see the game screen
come up, with a working mouse. The game is running successfully.
IMPORTANT! Don't let the movie play to completion, or the game will crash to desktop, and you'll
have to reboot before you can try again. Obviously the V5 has had its internal state scrambled
by something that happens at the end of the intro movie, and pressing SPACE while the movie
is playing skips past it.
That's it. Hope it works for you. It's made me very happy.
*NOTE*
I have sometimes had the game quit to desktop after showing the bioware dragon splash screen.
To fix this, try running the nwconfig.exe from the NWN directory, and make sure you press
the "scan" button and then the "test" button. It should show a blank screen and then return ok.
After accepting the suggested recolution, try running the game again as per the instructions above.
It should be ok now.
If nwconfig complains that you don't have a valid OpenGL driver installed, reboot and try again
Clearly there is some part of the V5 which is not being reliably initialised. I'm sure the correct
fix would only be a few extra lines of OpenGL / Glide startup code...
p.s. You'll have to turn off the shadows and stuff in the video config for it to be
playable, but it still looks very nice. I'd suggest you get something faster than my
1G duron though
regards, Bird
--------------------------
Notes on performance
--------------------
You need a fast system to use the V5 for this game - I guess that's because a lot of the features
are being done by the host CPU.
My initial tests were done on a system with a 1Ghz duron, and the speed was borderline
( around 10fps, sometimes lower). When I dropped the V5 into my main gaming rig (1.5Ghz athlon,
ASUS A7V333 Mb, DDR333 RAM) the framerates were fine - around 20fps and higher. To make the game
playable however, you have to run at 800x600 with the video slider set to "fast". This disables
all the environment video effects etc, but the game still looks ok without them.
I improved my performance another 20% or so by playing with the 3dfx control panel, enabling
HSR, mip mapping, triple-buffering etc. It's worth experimenting a bit to see what you can get.
By comparison, my main gaming rig usually has a GF4-4600, and with the game running at 1152x864
with all video options enabled, I get around 20 - 30 fps. Sure it looks better, but IMHO the
game is just as playable on either card PROVIDED YOU HAVE A FAST MACHINE. Don't bother trying
to play this on a p2-400 if you have a Voodoo5
As said, I have no Idea if this helps with a Banshee as well. If it works, don't expect good performance
(when Using WinXP, BansheeDriver's Drivers should carry the most modern OpenGL components)
This needs to be extracted from the Driver if needed, as this modified Version is not in my Archive by itself. (If needed I can send it)
Experimenting with various Versions as found here in the 3dfx Archive might help as well...
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