Night of Comedy - Comedy of Errors, Aurora 11 Gaming PC, MacBook Air, and embarrassing pantless moments
I was up all night last night. People who know me well know that that is not all that unusual though I've gotten better in recent months.
In January, I purchased a Dell Gaming PC, the Aurora R 11 Alienware machine with 2 TB SSD, a better than decent Geforce GTX series video card lots of ram, a pretty case, and bells and whistles to delight anyone. I spent a great deal of time choosing after carefully considering my options and budget. In the same month, I also purchased a new MacBook Air as the one I purchased in 2012 was getting low on HD space.
I am not one of those people who loves a PC or loves a Mac and hates the other (and to be honest, that whole rivalry has always confused me since both machines are made by giant corporate entities whose only goal is to get us to spend money but hey some people like being fan boys or fan girls I suppose).
I wanted the gaming PC for gaming, obviously. The MacBok Air was purchased for writing, obviously. It runs all day without having to be charged is light weight, and therefore easy to carry to the great indie coffeeshop a block away, and best of all, I don't have to worry about viruses and other AI bugs.
In March, I purchased a game on Steam called "Baldur's Gate 3." I became addicted and really love that game. It's made by Larian, the same folks who created DOS 1 and DOS 2 or Divinity, Original Sin for the few uninitiated.
My friend Charles and I both got new gaming pcs within a week of each other and sometimes played together when our schedules worked out that way. Most of the time though, we were competing. I remember him telling me about the hag to the left of the goblin village for the first time. But I got to tell him about the sword I found beneath the Ruined Temple. I confess, he is usually way ahead of me. He is one of my DMs. But we have spent a lot more time talking on Discord about BG3 than we have about Storm King's Thunder. Baldur's Gate 3 has plenty of flaws as expected; it was issued in early release. I accepted that and worked around them.
When we heard that Patch #5 was coming out, we talked about little else. We were both excited.
The day it released, I downloaded the patch. Charles downloaded the patch. My new gaming PC crashed within about 15 minutes of launching the game. Charles' PC showed no signs of bugs or crashes whatsoever (until yesterday anyway).
Since that fateful day (you know.....that important date that patch 5 came out), I have spent what hours I could when I could, trying to figure out what was wrong with my new PC. I joined the Larian Discord and discovered that thousands and thousands of people were having similar or the same issues I was having. I wish that knowing that had made me feel better but it didn't.
I went through every suggestion made on the BG3 troubleshooting channel on their Discord and nothing worked. In fact, it seemed that things got worse. I had a friend come and take a look at my PC because he outsources work for Dell. He did discover a problem with my hard drive but said my graphics card and everything else was fine. We cloned and replaced the hard drive. I hoped that would fix the BG3 problem. I launched the game and it played perfectly for about 12 minutes before crashing. ARGH.
In the meantime, I was busy writing Summer Camp Prompts and other things. I simply didn't have much time to work towards a solution.
I got an email from Larian about a week and a half ago. The very first sentence of the email explained to me that Steam was at fault and told me how I could play patch 4 in Beta.
For the first time in two weeks, I would have a free day to work on my addiction problem yesterday. Only I didn't because I had unexpected though welcome company. As soon as my welcome company left, I headed to my gaming/crafting room upstairs. Aaaack, my D&D game would begin in -5 minutes. I ran downstairs and brought my Macbook Air to play D&D on.
After a delightful game of Storm King's Thunder (I got a bag of holding, yay!), I decided to download patch 5 for my MacBook just to see what would happen. It downloaded very quickly, much more quickly than the PC had so I was sure that it wouldn't work.
I made trips up and down the stairs to gather possibly needed things. I wanted to use a mouse if BG3 actually worked on the MacBook. I could see that the mouse was somewhere nearby on the bluetooth screen. I ran back downstairs, searching and miraculously found it within 30 minutes. I also grabbed an adapter for a corded mouse just in case.i In the meantime, I realized I might as well bring my MacBook's headset upstairs too. I gathered things together to carry upstairs and the adapter was nowhere to be seen. I spent 30 minutes searching for the thing that was in my hand five minutes before. Finally I found where it had fallen out of my pocket into a shadowy and remote corner on the floor.
I ran upstairs carrying a bag of things while fantasizing about actually having a bag of holding like the one I had been lucky enough to get whilst playing SKT. I got upstairs and realized I needed batteries for the mouse. No problem. I came downstairs and found more things I might need and began my uphill climb again. My pants fell down. I am not kidding. My arms and hands were full of tech things plus a sports drink to keep me hydrated but I was frozen midway up the stairs with my pants around my ankles.
I carefully began placing drinks, objects, small adapters, cords, batteries and a sewing thing I also had meant to bring to the game/crafts room on one of the steps and pulled my pants up feeling very foolish. Then the batteries rolled down the steps to the bottom. My cat decided that would be a good moment to stretch herself out to her full capacity on the step just below where I had lain all my things when my pants deserted me.
By the time I had all the accoutrements I thought I might need for my great experiment, complete with pants and sports drink, I was sweating and panting. Then I started laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.
Recovering, I didn't know where to start now that I had everything Nasa might need to run a simple computer. Typicallhy, when I start a Steam session on my PC, I almost always reboot the PC because a certain incredibly brilliant ten year old in my home loves Roblox, mods, Minecraft, mods, and Tik Tok. I wanted all the ram you see even though I had plenty. For some reason, this habit did not holdover to my interaction with my MacBook Air. After all, I usually only use it for writing, D&D, and Discord. I haven't rebooted the lightweight thing in about two weeks. But by the time BG3 had started, there was no stopping me. I wouldn't go back and close out FireFox with Roll20, D&D Beyond, and World Anvil all open. I left Discord open, what could it hurt? And of course Pages and iBooks author are always open. It was with great trepidation that I hit launchpad so I could tweak the mouse settings a wee bit.
The game was still running. It hadn't crashed so I was off and running. But the screen is so tiny.
I had to find a solution. I thought about projecting to the Dell Gaming Monitor but it seemed that Dell was well in favor of sharing things to my innocent tiny Macbook Air but all too willing to project to the MacBook Air but was passive-aggressively unwilling to let my MacBook air project to its screen.
Finger shaking, I hit launchpad again, fingers mentally crossed, to see what could be done when I saw that I could mirror my screen to the TV through the Roku Stick. I had never done that before. Yes, I've mirrored YouTube videos from my MacBook to another TV using the Mirror app but this was different. This was a **game**. A big game, a big game that my fancy gaming PC can't run even though it was bred for it like the finest bluegrass bred Kentucky colt whose only job in life was to run around a circle fast while people wearing fancy hats and getting drunk while losing money celebrated.
I figured I might as well try because the odds of my being able to play the patch 5 BG3 game on my MacBook was an iffy proposition in the first place.
Only it wasn't. I played for 6 hours straight. I kept expecting it to crash. Roku passed out well before my Macbook was phased. I continued to play BG3 with the screen 3 inches from my face. There's no way I will have caught up to Charles in one night. And the truth is, I am earnest in my hope that Larian fixes the problem they blame Steam for.
It was worth staying up all night, ignoring friends who messaged me (sorry guys) and getting my BG3 fix in after what surely has to be nearly two weeks. I didn't even notice the sun had risen into a position a couple of hours above the horizon. I only quit playing when my MacBook Air got a little hot on the bottom. I had been checking it throughut the night, having some idea of where the CPU is located. I saved the game, closed out Steam, looked longingly at my Aurora R11 Alienware high powered graphics driven gaming PC. You might say I had a moment.
Closing the door to the favorite room in my house, I balanced my small computer, mouse, many unnecessary accoutrements, sports drink, batteries, to carry my MacBook air, all the little accoutrements I thought I might need but didn't, the rest of the sports drink, and of course my phone and made my way down the stairs one last time.
I was pensive. I just want to play Baldur's Gate 3 on the gaming PC where it belongs and keep my MacBook right next to me 24 hours a day where it belongs. Slightly sad but with a strange feeling of accomplishment, I made my way downstairs one last time. Halfway down, as my cat stared accusingly at me from his perch upon the cat tree, my pants slid to my ankles again.
Did I mention it had taken me a good two hours to discover that some witless person had turned the switch to the bottom half of all the electrical sockets in the room, the light switch that has no purpose as there is no light in the ceiling. It's a wicked invention by electricians as far back as the 1970s to ruin all our lives. A light switch in every room that doesn't have a ceiling light. A light switch that simply stops the power to the bottom half of every electrical outlet to ruin your appliances and bring you one moment closer to a stroke.
Here is what my gaming set up used to look like:
Before Larian released Patch 5 and I, along with hundreds of thousands of other players repeatedly experienced a crash with the following error:
One has no choice other than to click "Okay." And when one clicks "OK," one cries. It has become a rite of passage.
Here is what my gaming crafts room looks like in general. The crafts part of the room keeps shrinking.
And then finally, after stair stepping, pants falling to the ground, losing important pieces of computer necessities, carting two different mouses just in case up the steps, ad nauseum, here is what my new gaming set up looks like. Just remember, it's only for Larian's BG3. All other Steam games and a massively overseeded Minecraft game work just fine on my poor beleagured PC. If you look closer, you can see the little adapter that kept hiding in corners.
IIf, by some miracle, you have read this far, you may as well read the email Larian sent me. It couldn't have been more humorous had they hired a comedian. You might enjoy it. I did. Until my eyes glazed over. If you're a completist, you will want to read it so here it is for posterity:
Steam is responsible for the install and update process. We are looking in to crash reports, and a hotfix is being prepared. To revert to a previous version, in the Steam library right click on the game and select Properties, switch to the Beta section and then in the dropdown list select the patch 4 beta. On Wed, 21 Jul at 2:10 AM , Kato wrote: How can I go back to patch 4? Sent from my iPhone On Jul 15, 2021, at 10:47 PM, BG3 Support wrote: Are you shutting down all non-essential programs (especially anti-virus) before starting the game? Try verifying local files: in the Steam library, right click on the game and select Properties, switch to the Local Files tab and then click on the 'Verify Integrity of Game Files...' button. Try exiting out of the Steam client and starting the game directly from the '..\SteamApps\common\Baldurs Gate 3\bin' folder, by right clicking the executable (bg3.exe for Vulkan, or bg3_dx11.exe) and running as administrator. Try right clicking the executable, select Properties, switch to the Compatibility tab and check off the 'Override high DPI scaling behavior' option (set it to Application), run as administrator and disable fullscreen optimization, and maybe set a Win 7 or 8 compatibility mode. In Windows 7, check off the option to 'Disable display scaling on high DPI settings', disable desktop composition and run as administrator. Try right clicking and holding on the bg3_dx11.exe executable, then hold Shift down, release the right mouse button and select Run as administrator, continuing to hold Shift until the splash screen comes up. Holding Shift prevents the game from taking focus when loading, and can avoid certain resolution or DirectX/Vulkan issues. Holding Shift when starting the game from the launcher may do the same thing. If you are using a program such as Process Lasso to adjust the core affinity for games (for example to have games and system processes run on different cores), try disabling it to restore the default (all cores). One person reported a conflict with Process Lasso's 'core engine' being on, even with the settings for the game restored to default. If you check the Event Viewer, does that give an error code or 'Faulting Module' file name that might help identify the cause of the crash?There was no prompt for me to write for Autauga today but I write every single day. This is what was on my mind. In Kato's words.click Start (or WinKey-R), then type "event viewer" into the search box. in Windows 10, 'event' should bring up 'View event logs'. after starting the Event Viewer, expand 'Windows Logs' in the left column and select 'Application' in the center column, look for a recent error for the game (maybe sort by Date and Time, or search for 'bg3') check the information under the 'General' tab below the list of events, starting with "Faulting application name..." If applicable, disable Steam cloud support either globally (in the client click on the Steam menu and select Settings, and then Cloud) or just for this game (in the library right click BG3 and select Properties, then switch to the General tab and check the Steam Cloud section). Alternately, exit out of the Steam client and just start the game directly from the executable when required. This would probably be safer to try getting the game running, without risking Steam redownloading anything. Next, try browsing to the '..\Documents\Larian Studios' folder and rename the 'Baldur's Gate 3' subfolder. This folder contains the saved games, configuration files and a level cache folder. Deleting or renaming it will get the game to recreate it on startup; playing the game from a different Windows user account would effectively do the same thing. With Steam running and cloud support enabled, the client would just download the cloud copy of your existing profile. After that, see if you can start the game. If so, create a new profile and maybe check that you can start a new game and save/load. If not, delete the new Documents BG3 folder and extract the replacement folder from the download below into your '..\Documents\Larian Studios' folder, to see if that will let you start the game. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jhv4qoopmmo1qeq/bg3_doc_41826359.zip?dl=1 The graphicSettings.lsx file is set to 1280x720 Windowed mode, Very Low quality preset and low audio quality, which you can change in the options (manually, or hit autodetect) if this gets the game working (as well as optionally create a new profile). If the game still crashes, delete the replacement Documents BG3 folder and (if you have any saves from previous versions that you wish to keep) rename the original back again. Try doing a clean boot and then test the game. Click Start, or hit WinKey-R, type in msconfig and hit enter; in the General tab, click Selective Startup, uncheck Load startup items (if required) and leave Load system services and Use original boot configuration options checked. Next, click on the Services tab, check the box to Hide all Microsoft services, then click the Disable All button (maybe make a note of which are currently enabled/disabled), then click OK and reboot the computer. Run msconfig again to switch back to the normal boot configuration. If that doesn't help with the startup crash, please reply with a dxdiag report (WinKey-R, type in dxdiag and hit enter, then when it finishes loading click on the 'Save All Information...' button and save the report somewhere handy). Also check the '..\Baldurs Gate 3\bin' folder for the gold.log file, and if there are any CrashDump files being created there (or in '..\bin\db\attachments'), zip a few together to include. If getting the game running from the executable doesn't fix the problem with Steam's download loop: In the client, in the Steam menu select Settings, then Downloads, and try changing your Download Region. Try logging out of Steam, exit the client, reboot, start Steam again, log in, and see if that helps. Try 'clearing the download cache' and reboot your computer (in Steam, Settings, Downloads section). https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3134-TIAL-4638 Try checking your drive for errors. In Windows Explorer, right click the drive and select Properties, switch to the Tools tab and click Check Now in the Error-checking section. Make sure you have enough free drive space to install the update (twice the download size). That should be fine if Steam lists the game as installed, though. If required, a program such as WizTree could help track down files and folders taking up the most space, some of which you may be able to delete or move to a different drive, etc, to free up more space. https://wiztreefree.com/about Try exiting out of the Steam client, then browse to the SteamApps folder where the game is being installed and delete the contents of the 'downloading' folder. Right click on the Steam shortcut and run it as administrator and try installing the game again. If nothing else helps, you should at least be able to uninstall the game, and try a clean install (before deleting, right click the game in the Steam library, select Properties, switch to Local Files and select 'Browse Local Files...', then after uninstalling the game, make sure that folder is removed or empty).
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