This is for people running win7x64 who want to play BG1 with the BG2 engine. If you have installed GoG's BG1 & BG2 & you have run the EasyTutu mod to create a new version of BG1, you may need this tip.

In the tutu version of BG1, I found that if the game was setup to use 32-bit textures in baldur.ini:

16bit textures=0

then unfortunately I could not run the game with 32-bit textures enabled because the game would boot to a screen 1/4 the size of the full screen, with the remainder of the UI and game running off screen and unreachable! Setting BG1Tutu to use 16 bit textures, however:

16bit textures=1

solved the problem! Game ran fine after that. But I wasn't satisfied--had to run the game with 32-bit textures--before I would be. Long story short, it was the very last thing I tried that solved the issue for me. Of course it was so-o-o-o-o-o-oooo simple!:

*Turn off Windows 7 aero

That's it. Now I can run the game with 32-bit textures. Evidently, BG1Tutu w/32-bit textures wants to occupy the same area of ram that the aero desktop seizes for itself. BTW, it didn't matter which mods I had installed, the situation occurs with or without mods on my system w/8 gigs of ram installed. Strange but true.

Pretty much another tip for everyone running the BG2 engine: turn off triple buffering! Game looks a real mess if you don't.

It's kind of idiotic the way Microsoft states to turn off aero--you can do it only by loading the Windows Basic theme or the handicapped themes. Just turning off the transparency in your regular aero desktop taskbar does not, unfortunately, turn off the aero desktop. If I knew of a way to turn off aero other than loading in a non-aero theme I've forgotten it...;)

Edit: I remembered with a little help from Bing:

Just stop and then permanently disable the "Desktop Windows Manager Session Manager" service and boom--you no longer have aero to contend with and you can use any theme you like--aero is gone! No loss--Microsoft removed it entirely from Windows 8, interestingly enough.

Useful tip though it isn't a given you'll experience this. I have mine set to use 32bit textures on Win7 64bit after installing the EasyTuTu mod without any off-screen or sizing issues... but then maybe the additional widescreen mod rectified the problem without me knowing about it. I never had to turn off Aero.

Heh...;) I posted that nearly two years ago...! Seemed relevant then...now I'm running 8.1x64 (sans Metro, of course), and haven't thought about Aero in quite sometime....IIRC, that was about the only time I ever had to turn off Aero, though. Yes, could be that the updated wide-screen mod did it, or else Microsoft fixed that problem in a subsequent patch. I enjoyed the memory. Thanks!

I'm a little behind the curve in playing this game :)