Ding0's Chronicles of Mod

[SimDing0™]

Ding0's Chronicles of Mod

Within these pages, I shall chronicle my experiences with the Big Picture and Baldur's Gate Trilogy. I thought I'd try it out with as many mods as possible. Expect no detail omitted.


The Preparation

So there I sat, with over 2GB of files downloaded from TheWizard's FTP and a fresh new BG2 installation. Having discovered during a casual browse of the forums, much to my horror, that the version of Tortured Souls I'd downloaded was actually too new, I quickly grabbed a hundred or so more MBs, and seemed set to go.

Except I still didn't have all the files listed in one of the many readmes I encountered: it seemed that my Tortured Souls was still 0.01 versions too new, for example. Nevertheless, I decided to take my chances and hope that the autoinstaller would be satisfied with some filenames differing slightly from those listed in the instructions.

The next thing to do seemed to be to set up a BG1 installation in C:\baldur. Rather a restrictive requirement, but who was I to argue? I had disk space to burn.


The Installation

I began the actual mod setup by extracting BGT MK3, as instructed. The installer was functional, if unregistered. 9277 files unzipped successfully! I decided to give it a break, and go to bed. Such an installation process is not a one-evening job, it seems.

Next task was to unzip 8 or so files in various places in my BG2 directory. With this done, my excitement grew as I neared running the autoinstaller. No, false alarm. I seemed to have the NP-BGT-NeJ v3.13 patch instead of the 3.10 installer that I needed. Said installer was nowhere to be found on the FTP from which I'd downloaded the rest of the files.

I faithfully returned to the forum, and switched to another, apparently more recent, install guide, which confirmed my earlier hope that 0.01 versions would not make a difference to TS's installation. However, it still demanded the BP-BGT-NeJ 3.10 installer, which didn't seem to be around. Checking the BlackWyrm mirror didn't reveal anything, and the third mirror to which I encountered links just didn't work at all, so I searched the forum for the filename. Unfortunately, the FW forums were running ridiculously slowly (something to do with CivFanatics, I'm often told), so I made breakfast as I waited.

Aha, success! The forum search revealed that the 3.10 installer should be packaged within the 3.13 archive. Except it wasn't. By this point, serious frustration was beginning to set in. The install process had been laughable from the start, but trying to follow it now was downright horrific. It should be noted at this stage that I installed the Big Picture once before, and rather ironically, the installation was actually far easier back then. Presumably it's become progressively worse since I last indulged myself.

A post on the forum quickly set me on the right track, thanks to Sir BillyBob's swift reply. It turned out the file I was looking for was in fact in BP-BGTv311.exe. Now I was really getting somewhere. I ran the filechecker, and all the files on the list were highlighted in bright read. I could only presume this meant they WERE correct, contrary to what I'd have expected.

So I double-clicked "Fixed-BP-BGT-NEJ-310-COMPLETE.exe", and hoped.

The installer told me to ensure that some file was in my destination directory. It wasn't, and the instructions hadn't mentioned it, so I presumed it'd work anyway. Shadows Over Soubar and The Darkest Day were installed, then the BP-BGT-NeJ installer exploded into action itself. Then, finally, the BGT installer popped up. As the info scrolled past, I went to get some lunch.

When I returned, the TDD desktop icon loomed menacingly at me. So I deleted it. The Soubar icon did not loom menacingly, because it didn't have a working one.

At this stage, BGT was unpacking the tilesets. The time it took led me to appreciate just how quickly Tutu's conversion runs. In spite of the fact that you spend a far longer time downloading the resources, BGT is actually slower to install them than Tutu as well.

Eventually, a starting XP patcher popped up, asking me to point it to BGMain. I did so. It promptly crashed. The NeJ installer then appeared, and I casually installed all components. Oops. Big mistake. It turned out that Setup-BP-BGT.exe should have been run first, but the installer hadn't accounted for WeiDU's auto-update procedure. Since I'd now installed two things in the wrong order, I really had to start hoping that I wouldn't have to start over again.

After NeJ was installed, I went back to running Setup-BP-BGT.exe, hoping it'd work anyway. A stream of parse errors flowed past, but I'd already learned that this was quite normal for these mods, and no indication of whether it was actually working.

Then the installation failed. Silly me, thinking I didn't need my "script compiler" directory because the game didn't use it. The BP-BGT installation certainly did. I created a new directory, and used WeiDU's handy ability to reinstall immediately. And yes, success at last! I returned to the original installer's path, which was now prompting me to install BP-NeJ.

"All installed", the BP-BGT-NeJ installer told me. Then it installed a few more things. And some more. For 20 minutes or so. For some reason, during this time, it actually started compressing TISes to TIZ format. Then it appeared to decompress them again. It seemed best not to question what was going on though.

I decided to have a quick browse through the installation instructions while I was doing it. Yes, there was a looming warning about it not working properly with WeiDU's update function. That'll teach me for expecting an autoinstaller to be automatic. While I was reading, it quietly finished. Having learned my lesson for not following the instructions to the letter, I made the INI change they suggested, deleted weidu.log, and ran the v3.13 patch. The patch, at least, was quick and painless. Except for the errors during install.

I ran the game, and to my astonishment, it worked!


BP-BGT-NeJ Installation - Summary

• Huge amounts to download; I was only able to find 1 reliable source with a decent download speed.
• Complex, and often confusing install procedure. Multiple installation guides, some of which are outdated, is not helpful. There needs to be a single guide, which is kept up to date as new mod versions appear.
• Somebody needs to examine all the files on the FTP and ensure that they're correctly and intuitively named. Placing them all in the same folder would also be a helpful step, because I have to venture into both BP-NeJ and BP-BGT as it is anyway.
• Extremely slow installation procedure, for BGT especially. I was anticipating a quicker install than Tutu, due to the downloaded content, but it was in fact many times longer.
• Intimidating desktop icons.

[/i]

[jester]

q.e.d.

[SimDing0™]

The Installation Part II

And so, I wanted as many mods as possible now. Firstly, I installed the oddly named "s and h" patch for BP. Then, I faced the challenge of figuring out which order CtB, DSotSC, NTotSC and BG1NPC were meant to be installed.

Again, I found some handy step-by-step instructions posted on the forum, which led me to yet another install guide. I seemed to need some BAT file to prepare my install for Check the Bodies. Seemed I was missing a file again: I'd downloaded CtB4BGT-BPv2, which in fact both v1 and v2 were required. Back to the FTP.

I extracted and ran the BAT. It did... something. Next, I tried installing CtB. Except the installer gave me a parse error at line 3000-and-something. I fix the unforgivable typo in the TP2. Another error appears at line 8000ish, so I fix that too. Finally it installs, and I'm left hoping I've done it right. However, as much as I might have hoped it'd work, the installer errored out and rolled back on what appeared to be an attempt to copy an item from the translation directory. I QUITTED EXTREMELY CALMLY, and ventured back to the forum, where I discovered a replacement TP2 to put in the game directory. Finally, I managed to get it working, with only one crash the whole time.

Next, I install the BG1 NPC Project. This was painless and worked first time with no errors, in stark contrast to pretty much everything else I'd had to do.

After the brief breather with an installer that worked properly, I moved on to DSotSC. It's a bit of a mystery to me why this version is over 200MB compressed, while the original on TeamBG was around 30MB. As usual, the installer spewed errors everywhere, but worked successfully nonetheless.

Having done that, I had to, uh, run the CtB-BGT installer again. It was then time to move on to the mods which were listed as "BP APPROVED". Or not, because the list was grossly outdated. So, I just tried installing as much as possible. Following is the list of mods I added on, with notes on their installation procedures for comparison:

The Grey Clan - Installed flawlessly.
Unfinished Business - Installed flawlessly except for "Restored Character Names and Biographies". For whatever reason, I guess this component must be incompatible with BP-BGT-NeJ-whatever.
NTotSC - Worked, with the usual few parse errors.
Kelsey SoA and ToB - Installed flawlessly.
Keto - Installed flawlessly until it encountered a dialogue that one of the earlier mods changed, at which point it failed.
Flirt Packs - Came packaged with such an old version of WeiDU that it failed because the TLK was too large. After auto-updating, it installed flawlessly.
Banter Packs - Installed flawlessly.
Freedom's Reign & Reign of Virtue - Installed flawlessly.
Rogue Rebalancing - Installed flawlessly.
Tactics - Installed flawlessly.
Improved Battles - Installed flawlessly.
Edwin Romance SoA and ToB - Installed flawlessly.
Hubelpot - Installed flawlessly.
Imoen Romance - Installed flawlessly.
Longer Road - Installed flawlessly.
Solaufein - Installed flawlessly.
Valen - Installed flawlessly.
Underrepresented Items - Installed flawlessly.
Item Upgrade - Installed flawlessly.
Ajoc's Minimod - Installed with a few parse errors.
Chloe - Installed flawlessly.
Corthala Romantique - Installed flawlessly.
Kindrek - Installed flawlessly.
Kitanya - Installed flawlessly.
Kivan - Installed flawlessly.
Kiara-Zaiya - Installed flawlessly.
Silver Star - Installed flawlessly.
Tsujatha - Installed flawlessly.
Yasraena - Installed flawlessly.
Tashia - Installed flawlessly.
Planar Sphere Expansion - Installed flawlessly.
Desecration of Souls - Installed flawlessly.
Crossmod Banter Pack - Installed flawlessly.
G3 Anniversary Mod - Installed flawlessly.
Ruad - Installed flawlessly.
PnP Celestials - Installed flawlessly.
Oversight - Installed flawlessly.
G3 Tweak Pack - Installed flawlessly.
D0Tweak - Installed flawlessly.
Improved Oasis II - Installed flawlessly.

As we can see, the general trend is a ridiculously overcomplicated installation procedure for the core BP-BGT-NeJ-CtB-DSotSC part, while the later mods are better designed, installing easily.

At this stage, my game folder was 13GB in size, containing 55,345 files. It was now time to play. The game crashed. As far as I can think, a crash at this stage could only be caused by a BIF-altering mod. I'm looking at you, CtB.

Extended Installation - Summary

• The BP-BGT-NeJ-CtB-DSotSC-BG1NPC setup procedure is hilarious, but as far as installing mods goes, its an unacceptable joke. Whether it works in the end or not, something of this quality is unfit for public consumption. I found the BP-BGT-NeJ procedure frustrating, and I really didn't imagine it could actually get worse. Until some kind of automatic installer is worked out, I think the BP support crew should be advising people that installing anything beyond the basic BP-BGT-NeJ package isn't safe at this stage, rather than telling them what a great experience it is.
• In the state I downloaded it, CtB won't install regardless of whether it's over BP-BGT-NeJ or not. I don't know what inspires a modder to release something without testing the installation, but somebody really needs to update the package with the fixed TP2, rather than posting it in some obscure place on the forum.

[/i]

To be continued...

[Kismet]

Sounds like a horror story of epic proportions.

[Suluku]

Your woes remind me of when I first attempted to install this mega-mod 

Yes, the installer is a bit of a lash-up but it does work OK with a bit of practice. A good start is to read every post on every BP-related forum. That way you can find out before attempting an installation when new patches or BP-compatible versions of other mods came out, what bugs were found and what fixes are available. After all, this is not a commercial product     

[NiGHTMARE]

Some advice for when you next attempt to re-install: Desecration of Souls definitely isn't compatible with BP, since both add entrances to new areas in the slums and the graveyard, in the same places.

[icelus]

You forgot SoBH.  Start over, plz.

[Ghreyfain]

Would/could you try to do the same thing with Tutu?  Although you wouldn't be able to add BP to that, I think you could have one of the Big Three, right?

I wonder if the added effort of uninstalling Tutu, then installing BG2 mods would add to the confusion just as much.

[SimDing0™]

I'd think BP-Tutu would actually be possible with minimal effort, but I haven't really thought about it much.

[weimer]

I don't know what inspires a modder to release something without testing the installation, but somebody really needs to update the package with the fixed TP2, rather than posting it in some obscure place on the forum.

I can't speak for others, but I can speak as a modder who has released mods that blatantly don't install out of the box (parse errors and such). The reason for this is almost invariably carelessness on my part (read: forgot to re-run Setup-Foo after changing some file) or a failure to take interactions into account (read: forgot to re-run Setup-Foo after changing WeiDU). It has been noted that my QA procedure (read: the empty list) leaves something to be desired. For example, I just noticed when I put up a new version of Ascension-WeiDU that one of the Chinese translations had some syntax errors and could not possibly have installed correctly in the previous version.

In my case, this is the (unfortunate) result of a personal philosophy about releasing. I release early and often (well, I did in bygone eras ... let's say instead that when there are things to release I try to do it rapidly) because I want to give users immediate access to bugfixes (which is what I would want as a user). An alternative choice involves testing and quality assurance to give the users a reliable product with no rough corners (which is what non-CS people typically want).

Perhaps the CtB authors just wanted to get "something out there" for adventurous souls like yourself.

Thanks for providing the writeups. Your journal style is hilarious.

[SimDing0™]

I can't speak for others, but I can speak as a modder who has released mods that blatantly don't install out of the box (parse errors and such). The reason for this is almost invariably carelessness on my part (read: forgot to re-run Setup-Foo after changing some file) or a failure to take interactions into account (read: forgot to re-run Setup-Foo after changing WeiDU).

I think there's a distinction to be made between finding that a release doesn't work and quickly updating, and having users manually update the installer if they're lucky enough to download the more recent file. Having said that, yes, there's also a fair difference between updating Ease of Use and updating several hundred MBs of uncompressed tilesets, so maybe I've been a little harsh on CtB here.

Thanks for providing the writeups. Your journal style is hilarious.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. And hey, don't normally see you round here.

[Ashara]

Sim, I know it sounds odd, but after and if you manage to install it correctly, do you think you will be able to actually play it? I mean... DSoSC and Kivan, TS and CR... they are logically incompatible.

[NiGHTMARE]

How come DSotSC and Kivan are incompatible?

EDIT: oh, you probably meant TDD, right? You should do what I've done with my Kivan mod, and have a component which checks for the TDD Kivan and removes him if found .

[Sir BillyBob]

DSotSC is large because I had included each tileset to the mod (many so I could work on them as needed).  Now that the mod is stable, I have a new version that is only 63MB.  Only three large maps are in the package and 2 small areas.  Everything else will point back to the original areas from BG1.  There are also three areas from BGT that have to be renamed due to incompatibility with CtB.  DSotSC will now be a single download and includes the files needed to make it compatible with CtB and also a file to biff the DSotSC files (thus increasing game performance).  Less downloading and less mods to download!

[Da_venom]

i'm dissapointed sim, couldn't u at least find some more mods to install?

it's just the work of a maniac too install many mods...

only means more corruptable files and errors, bugs

but nice try anyway

[the bigg]

At this stage, my game folder was 13GB in size, containing 55,345 files. It was now time to play. The game crashed. As far as I can think, a crash at this stage could only be caused by a BIF-altering mod. I'm looking at you, CtB.

Try looking at the musilist.2da's lenght. yours is probably too big.

[Ashara]

How come DSotSC and Kivan are incompatible?

EDIT: oh, you probably meant TDD, right? You should do what I've done with my Kivan mod, and have a component which checks for the TDD Kivan and removes him if found .

Er... yes, TDD. No, I will not remove anything from anyone elses' mod. I just want to make Kivan's mod. I target the audience that does not load every mod under the sun on their system to see what happens, but those who does want Kivan of Shilmista mod in particular.

[EarthquakeDamage]

Provided you get the game to run at all, with hupteen zillion GB of files it'll run horribly.  If you haven't already, you should biffing everything into 45-50 MB chunks using Weidu.

[AnnabelleRose]

This has been rather enjoyable Sim. I love your style or writing and observations.

[SimDing0™]

Baldur's Gate Trilogy

So with new resolve, I approached BGT alone. The installation of this actually isn't bad. It's annoyingly slow, but works. Well, the XP patcher still crashes, but you can't have everything. I couldn't see any extra patches or anything just looking at the forum, since everything seemed to be for BP-BGT, which I wasn't interested in right now.

When you click to start Baldur's Gate, the message includes "*Cough* ICM sucks *Cough*". I felt that was a good start to the general experience. (For anyone who isn't aware, ICM was an old modding tool.)

Upon starting a new game, I found that I couldn't skip the opening movie, and much to my annoyance, it restarted itself when I alt-tabbed away half way through. Ah well. I seem to remember this being the case with all BG1 movies, which was very annoying. I wonder if it's possible to fix. But anyway, I digress.

Not wishing to play through the whole game, I buffed my party up a bit, CTRL+Yed Imoen because she asked me to dual class her but crashed the game when I did so, and CLUAed to the Undercity. It's worth noting that the naming convention for the areas is pretty awkward, so I had to load up NI to find the correct code.

I payed the price of CLUAing to the end battle, since I had to do a fair bit of variable setting to get it to work properly. However, following the BG1 end movie, I was faced with the trek back to the Duchal Palace. Certainly rather frustrating having just defeated Sarevok, but eh.

Upon speaking to Belt, Montaron and Xzar packed up and left, while Khalid stuck with me. Belt then made the rather odd decision to send me off to the Three Old Kegs to rest up... nice to know they're really catering for my comfort. Okay, so admittedly the Three Old Kegs is fairly classy as inns go, but c'mon, even the BG2 tutorial says you stayed at the Duchal Palace. That would've worked way better.

Having been teleported to the Three Old Kegs, I then had to go BACK to the Duchal Palace to speak to Belt again. When I got there, he told me a messenger from Ulgoth's Beard was coming. Nobody appeared. I spoke to him again. And again. And again. Then a ton of the messengers turned up. Much better.

Speaking to Belt again then teleports me to Ulgoth's Beard. Saved me a trip, at least. At this point, I should note that I find the whole concept of placing TotSC between BG1 and BG2 to be a very strange one.

Once you've gone though TotSC, the transition dialogue is short and sweet. Don't expect more than one dialogue response at any point during it. Belt tells you the Shadow Thieves have been spreading rumours among the nobles, who want you gone, and then that's it... you're teleported away.

Having been sent away, you appear in the midst of some trees. All your old party members come back to you (it seems fairly odd to be expected to do TotSC without them, incidentally), and it quickly advances to darkness. Guess who pops up? Mae'Var!

Apparently Mae'Var's after me, and everyone else is "unconsequencial". Unfortunately according to the dialogue, the thieves he's brought with him can't make out what's going on in the dark, and Mae'Var doesn't really care what's happening at all. Setting aside the decision to have Mae'Var himself turn up to kidnap you, this is not the masterfully planned attack we'd expect from our favourite Shadowmaster. It would have worked better to have some anonymous attackers take you swiftly, or indeed to dispense with the cutscene completely.

"Qui-t f-ol!  -o -ot s--ak my --ame" says Mae'Var as you fall into slumber with a million hostile Shadow Thieves around you. Unfortunately, the effect of this line is lost somewhat because the creature speaking it is clearly named "Mae'Var", which shows up in bright orange text throughout the whole encounter.

Next, everybody stands around a long time. My familiar can still move around casually, so I try attacking Mae'Var. My Fairy Dragon won't attack for whatever reason, though. Imoen, Minsc, and so on, are all green circled but haven't quite gone the full length of joining my party. I get the "talk" cursor when I move the mouse over them.

I advance time somewhat to try and figure out what's going on. Everybody wakes up, and my PC is affected by a severe stutter bug. The Shadow Thieves continue to stand doing nothing.

I reload, and try the transition agian. This time, the Shadow Thieves stand around and Khalid pipes up with his leaving line. Right...

I reload again, and CTRL+Y my familiar before trying it. Ah, this time it works. I get a load screen, then a prompt to insert the next CD. Which is odd, seeing as I have a full install with a no-CD crack. Bemused, I put the CD in. Sadly, this doesn't do anything. Nor does it when I try again with the CD in the drive from the start.

Suspicious, I edit the scripts to remove references to the BG2 movie, then restart again. This time, the transition cutscene doesn't work even without my familiar. Minsc doesn't seem to actually be asleep this time, which might explain it, and Imoen's pathfinding's gone wrong as she tries to escape the screen.

Not to let this set me back, I delete a few lines at random from the cutscene, which seems to make the transition work. And, much to my delight, removing references to the movie seems to prevent it asking for the CD.

Okay, admittedly the starting cutscene in BG2 doesn't seem to work, but it's progress. I'm then left lying in Irenicus' dungeon indefinitely. However, it's not actually in cutscene mode, but the interface is hidden. I notice that the journal entries have been erased, but my items aren't gone.

I decide to try one more time before lunch. This time it goes so horribly wrong that I don't even want to talk about it. I just want to forget that moment of my life. I'll continue this later.

Baldur's Gate Trilogy BG1/2 Transition - Summary:

• The transition's obviously very forced, as is evident from the very start when you don't get any choice at all regarding what happens in Belt's dialogue. Bugs aside, it doesn't slickly link the games, which is something I'd expect from a mod whose primary selling point is improved continuity. Were it left up to me, I'd scrap the entire Mae'Var sequence and just play the BG2 movie instead.
• The NPCs leaving and coming back is once again very forced. It's also bound to be pretty frustrating to play through TotSC when half your party's just left.
• The scripting's pretty flaky. While some of it's possibly me paying the price for CLUAing about too much, I'm confident that a good number of the issues will be there for proper players too. I don't know whether all this is fixed in the various patches/mods that cater for BP-BGT players, but is there anything out there to cater for BGT alone? I tried checking the FTP, but it's not working at the time of writing. If somebody can direct me to a patch or improvement that I've missed out on, I'll re-edit the review.
• Placing TotSC after the end of BG1 really is weird.

[/i]

[dis]

Unless you did this for your person gain (for whatever way and reason) thank you Sim. This should save me hours of torment trying to remember which mods sucked or not.

[SimDing0™]

Well. Glad you found it helpful, but I didn't mean it to come across as saying "OMFG BGT sux sooooooooo much!!!" It has its good points, but I think there's work to be done to improve it in various areas. I'd at least be interested to know if the bugs have been resolved in a patch or in BP-BGT, regardless of the story issues I raise.

[Reverendratbastard]

 but if you did secretly do this for your own personal gain, then i'm going to make sure that thanks is retracted.

[Ghreyfain]

Upon starting a new game, I found that I couldn't skip the opening movie, and much to my annoyance, it restarted itself when I alt-tabbed away half way through. Ah well. I seem to remember this being the case with all BG1 movies, which was very annoying. I wonder if it's possible to fix. But anyway, I digress.

I just realised Tutu has this problem, too.  We should check that out, one of these days.

[SimDing0™]

Somebody told me that you can only skip movies once you've seen them once (ie. when they show up on the "Movies" screen on the menu).