Well, after 3 months of talking about it and then 2 months of actually coding it and testing it with the help of many people, I've finally decided to reveal BG1Tutu.
So, what is BG1Tutu?
Well, it's an automatic converter much like IWG2 that takes the resources from either a straight BG1 install or a BG1 + TotSC install on your computer and converts it into the BGII or BGII + ToB engine.
We've already squashed quite a few of the bugs during about six weeks of alpha testing, so the game is quite playable.
I've finished the game myself and everything seems fine thus far.
However, with a project of this scope and size, bugs will obviously come about sooner or later, but I'm confident that most of them will be easily fixable.
For this reason, I'm considering this stage to be beta. With any luck, within a month or so we'll be able to push it up to final.
But, enough of the boring details.
Please make sure you read the
Readme thoroughly before running BG1Tutu.
For those of you who don't read Readme's, here are the installation and uninstallation instructions taken straight from the Readme:
Installing1) If you haven't already, perform a Full Install of BG1. This could mean BG1, BG1 plus TotSC, or BG: The Original Saga, depending on what you've bought.
2) Apply the BG1 patch from Bioware *only* if you do not have BG: The Original Saga.
3) If you haven't already, perform a Recommended or Full install of BG2. Throne of Bhaal is supported but not required.
4) Depending on what you have installed, apply the BG2 patch or ToB Patch from Bioware.
5) Extract bg1tutu_v(x).exe to your BGII directory.
6) Open up the file called “configuration” using your text editor of choice (Notepad, Wordpad, PFE, etc.) which will be inside the bg1tutu directory located in your BGII directory.
7) Change the source path to your BG directory and the target path to your BGII directory.
Install any BG1 mods/upgrades that you will want to use in your BG1 directory.
Note: Most WeiDU based mods *should* convert correctly, however, I strongly recommend *not* installing DSotSC until it’s WeiDU conversion has been completed.
9) Double-click bg1tutu.exe (it will be in your BGII directory) and let it run. Depending on the speed of your computer, it can take anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes for the conversion to complete.
10) If you want BG music, copy BG’s music folder into your BGII directory. (Make sure to rename BGII’s music folder to something else first so that you don’t overwrite BGII’s music.)
11) If you downloaded Sim’s alternate start screens, make sure you extract the archive to your BGII override folder.
12) Play BG using BGII’s engine!
Uninstalling (Reverting back to BGII)1) Make sure that you have a final save in your save directory.
2) Double-click bg1tutu_restore.exe and let it run.
3) Load up BGII and load the “bg1tutu-transition” save. You will have your PC from the start of the game.
4) If you decided to use BG music, make sure you rename your BGII music directory back to “music”.
5) Play BGII as normal.
For screenshots, source code and the actual archive, visit
http://www.pocketplane.net/tutu.
Finally, I'd like to thank Wes Weimer for coding IWG2 and giving people like me something to build off. Without the IWG2 code, this project would still be in the concept phase.