17 replies to this topic

[Icendoan]

We can get multiple BG2 installs already. I have 3 myself. Jarno has something like 10.

WeiDU is more than dynamic enough, and I don't really see what this has to add. Also, if it makes it need to registry/cd, it would change the executable, which some mods rely on changing (WideScreen Mod, in particular).

We have no CD cracks, we have WeiDU. We have patched backups available. Everything else is pretty simple, and the energy put into this wouldn't work in the long run.

A torrent of a BWP install (EXE, override and Dialog.tlk, chitin.key, as well as all mods) would be useful, however.

Icen

[SConrad]

A torrent of a BWP install (EXE, override and Dialog.tlk, chitin.key, as well as all mods) would be useful, however.

Probably not going to happen, and if it does, it'll get beaten into a bloody pulp and will never get any endorsements or publicity on the forums. Legal issues about spreading the executable aside, modders simply won't allow it.

I don't think the idea of a "portable install" is a good idea; what I said above being one of the reasons. There are plenty of tools and resources available for anyone to be able to make backups, multiple installs and so on, so I don't really see the point in spending the time to do it.

Also, talk about no-cd cracks is prohibited on SHS.

[vilkacis]

...and it doesn't really fit in ideas either, so moved to... uh... *rolls dice* ...modding discussion.

[the bigg]

WSM doesn't patch the register, and in V2 doesn't patch the INI either.

modders simply won't allow it

<Insert stream of insults and accusations of hypocrisy>.

Spoiler

Using Wikipedia for looking up the exact spelling of hypocrisy rocks

Edited by the bigg, 01 February 2009 - 05:43 AM.

[Jarno Mikkola]

We can get multiple BG2 installs already. I have 3 myself. Jarno has something like 10.

You do this by first installing the game, it's extension(ToB) and patching it(to 26498). Then you copy it to an other directory(or drive) and edit with text editor(notepad) the baldur.ini so the [Alias]-es are directed to the right positions, and start the game from the BGMain.exe, not from the baldur.exe .

[the bigg]

Hm, those guys offer a torrent of the full portable games, rather than simply offering instructions on how to make the portable things yourself... I guess they won't last long.

Also, the BG1/TotSC they offer ships with 5521 and all games have the NoCD... I have to mentally prepare for a surge of people asking about EXE patching failed

[GeN1e]

A torrent of a BWP install (EXE, override and Dialog.tlk, chitin.key, as well as all mods) would be useful, however.

Probably not going to happen, and if it does, it'll get beaten into a bloody pulp and will never get any endorsements or publicity on the forums. Legal issues about spreading the executable aside, modders simply won't allow it.

A guy called Orlangur on Aerie.ru board have built some sort of megamod package and started spreading it via torrents. Copyright issues to hell (though the thread did get closed after Vlad asked for it), his pack was and is fully of bugs and eventually it got deleted from all of trackers (so I heard). Then not too long ago it appeared again, with the 'ready and tested' in the title and guess what, now nearly every day people come to boards with 'help, I've got a bug'. Laugh or despair, I've no idea what fits better.

[Jarno Mikkola]

My real point was there shouldn't ever be bugs if the working install was seeded as torrent because if you have a working install when you make the torrent when its downloaded and put on a flashstick it should work fine unless the others pc doesn't support bg in which never was going to work. It should almost totally eliminate the need for backups ect because the person playing would never had the 6 hr frustration of trying to get it all to install only to find its flawed and having to start again. Particularly megamods cos you guys won't work together and get a proper installer together because of people who won't play together no offence to anyone but why not all just team up instead of competing and make life fun for those of us who really want new content for BG *insert insults after this post *

Well, the new content that doesn't change the old content, doesn't exist. Thus the multiple choice mods are the only to go.

Now, there is an actual project(latest link to it's forum) going that can make that all that happen... in a way... It's playable, but it's not finished, and will never be.

[SConrad]

My real point was there shouldn't ever be bugs if the working install was seeded as torrent because if you have a working install when you make the torrent when its downloaded and put on a flashstick it should work fine unless the others pc doesn't support bg in which never was going to work. It should almost totally eliminate the need for backups ect because the person playing would never had the 6 hr frustration of trying to get it all to install only to find its flawed and having to start again. Particularly megamods cos you guys won't work together and get a proper installer together because of people who won't play together no offence to anyone but why not all just team up instead of competing and make life fun for those of us who really want new content for BG *insert insults after this post *

I understand that it's easy for a player to ask why we all can't just hold hands, but it's different when you're looking at it from our perspective. There are over 600 mods in the modlist (more if you count misc mods and so forth) for the various incarnations of the BG games, and many of them having been updated in years--their authors are long gone by now. Even if we had permission from the long lost modders, it would be a daunting--if not impossible--task to juggle compatibility and installation order for all of them. Some would have to be completely recoded, others heavily altered. In most cases, we don't have permission, so the issue is moot anyway.

So it isn't because we're "competing" with each other--quite the contrary. If you or another modder point out a compability problem with my mod, I'll try to fix it, and most other (still active) modders will do the same. Just don't expect me to do it with 600+ mods that aren't mine, too.

Your idea with "working installation torrents" may sound like a good one, but the problem lies with the dynamic changing as soon as mod Foo (not to be confused with Goo) gets updated. All of a sudden, the modder has outdated versions of their mod being redistributed in the "working installation torrents" and shortly thereafter, players who have downloaded one of said torrents are going to find their way to the Foo forum and post issues and questions related to the outdated version of the mod. Believe me, nobody wants to provide support for outdated releases. And you can't just simply replace the old version with the new version, as installation order and compatibility can change between releaes.

It's also not a good idea to redistribute mod installations through torrents. Mentioned updating issues aside, torrents only really works if there are seeds, and mods will probably not garner enough traffic to take advantage of the bittorrent system--even if you keep your client open after it's completed, downloads are likely to be sporadic/occasional and I doubt many seeders (or even the original player) would seed for months at a time. Instead, you'd have to rely upon servers to superseed, which in turn would put more strain on the big community servers. Now, not only do we have to provide direct file download; we also have to seed "working mod installations" in various shapes and sizes. (Speaking of which, how many installations are we talking about? If everybody who's got a working installation are free or even meant to upload them, we're talking about dozens or maybe even hundreds of individual installations.) Running one of the busier download servers, I can say that we're quite content with our current bandwidth usage as it is.

[DavidWallace]

I understand that it's easy for a player to ask why we all can't just hold hands, but it's different when you're looking at it from our perspective. There are over 600 mods in the modlist (more if you count misc mods and so forth) for the various incarnations of the BG games, and many of them having been updated in years--their authors are long gone by now. Even if we had permission from the long lost modders, it would be a daunting--if not impossible--task to juggle compatibility and installation order for all of them. Some would have to be completely recoded, others heavily altered. In most cases, we don't have permission, so the issue is moot anyway.

So it isn't because we're "competing" with each other--quite the contrary. If you or another modder point out a compability problem with my mod, I'll try to fix it, and most other (still active) modders will do the same. Just don't expect me to do it with 600+ mods that aren't mine, too.

There are also (at a rough guess) 10¹⁰⁰⁰ different ways of combining mods and mod components into an overall install. That doesn't mean compatibility isn't achievable, but it does mean it isn't achievable in an automatic or algorithmic way.

[Isaya]

I see a major legal issue with this kind of distribution. If you want to make something that works on a stick, standalone, immediately after you downloaded it, you need to provide the game within the archive, as the guy is doing with usbgaming. He even uses a no-cd patch, if I read correctly, so that there is nothing preventing people who don't own the game to use this.

If you change your initial idea to workaround the legal issue and provide only the mods content already installed with dialog.tlk, Override directory and all other content (chitin.key, bif files, ...), you have to give instructions on how to install. That would be far easier than installing all the mods, for sure. But there is still another problem : which language do you choose when creating this huge installation? English, I assume. Then you reduce by a fair amount the number of people who might be interested.

In my opinion, it's not that bad that installating mods is a bit difficult. Because that warns a bit of other difficulties you may face while playing. Would you install a kit to your car engine if you weren't sure you could handle the installation properly? If you're not sure, then don't do it. You can still have fun with your car as it is. The same goes for the game.

On a French forum, I've seen people coming for help having installed BGT, a mod for BG2 that changes her into a swachbuckler, another one giving Imoen and Nalia a kit called Adventurer and finally Imoen Romance? Does anyone know will be the Imoen character in game after that? I'm not clueless about the Infinity Engine and modding, but I really don't know and I wouldn't take the chance to install all that if I intented to actually play the Imoen Romance.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Does anyone know, what will be the Imoen character be in game after that?

Well, in the WeiDU moding, the latest change takes presidency(at least in overwriting situation), so the dialog files will have the romance, and if the creature file has not been overwritten by the romance mod, she'll be an Adventurer. That's without my guess, as I don't have the WeiDU.logs content, or the files...

Now, one thing about the Imoen Romance that will of course confuse people is that it's a mod for BG2 and so it assumes that you are in BG2, but with BGT, that's doesn't hold, so the mod is one of the 2 mods that need to be installed after the transition to BG2... And the BWP provides specific instructions on how to do that. Try that in the suggested one downloadable install... and you'll have to change the mod content.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 07 February 2009 - 07:19 AM.

[Zyraen]

Actually I can just suggest providing the entirety of the /override directory (I can't remember if that's right but there's a folder where all the mod info is placed into, I think that's the right one) and the DIALOG.TLK file. I can't remember but I think there's only one more file to be modified, is it CHITIN.KEY ?

Of course the installer should do the necessary back up of the original game files.

Distributing this should not cause any copyright issues, nor be too much of a trouble in any case. The only issue is the large file size.

With the advent of USB thumbdrives, I suggest friends in the same neighbourhood playing the same game can use this to quickly get both their games in line for Multiplayer.

Note that WeiDU.exe or any of its renamed forms (eg SETUP-BTL.EXE) should NEVER be used on such an installation, unless all the mod directories and WeiDU.log files are also ported over, because it will thoroughly screw up the entire installation.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Actually I can just suggest providing the entirety of the /override directory (I can't remember if that's right but there's a folder where all the mod info is placed into, I think that's the right one) and the DIALOG.TLK file. I can't remember but I think there's only one more file to be modified, is it CHITIN.KEY ?

That is: "data" and "override" -folders, Chitin.key, bgmain.exe, Dialog.tlk and WeiDU.log renamed as something else for reference. That's the same files as in the safe backup. Yes, the data folder is usually forgotten... and it's the biggest of them all after the game is modified multiple times with big mods.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 08 February 2009 - 02:45 AM.

[SConrad]

Does anyone know, what will be the Imoen character be in game after that?

Well, in the WeiDU moding, the latest change takes presidency(at least in overwriting situation), so the dialog files will have the romance, and if the creature file has not been overwritten by the romance mod, she'll be an Adventurer. That's without my guess, as I don't have the WeiDU.logs content, or the files...

Now, one thing about the Imoen Romance that will of course confuse people is that it's a mod for BG2 and so it assumes that you are in BG2, but with BGT, that's doesn't hold, so the mod is one of the 2 mods that need to be installed after the transition to BG2... And the BWP provides specific instructions on how to do that. Try that in the suggested one downloadable install... and you'll have to change the mod content.

I believe Isaya's question was rhetorical.

I agree with most of what Isaya said. I don't see how any setup or package of this idea can possibly work without running into multiple issues, including mod support, legal concerns, distribution questions and so on.