32 replies to this topic

[Marvin]

Exactly!

This would make all the whole thing more comfortible for anybody.

Marvin

[Silinde Ar-Feiniel]

please make the auto-installer!

[Azazello]

People forget or didn't know that Classic MegaInstall used an installer, at least for the bigger mods (formerly known as the "BP mods".)

Yes mate but it handled "only" 5 mods (big ones) but just 5, not 100+ !

mm75

Yeah, but it did it very well. The process is similar, something that can be expanded upon. No need to re-invent the wheel, so-to-speak.

[Silinde Ar-Feiniel]

Azazello, when you say classic megaInstall istaller, could you post a link? What about the versions of the mods? Are all the big ones included? And is this expandable? Or "you can add more at your own risk"? Anyway, a new auto istaller for those who want them ALL would be veeeeeeeeeery helpfull.

[Azazello]

Here's the simplest research for you to do: go to the very first threads in this forum (Mega Mod Help), start reading upward to learn about how the classic megaInstall was developed. All your questions will be answered.

[Silinde Ar-Feiniel]

I SEE.... the classical installer is just a part of a long and difficult to follow, old method to install the BP-BGT-NEJ. There are many changes since then and in fact there is NO auto-installer. And i wonder, lostincarnation do you try to make one?

[Hak`M]

Verify the key files to ensure that the current installation is a clean one.

Not possible, since most mods only modify dialog.tlk and add new files to override - they do not modify chitin.key/other key files. You might try
interdia.2da or songlist for NPC mods, but Dungeon Crawl or Romantic Encounters, for example, do neither. You could try dialog.tlk, but what if the user has a French or German version of the game, and wishes to play with English mods?

Well just use an MD5 checksum of the dialog.tlk and some other mail files? At least to check if the start install is clean and properly patched it should work fine. To check intermediate states might be harder.

2. Verify the downloaded mods and patches to ensure that their version is correct

Er, how are you going to do this for each mod? I'd really like to know that.

Well again checking if a download not corrupted and the correct version can be done by an MD5 checksum over the entire archive before extracting it. It would required a list of all versions with a corresponding md5 checksum for the download. It think that someone mentioned using an SQL database to create a mod-list from where mods could be selected. That could easily hold a field for that.

If people really think of making a tool like this, take a look at apt (the package tool for debian based linux distributions), it also downloads, verifies, extracts and installs software. I heard things way back about making weidu work with command line switches, so that interactivity would no longer be required. Did that ever happen? (Yes I have been quite away for a while, so I lost track of things)

- Hak`M

[Hak`M]

I just took a look the Big World Porject. It seems that weidu is able to handle command line options (since they happen to be using that) so an automated install should be possible (technically), but beware that making it robust (solving dependencies and protecting against incompatible mod combinations etc) might turn out a bit harder than it seems.

At least I'll be following this thread for a while.

[Azazello]

We got a lot of people talking. Is anyone coding?

[bigmoshi]

Two thumbs up for the idea, but because modding is generally in flux, it would be best not to do patched-up mega-mods like big-world. Intuitively, that approach would give rise to a lot of maintenance work and likely a lot of bugs. Since the weidu-format is already robust and stable, a simple command-line clean auto installer would be effective enough. Seriously, I dont really care if i'm using weidu 2.00 or 2.01 as long as the job gets done.

Perhaps, if you are gog to do it anyway, it would be less painful to design like this:

The autoinstaller comprises 3 basic files, nothing fanciful:
[a] autosetup.bat - command-line driven file that performs the tasks below
[b] modlist-ver1245.txt - stores (1) list of mods in sequence (2) MD5hashes (3) mod-components to install for each mod
[c] checksum.exe - performs the MD5 hash-checking using file modlist-ver1245txt

First the user has to install BG+TOSC, BG2+TOB & the official patches.
Directory structure is something like this:

+ <Program Files>
----+ <Baldur's Gate>
----+ <Shadows of Amn>
--------+ <MODS>
--------+ <BACKUP>
--------+ <data>
--------+ <override>
--------+ dialog.tlk
--------+ ......

The user should dump all the relevant mods into <MODS> directory
Using winrar's command-line interface, the auto installation tasks by autosetup.bat would be:
[a] run checksum dialog.tlk to ensure that it is a clean installation.
[b] run checksum all the mods in <MODS> using MD5-hash in modlist-ver1245.txt
[c] any other verification tasks, if necessary.
[d] run WINRAR-COMPRESS <data>, <override>, dialog.tlk and other relevant files to <BACKUP> directory
[e] For each mod in modlist-ver1245.txt
----{
run WINRAR-EXTRACT <Shadows of Amn>\<MODS>\modfile to <Shadows of Amn>
run weidu's "--force-install-rest X Y..." command based on modlist-ver1245.txt
----}

To uninstall:
[a] delete any file/folder that is not supposed to be in a clean installation
[b] delete weidu.log
[c] run WINRAR-EXTRACT <data>, <override>, dialog.tlk from <BACKUP>

Maintainability:
[a] only revisions required for modlist-ver1245.txt
[b] no mega-mod patching. Leave the patching to modders. Add only compatible mods into the mega-list.

Kudos to whoever does a simple installer like this, rather than one like BigWorld where I have to read 150 pages to install the mega-mods. I love BG, but haven't much time to play nowadays

Edited by bigmoshi, 04 December 2007 - 07:16 AM.