388 replies to this topic

[Fouinto]

I think it will work in 99% cases, but when editing the install.bat I discovered that some components are not installed the same way in German as in English :

%IFES%bg2fixpack%S%bg2fixpack%L%0%SK% 0 1 3 100 101 102 103 104 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 | %M%
%IFGS%bg2fixpack%S%bg2fixpack%L%3%SK% 0 3 100 101 102 103 104 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 | %M%

The component 1 is not installed in German (only in English if i remember well). So I guess it will be more complex than that.

Well, I would say that as the English .PDF file has a few missed numbers in the start, that the Germans corresponding component to the Fixpacks component is actually already installed in the corrections phase... as they apparently weren't all happy with all the translation... (long history) ... so the Fixpacks component is not actually installed.

Well I didn't know the whole story about this component, but this was just an example showing that dabus should take care of this kind of mods where components installed are different according to the chosen language. According to his answer, he has already taken this into account.

What I would suggest for you Fouinto is to contact all the non-French-translated mod coders and force the issue that you wish to translate their mod to French.
But first; make a list of all the mods that have been translated already.

Well this list already exists there in French (of course).
But, I know nothing about modding...

You are right, but translating the pdf guide is 200+ pages ! this is huge !

Is huge but easy too.

Well, I don't know if I am ready to translate all this alone... And, moreover, it will not be a solution to allow BWS install mods in French (when available) .

The component 1 is a fix-text only to English version, it's not neccesary to other installation (like German or Spanish).

Yes, I already knew that, it was just an example.

@Fouinto: You are right that there are mods and components used here an there that are not used in other languages. But this can be simply solved by leaving out the description for the component, since those without one are not displayed.
So the common file says "always install - it's important" and the language file "overrides" that. Easy but effective.

Well, I only wanted to be sure that you had taken this kind of problem into account. Well, you did

The BWS itself does contain some text, too. I would guess that you have 17 pages for the BWS itself, maybe 18/19 when the install-stuff is build into it, and 6 to 7 pages for the mods descriptions. Some of that can be optained with copy and paste, others not or need to be shortened. The other stuff for the component itself can be fetched with a script, I already played with something like that a year ago.

Do you mean that most text from BWS come from the pdf guide?

[dabus]

No, the text for itself are from me and since I gave the stuff to Leomar (I do not have the time to keep the mods and descriptions current) he did some corrections and updates since then.

The text for the mods that you can see in the mod-list when you select a custom installation are from the pdf - we saw no need to reinvent the wheel. These texts have the following stats:

lines words bytes
469 5966 47385 BWS textblocks
304 9327 65618 Mod descriptions

[Leomar]

%IFES%bg2fixpack%S%bg2fixpack%L%0%SK% 0 1 3 100 101 102 103 104 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 | %M%
%IFGS%bg2fixpack%S%bg2fixpack%L%3%SK% 0 3 100 101 102 103 104 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 | %M%

The component 1 is not installed in German (only in English if i remember well). So I guess it will be more complex than that. No.

What you have found is the one exception in the whole Install.bat. All other install lines have the same component numbers for each language.

The Spanish people and we have a Textpatch for our languages, which we must install separately. For the English gamers they have the component 1 of the BG2 Fixpack for it.

Greetings Leomar

[Lollorian]

Hey all Geez, been a long while eh??

Great news about the BWP 8 though. I've been regularly (read daily) downloading the updated mods from the linklist. A search for "Heute" on that page gives the section that's updated recently (methinks "Heute" means "Today"?? ). That page sure is resourceful

About my game, been a blast through BG1 using BWP 6. Really, totally enjoyed the experience with all the mods, especially the widescreen mod, new GUI and the BG2 interface (although, as a first-time-modded-gamer, I admit I was overwhelmed by the amount of new stuff. I think I did skip large quantities of content because of the excitement of playing a "new" game and all I'm ready this time ) Reached Athkatla the same day BWP 7 got released Then been away cause of RL I've been lurking in the major IE forums reading about each new mod release and such. But the BWP is something that I (for one) eagerly await

But no worries on the time of release. Even if it takes another month, I'm sure the end product would be enough to satiate everyone till BWP 10

You've all worked very hard to make something that's enjoyable by others. And it's also become a major catalyst in bringing the entire IE community together. And now you've included the Spanish version too You guys are truly awesome!!! (not a Spanish speaker myself and cannot understand anything Spanish except "Ciao" ... that is Spanish, right?? )

Leomar, I've seen you do this in many forums, but this one's for you and the gang.



Here's to the BWP. Really appreciate your work dudes.

EDIT: Reverted smiley attack!!

Edited by Lollorian, 24 July 2009 - 01:47 AM.

[Ranadiel]

Anyone know how many hours I can expect the game length to be with the standard version? (I like to complete everything!)

Also is the level cap increased?

I'm looking at the Linklist and I understand that:

Green = Recommend-Version
Blue = Standard-Version
Orange = Tactic-Version
Grey = Expert-Version

But what is the pinkish/brownish colour for?

Thanks.

Sorry for the noob questions...I'm just so excited for v8...I've reinstalled all my Baldur's Gate CD's and just raring to try this awesome looking mod package!

It depends on your definition of "complete" everything. A lot of the content will be hard to complete together in one go around because they require specific NPCs and you have a limited number of character slots(as an example there are currently 17 NPCs listed in my NPC guide who start in Chateau Irenicus, and I believe you can permenantly lose a couple of them if you don't recruit them in the dungeon). I don't think anyone can really give you an accurate hour count. Just suffice to say thaty it is going to be very long if you try to do as much as possible.

I believe it is, although I don't know which one is used in the standard install.

As I see no blue, I would assume the color you are referring to is the one for the standard version.

[Lollorian]

Anyone know how many hours I can expect the game length to be with the standard version? (I like to complete everything!)

If you want a timeslot, I'd say about 6 months for BG1 (haven't played through BG2 yet so ) But I hear it sometimes takes almost 2 years to finish BG2 on "Expert" (cause most of the content is for BG2). Many of the megamods are perfectly optional and only available if you want to complete them though.

Also is the level cap increased?

Yep, increased to 50 But XP gain's also nerfed

I'm looking at the Linklist and I understand that:

Green = Recommend-Version
Blue = Standard-Version
Orange = Tactic-Version
Grey = Expert-Version

But what is the pinkish/brownish colour for?

Thanks.

Sorry for the noob questions...I'm just so excited for v8...I've reinstalled all my Baldur's Gate CD's and just raring to try this awesome looking mod package!

Dunno about the blue (can't see any )

Cheers,
Lol

[Lollorian]

Can I start downloading the mods for v8 now? Or should I wait for the new v8 BIG World Setup?

I haven't installed the BIG World Setup v7 yet. I'm wary of it messing up my installation and making v8 not work in the future.

Sure, download all the mods you need from the linklist. Take care to check everyday as it's updated almost daily, you can use the "Heute" search (check my post above your first post) to check which mod section's been updated recently. Or you can download the mods as they are right now cause the BWS automatically checks for new versions by comparing file sizes (new versions usually are bigger than an old one )

I dunno if this is valid but, I've had trouble downloading them using the BWSetup 7 (apparently cause many of the mods have been updated, including WeiDU itself. Great tool btw ) so I use a download manager (helps a lot on dial-up ).

Oh yeah, and it is better to wait for v8, there's a truckload of new mods (exclusive to BWP8) on the linklist that aren't gonna be installed or downloaded by the BWSv7. And they haven't stopped adding new mods, the last addition was 2 days ago, so that's why checking regularly will help.

Cheers,
Lol

[MrBig101]

I'd definitely suggest putting a huge disclaimer saying how much hard disk space a certain install will take. Not including the zipped/rar'd mods in the separate folder, my BG install totals 23 gigs so far, and it's not even done biffing yet. I started out with around 12 gigs pre-batch and had to quickly move/remove things when I realized my HD was down to 50 megs. It even stopped installing one NPC because it didn't have enough space to complete (hopefully one NPC won't screw up the entire install). Definitely have 20 gigs free on your HD before you start the install process, at least if you're doing the Tactics install.

[dabus]

A few hint about the new versions the BWS "finds":
This only works for links that do not change, like the ones from shs, which uses php to provide/link you to the current version. If the server does not support that, you will always get an old one.

To give the BWS the new locations and version information, a script is used to get the information from the linklist and upload a little file at the kerzenburg. This file is about 30-40 times smaller than the html-site itself. So this saves a load of bandwith for them.
This script has not been run since the time Leomar updated the site to fit with the new upcoming BWP8. This has been a few weeks. So there may be some mods that have been updated but the BWS does not find them (any more).

Running the script now will not make any sense, since a lot of the chapters do not fit to the old ones any more.

If you download and install the mods from list now, please be sure that you might miss upcoming fixes, hints about mods that are not compatible, installation order of the components and so on. So you may install and break it in one run.

[Lollorian]

Wow, thanks for the explanation dabus. Now I understand why there's this 11kB file called BWS_Linkupdates-20090703_0.7z in the "Old files" folder Always wondered why it looked familiar

My initial plan was to download and keep all the big bg1/2 mods, but then I said, what the heck and click-downloaded the entire list. I checked for the conflicting mods and excluded them using the BWS. Now, when the BWS8 is released, I plan to "Test" the mods present in BiG World Downloads and only download, what I think would be any mods I missed, or were updated.

Like I said, I'll only actually start the installation once BWS8 is released (to be honest, I'm waiting to see how the BWS unpacks the mod files and places them Always had problems with that during v5.7) That and the very awesome Cleanup.bat. Personally, I love automation and usually learn new stuff by seeing how it works

Dabus, may I ask a few stuff?? One thing I was afraid to try using the BWS was download resuming, me having a tortoise's connection, the 100+ MB mods take a few hours to download. And from the download manager, I've seen that almost all the mods are resumable, except the ones as attachments and the ones from Chosen of Mystra. What if, while downloading say, RoT (~350 MB) finished till 75% and I turned off the PC?? Will it resume?

Another thing, are the components now choosable?? Or does the BWS give me a chance to edit the install.bat after the setup's job is done? Nothing much though, just some portrait changes and the TDD kits Oh, and last time, I added a "pause" (the "press any key to continue" kind) after each section was complete so that I could check for any errors during installation. Kinda acted like an install resumer too

Being a first-time BWS8 user, I'll keep all my other questions for the official BWS thread (once it's necroed and the BWS8's actually released)

But yeah, the first time I saw an actual working GUI instead of the DOSbox install.bat, I kinda freaked out!! Cool work bro

Cheers,
Lol

[dabus]

Resume: Wget tries to get the file 3 times in a row. Trying to throw in a file that is at 75% and resume that does not work.
Components: See here.

Edited by dabus, 25 July 2009 - 05:56 AM.

[Jarno Mikkola]

One thing I was afraid to try using the BWS was download resuming, me having a tortoise's connection, the 100+ MB mods take a few hours to download. And from the download manager, I've seen that almost all the mods are resumable, except the ones as attachments and the ones from Chosen of Mystra. What if, while downloading say, RoT (~350 MB) finished till 75% and I turned off the PC?? Will it resume?

No it won't resume and you have to re-download the whole file, as essentially you have miss matching archive size.

Another thing, are the components now choosable?? Or does the BWS give me a chance to edit the install.bat after the setup's job is done?

Well, the mods are choose able, but if you wish to edit the BiG World Install.bat, the BWS does start it but you can exit it after the auto-start when it asks if you wish to continue...

[Lollorian]

Resume: Wget tries to get the file 3 times in a row. Trying to throw in a file that is at 75% and resume that does not work.

Exactly the problem I wanted to avoid 3 times may work for ~5 MB mods but the mega mods, TDD, NeJ, CtB, RoT, DSotSC, NSotSC, BoneHill total at around 3 GB of stuff (not counting the beautiful NPC mods with sounds ) So, methinks the download manager idea wasn't bad after all.

Btw, I was thinking about this a while ago and thought I'd just voice it out A while ago, there existed Big Moshi's Standard MegaMod Installation that kinda was like the BWP from what I hear (on a much smaller scale). It too had an auto-download-installer like the BWS but something that I noted there was the SMM Mod Links (convenience) - a small .txt file that could be used to import all the links of all the mods into a download manager like Free Download Manager or FlashGet (if these links are considered ads, I'll take em down ) This offers resume support as well as kinda organizes the downloads.

What my suggestion is, is to give the user an option just prior to downloading the mods, whether they wanna do it through the BWS (useful for fast connections) or generate a list of all the links as a .txt (FDM) or .lst (FlashGet) so that can be imported to either manager (useful for crawler connections like mine ).

Otherwise, the .txt file can also be uploaded on the SHS Download Center along with the rest of the package as a separate download

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT DOWNLOAD MANAGERS: Always reduce the number of simultaneous connections down to 1 per server to avoid file corruption. Happens very often in the case of .rar archived mods (some might remember the time I downloaded and had corruptions in TDD, NeJ and RoT (all archived as .rar's) )

Those are just useless thoughts that occured just a while back It's always you who decides what goes in and out

Well, the mods are choose able, but if you wish to edit the BiG World Install.bat, the BWS does start it but you can exit it after the auto-start when it asks if you wish to continue...

Ah yes Thanks for reminding me about that Jarno. Kinda forgot

PS: Btw happy b'day Jarno Mikkola

[dabus]

Generating a textfile would not be the problem.
The reason I did not incude a resume-switch in all the downloads is that some mods are reupped with some minor corrections and you have much fun to find out that your download is not worth a *!?% since the resume just fetched a few bytes, appended them to an existing archive and those are ignored again by the 7z-unpacker.

If you need a textfile, just do a grep ^Down Mod.ini and you get all the main-downloads. (Just as an example.)
You may want to use findstr if you don't have grep.

If you did a link-test, you can get all the info from the log-file.

Edited by dabus, 25 July 2009 - 12:42 PM.

[Kaeloree]

Be careful using Download Managers with the SHS Download Manager; if you create too many connections, you'll be temporarily banned from the server, because the software will believe you to be a spambot or something along those lines.

[Lollorian]

Incoming Wall o'text

Generating a textfile would not be the problem.
The reason I did not incude a resume-switch in all the downloads is that some mods are reupped with some minor corrections and you have much fun to find out that your download is not worth a *!?% since the resume just fetched a few bytes, appended them to an existing archive and those are ignored again by the 7z-unpacker.

Yeah, that is a problem. That's cool though. The next bit you wrote made it much easier to create an importable list

If you need a textfile, just do a grep ^Down Mod.ini and you get all the main-downloads. (Just as an example.)

Hell yeah, I learnt good stuff today Ok, so the Mod.ini houses all the links, thanks for that

How about when you download a certain mod with BWP, and a week later that mod gets updated. Would it be possible to update said mod whilst continuing your game?

Technically, yes and no depending on the placement of the mod in the .pdf guide/linklist. There are two cases:

1. If the updated mod was installed before "26.5 Generalized Biffing v1", the mod's files may have been biffed (archived) into .bif files, making it impossible to replace the mod files with the updated files. So, updating is not an option.

2. If the updated mod was installed after "26.5 Generalized Biffing v1", the mod's files aren't biffed BUT because of the way WeiDU works, all mods upto the mod you wanna reinstall will be uninstalled and reinstalled in reverse order. Like if you installed A,B,C (C being the last one) after Biffing v1, and mod A was updated, the installer will uninstall C, then B, then update A, then reinstall B, then C (dunno if that's understandable that but ). BUT in the BWP, since the biffing is done at the end, you technically can't update any mods once you've installed everything.

So, that's that, you can't update mods once you've installed everything

But, you should know that isn't much of a problem, the Big World Fixpack fixes a large number of bugs in non-updated mods and the only stuff you may miss is new content (which probably won't be installed anyway cause the install.bat doesn't update with new content components )

MM, I hope that the transition between v8 and v9 will be smoother, using an alternate website adress to prepare the v9. The problem is that we are now in a problematic situation, since v7 can't be installed anymore because of the v8 modules, and the v8 setup doesn't seem to be ready soon, meaning that clean big world installtions are currently impossible.

Seconded

Cheers,
Lol

EDIT:

Be careful using Download Managers with the SHS Download Manager; if you create too many connections, you'll be temporarily banned from the server, because the software will believe you to be a spambot or something along those lines.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT DOWNLOAD MANAGERS: Always reduce the number of simultaneous connections down to 1 per server to avoid file corruption. Happens very often in the case of .rar archived mods (some might remember the time I downloaded and had corruptions in TDD, NeJ and RoT (all archived as .rar's) )

So that may be why the files get corrupted. Thanks for the clarification

Edited by Lollorian, 25 July 2009 - 07:31 PM.