Hi everyone
I'd like to play the BiG World Megamod on my Mac without booting up Windows, but considering that the BiG Wold Setup looks quite fragile on Windows i don't even want to try it with Wine, unless someone can confirm that it will work as smoothly as on Windows.
Anyway, here is another idea: I could do a clean install of all the BG games under Wine and do a megamodded install on Windows. Then i simply move the modded stuff into Wine where the clean install used to be.
Let me give you the details
My setup
I come from a porting community calld The Porting Team. We make wrappers, which are self-contained Mac applications that contain a Wine environment and the game. That way every game can have its own unique Wine environment with its own Wine version. Different games won't conflict whith each other and I don't have to worry about breaking compatibility when changing the Wine version (as evey game has its very own Wine setting). The whole thing is wrapped up as one single App that can be launched like any other Mac app and does not rely on any extra software the user would need to have installed. That's why we call these things ports. Think of them as aquariums where Windows applications are the fish.
All BG are installing perfectly fine and work perfectly, so there is no problem in that regard. I can patch them, save and load games.
My idea
-First I install both games into the same wrapper, everything according to the install instructions for BWS. I patch the games, start a new character and save... usual stuff.
-Then I do the same thing in Windows and I choose the same folders as i chose in Wine (the wrappers have inside them the same folder structure as Windows)
-I use BWS in Windows, install everything... just like everyone else
Now for the interesting part. I would delete the "C:\BWP\BG2 SoA" folder inside th wrapper and replace it with the same folder from Windows.
My question
Well, the obvious question is if that would actually work. The wrapper has its own Windows registy, so when I install the games there the registry entries are made. The question is whether the mods make changes to the registy.
I use Windows XP and the wrapper will mimic Windows XP as well. However, my actual Windows XP is German, while the wrapper mimics an English Windows.
Another question, I once did run BWS on Windows and I want to get rid of all of it before trying this approach. Would it be enough if I simly uninstalled the games in System Preferences and then deleted the folders from "C:\Program Files\Black Isle"?
I should also note that I installed Icewind Dale II in such a wrapper and I was able to mod it directly from there (copy the mod into IWD's folder, run the installer through a command line utility), so modding is possible at least to some extent.
Edited by HiPhish, 28 June 2011 - 11:16 PM.