22 replies to this topic

[The Nemesis]

Normally I don't have much of a problem with mods and whatnot for my games, much less games with mods that basically self-install. But for whatever reason I'm having a hell of a time getting everything to work right. I've tried several supposed "walkthroughs" of the installation necessities and order and at best when I try to start a game it crashes to the desktop. At worst I get some funky error message that seems to equate to there being a missing file or something.

I wonder if part of it might be that I have the GOG.com recently download versions of both BG1/TOSC and BGII/TOB, which to the best of my knowledge are fully patched. I also have current versions of the following mods:

BG1 Fixpack
BG1 Tweaks
BG1 NPC Project
BG1/TOSC Text Update
Unfinished Business
BGQE
BG2 fixpack
BG2 Tweaks
Ascension
Turnabout
Oversight
Widescreen mod
BGT

So my questions are:

1) Are any of these things redundant or unnecessary when taken all together (for example, if I'm using BGT, will I need any/all of those BG1 mods? Also am I missing anything that is necessary?

2) Given what I have and whatever else is suggested I may need, what are the specific installation steps and order that I need to proceed to make everything work. Assume for the sake of this that I'm a gibbering moron and no detail is too small.

I realize that this might be a tired question but I can't seem to find anything else that appears to specifically and entirely meet my needs.

Thanks for your help.

[Jarno Mikkola]

BG1 Fixpack
...
BGT

Those two don't work together, as the BG1 Fixpack is a mod for BG1, while the BGT-WeiDU is a BG2 mod that 'copies' the BG1&TottSC data to the BG2 folder and then uses those to make the BG2 game use them... meaning that if you install the BG1 mod, you'll corrupt the whole thing and you have to start all over again.

What Operation System do you have, for PC, you really need to read this, as the OS is just stupid, most of the time, on the others, the BGT-WeiDU don't really work that well...

Then the other mods, what you wish to do with them is install them through the BiG World Setup, read the points (1,) 3 and 4 again in the same topic, and that should get you started. And if you need more step to step instructions on the BWS use, read this post.

[The Nemesis]

BG1 Fixpack
...
BGT

Those two don't work together, as the BG1 Fixpack is a mod for BG1, while the BGT-WeiDU is a BG2 mod that 'copies' the BG1&TottSC data to the BG2 folder and then uses those to make the BG2 game use them... meaning that if you install the BG1 mod, you'll corrupt the whole thing and you have to start all over again.

What Operation System do you have, for PC, you really need to read this, as the OS is just stupid, most of the time, on the others, the BGT-WeiDU don't really work that well...

Then the other mods, what you wish to do with them is install them through the BiG World Setup, read the points (1,) 3 and 4 again in the same topic, and that should get you started. And if you need more step to step instructions on the BWS use, read this post.

whoops, I should've figured I'd need to post my OS. I'm using Vista Home Premium with SP2.

And thanks for the links and the tips. I'll go through there and see where that gets me. if I have more problems I'll come back here with as much info and specifics as I can.

Thanks again.

[The Nemesis]

I almost forgot to ask, I was reading the other threads, but either I didn't see it or I'm just blind.

for installation order if I use BiG World for all the mods, do I put BGT into the folder with all the other ones? or do I install it prior to the other mods? or what?

[Jarno Mikkola]

I almost forgot to ask, I was reading the other threads, but either I didn't see it or I'm just blind.

for installation order if I use BiG World for all the mods, do I put BGT into the folder with all the other ones? or do I install it prior to the other mods? or what?

You just put the BGT-WeiDU mod to the BiG World Downloads folder just like everyone of the other mods... and let the Setup itself download the thing, in the event that it decides that you don't have the right version... easy.

It will be installed probably in this order:

BiG World Fixpack
BG2 fixpack
BGT-WeiDU
BGQE
BG1 NPC Project
BG1 Unfinished Business
Unfinished Business
Ascension
BP-v180
Turnabout
Oversight
BG2 Tweaks
Widescreen mod

You should choose the Tactical install if you wish the Ascension mods challenge that the BP mod brings...

And if there is more questions, please ask, cause they might be very important...

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 08 February 2011 - 09:47 PM.

[The Nemesis]

Ok, new wrinkle. During the mod installation, i got stopped and told that I had not installed BioWare patch 26498 and that a movie file was missing from the installation and that I should have gotten it off of disc 5. This is odd for two reasons:

1) the gog versions of the game are supposed to be fully patched to start with

2) there are no discs since it was a download version of the game. I can't see why the file wouldn't be there.

what now?

[fearless]

I seem to recall a post somewhere mentioning about renaming the throne of bhaal patch readme file to something specific, and also a post mentioning about CD5 and moving a movie file into that folder. Probably in this BGT-Weidu sub forum somewhere.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I seem to recall a post somewhere mentioning about renaming the throne of bhaal patch readme file to something specific, and also a post mentioning about CD5 and moving a movie file into that folder. Probably in this BGT-Weidu sub forum somewhere.

Well, this post says that one can create a new file or rename the old as "BG2-ToBPatchReadMe.txt" and the BWS understandas that as...
And you need to copy the "25Movies.bif" so it's also inside the ...BGII - SoA\CD5\movies\ -folder.

[The Nemesis]

I seem to recall a post somewhere mentioning about renaming the throne of bhaal patch readme file to something specific, and also a post mentioning about CD5 and moving a movie file into that folder. Probably in this BGT-Weidu sub forum somewhere.

Well, this post says that one can create a new file or rename the old as "BG2-ToBPatchReadMe.txt" and the BWS understandas that as...
And you need to copy the "25Movies.bif" so it's also inside the ...BGII - SoA\CD5\movies\ -folder.

Thanks. I put the txt file in, and I also found that the GOG install actually has the readme for that patch, but it's saved as readme_addon_patch.txt

As for the second part I don't have a CD5 folder. I imagined this might be a problem since the installer I use doesn't have CDs, it was just the single, all-inclusive installer. The 25movies.bif file for me is located in BGII - SoA\data\movies

any ideas of what to do?

EDIT: I was just reading this -

http://www.gog.com/e...k_for_bg2/page1

and it was suggested that these two file checks are just meant to verify the installation is correct and legitimate, and that all it requires are that the files are there. In that case, it's supposed to be OK to just fake the 25movies.bif check by making a copy of the file in a CD5\movies folder that you also make yourself.

Does this make sense? My instinct would be if it's checking for that 25movies file that it is required for something more, and if I just create a copy in that new location, it won't run properly with the game since my install would be checking for the file where it normally installs it (data\movies in this case)

I'm not sure what to do here and I'm not keen to go through uninstall/reinstall #4 at this point because I keep messing stuff up.

Edited by The Nemesis, 10 February 2011 - 04:33 PM.

[fearless]

Yeh i'd rename the readme as specified above, and create the CD5\movies\ folder and copy the 25Movies.bif file to it, just for the installation check.

[The Nemesis]

I got through the BiG world install and all the mods went in without incident or warnings or anything of the sort. And then when I went to launch BGII the screen goes black for a sec like it's going to load, then crashes back to the desktop. No warnings, no error messages, no nothing.

I'm at a loss here.

[Chevalier]

Have you tried launching from TobExLoader.exe?

[The Nemesis]

Have you tried launching from TobExLoader.exe?

I get the DOS prompt bit, then it does the same thing (black screen, 3 seconds of waiting, then back to desktop). I've tried to go from the desktop shortcut that is installed with BGII, directly from baudur.exe (which starts up with an options menu) and from TobExLoader. All end up the same way.

EDIT: Tomorrow I'm going to try a reinstall and skip the widescreen mod. I know when I tried to use it by itself I had problems with both BG1 and BG2, but I chalked it up initially to me doing something wrong in the installation process. If that doesn't work, I'll probably try just BGT by itself with no mods. Slowly work myself along just to see where the particular problem lies.

Edited by The Nemesis, 11 February 2011 - 07:40 PM.

[Ascension64]

Have you tried launching from TobExLoader.exe?

Please don't suggest TobEx as a quick-fix to any problem. BG2:ToB should be stable by itself. TobEx may help only to give further debug information.

[The Nemesis]

I did a very minimal mod installation using BWP. All I put in was BGT, the relevant fixpacks and tweaks, and the UB mods for both games. Everything works it seems (I only spent a couple of minutes messing around in candlekeep in BG1 to check so far. It makes me suspect that the widescreen mod is the culprit behind my issues. The only way to know that for sure though would be to add more mods and see how things go.

Can I run the BiG World installer again to add more mods, or does everything need to go in as a one-shot change (eg do I need to uninstall everything and start from scratch again).

Sorry for all the questions. I've never had such a finicky time with mods and add-ons before in other games.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Can I run the BiG World installer again to add more mods, or does everything need to go in as a one-shot change (eg do I need to uninstall everything and start from scratch again).

No, you need to make a new setup to add more mods, so run the "BiG World Setup.vbs"... it will actually reset your install so it starts from the clean install...

[The Nemesis]

I don't want to start a new thread for this, but I'm seeing a weird effect where I get black borders and boxes around certain things like spell effects and fountain water.

Like this:


The odd thing is that with something like the fountains, I don't see the black when the area is fogged over, but when my character is in visual range of the fountains, then the water that cascades out the top has a black border around it (it's not big boxes like the above picture's spell effects.

I've tried searching around for info and I see conflicting info about how fixable this is. Some places indicate it's a problem with the video card compatibility and drivers, and some sort of shrug it off like "you can't do anything about this"

Thanks.

[Jarno Mikkola]

...

It's a transparency issue... see the pictures that animate the spells and other moving effects take larger space than just the borders of the effects, the rest of the space is then colored as transparent... but yours is for some reason black... well it's shown as black, as the game's files have a set format where the transparent is one of them in the used pallet.
It would be good to know which Graphic card you have( ATI, NVidia or integrated + producer + the cards serial ). ???

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 15 February 2011 - 05:37 PM.

[The Nemesis]

...

It's a transparency issue... see the pictures that animate the spells and other moving effects take larger space than just the borders of the effects, the rest of the space is then colored as transparent... but yours is for some reason black... well it's shown as black, as the game's files have a set format where the transparent is one of them in the used pallet.
It would be good to know which Graphic card you have( ATI, NVidia or integrated + producer + the cards serial ). ???

I'm using a Nvidia GeForce Go 6150 (I'm running this on my laptop), no idea about the serial # though. I don't feel comfortable opening this up like I would a desktop.

[Jarno Mikkola]

It would be good to know which Graphic card you have( ATI, NVidia or integrated + producer + the cards series number ).

I'm using a Nvidia GeForce Go 6150

Thats everything... have you tried this. That is to say... to be edited.