7 replies to this topic

[HiPhish]

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.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Do ... the mods make changes to the registy... ?

Nope.

Would it be enough if I simly uninstalled the games in System Preferences and then deleted the folders from "C:\Program Files\Black Isle"?

No... you need to remove the whole folder after uninstalling for that to work (but in my mind that almost the same thing).
Erhm, nevr install anything to Program Files folder.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 24 September 2012 - 09:58 PM.

[dabus]

I guess you got caught by a bloody necromancer, or do you expect that guy to look in this thread 15 months after he posted it?

[Echo]

Maybe he'll get an e-mail notification, better late love than no love ^0^

[dabus]

Uhm, so what did he get:

1.) Try it -- if the author is curious he'd be a maroon not to try it in that timespan.
2.) Registry is not used -- I think you can read it in almost any faq (copy and paste and baldur.ini and all that).
3.) Delete the folder & don't install in Program Files -- I bet that Wine is (light)years away from implementing UAC.

That's really more a light handshake than a hug, not to speak of some love.
By the way: your avatar looks naked without the lovely picture.

[Echo]

Oh c'mon, it's intent that matters!

Though yes, resurrecting a 15 month old thread with "try it" is a peculiar help tactic, I give it to you.

And my avatar is broke :< Can't put a picture there for some reason. I wanted to cutify it and kaboom!

[HiPhish]

Try it!? Seriously? If I wanted to just try it blindly I wouldn't have asked the question in the first place. Anyway, since this thread has been popping up in Google search results among the first entries i think I should wrap it up with some useful conclusion for people who come across this. There are few things I hate more than these useless threads polluting the internet. Well, at least it's not one of those "nevermind, figured it out, bye" threads.

First of all, BiG World Setup is outdated and no longer supported, don't use it. At all. Instead one has to download and extract mods manually and then install them with BiG World Install.bat. I prepared my Wine setup just as I described above, then i did the same in Windows (Win 7 64 Bit), extracted all the mods properly and installed everything. Finally, I went back to Wine, threw away the contents of the old Baldur's Gate 2 folder and place the game files from Windows in it. It works great, except a few small caveats:

1) The Wine version I used was 1.6.0 with the X11 driver. The native Mac driver doesn't seem to work for this game, but it's not a big deal, Baldur's Gate 2 won't need the extra performance. Other Wine versions will probably work as well, but don't fix what isn't broken.
2) There is excessive flickering on the screen with my graphics card (Nvidia 9400M), this is a common Wine bug I have to face in a lot of 2D games. Running Winetricks ddr=gdi got rid of the flicker.
3) If you install the Throne of Bhaal Extender (ToBEx) the game will crash when it tries to play a casting animation. You can turn off the offending option in the extender by following the instructions found here:
http://www.shsforums...-wine/?p=532979

Hi,

It is good to see that TobEx works well on Wine (mostly). I am unsure what is going on here, as it appears that only a single patch isn't being applied. You can work around this by opening ./TobEx_ini/TobExCore.ini and changing

[Spells]
Casting Fixes=1

such that "Casting Fixes=0

The error code doesn't really help me because the code indicates it can't find the error message, so I'm a bit stumped on this one.

Let me know if this works around things for the time being.
 

4) If the game is still flickering and clicks seem delayed you should turn on 3D acceleration. In baldur.ini make sure you have this line and that its value is 1, not 0:

3D Acceleration=1

5) Don't install all the mods. This goes for Windows and Wine equally, I had to learn it the hard way. There is a bunch of junk mods or mods that are still old and buggy. I know it's tedious, but you should go through the various mods and manually pick the ones you want and ask the community for the must-haves. It will take time, but it will make downloading, extracting and installing the mods much faster. Many thanks to everyone who helped me out on this one.
6) BiG World Install.bat does not work in Wine. I don't know why, but I know that WeiDU mods can work in Wine (modded icewind Dale 1 & 2 that way), so if you have a lot of time to burn you could try installing each mod manually.

Keep in mind that all this is just what I experienced now. Wine is heavily being developed on, as are these mods, so there is no way of telling what might still apply a year from now on. The best way is to try to get everything working without tweaks and then gradually apply these fixes until the game works the way you want it.