5286 replies to this topic

[agb1]

The expert install order also should encourage people to research all the possible bugs they can run into within their installs and thus have a stable base to build a stand from which the thing grows. So if you or others(micbaldur's a good example) can fix all the bugs you run into in the current spot the mod is at, it should allow others to also use it in their games and have no longer any of the large scale bugs ... that the expert mods have.

 

I don't agree with this.  The install order in BWS is mostly following BWP, but BWP is not perfect.  Many mods have a mix of components that add content and components that tweak content.  Also, some components do both.  Tweak components have different effects depending on what was installed before them.  Also, a tweak component can't know what will be installed after, so it's best to install tweaks later, after all content has been added.  This is the general approach of the BWP.  However, the BWP mostly installed components of mods together, rather than installing content adding components of a mod early and tweak components later.  This is partly because BWP is (at least theoretically) a manual install guide, and installing all components of the same mod together means less commands for the user.  BWS is completely automated, though, and it can easily install components of a mod separately, so it makes sense to optimize the BWS install order so that components that add content come early and components that tweak come later, even if the components are from the same mod.

 

In short-- I think that moving mods and components of mods to a better install order is a good thing for the modding community, because it reduces compatibility issues and means that mods are doing more of what the author intended.  After that, yes, we still need to analyze conflicts and maybe change some mods to solve compatibility issues that remain.

[The Imp]

Well, it's true that the BWP has a few mods that could use a few moves, it's not as drastic as it might sound. For example the BGT-Tweaks, even though it's a tweak mod, it should be installed closer to the BGT install rather than the BG2 Tweaks ... cause it was made to edit the BG1 related items, cre's etc rather than the BG2's, so it was placed into the BG1 Tweaks mods category.
There aren't that many mods that belong to multiple slots of the ~26 essentially different kinds of mod determinants/categories. Yeah, if the BG2 Fixpack would have a component that fixes a problem in BG2 Tweak Pack's edits that couldn't be installed anywhere else than after the Tweak Packs, then it would likely be called something else and thus be a somewhere else. But that's rarely the case.

The Sandrah Saga mod is a BG2 NPC mod, so it should be in that cathegory, so it's install should be among them, not installed after the Lollorian's Lolfixer. Cause that's crazy.

Edited by The Imp, 18 November 2015 - 01:12 PM.

[agb1]

As I understand it, Sandrah (+Return to Faerun) is rather unique among BG mods in that it is a content expansion aimed at enhancing most other content expansion mods for BG.  It's explicitly aware of many other mods in BGT.  It adds a joinable NPC, but that's really just a small part of the mod.

 

I agree it might make sense for Sandrah to be installed earlier, even by my own argument that content addition comes before tweaks.  But I'm not sure "NPC mods" is the right place for it.  At very least, it would make sense to install Sandrah after all the mods that it is explicitly dependent upon or to which it adds supplemental content.

 

@roxanne - what do you think about installing Sandrah before the tweaks and AI mods but after all the other content adding mods (quests, NPCs, tactical encounters)?  I know you had wanted to move Sandrah later because some of the item tweaks mods made her equipment overpowered, but you already made a patch mod to correct those changes.  Were there other tweaks besides item changes that were problematic for Sandrah?

[agb1]

There aren't that many mods that belong to multiple slots of the ~26 essentially different kinds of mod determinants/categories.

 

Here are a few others to consider:

 

- Polytweak (BWS has it under BG2 Tactical Encounters, but it is a collection of NPC-related tweaks, creature tweaks and item tweaks)

- Revised Battles adds some kits (components 23, 24, 25, 26), which aren't split out from the Tactical Encounters section

- Big Picture component 35, under Tweaks, actually is an item adding component (bags of holding, throwing daggers)

- IWDification component 80, under Tweaks, is an item adding component (two handed axes)

- Rogue Rebalancing component 7 adds items to stores; component 12 modifies Shadow Thieves quest content; kit tweak components also might be better grouped with other kit mods

- Teleport spell mod, seems more a Mini-mod than a Tweak

 

Edit:  Perhaps we should consider Sandrah a Tweak mod, because it expands/enhances/modifies some of the mods installed before it...?

Edited by agb1, 18 November 2015 - 03:24 PM.

[Roxanne]

There aren't that many mods that belong to multiple slots of the ~26 essentially different kinds of mod determinants/categories.

 

Here are a few others to consider:

 

- Polytweak (BWS has it under BG2 Tactical Encounters, but it is a collection of NPC-related tweaks, creature tweaks and item tweaks)

 

- Revised Battles adds some kits (components 23, 24, 25, 26), which aren't split out from the Tactical Encounters section

- Big Picture component 35, under Tweaks, actually is an item adding component (bags of holding, throwing daggers)

- IWDification component 80, under Tweaks, is an item adding component (two handed axes)

- Rogue Rebalancing component 7 adds items to stores; component 12 modifies Shadow Thieves quest content; kit tweak components also might be better grouped with other kit mods

- Teleport spell mod, seems more a Mini-mod than a Tweak

 

Edit:  Perhaps we should consider Sandrah a Tweak mod, because it expands/enhances/modifies some of the mods installed before it...?

With regards to Sandrah being a tweak mod - honestly I tried to avoid that very much but in hindsight I have to confess that some aspects could be considered tweaks

• - Drizzt Saga without the Drizzt companions - the downside of that mod always was that you had to get rid of your companions and take the Drizzt party instead. In order to enable the Sandra/Drizzt contenst at all, I *tweaked* the respective parts so that you only need pne free slot for Drizzt and send everybody else home after you rescued them - thus your party (and your romances) stay intact during Drizzt episodes.
•  
• - Region of Terror without Drizzt - The original mod was developped very long ago and at a time when all those interactive/interesting NPC in SoA did not yet exist. In today's game blocking your party with a silent guy is a waste for many player (including myself). I tried to ressurect the mod with my tweak while the Drizzt references are kept but you may populate his party slot (and those for his companions) with more interesting NPCs.
•  
• - Shar-Teel romance for every alignment - With Sandrah and Shar-Teel in the party there is some character development with both of them - they are very alike in character and attitude, they simply started from a different point in society, Shar-Teel is true and honest according to her code and goals but she is not dumb - they play a Wildcat/Pussycat game with the male PC that may end in the Shar-Teel romance while maintaining all of the original stuff (I have not changed a single line in the original romance, just some additions)

 

Those are the issues that may be considered tweaks I can think of at the moment.

Edited by Roxanne, 19 November 2015 - 12:06 AM.

[Roxanne]

There aren't that many mods that belong to multiple slots of the ~26 essentially different kinds of mod determinants/categories.

 

Here are a few others to consider:

 

- Polytweak (BWS has it under BG2 Tactical Encounters, but it is a collection of NPC-related tweaks, creature tweaks and item tweaks)

 

- Revised Battles adds some kits (components 23, 24, 25, 26), which aren't split out from the Tactical Encounters section

- Big Picture component 35, under Tweaks, actually is an item adding component (bags of holding, throwing daggers)

- IWDification component 80, under Tweaks, is an item adding component (two handed axes)

- Rogue Rebalancing component 7 adds items to stores; component 12 modifies Shadow Thieves quest content; kit tweak components also might be better grouped with other kit mods

- Teleport spell mod, seems more a Mini-mod than a Tweak

 

Edit:  Perhaps we should consider Sandrah a Tweak mod, because it expands/enhances/modifies some of the mods installed before it...?

With regards to Sandrah being a tweak mod - honestly I tried to avoid that very much but in hindsight I have to confess that some aspects could be considered tweaks

• - Drizzt Saga without the Drizzt companions - the downside of that mod always was that you had to get rid of your companions and take the Drizzt party instead. In order to enable the Sandra/Drizzt contenst at all, I *tweaked* the respective parts so that you only need pne free slot for Drizzt and send everybody else home after you rescued them - thus your party (and your romances) stay intact during Drizzt episodes.
•  
• - Region of Terror without Drizzt - The original mod was developped very long ago and at a time when all those interactive/interesting NPC in SoA did not yet exist. In today's game blocking your party with a silent guy is a waste for many player (including myself). I tried to ressurect the mod with my tweak while the Drizzt references are kept but you may populate his party slot (and those for his companions) with more interesting NPCs.
•  
• - Shar-Teel romance for every alignment - With Sandrah and Shar-Teel in the party there is some character development with both of them - they are very alike in character and attitude, they simply started from a different point in society, Shar-Teel is true and honest according to her code and goals but she is not dumb - they play a Wildcat/Pussycat game with the male PC that may end in the Shar-Teel romance while maintaining all of the original stuff (I have not changed a single line in the original romance, just some additions)

 

Those are the issues that may be considered tweaks I can think of at the moment.

Edit . I have not considered those to be tweaks in this sense because they all have the IF~InParty("CVSandr") ~THEN condition, so they do not globally change the game.

[Roxanne]

@Imp, if you read the rest of the thread, roxanne didn't realize that component was part of the Expert pre-selection in BWS.  It was a recent change by me that made it part of the default Expert installation.

 

@roxanne, I looked at the script and I think you could fairly easily do a global patch to make ALL doors and containers locked, but I'm not sure about enabling traps again.  Also, I think that BG2 Tweaks component makes some of the "key required" doors not need a key.  That's also not something I know how to reverse.

I think solution I am looking for would be to identify containers that have lock difficulty >0 and then to set the *locked* flag for those.

I am sure such a thing could be scripted but I cannot.

So I need to re-install and be very cautious this time, i.e. inspect every single component setting of every single mod in the BWS (or blame myself for not doing so - thanks to *the imp* for this enlightment)

[eXistenZe]

Hey there.

 

Trying a BG2EE only install on a beamdog version.

 

Found two bugs:

- Item revisions and spell revisions do not download (and do not accept the manual files since they are different from the expected ones.

- No matter what mods I choose it seems to block on these lines:

IF EXIST "PaintBG*(EE)" MOVE /Y "PAINTBG*(EE)" "PaintBG"
IF EXIST "PaintBG" IF EXIST "override\bgee.sql" ECHO INSERT INTO portraits ROWS >> "override\bgee.sql" && ECHO ( >> "override\bgee.sql"
Tmp.bat
The following usage of the path operator in batch-parameter
substitution is invalid: %~nF & echo '!trunc:~0,-2!', 1, >> override\bgee.sql"


For valid formats type CALL /? or FOR /?

Y:\Baldur's Gate II Enhanced Edition\Data\00783>c
'c' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Y:\Baldur's Gate II Enhanced Edition\Data\00783>

PaintBG is not even selected.

 

Best regards,

João

[agb1]

Item Revisions v3 and Spell Revisions v3 are not compatible with BG2EE yet. However the v4 beta versions of both mods have been made available to many players, and they are BG2EE compatible, so we have added them to BWS. You may contact the author if you are interested in joining the beta test for those mods.

As for PaintBG, I really thought that was fixed now, sorry for the trouble! If you want to work around this in your local copy of BWS, open the file Config/BG2EE/Select.txt and add ";;;;D:PaintBG(0)" without the quotes to the end of each of the CMD lines that include PaintBG (append to the end of each of those lines). That will make those lines conditional on PaintBG being selected for your install.

After that change, you can resume your install by modifying Config/Setup.ini and replacing the lines under [Order] with the lines under [Order-Install] lower in the same file. The [Order] section is the one that tells BWS what to do when you restart the program; the other sections are examples for reference / copy-paste. Also the [Order] section is automatically rewritten by BWS whenever you run it, so don't worry about keeping whatever lines were there before.

 

Edit: I remembered incorrectly - the PaintBG lines don't end in a semicolon, so I added ;;; to the paragraph above.

 

Update 2:  I just checked the batch script again and it doesn't give me any errors.  Check if your Config/BG2EE/Select.txt has %F or %%F for the PaintBG lines.  It should have %% if you are using the latest BWS.  If you have %% in Select.txt, what version of Windows are you using?  If you have single %, get the latest from here:  https://bitbucket.or.../get/master.zip  (this link always points to the most up-to-date BWS)

Edited by agb1, 19 November 2015 - 06:17 AM.

[agb1]

@roxanne Unfortunately the "no locks" component also sets all locks' difficulty to zero, so there is no way (other than referring to the backup area files) for the script to recognize that those containers/doors were originally locked.

[Roxanne]

@roxanne Unfortunately the "no locks" component also sets all locks' difficulty to zero, so there is no way (other than referring to the backup area files) for the script to recognize that those containers/doors were originally locked.

Yes, right - I made the mistake to look at those areas where I had already run the difficulty 50 script for test...yes all others are 0.

Ok- this installation will go to the trashcan.

[eXistenZe]

After that change, you can resume your install by modifying Config/Setup.ini and replacing the lines under [Order] with the lines under [Order-Install] lower in the same file. The [Order] section is the one that tells BWS what to do when you restart the program; the other sections are examples for reference / copy-paste. Also the [Order] section is automatically rewritten by BWS whenever you run it, so don't worry about keeping whatever lines were there before.

So if I make a new install I can skip this part, right?

[agb1]

So if I make a new install I can skip this part, right?

 

Right.  Changing Setup.ini is only necessary if you want to continue an installation-in-progress that you interrupted by closing and re-opening BWS and answering 'no' when it asked if you wanted to continue.

[Lollorian]

Feature request: Is it possible to record the timestamp of exactly when the installation process started in the WeiDU.log? (maybe in the VERSION tag of the BWS.tp2?)

[The Imp]

Feature request: Is it possible to record the timestamp of exactly when the installation process started in the WeiDU.log? (maybe in the VERSION tag of the BWS.tp2?)

But which time index do we use ? And how much to the nano second do you wish it to mark the count ? And do we use a dual -index time ? Aka when the setup starts and when the install starts ... I have a strong suspision that the date that's already recorded in the setup-bws.tp2 should be enough, at least in most cases. And it's still likely that it takes about a day to make an install.

[Lollorian]

Simple DDMMYYYY kind of date would be enough - the date you see beside BWS.tp2 is (I think) the base release version of the BWS being used (not the date of installation)

[agb1]

Edited to remove earlier solution that required files I don't have.

 

I figured out a hack to make it work without dependencies.  Is this kind of timestamp in the weidu.log good enough, or do you need timezone too?  (I don't know how to add timezone yet.)  With the way I did this, the timestamps are only added for certain special BWS mods (mostly the ones listed below), NOT for every mod.

 

// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods

// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod

// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]

~SETUP-WEIDU.TP2~ #0 #0 // 23800 (installed by BWS Thu 11/19/2015 17:24:26.45)

~SETUP-BWS.TP2~ #0 #0 // 20150812 - Updated by Silent (installed by BWS Thu 11/19/2015 17:24:33.62)

~SETUP-BWFIXPACK.TP2~ #0 #0 // BiG-World-Fixpack-master.zip (installed by BWS Thu 11/19/2015 17:24:40.05)

~SETUP-BWTRIMPACK.TP2~ #0 #0 // BiG World Trimpack v14.0.2.7z (installed by BWS Thu 11/19/2015 17:24:47.19)

~SETUP-BWINSTALLPACK.TP2~ #0 #0 // BiG World Installpack-15.5.7z (installed by BWS Thu 11/19/2015 17:24:53.65)

 

I've submitted a pull request to BWS with this code.  I removed the HH:MM:SS, just kept the date.

Edited by agb1, 19 November 2015 - 02:56 PM.

[agb1]

The date currently logged for setup-bws is taken from the most recent manually updated change log entry in the Docs folder of BWS. Lately we have not been updating that file regularly.

 

@Lollorian - I assume you want the install time mainly to know what commit version of your fixpack has been installed, since it doesn't get logged in the weidu.log?  If so, we can also figure out how to get your latest commit version to show up in the log.

 

Did a bit more investigation on this.  Git puts the latest commit version in the "File Comments" meta-data of the zip file (e.g., BiG-World-Fixpack-master.zip).  There is an AutoIt function FileGetVersion that might be able to extract that info.

 

https://www.autoitsc...eGetVersion.htm

 

We would need to read the version from the zip file after download, before extracting, and then during the install phase we would need to add the version to a dummy tp2 file so we can make it appear in the weidu.log.

 

So we need to save the version for a while.

 

Since there are now many mods that are using Git for distribution, this would be a useful improvement for more than just the fixpack.  I think the best way to keep track of commit versions for many mods would be to add an extra "file comments" field to the data structures that BWS builds for each mod, and check every archive for comments.  Most mods don't have any file comments, so we would just skip them.  For the ones that do have comments, we could have BWS add all of them to the weidu-log with dummy tp2 files before we actually install any of the real mods, so there would be a convenient list of all the Git-distributed mods' commit versions at the top of the weidu log.

 

I do not know how to do all of the above (still a novice in AutoIt coding), so this is just an idea so far.

Edited by agb1, 19 November 2015 - 03:31 PM.

[agb1]

Edit:  Perhaps we should consider Sandrah a Tweak mod, because it expands/enhances/modifies some of the mods installed before it...?

With regards to Sandrah being a tweak mod - honestly I tried to avoid that very much but in hindsight I have to confess that some aspects could be considered tweaks

• - Drizzt Saga without the Drizzt companions - the downside of that mod always was that you had to get rid of your companions and take the Drizzt party instead. In order to enable the Sandra/Drizzt contenst at all, I *tweaked* the respective parts so that you only need pne free slot for Drizzt and send everybody else home after you rescued them - thus your party (and your romances) stay intact during Drizzt episodes.
•  
• - Region of Terror without Drizzt - The original mod was developped very long ago and at a time when all those interactive/interesting NPC in SoA did not yet exist. In today's game blocking your party with a silent guy is a waste for many player (including myself). I tried to ressurect the mod with my tweak while the Drizzt references are kept but you may populate his party slot (and those for his companions) with more interesting NPCs.
•  
• - Shar-Teel romance for every alignment - With Sandrah and Shar-Teel in the party there is some character development with both of them - they are very alike in character and attitude, they simply started from a different point in society, Shar-Teel is true and honest according to her code and goals but she is not dumb - they play a Wildcat/Pussycat game with the male PC that may end in the Shar-Teel romance while maintaining all of the original stuff (I have not changed a single line in the original romance, just some additions)

 

Those are the issues that may be considered tweaks I can think of at the moment.

Edit . I have not considered those to be tweaks in this sense because they all have the IF~InParty("CVSandr") ~THEN condition, so they do not globally change the game.

 

@Roxanne, with your explanation I agree that Sandrah is not a tweak mod.  So back to my earlier question:  what do you think about installing Sandrah and RTF before the tweaks and AI mods but after other content adding mods (quests, NPCs, tactical encounters)?  I know you had wanted to move Sandrah later because some of the item tweaks mods made her equipment overpowered, but you already made a patch mod to correct those changes.  Are there other tweaks besides the ones that changed Sandrah's items that are causing conflicts for you?

[Lollorian]

@agb1: Time isn't necessary (sorry I mentioned timestamp earlier) Just the date in a readable format (like YYYYMMDD which the BWS.tp2 already has for base version)

Also it would be better to print it out once instead of in all the BWPtools.tp2 lines

 

I suggested it because yeah - in Chevalier's thread earlier, it would've helped a lot to know whether he had the patches for BG_Travel installed or not (I guessed he hadn't because he had an old as fuck version of the lolfixer installed I use release date as the VERSION in that mod)