20 replies to this topic

[Bill Bisco]

Alright everyone with my latest try using the BIg World setup, I am unable to save single player games and I am unable to start multiplayer games.  People should be able to install every mod in the Big World Setup and play the game successfully. 

 

If you can, I would like your help and suggestions in order to hopefully find this bug and get a working Mega Install.  

 

I.  Initial Method:

 

My initial attempt was a BWS Expert Install.  I installed almost every mod that I could and left a lot of the suggestions intact.  You can find my selections here -->   BWS-Selection3.zip   8.31K   221 downloads

 

II.  Initial Mods:

 

My Weidu Log is Here -->   WeiDU.log   147.55K   190 downloads

 

It'd be easier to tell you what I didn't install:

Spoiler

1. Multi-Install Tool

2. BGT-NeJ Compatibility Modification

3. NeJ2 Patch v6.02

3. Garrick Tales of a Troubadour

4. Big Picture XVart Villiage

5. BG1 NPCs at the beginning

6. New Travel system for BG1

7. Parting Ways

8. BGT NEJ (Enhancements and Bank)

9. Never Ending Journey 2

10. Never Ending Journey 2 v6.80

11. Tortured Souls BP

12. Rukrakia NPC

13. Cal-Curator

14. Branwen NPC

15. Drizzt NPC Beta

16. Kiara Zaiya

17. Never Ending Journey 2 (Leina, Melora)

18. Ninde NPC

19. Perils of Branwen

20. Shar-Teel NPC

21. Worgas NPC

22. BG1 NPCs for SoA: All but Faldorn and Dynaheir

23. Arnel's Nalia Romance

24. Keeping Yoshima

25. Khalid mod for BG2

26. Romantic Encounters (Night with Coran)

27. Parts of Big Picture, Butchery, Deeper Shadows of Amn, Grimuars, Polytweak, Weimer's Tactics,  (a few that aren't selected by default)

28. Oversight (Sendai encounter)

29. Aurora's Shoes and Boots

30. BGT NEJ2: Boo

31. Ding0 Xp fixer

32. Dungeon Be Gone

33. Full Plate and Packing Steel

34. igi's learn through use, projectile retrieval, spell system adjustments

35. Scales of Balance

36. Semi-Multi Clerics

37. Spell-50

38. Improved Horns of Valhalla

39.  Mortis Mini Mod

40. Sorceror's Palace Item Collection

41. gMinion

42. Macholy's living mod

43. Ashes of Embers

44. Kit Revisions

45. BG2 Alternate Soundtrack

46. LadeJarl's TuTu GUI

47. Smiling Imp Cross Banter Mod

48. W_GUI

49. Widescreen Mod

50. Small components of mods here and there

51. Almateria's quest

 

I know that looks like a lot, but most of these mods I couldn't install through BWS because of restrictions.Otherwise with a few exceptions I installed everything.  I don't entirely know about NeJ:  The default expert suggestion looked like:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

So I hope the above is accurate for installing NeJ2.

 

II.  Troubleshooting Methods to find the gamebreaking Bugs

 

1. Remove Generalized Biffing and Uninstall mods one at a time backwards.  Test new games with each uninstall until we arrive at a game where multiplayer games don't fail and single player games can save

 

Disadvantage: Time Consuming and some mods replace content and aren't fully Weidu.  Possibly a lot of work in vain.

 

2. Start a new Install with everything the same except with the removal of all red highlighted mods

 

Disadvantage: If we aren't able to save SP games or start MP games, then we wasted our time.  If we can, then we have to troubleshoot 1 at a time.to figure out exactly why we're getting this error.

 

3. Ask someone to install your selections of BWS and see if they can duplicate your Errors.

 

Disadvantage:  Unlikely to get anyone willing to do this.  Unlikely they'd get a different result than me.

 

I think I'll start with Option 2.

Edited by Bill Bisco, 20 May 2015 - 07:02 PM.

[Torvald]

Bill,

 

Sorry your first efforts with a BWS install aren't working well.

 

I feel your pain, as my first BWS attempt took 24 hours last weekend, but my install is definitely buggy, so I'll have to try redoing it this weekend.

 

Up till now, I've always manually done mega mod installs, with good results.  Sure hope my second BWS install works better!

 

P.S.  Your idea of removing the red highlighted mods sounds like a good idea - I think the red coloring means they are either very hard to play or bug-prone.

[Bill Bisco]

Well.  This one worked!  No red mods and I can save the game in MP and SP and I don't get crashes (yay!)

 

So, now I need to install each one of these red mods, one at a time, and find out what is causing the MP crashes and/or what is causing the unable to save errors.

 

Also, what mod gives you the Amulet of Sigil in your starting inventory?

Edited by Bill Bisco, 21 May 2015 - 05:43 PM.

[Bill Bisco]

Well, I thought of something important:

 

I want to install the Expert BWS version as close to default as I can.  The only changes will be removing mods that I still can't find, Aran Whitehand, the NPC who doesn't have his options finished and the Widescreen mod.

 

If the Expert mod install without additional options or mods fails, then I really need to get some help from the admins because our default installation package needs to work.

[dabus]

If you want to contribute, that's ok. I'd just note that expert is just meant to say that you need to be a "debugging expert" with NearInfinity and WeiDU-knowledge to solve the problems that will likely come up.
If you want to have more fun, install less.

[Bill Bisco]

In my opinion the default expert setup needs to be playable out of the box. I shouldn't be getting any errors when I install it. Either we fix them or remove them from the default selections for expert mode.

[dragonian]

Actually i agree with Dabus here - Expert install(and red mods in general) is flagged as having mods that cause errors and bugs so if you want to use those you should be ready.

[Bill Bisco]

Errors and bugs like broken quests are one thing. Failures during install are another thing.

For example here are some errors I got from the default BWS Expert Selections:

ERROR: preprocessing APPEND_EARLY [SmilingImpCrossBanterMod\SharTeelAzrael.d]: Failure("resource [B7XSHAR.DLG] not found for 'CHAIN3'")
ERROR: Failure("resource [B7XSHAR.DLG] not found for 'CHAIN3'")
Shar-Teel w/Azrael (Smiling Imp Cross Banter Mod) was not installed due to errors.
ERROR: preprocessing APPEND_EARLY [SmilingImpCrossBanterMod\BranwenStivan.d]: Failure("resource [7XBRANB.DLG] not found for 'CHAIN3'")
ERROR: Failure("resource [7XBRANB.DLG] not found for 'CHAIN3'")
Branwen w/Stivan (Smiling Imp Cross Banter Mod) was not installed due to errors.

Portrait that matches Viconia's thief animation (recolored hood) (La'Viconia) was skipped.

If a component was skipped during the install, this indicates a conflict or
dependency that's still missing in the BWS.

These are bad for two reasons:

1. These break up the auto install and require user input

2. It shows that the expert install hasn't actually been tested recently


In my mind the priority is

1. Get rid of install errors that slow down the install process in the default Expert Setup by amending the default expert install to remove those mods and/or patching mods to prevent install errors

2. Remove or patch mods from the default BWS Expert Install that cause early major problems (I.e. cannot start multiplayer game, cannot save a game).

If we can do those 2 things, we can be confident when we want to advertise this program better.

Edited by Bill Bisco, 22 May 2015 - 07:34 AM.

[dabus]

The expert selection is for debugging purposes.
If you remove all errors, you might end up with a tactics install.
If you remove tactics content, you likely have something similar to standard.
And if you stick with mods that arguable have a better reputation (and add some more mods) you'll get the idea what recommended was for.

At least those were the ideas of the few out of the box selections that the batches provided that were tailored after the PDF guide.
Since the BiG World idea is "all you can eat", removing them completely was rarely a result of an install failure. They moved to expert.

Since I have no idea of judging mods nor played them (don't know about Quiet or Alien), we stuck with the guide for a long time.

Leonardo changed the number/setting of categories in his installpack-batch but the BWS still has it in there.
Reasons? I'd go with
-adding different 50 icons might not help to make things clean
-we already have a tree that's showing different themes
-it would also be a pain to get it out
-I still like the idea of some rating, but there's nothing like a central rating poll or something and opinions differ.
So I'd like to have something like to replace these Recommended/Standard/Tactics/Expert with a some meaning of ++ + o - rating. But as said, never happened.

Alien/Quiet/me also discussed the option of leaving those options out of the Selection-menu and only put in preselections like Kresos or Mic Baldurs.

So if you want to throw all mods away that possibly produce errors and create a foundation that is solid, I'd guess that reminds me of an idea that was lingering around a few years ago, but it was not implemented because of the lack of manpower/ guys that can fix problems / the BWP idea.
Think of an absurd number of over 500 mods. Ok, a few do only one thing and are not troublesome at all, others are fine when similar mods don't interfere but stacked with others, they go bonkers.

To sum it up:
If you don't want a small install and add some mods to - lets say Kresos preselection - I wish you good luck with debugging and if you get some help and you had enough courage and time to play the game with all those mods under different conditions (weapons/npcs/enemies/AI mods) and think it's stable, I'd applaud you and put another preselection into the BWS.

Edit:
Seems like you had a slightly different approach about a "playable install"... Gimme back my time.

Edited by dabus, 22 May 2015 - 08:01 AM.

[Fouinto]

The expert selection is for debugging purposes.
If you remove all errors, you might end up with a tactics install.
If you remove tactics content, you likely have something similar to standard.
And if you stick with mods that arguable have a better reputation (and add some more mods) you'll get the idea what recommended was for.

I'd like to add that both expert and tactics selections are based on facts (not fully tested or known to be bugged and serious increase of difficulty), so there are VERY important to me (and probably to lot of people).
So, one can discuss about mods in Recommended or Standard... but the truth is that a 1st time player should limit himself to recommended* to play something close to a kind of "Enhanced vanilla game" so I think that Recommended selection is important too...

So what? these 4 selections are not that bad

* In fact I think that 1st time player should play vanilla + fix only

[Bill Bisco]

From a user convenience standpoint, the Big World Setup is superior to the Big World Project because I can see the selections and make adjustments Immediately rather than have to open up, think and figure out how to edit the Bat File

So I'd like to have something like to replace these Recommended/Standard/Tactics/Expert with a some meaning of ++ + o - rating. But as said, never happened.

Alien/Quiet/me also discussed the option of leaving those options out of the Selection-menu and only put in preselections like Kresos or Mic Baldurs.

I think a standard set of default installs that the Big World Setup Maintains is a good idea that should be continued. This will actually help us to bug hunt and have a starting point. This also means we need to test these standards occasionally as more mods are added and updated.

Make the game easy to play first. A lot of users are like me in that they want every mod possible installed. If we can get a working expert install, then people will know roughly the upper limit for what can be installed easily.

I'm open to a different naming convention but I definitely like the categories of recommended and expert.

Personally, I'd like my children to play a fully modded expert install. I'd love to get their opinion on what they think was from the original game and what was modded in if they have trouble knowing which, we've done a good job!

Yes I do have a slightly different definition of playable. Users want a nice clean install with no error messages requiring user input and no gamebreaking problems (can't start a game or save). If a quest npc is missing or borked, it's not fun, but the game still works and many times the users haven't played these quests anyway so they might not notice

Edited by Bill Bisco, 22 May 2015 - 08:58 AM.

[The Imp]

If we can get a working expert install, then...

Then nothing, as you just blow up the world, cause the eXpert install is known to contain known bugs that make it the eXpert install, as if it doesn't contain them anymore, then it's just a regular Tactics install... with every mod(option) under the sun, not an eXpert install, cause it doesn't contain any bugs. Yep, intentionally repeated that.

Edited by The Imp, 22 May 2015 - 09:19 AM.

[Bill Bisco]

We're going to have to define bug Free. For myself I am most concerned with a bug free mod install process and the ability to start, save, and end the game.

To me this is the most important aspect as it directly affects users' willingness to start and continue a game.If mods or mod combinations have bugs beyond that, I do want them fixed, but that's a different priority. To me, a bug free install is the priority.

Edited by Bill Bisco, 22 May 2015 - 09:42 AM.

[Fouinto]

First, you can have bugs during installation with minor (or no) effect in the game... and you can have bug-free installation and as a result, a game full of breaking bugs... I prefer the first case to the second
Second, every day, a mod is updated correcting a bug here and there but breaking another one elsewhere... or make the fixpack creates a bug that would not exist without the fixpack...

So, you'd better choose the mods you want (without expert ones) and... play... and ask for help here if/when you encounter a bug. I played many tactic install with only few bugs, and most of the time, these bugs were minors one.

[Bill Bisco]

I can understand what you're saying. Bug free game is important. But, if the BWS is maintaining a recommended, standard, etc. Setup, shouldn't we ensure that the setup is install bug free?

[The Imp]

I can understand what you're saying. Bug free game is important. But, if the BWS is maintaining a recommended, standard, etc. Setup, shouldn't we ensure that the setup is install bug free?

Well that's what the Tactical setup is for, it installs fine. The eXpert doesn't, and it has other bugs as well. Yeah, the BWS is not up to BWP v15.0.2, but it's not like all those mods can be downloaded easily anymore either. And none of those installs have been thoroughly bug tested content wise...

[Bill Bisco]

I'm pleased to say that the default expert setup works albeit with a couple of install errors. Tower of Deception BGT portraits La Viconia thief hood animation Soa BG1 Npc cross banter pack I'd like to get some help on figuring out how to resolve these. I hope Smiling Imp can help with the errors flagged related to his mod. Lava Del'Vortel related to hers?/his? Tower of Deception recently was updated for bg2ee so maybe something got borked in the update.

 

Friends, where is the Big World Setup Debug text file located?

 

Edit: Setup-BWS_Final.Debug   Got it!

 

Edit2: Nope that's not it, I need the text file that displays all the errors in it!

Edited by Bill Bisco, 23 May 2015 - 02:23 AM.

[dabus]

Seriously: You installed so many times and you did not notice any messages about debug-files nor looked into the BiG World Setup-folder?

Also the hood animation is not and error but a skipping-message of the mod and a simple dependency in the BWSs game.ini away.
And Portraits has some errors in the mods REQUIRE_PREDICATE lines. He already received a report about those errors.

Edited by dabus, 23 May 2015 - 08:06 AM.

[Bill Bisco]

Well.  I call it an error because it delays the install and the user won't know if there's an issue or not.  I know there's a button to grab the debug file, I just don't know the folder location it's written too so that I can grab it post iinstallation.  (Also, do we rewrite that file if we start a second installation?)

 

I did report errors in an earlier thread and post.  Would it be alright to start an official BWS error/bug reporting thread?

[dabus]

If you don't know what to do, a you could just let the BWS skip those errors by selecting another install-logic (not saying that preventing that would hurt).
All log files of the BWS are in the BiG World Setup\logs folder. If you start a new install, the files are moved into a sub-folder with a timestamp.
You also find the slightly stripped install-logs inside the BiG World Debug.7z archive, which can be found in your games folder. Things like shown progress when decoding ogg-files or converting tile-sets are not shown there.