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Jarno,

Has there been any official testing with Level 1 NPC and the Big World Projekt? It was the only Mod I installed on my Manual, Mac OS X installation that was not on the official BWP list. I installed it just before the G3 tweak pack. No NPC mods were included in the install, and all mods gave a "Successfully Installed" prompt after installation.

The game played perfectly thorough the Chateau, and all areas of the Promenade are accessible. However, every time I exit the Promenade, I get a CTD. I can Console my party to other areas of the City, but when I try to enter the Copper Coronet, I get an Assumption Failure. So, I'm wondering if anyone has successfully installed Lv1 NPC with a Mega-Install, and if so, did it cause any of the sort of problems I am having.

I'm considering scrapping my current install, and starting over again with a greatly reduced mod list. However, I wanted to get some feed back on Lv1 NPC first, as I really want a party that includes all multi-classed NPC's, to go along with my multi-classed Fighter/Mage (Boo, where did I put my spell scroll?)

Leomar, absolutely no need for apologies. In fact, if it wasn't for the efforts of yourself and a few other dedicated modders and programmers, I would not even be able to attempt this. And as I said, I certainly do not think that developing a separate fixpack for the 5 or so Mac users who are attempting a mega-install is a good use of time or resources. The fact that you, Jarno, and the rest of the mega-mod community take the time to respond to my noobie questions is really more than I could ask for. Cheers!

I also understand your move to an automated install system for the fixpack, and have no problems attempting to manually patching the files myself. For the Animate.ids.patch, I used the following process: I opened the patch file with textwrangler. Upon examination, it appeared that the only change the Animate.ids.patch file is making is replacing the line

"0XE0C0 IC_SNOW_TROLL" with
"0xE0C0 IC_SNOW_TROLL"

I then opened the original Animate.ids file (in the Rule folder of TDD) and changed "0XE0C0" to "0xE0C0". My 1st question is, wil this work? Specifically, with this manual change do the same thing that the patch file would have done?

2nd, is there a tech file somewhere that explains what changes the patch files make and whether they are game critical (i.e, failure to patch the file will result in a CTD) verses other types of fixes that are not absolutely required to make the game playable? As an example, if my manual patch of the Animate.ids file does not work, would this make the game unplayable?

What I would like to do is compile a list of patches that are absolutely required to make the mega-install work, and focus on manually patching those files (assuming my manual patch method actually works!)

Again, you time and help is appreciated!

Leomar, you have nothing to apologize for. You and your band of merry Modders have created a wonderful tool for getting the most out of BG & the infinity engine. Its simply an unfortunate fact (for us Mac users) that your latest advancement in automating the process, which will be of great use to the vast majority of BG gamers, is not Mac compatible. I can live with that.

Unfortunately, Taimon, I have no idea what wine is (other than I prefer red over white). And although Jarno's suggestion of creating a Bat converter would be nice, I certainly don't expect the Big World community to waste precious programming time creating a work around for the small, non-programming, mac using minority. Would it not be simpler to post the older, not patch requiring versions of the fixed files, so that those of us who cannot used the .bat process can still manually update the files and take advantage of your hard work and efforts?

If this is not possible, can someone provide an explanation of the consequences of not replacing "the faulty files Animate.ids and ANISND.IDS" for TDD, SoS & CtB? I've progressed to the point in my second BG2 only install where I am ready to install the big BG2 mods. I don't want to proceed until I find out if the game will be playable without replacing the faulty files.

Thanks again for your guidance and support. It is greatly appreciated.

O.K., now I'm getting serious, I actually registered!

Jarno, as always, thanks for your answers! I am, however, still a little confused. Does this mean that if I do not use the .bat patcher (which, seeing that I'm doing this on a Mac is probably the case), then I basically won't be fixing the laundry list of files the Big World Guide instructs me to fix? Isn't this bad? Like very, very, your game will crash and burn in hell bad?

Forgive my over simplistic thinking, but if all these files need fixing, couldn't the Big World Fixpack simply include new, fixed versions of the files, so that you actually could "Replace the file named <filename> with the file of the same name included in the Big World Fixpack folder" and avoid the whole .bat patching process altogether?

Steve over at Macinfinity was kind (and patient) enough to give me the unix commands necessary to manually execute the patch command for each required patch file. However, considering the vast amount files that apparently require patching in the Big World installation, doing this manually for each file would be a tremendous pain in the $#!@. I would really like to include TDD, SoS & CtB in my mega-install, but the number of files that require patching in these three mods appears to make a manual install extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Sorry for requesting so much clarification, but I am trying to get as much information on the nuts and bolts of the process as possible before I waste another 6 hours on my next install attempt.

Thanks again for your time and patients with a modding noob.