Disabling autosaves in BG1 & BG2

[Guest i30817]

The people here have reversed engineered the engine, so i've figured this was the best place to ask.

 

I'm looking to disable autosave in both BG's games. I'm also looking to know if i can avoid the copy of files to the cache dir somehow. That is the slowest part of loading a area nowadays, and doesn't make much sense in a full install anyway.

 

Also, is there any way to fool the bg exe to use a relative path in the

HD0 line in baldur.ini?

In BG1

HD0:=Data\..

CD1:=CD\

CD2:=CD\

CD3:=CD\

CD4:=CD\

CD5:=CD\

 

Appears to work, but in BG2, although it goes ingame (it passes the initial checks),

when it tries to load a area, it hangs indefinitely.

 

So here they are, my exe secrets questions.

[Guest i30817]

To disable the copies to the cache, i've tried setting cachesize to 0, but i suspect there is a hardcoded limit in the exe, so that doesn't work like it apparently does in Torment.

I'm afraid to try the opposite: set it to 2 gb or so, and copy all files in the all data folders to there. The cache gets deleted in certain circumstances right?

[Avenger]

I don't understand how the cache and disabling autosaves are related.

 

In any case, i believe you can modify the .exe in a way to disable all autosaves.

 

Still, this is more likely a modding question and unrelated to GemRB.

[Guest i30817]

I don't understand how the cache and disabling autosaves are related.

 

In any case, i believe you can modify the .exe in a way to disable all autosaves.

 

Still, this is more likely a modding question and unrelated to GemRB.

they aren't, they aren't.

 

BTW i was unable to make BG2 ToB eat relative paths of any kind. I ended up using sed from a shell script to replace the path in the file so it is somewhat portable in linux.

 

Disable autosave is a option in the exe modifications?

[Avenger]

>Disable autosave is a option in the exe modifications?

 

Sure, disabling existing things are always easy. Enabling them is not always so easy.

You are a bit vague on what exactly you need, so maybe clarify a bit.

Autosave is possible in the following cases:

 

1. at certain points of the game, the game's script creates autosaves

2. party required travel regions force an autosave

 

Which one(s) you want to remove?

 

Btw, it is also possible to enable autosave on rest.

[Avenger]

Ok, i'm not too good at creating exe patchers (not interested), but here is the list of required modifications.

The offsets are for patched ToB.

 

turn off worldmap autosaves:

original:
.text:007EF77C				 and	 eax, 1
.text:007EF77F				 test	eax, eax
.text:007EF781				 jnz	 loc_7EF8BE

modified:
.text:007EF77C				 and	 eax, 1
.text:007EF77F				 test	eax, eax
.text:007EF781				 jmp	 loc_7EF8BE


turn off travel region autosaves:

original:
.text:0092D8C1				 call	sub_9A6FB9
.text:0092D8C6				 cmp	 [ebp+var_10], 0
.text:0092D8CA				 jz	  loc_92D9C0

modified:
.text:0092D8C1				 call	sub_9A6FB9
.text:0092D8C6				 cmp	 [ebp+var_10], 0
.text:0092D8CA				 jmp	 loc_92D9C0


turn off scripted autosaves:

original:
.text:0047C187				 and	 edx, 0FFh
.text:0047C18D				 cmp	 edx, 1
.text:0047C190				 jnz	 loc_47C37E

modified:
.text:0047C187				 and	 edx, 0FFh
.text:0047C18D				 cmp	 edx, 1
.text:0047C190				 jmp	 loc_47C37E

[Guest i30817]

Ok, i'm not too good at creating exe patchers (not interested), but here is the list of required modifications.

The offsets are for patched ToB.

 

turn off worldmap autosaves:

original:
.text:007EF77C				 and	 eax, 1
.text:007EF77F				 test	eax, eax
.text:007EF781				 jnz	 loc_7EF8BE

modified:
.text:007EF77C				 and	 eax, 1
.text:007EF77F				 test	eax, eax
.text:007EF781				 jmp	 loc_7EF8BE


turn off travel region autosaves:

original:
.text:0092D8C1				 call	sub_9A6FB9
.text:0092D8C6				 cmp	 [ebp+var_10], 0
.text:0092D8CA				 jz	  loc_92D9C0

modified:
.text:0092D8C1				 call	sub_9A6FB9
.text:0092D8C6				 cmp	 [ebp+var_10], 0
.text:0092D8CA				 jmp	 loc_92D9C0


turn off scripted autosaves:

original:
.text:0047C187				 and	 edx, 0FFh
.text:0047C18D				 cmp	 edx, 1
.text:0047C190				 jnz	 loc_47C37E

modified:
.text:0047C187				 and	 edx, 0FFh
.text:0047C18D				 cmp	 edx, 1
.text:0047C190				 jmp	 loc_47C37E

 

Thanks. I'm interested in disabling the second one definitely. It is most annoying in the map transitions after you've loaded a big map you have to wait a additional time looking at the menu screen again. The others are there because the fights are expected to be especially hard, so i don't have a problem with them. Could something like this be included in the ToB hacks collection?

 

Regardless, i'm not going to be replaying this soon:

BWP Setup is not working on wine even if if i enable ping capability to wine-preloader (it crashes when attempting to download the mods) :\

[Guest i30817]

What about the cache? Do you know if i can (and if it is safe to) disable the copying that happens if i increase the cache size to a value larger than all bif files and move them to the cache folder?

 

That should cut loading times, if the cache never deletes files in that situation.

[Avenger]

I believe you could just uncompress all bifs and keep them in their original place. Sure, it takes some place, but less than keeping the compressed and the uncompressed versions around