Thanks for not making an uninstall

[phordicus]

serious question: how are you getting to the mines with a level 1 party? are you sneaking around any potential encounter and going straight from CK? i think that's an accomplishment in itself and requires some metagaming. i also have to disagree with the mines being intended for a level 1 party. the "canon" path -- ck>fai>ber>nas -- and fighting along the way is going to put most characters at level 2. ad&d in general and bg specifically assumes some exploration as well. going bare bones into major plot encounters and getting wiped seems quite expected.

 

shouts: maybe i can preempt dw's response on this: kobolds can intelligently lay traps and have an organized military heirarchy with advanced weapons. it might be an RPG trope that dungeons and keeps can be fought through one room at a time, but that's not realistic and certainly not intelligent.

 

i do sympathize with the too-uber nature of commandos and the number of grunt kobolds.

[Ardanis]

@Kharhaz

Rule number one - never post when angry or frustrated.

 

Thanks for not including an uninstall

I think I've seen another similar report, of a player who didn't know how to uninstall a mod. Someone needs to include the Uninstallation section in G3's readme format.

 

Yes, I know I can level up and go back to have an easier time with it, that's not the point. My point is it's a level one dungeon and making a mod that makes it anything other than that, or impossible at level 1 is just stupid and counter productive because beating Nashkel Mines with a higher leveled party completely goes against the entire point of using difficulty mod in the first place. I don't think I should even need to comment on why I shouldn't need ankheg plate mail to handle Nashkel Mines...

Is there any ingame indication that Nashkel Mines are indeed supposed to be a lvl 1 dungeon?

 

For what it's worth, I myself won't be installing kobolds in my game (when I'll finally get to replay BG1 part), because I deem this change as too much for my taste. Modularity wins, yeah.

 

I'm not really interested in it anymore because half of the mod is not compatible with the ToB beta patch anyway. The initialize component checks the byte size of your bgmain.exe before installing and if it doesn't match the 26498 patched bgmain.exe it refuses to install the component, meaning you can't use any feature that uses initialize as a perquisite, which is half the mod. This is a completely pointless check because the exe itself won't be modified by SCT and I assume it was only put in place because the author wanted to make sure users patch the game, which is stupid because anyone installing this would have already have had to install Tutu or BGT and therefore patched.

Since recent, SCS mods distribute the ToBEx hackpack, which modifies the executable in order to incorporate new useful features. Checking byte size is crucial, otherwise you will encounter far more hideous things than kobolds on steroids.

 

If you want playing with 26499 patch, you'll need to disable ToBEx - see the Power User section of the readme on how to do so.

 

As far as supporting that patch goes, all complaints should be directed to the ToBEx's forum. I wouldn't assume for granted a positive outcome though.

 

Also, do not give so much credit to people's intelligence - it's not an uncommon practice for some of them to not install a patch and then go choke modders with bug reports they can't reproduce.

[Kharhaz]

I suppose it was unfair to judge SCS based on the kobold component so I've decided to give the mod another chance and I've actually reinstalled BG2, Tutu, the Fix/Tweak packs, and SCS. The issues with 24699 were unrelated to my problems but I did want to try out the other features of the mod, so hopefully I don't run into the save/load time issues.

 

Unfortunately I've run into another problem already as mentioned here. We're currently in the process of figuring out what exactly is causing this problem through the process of elimination, and we're positive that it's related to the initialization component and we've come to the conclusion that it's either ToBEx, the initialization component itself, or much less likely, one of the components that requires the initialization component. So, hopefully we're able to get it working and let DavidW know what was causing it specifically.

 

I apologize if I was overly harsh, but it was quite frustrating last night because we really didn't have a problem with the massive amount of kobolds at level 1, we just kept getting oneshot by commandos, haha. In retrospect, perhaps we should have used the elemental arrow nerf component.

 

Edit: Yep, I was right it was indeed ToBEx. Installing SCS and having it hack bgmain.exe results in a perfectly working multiplayer game without the bug.

[phordicus]

for what it's worth, i've done multiplayer with scsii with 5 players with no problem but only on pre-ToBEx versions but with other exe hacks (stoneskin coloring, no cd, SR's). are yours and your friend's rigs the same?

[Kharhaz]

We've got similar specs, and we use the exact same config for the game and we've made sure we used all the same components when installing each mod. I don't really care about ToBEx, I'm not sure what it does but if SCS can function roughly the same without it then I don't mind using the bgmain.exe hack method. I'm kind of curious as to why ToBEx would cause such a strange problem though, any thoughts?

[Guest guest]

We've got similar specs, and we use the exact same config for the game and we've made sure we used all the same components when installing each mod. I don't really care about ToBEx, I'm not sure what it does but if SCS can function roughly the same without it then I don't mind using the bgmain.exe hack method. I'm kind of curious as to why ToBEx would cause such a strange problem though, any thoughts?

 

You should report these issues at the ToBex forum, at Spellhold Studios rather than here, then hopefully something can be looked into: http://www.shsforums.net/forum/606-tobex/

 

ToBEx is still in Beta, and really fairly new as far as mods go in BG2 modding terms. The hack and this both modify the exe, albeit probably in different ways. Only one or two components were done by both mod authors, but generally tob_hacks is no longer being added to and ToBEx is becoming the de facto choice afaict.

 

As for your question of what it does: Fixes 'hardcoded' things that are impossible to do so otherwise, such as dispel magic not working as it should, mirror images protecting you from aoe, etc. Also adds in other neat features that could not really be considered fixes, but allow new posibilities. The main thing is the components are chosen by YOU at install time, as with SCSII. SCSII does "force" the scrollable spellbook change currently, but that's it really, and as you have figured out, you can disable ToBEx, and then tob_hacks takes over as much as possible, or you can disable that too. You miss out on certain features (as above for e.g.) but no big deal. All this is in the readme.

 

Perhaps you can explain the install order you went for exactly? Including the CDs and patches.

 

As mentioned ad nauseum, patch 26499 is a bad idea. You'll want a brand new installation, with patch 26498. Further, multiplayer requires exactly the same patches, exactly the same mods, exactly the same components from said mods, and exactly the same order of installation to have truly duplicate copies and therefore not run into (more) trouble. The more mods you add the harder this can get (I suppose, depends how good you are at tracking what it is you're doing) and generally more chance of conflicts and incompatibilities.

 

So much in SCSII is modular, and you choose what to install. Granted, if you haven't played it before, you cannot truly know how things work out but that's life. Next time will be better. I dont understand why you cannot uninstall, it's one of the best things about Weidu mods; again, perhaps, the wrong patch has messed things up. Could be your OS too, vista and windows 7 have their own issues. I'm not certain, but it is recommend to not install in the default directory the game asks you to at install time.

[cmorgan]

Someone needs to include the Uninstallation section in G3's readme format.

 

I'll take a look. I know most of the G3 mods have a splash page that points folks to the setup-mymod.exe for installation/uninstallation, but things like BWP disable those by direct extraction. We should probably have some step-by-step instructions, as we get more and more folks each year who have grown up in a world of "apps", where the program itself can determine its status from within its own GUI. We may need to beef up the details of uninstalling and re-installing components of mods.

[Kharhaz]

You should report these issues at the ToBex forum, at Spellhold Studios rather than here, then hopefully something can be looked into: http://www.shsforums.net/forum/606-tobex/

 

I'll get around to it eventually, I don't really have any plans to use ToBEx myself, but I suppose it may be helpful to others.

 

ToBEx is still in Beta, and really fairly new as far as mods go in BG2 modding terms. The hack and this both modify the exe, albeit probably in different ways. Only one or two components were done by both mod authors, but generally tob_hacks is no longer being added to and ToBEx is becoming the de facto choice afaict.

 

Well, hopefully the multiplayer invisibility bug is fixed soon then, it's definitely something related to ToBEx, though I don't have any more technical knowledge than that.

 

As for your question of what it does: Fixes 'hardcoded' things that are impossible to do so otherwise, such as dispel magic not working as it should, mirror images protecting you from aoe, etc. Also adds in other neat features that could not really be considered fixes, but allow new posibilities. The main thing is the components are chosen by YOU at install time, as with SCSII. SCSII does "force" the scrollable spellbook change currently, but that's it really, and as you have figured out, you can disable ToBEx, and then tob_hacks takes over as much as possible, or you can disable that too. You miss out on certain features (as above for e.g.) but no big deal. All this is in the readme.

 

Ah, well I didn't really know much about ToBEx because I've only heard about it from the SCS readme, which just mentions that it installs it as part of the initialization component. Thanks for the information

 

Perhaps you can explain the install order you went for exactly? Including the CDs and patches.

 

I didn't really install too many mods but here it is:

 

1) Full install of BG1 and TotSC

2) TotSC patch

3) Full install of BG2 and ToB

4) ToB patch 26498

5) BG1Tutu v4

6) BG1Tutufix v18

7) BG2 Tweak Pack

8) Sword Coast Stratagems

 

And that's it, I didn't really want an overwhelming amount of mods, just Tutu, some fixes/tweaks, and SCS for added challenge.

 

As mentioned ad nauseum, patch 26499 is a bad idea. You'll want a brand new installation, with patch 26498. Further, multiplayer requires exactly the same patches, exactly the same mods, exactly the same components from said mods, and exactly the same order of installation to have truly duplicate copies and therefore not run into (more) trouble. The more mods you add the harder this can get (I suppose, depends how good you are at tracking what it is you're doing) and generally more chance of conflicts and incompatibilities.

 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have done a complete reinstallation of BG2 so that I could use the bulk of SCS features. Originally I had taken the risk of incompatibilities and installed the 26499 patch because I really don't like the slow save/load times that occur near the end of the game, however I've since reconsidered and decided not to use it.

 

So much in SCSII is modular, and you choose what to install. Granted, if you haven't played it before, you cannot truly know how things work out but that's life. Next time will be better. I dont understand why you cannot uninstall, it's one of the best things about Weidu mods; again, perhaps, the wrong patch has messed things up. Could be your OS too, vista and windows 7 have their own issues. I'm not certain, but it is recommend to not install in the default directory the game asks you to at install time.

 

I don't know either, mostly I was just irritated that it wouldn't uninstall and didn't really explain how you could do a full uninstall, but I guess it was my fault anyway. In any case, I'm really glad that SCS works fine multiplayer if you use the bgmain.exe hack option and I'll try to submit this bug to the ToBEx forum shortly so that it can hopefully get fixed. We're having a lot of fun with the mod and it's added features now though.

[Daulmakan]

1) Full install of BG1 and TotSC

2) TotSC patch

3) Full install of BG2 and ToB

4) ToB patch 26498

5) BG1Tutu v4

6) BG1Tutufix v18

7) BG2 Tweak Pack

8) Sword Coast Stratagems

Are you using an english version of the game? If so, I recommend Easytutu instead.

[Kharhaz]

I'd rather not install a third time and I don't really see the point in using EasyTutu anyway, I don't find the installation process confusing nor do I have trouble managing my BG2 directory, and I don't plan to play BG2 or ToB during my playthrough of BG1Tutu.

[Shaitan]

Easytutu is only for the BG1 part.

 

Easytutu also fixes alot more than the original tutu.

 

But surely tutuv4 will work fine enough.