Mod Install Issues on OSX

[Mike1072]

 

• the archives will be packaged in .tar.gz format to preserve file permissions (no need to chmod)

Does this scheme rely on the mod packager setting the right permissions, or not unsetting them, prior to packaging the mod?

 

When using 7zip to package as .tar, it automatically sets all permissions for every file in the archive. It's a little bit overkill, but I don't think it should cause any problems.

 

It was remarkably difficult to find other ways to create an archive on Windows that preserved or set Unix file permissions. The only other solution I found required Cygwin.

 

Some thoughts from a long-time Mac user:

 

There is still the case of some Mac users who don't want to use the EE versions of the games. For PPC users, this means having to perform surgery on .tp2 files to remove or comment out all commands and identifiers related to EE.

The problem is that nobody has compiled a recent version of WeiDU for PPC systems. The time you put into performing surgery on mods would have been better spent trying to compile WeiDU, because that would have made all mods work as intended.

 

As I said, if we do get a PPC version of WeiDU, we will create a little package with all the PPC binary files, so PPC users could simply replace the appropriate files and install their mods as expected. With nobody compiling a recent WeiDU version for PPC, we can only assume that PPC demand is quite low.

 

With mods that use .ogg audio files, at least on the PPC side, many mod installers don't convert the audio (Mac doesn't know from oggdec, and of course PPC Macs don't know from .exe files). In this case, an audio converter program is needed. I've mostly had success with this by using Switch, a free converter program.

This is what sox is for. As mentioned, new G3 packages will be bundled with a sox version compiled for 64-bit Intel machines. Pretty much all the old packages were bundled with a PPC version of sox, which should have worked for you. If you remember any such mods with audio that didn't work, you should inform the mod maintainers immediately.

 

I'm new to Intel Macs, and have recently become comfortable with Mavericks. Since there's no native versions of the games that don't involve EE, my solution for now is to run the Windows versions of the games in a virtual machine via Parallels Desktop. With this set-up, I've been amazed and delighted at how fast and smooth everything behaves, with both the mod installation process and game play! The same processes on a PPC Mac are a torturous nightmare by comparison, especially due to those random CTDs that are simply a fact of BG on PPC life.

I'm glad you've found a solution that works better for you. It was also quite torturous to hear how little success you were having with your installations.

[ericp07]

 

There is still the case of some Mac users who don't want to use the EE versions of the games. For PPC users, this means having to perform surgery on .tp2 files to remove or comment out all commands and identifiers related to EE.

... In this case, an audio converter program is needed.

The thing with this is, you would only need up to date(v23600) PPC-Mac weidu to be compiled to skip the EE content, as on PC's side it's done with the newer commands that are not likely to be in the old weidu.exe's.

And on PC's side, today the ogg-to-wav conversion can be done by weidu.exe itself. It's likely that addition was made just for the implicated reason.

 

Unfortunately, we don't 'own' a PPC -genius as a moding community, so there's no updated PPC-weidu. Unless one of you *pokes every one of the post reader* becomes one.

Then again, the PPC Macs haven't been any longer in productions for a long while... and you might be the only one that remembers using one. Yes, jokes, bad ones, yeah.

 

It's absolutely not true that updating Weidu-mac will skip EE content in mods. The installer fails on all mods that contain such coding, and Weidu-mac can be updated only so far on the PPC side.

 

If I knew how it's written and compiled, I would have tried my hand at writing a more focused version of Weidu-mac, but that's one of the very few things about Macs that are beyond my expertise.

 

Not only to I "remember" using a PPC Mac, but that was my primary system until a few months ago, when I bought my first Intel Mac, and I've been spending tremendous amounts of time and effort to attempt to achieve a playable multimod BG2 installation on a PPC since about 2007, as well as writing a mod under that system.

[ericp07]

As for sox, yes, it's included in many mods, but I've noticed that many OS X mods don't have properly written audio install/uninstall script files (these are .sh files under Mac's flavor of UNIX, the counterparts to .bat files on the PC side).

 

If a user has Install-tools in the main game directory, sox is included, obviating the need for a mod to include that. Indeed, some mods won't install as packaged after extraction, because their folders and files aren't organized in a way Weidu-mac will find and process. When that's the case, we must run install-mod.sh on the mod's main folder inside the main game directory, in order to "fix broken files" and to place files and folders where weidu-mac will find and process them.

 

I feel like a fool now for having wasted nearly a decade trying to get things to work on a PPC Mac for so long, and it will be very sad to have to destroy all that work. I don't even know right now if I'll be able to finish writing my mod, unless I get around to learning what I need to change/add in order for it to install and run on modern systems...or fairly modern. My Mac Pro is from 2008, but it's in no way obsolete. I'm running the latest version of Mavericks, and I keep all my software up to date.

 

I'd love to find a way to install and run BG2 for OS X on this Mac Pro. Wineskin thoroughly confused me, and I don't have access to Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard, so I'm unable to set up any environment to run PPC programs on it (that's what I have PPC Macs for). The PPC Macs aren't completely useless, at least. I use one as a print server.

[subtledoctor]

It's absolutely not true that updating Weidu-mac will skip EE content in mods. The installer fails on all mods that contain such coding, and Weidu-mac can be updated only so far on the PPC side.

Jarmo was wrong about that, but it's not the responsibility of Weidu to skip EE content when installing mods. A good mod will handle different games on its own.

 

Example: on BG2 OG (as I like to call it) there is the "Taimon's WSPATCK for all" mod, in the_Bigg's tweak pack, to enable non-warriors getting extra APR for weapon specialization. EE enables this, via the CLWSPBON.2da file, but there was no simple Weidu-ized way to apply the change.

 

So I made one, as a gift to EE players who can't use the_Bigg's mod. My component is very much EE-only, it would choke on OG games. But it doesn't; my mod installs fine on both platforms, elegantly skipping the EE component of it detects that it is being applied to a non-EE game.

 

My mod also has 15 new kits, and adding kits to EE is very different from adding them to the OG... but anyone using my mod would barely know the difference. Many mods are similar: Song & Silence v6, BG2Tweaks, FPPS, lots of others.

 

I suspect you're trying to use some of the newer stuff over on the baldursgate.com forums. Many people over there barely even know the non-EE versions of the game exist. I highly doubt any mod over there that doesn't competently work with OG installs would never be hosted at one of the more established modding sites like G3, SHS, PPG, etc.

 

What you should do, is give feedback to those mod authors and tell them to stop being such lazy jerks and write more compatible code. Except you should probably say it more nicely

[subtledoctor]

wasted nearly a decade trying to get things to work on a PPC Mac for so long, and it will be very sad to have to destroy all that work.

 

I'd love to find a way to install and run [PPC] BG2 for OS X on this Mac Pro.

The time wasn't wasted if you were playing BG2 in the meantime!

 

But, sunk costs are a bad reason to stick to a course of action when another course is better. IMO the PPC version of BG2 is truly past its sell-by date. I still have my copy, in my applications folder, with all my old mods and tweaks intact! But it doesn't run, it's just for reference.

 

Now I run TinyXP in Virtualbox, on a ~20GB disk image. I have the GOG Windows versions of BG1 and BG2 (now tied together as BGT) as well as IWD and PS:T. It's easy to use, easier to set up than WINE, super-easy to mod, and super-cheap.

[Jarno Mikkola]

It's absolutely not true that updating Weidu-mac will skip EE content in mods. The installer fails on all mods that contain such coding, and Weidu-mac can be updated only so far on the PPC side.

It won't, as it skips the content, cause the .tp2 says that it shall... there's no avoiding of that.

 

Jarmo was wrong about that, but it's not the responsibility of Weidu to skip EE content when installing mods. A good mod will handle different games on its own.

Erhm that's why the .tp2 file is there for, to allow the weidu to do skipping and installing mod components on a certain conditions, Enhanced Edition ones that have been added to the v23000+ weidu's, because they didn't need to exist before that. Yes, I am talking about the very same thing you are. So I was not actually wrong, he's point of view was off. What ericp07 is talking here is that he would have to un-make all the previous weidu changes in all the mod .tp2 files and make them compatible with the ppc weidu he has had from ages ago. Bad tactic in my opinion. Specially if you wish to have more than a fraction of the mods working as intended. I bet it's easier to learn to compile the weidu -program than make what he tries. As it's mostly automated. But ha, I don't have to bother with any of that. As I have Wisp ...

[ericp07]

If memory serves, the latest version of weidu will not run on a PPC Mac at all. I'm pretty sure v231 is as high as it can go. Weidu updates mod installers when it needs to.

 

No, I'm not attempting to install any mods that are specified as EE-only. What happens with the mods I've been installing is that, when an updated version is released, I d/l it and use it during my next install run. When I install a mod that has been updated, if the .tp2 includes "bgee" or "bg2ee" or the like, weidu-mac complains that ee is not an identifier it recognizes, so it rolls back to previous state, and will not install the mod. When I first discovered this, I edited the .tp2 files in question, deleting lines that included such code, as well as "HANDLE_AUDIO" and "LAF" which also break installation because the older weidu-mac doesn't recognize those commands, either.

[ericp07]

It appears that this "virtualbox" way would be the way to go, if I want to be able to run my PPC BG2 on my Intel Mac, but I hesitate to proceed down that path because I'm not familiar with how to do it (what I need to d/l and install, configure, etc.). If setting it up requires purchasing Snow Leopard, then it's a no-go, as I won't have any discretionary funds for the rest of the year, at least.

 

I'll hold off on deleting every last trace of BG2 from my PPC installations until I know if and how I can make use of it, or any of its content. At the very least, I'm sure I'll be able to hold onto portraits and sounds.

 

If completing my NPC mod will require the inclusion of any EE-specific coding, I need to know that, so I can determine the ultimate fate of my work.

[Jarno Mikkola]

When I install a mod that has been updated, if the .tp2 includes "bgee" or "bg2ee" or the like, weidu-mac complains that ee is not an identifier it recognizes, so it rolls back to previous state, and will not install the mod.... because the older weidu-mac doesn't recognize those commands, either.

Yeah, and if the v23600 versions of PPC weidu would be compiled, it would be programmed to recognizes the identifier and stroll around them. It's just that that no one has compiled the latest version that includes the flags, of which the Windows version already has been compiled and is currently in heavy use. So only the update is needed here, it's unfortunate that no one has the machine and skills to compile it.

[subtledoctor]

It appears that this "virtualbox" way would be the way to go, if I want to be able to run my PPC BG2 on my Intel Mac, but I hesitate to proceed down that path because I'm not familiar with how to do it (what I need to d/l and install, configure, etc.). If setting it up requires purchasing Snow Leopard, then it's a no-go,

Well running OS X on VirtualBox is probably pretty rare, so you might not find much in the way of instructions on the net. But I can only repeat my exhortation to consider leaving behind the PPC game. VirtualBox is free, and you can do what I did and run an old dust-collecting copy of Windows XP on it - or else search for TinyXP which can also be had for free. Instructions for setting up XP on VirtualBox abound, and it gives you a nice sandbox in which to install the game, and you can use the most up-to-date versions of Weidu and mods etc.

 

The only cost would be $10 for the GOG game, or maybe you could find the 5-disc or 3-disc versions somewhere for cheaper. For me this is the best way to play these games, even better in some ways than playing EE natively on OS X.

[ericp07]

I already have a Windows 7 installation of BG1/ToSC and BG2/ToB, accessible via Parallels Desktop, so I guess I should just stick with that going forward.

[subtledoctor]

Oh, yeah, well that's be much better!

[CamDawg]

Well, Sarah v4 and Kivan v15 are the first of our new OS X and Linux installers based on feedback here and elsewhere. We'd appreciate any OS X users to try them out and see how they work.

[ericp07]

Oh, sure, torture me with that news about my favorite mod (Kivan) after I've decided to utterly annihilate my OS X installation and never play BG2 under that OS again *LOL*

[CamDawg]

Damn, I think ericp07's on to me...