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Trials of the Luremaster in Windows 10


Guest IWD Lover

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1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

@WinRAR: I'll take your word for it, Jarno, but nevertheless, I think I'll stick with 7zip.

I can't say for sure of the extraction rate, but I would think that the .7z files are faster and definitely smaller than .zip's. The .zip's only advantage is the universality of them, as in you can upload it to a website easily and nearly every forum etc accepts it, and it comes by default to Winodws, but it has no others... so using it to keep personal files is not that much better than having the files in storage as a folder.

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Guest IWD Lover
19 hours ago, AL|EN said:

In order to not manually fix *.ini files and registry entries for each game, you can use my tool: http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1063-infinity-engine-game-launcher/

Took a quick gander at your link there.  The description mentions operating systems XP through Windows 8.  Works for Windows 10 too?

18 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

(1) This is because you don't have the "familiar" file extensions shown, in the folder and file options. Guess you aren't that familiar with the bad options, set by default. :dry: Dont you just love it when Macrohard does things wrong by default.

 

(2) The extraction time is faster with WinRAR and it makes smaller files... but of course you need WinRAR to extract.. but I always install that by default. Yeah, that's an important detail.

(1) Cool, flipped the file extensions on easy enough.  I see the icewind.ini and two others now.

 (2) Where you talk about the "important detail," referring to zip files coming with .ini's "[you] can then edit": are you saying putting Icwind Dale's files in a zip is going to generate new .ini's that will need to be edited in addition to the icewind.ini Bartimaeus speaks of?  The only reason to bother with a zip is to conserve space, correct?

22 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

In the Icewind Dale directory, there is a "icewind.ini" file - if you open it up with a plaintext editor (e.g. Notepad), you'll see the "HD0=[path]", "CD1=[path]" lines under Alias. You'll note that the paths specified go to your previous location of the game directory - change all of them to the new one, save, and launching IDMain.exe magically works again. The same principle applies to all of the games. You don't actually need a given system to go through the "installation" via the installer CD/exe - just need to make sure the .ini points to the correct path if you actually have all the game files already.

Of the three .ini's, only the icewind.ini you mention requires editing?  If a game isn't "installed" via the CD, load times and/or performance of the game takes a hit?  I seem to remember the "installing" of Icewind Dale from CD made mention of the "Full" install requiring less in the way of load times or had more performance than the "Minimum" or "Recommended" options.

Also: might there be a change to make in the icewind.ini you mention that makes it so that the game doesn't require a CD in the optical drive to be played?

22 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

 

baldur_2020-04-12_22-34-27.png

I apparently haven't had BG2 properly installed for years - I opened the launcher and it thinks it wants to install instead of play.

I don't know what necessarily constitutes "properly installed," but I noticed that even though I had installed Icewind Dale by CD on my old Windows 7 laptop, the launcher will prompt me to install the game yet again, as you've portrayed above with Baldur's Gate 2, when I run the launcher.  It's installed simply at 😄 and doesn't seem to even show up in the registry.  I installed it a second time to generate the fresh Icewind Dale folder I used to transfer to my Windows 10.  Oddly, it then both showed up in the registry and the launcher then prompted me to play instead of install.

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Zipping files was just an aside to me for archiving the game, not to do with fixing anything.

Yeah, it should only be the icewind.ini. The others are...to do with...like controls and maybe something else, IIRC.

When you do a full game install via the CD, this just means the files are transferred from the CD into the game directory so that the files can be read off of your hard drive instead of the CD-ROM (CD/DVD drives are horribly slow). As for making the game no-CD, uhh, I don't think so, I just have a program that removes the CD check from all the Infinity Engine games (although it requires doing a full install, of course, as otherwise there'd be missing files).

Edited by Bartimaeus
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9 hours ago, Guest IWD Lover said:

(2) Where you talk about the "important detail," referring to zip files coming with .ini's "[you] can then edit": are you saying putting Icwind Dale's files in a zip is going to generate new .ini's that will need to be edited in addition to the icewind.ini Bartimaeus speaks of?  The only reason to bother with a zip is to conserve space, correct?

Nope, the .ini files are generally generated during the first run of the .exe's, from the install processes finnishing rutine. What's important is that when that's done, the .zip's can save those files without a need to redo the install or according to a windows register... meaning you can then just freely extract the file anywhere you like and edit the already existing files to then reflect the current location and have the game run as intended.

The other reason than saving space in archiving files is that the computer can read the data faster from an archive than from a folder. Why, cause it just can... as it has to do with large numbers, well large and a tiny bit smaller large numbers. Similar like the new consoles are rumored to be able to stream x2 the data read speeds, from an SSD. This can be seen in the old versions of the BG2 games, as the files there are actually packaged in a .bif files. Infinity Engines OWN archiving files.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola
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Guest Distraught Petitioner

Hello!

Please excuse me the thread necromancy - I have a very similar (although not identical) problem to the OP's and it seemed more appropriate to write here than to make a new thread.

I have a (localized) DVD collection of IE games - I've managed to conquer the many, many problems I'd faced when trying to mod and run BG1/2 and PS:T, but I think I've hit a brick wall when it comes to IWD1. My DVD, for some reason, does not include Trials of the Luremaster; the game version is 1.40. I found and downloaded the patch - I think it's the correct one for the localization (if it matters), albeit I'm not certain it's not just the English one - it is named HOWTrials.exe (and is 71.2 MB). However, I am unable to install the patch - it seemingly starts the setup, only to give the error message: "Setup was unable to find a valid installation of Icewind Dale. Please make sure Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter have been properly installed.". I believe both are properly installed, I've launched the game and can see "Heart of Winter" displayed on the title screen. The same happens with patch 1.41. (Most tests I did on the TotL patch however.) Unfortunately, I don't own a pre-Win10 computer. (Current system version - Windows 10 20H2.)

I've tried a couple of things:
- reinstalling
- installing the patch from the game folder and from outside of it
- Jarno's way of installing (C:\Users\<username>\<games>\Icewind Dale; also alternatively within a created Black Isle folder) in addition to my stardard installation on E: (SSD I use for games; didn't touch Program Files; uninstalled every time)
- changing the game catalog name from "Icewind Dale" to "Icewind Dale - Heart of Winter" and the appropriate variant for my localization (along with the .ini file paths so it's consistent), although this seems to not be well liked by the game
- I've noticed that in the .ini file there's 3 CDs listed (CD1, CD2, CD3) and only two (Cd2, CD3) in the game folder; this seemed like a possible culprit, so I tried copying a CD1 folder I found on the DVD and alternatively changing the path to F: - to no avail (tbh, I didn't really expect it to work, it might not even be the "same" CD1 folder - the DVD is for both IWD games); oddly, changing the path to F: in the .ini file did not seem to make a difference for the game as it still launched - makes me kind of worried whether it won't become a problem even in untouched game

With regard to the above, I have two questions:

1. Would you, by any chance, have an idea on how to possibly fix this? It seems like the problem is indeed caused by some as of yet not understood quirk of Windows 10 (as per the discussion above) - my only hope is that my problem isn't 100% identical to the OP's and so maybe SOMETHING will work. The hope is faint though and so...

2. Failing installing TotL or 1.41, would it possible (/good idea) to install the Fix Pack, Tweaks and Widescreen Mod for IWD 1.40? I know it's not recommended, and I'd love to comply with "getting the game in order" by installing 1.42 or at least 1.41, but I'm afraid 1.40 might end up being the only option for me. I could probably deal with no WSM and tweaks, but I'm terribly afraid of bugs, especially of the gamebreaking kind. 1.40 was reported to be riddled with bugs... then again, Fixpack likely won't help with what was fixed by the official patches.

Lastly, I may not have posted here before, but thank you to G3! Great stuff here. And special thanks to Jarno, I believe his posts helped me with at least one of the problems with other IE games I've mentioned above. :)

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Interestingly, since I last studied this issue, I actually reformatted to Windows 10 and...the original CD installations actually still work perfectly fine, can still install them and then use the Trials of Luremaster patch. Unfortunately, from my tests last year that I noted down in this thread, it's a number of different registry, file path, and file contents checks that the original CD version of the game passes, but for whatever reason, at least some of the DVD versions don't. As for how to fix it, difficult to say without somebody actually owning both the DVDs and CDs and doing a deep dive into them both and figuring out the differences and why the patch .exe responds to one set of conditions but not another. As I don't have any of the DVD installers (much less your specific localized one), but instead simply own all of the original CD releases, alas.

Your 71.2 MB HOWTrials.exe matches my English 71.2 MB HOWTrials.exe. I'm not sure what localization you're trying to install the game in, but that is not the correct size for either the German, French, Spanish, Italian, or Polish versions of Trials of Luremaster, so it seems as though you've been using the wrong patch .exe to begin with. Not ideal! You can find links to the other versions on here under the Trials of Luremaster description: https://sorcerers.net/Games/IWD/index_misc.php

My other suggestion would've been just to shell out the $10 or so on GOG to get Icewind Dale Complete with everything already taken care of in your localization...but since IWD:EE was released, it's no longer offered, so you can no longer legally obtain such a thing.

Edited by Bartimaeus
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Guest Distraught Petitioner

Thank you! The correct patch file was the answer. Turns out I'm a blind idiot and somehow missed the obvious place (sorcerers.net)... And I searched far and wide. I got the (wrong) patch from a Polish site and thought it's either this or nothing. Or that in worst case I'd suddenly get English text.

18 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

My other suggestion would've been just to shell out the $10 or so on GOG to get Icewind Dale Complete with everything already taken care of in your localization...but since IWD:EE was released, it's no longer offered, so you can no longer legally obtain such a thing.

I did consider this, but as you say - now it's EE (+ the original game on GOG) or nothing. I wouldn't mind paying for the old GOG versions (especially if they're on sale), but I'm not particularly happy about paying for the EE just to get the basic versions. I'm a stubborn miser, haha. Also not a fan of how Beamdog handled EE.

Thank you again and sorry for bothering the forum with a (as it turns out) trivial problem of my own making. Have a great day! :)

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Hah, glad you were able to sort it out with just that!

I hate how Beamdog handled the Baldur's Gate EEs, but to my knowledge, they were a lot more hands-off and...less self-insertive with PST:EE and IWD:EE. For archival purposes, I keep copies of everything, though:

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Ain't nobody ever called me a little OCD before, :p.

Edited by Bartimaeus
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Guest Distraught Petitioner

Whoa, quite the collection there! I'd probably do something similar, haha. Might actually break eventually and buy BG1/2 EE. I intend to replay BG sooner or later, but the thought of (potentially) going through the hassle of getting my version to work again kind of scares me. Especially that I'd change some mods. I'd likely still end up using the old GOG version though, Beamdog's "fanon" is just... a nope for me.

I heard the same about EE of IWD and PS:T. It's somewhat unfortunate that BG out of all these got that treatment - it's probably the one people "mess" with the most (mods, character import, replayed a lot, even MP), so having a version that's mostly problem-free on modern systems would be nice. The other two imo give less incentive to play as EE: PS:T is a single game and doesn't rely heavily on mechanics (theoretically easier to get in order) and with IWD you'll be playing non-EE IWD2 anyway, so might as well be consistent. (I can't imagine BGEE-style additions in PS:T though. Perhaps Beamdog saw it would be much worse in PS:T and avoided that big of a blunder.)

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Yeah, it really is unfortunate the BG games were the ones Beamdog decided to add all sorts of what's essentially ill-fitting fanfiction on top of. And I can't even imagine such 'additions' to PS:T - the idea would be utterly laughable for that game.

The only problem with the GOG editions is...yeah, they're not legally available anymore, ;).

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Guest Distraught Petitioner
1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

The only problem with the GOG editions is...yeah, they're not legally available anymore, ;).

Well, technically they are... you just have to buy them in a "bundle" on GOG, that is as a free addition to EE. 😛 Also works with NWN. But I do wish they were available separately...

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