Mod bugs that cause NPCs’ names to change?

[ensbana]

@Angel I have another question to ask if you don’t mind. I installed an NPC mod (Afaaq the Djinn) but now his name is all wrong. Is it possible to manually fix this issue?

 

 

[Jarno Mikkola]

1 minute ago, ensbana said:

@Angel I have another question to ask if you don’t mind. I installed an NPC mod (Afaaq the Djinn) but now his name is all wrong. Is it possible to manually fix this issue?

Start a fresh game, aka don't load a save made before the mod was installed. That will fix this problem: entirely.

[Angel]

I'm not familiar with that particular mod.  If he's an NPC and gets stored in baldur.gam my string fixer should have fixed him too, but I understand he's not a NPC in the normal sense.  In theory fixing it should be possible but I cannot give you a guide on how to do it, sorry.

Most of the time you can safely ignore what Jarno says but this once he is exactly right; the only sure-fire way to fix everything is to start a new game and remember to never change mods on a running game again.  There are ways to do it, but you have to understand exactly how the game and mods work to pull it off, and even then you might screw up or just get unlucky, so it's best to just don't do it.   My tool is not anywhere near complete and I don't know when or even if it will ever be.

[ensbana]

Hey thanks for the comments. I guess I will just stick with this playthrough for now. I don’t have much use for that NPC anw, so I can do without it for now. 

[Veszerin]

On 9/12/2020 at 8:08 AM, Angel said:

As others already pointed out, this is caused by using a save from a game with different mods (or different versions of mods, or different order of installation).  The reason for this is that NPC character files get stored in the baldur.gam file including the reference to their name in the dialog.tlk file, it is not looked up again from  the .cre file.  The same thing can happen with areas and shops, which are saved in the baldur.sav file. This is different from items and spells, which do refer to the game file every time they are referenced, so this never happens with items and spells.

I have a tool that might fix this, but it's very much experimental so use at your own risk.  The tool is found here:
https://github.com/AngelGryph/BGSaveFixer

This tool is a huge life saver. I'm glad I happened to stumble on this thread, which allowed me to make a few changes to a mid-BG1 EET game.  Thank you so much.