Trying to get EET installed on an iPad... but it's still on the 2.5 patch

[subtledoctor]

I'd like to finally show Jarno EET on an iPad, but Beamdog has so far failed to get the 2.6 patch out to iOS.* I'm getting tired of waiting. From a bit of reading about EET v13, it looks like it had to adapt to some changes in UI.menu in the 2.6 patch; does this mean it is not compatible with 2.5 games? Should I try using v12.2? (I'm a bit leery of that, because of v13 notes like

Quote

"fixed bug with conversion of the BG:EE kitlist.2da PROFICIENCY column"

and

Quote

"removed binary (executable) patching (fixes installation on Mac OS and makes the mod compatible with mobile devices)"

Maybe I could grab v13.4 but use the UI.menu code from v12.2...? That sounds like a bad idea to me, but... maybe someone around here will know.

EDIT - I suppose I could put a copy of UI.menu from a 2.6 desktop game into my 2.5 iOS override folder... but that also sounds dangerous...

* (Especially aggravating because IWDEE v2.5 is not currently moddable on iOS, for a really stupid reason, so I can't play IWD. But I could play that version of IWD-in-EET... if I can play EET.)

Edited April 7, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Graion Dilach]

I haven't looked at IWD-in-EET in details, but I guess it requires 13.4 EET. The problem is that 13.4 probably doesn't work on 2.5 (one of the UI changes effectively broke EET's campaign selection feature and it ended up in BG2 alone). Maybe you can try combining 13.4, IWD-in-EET and then an UI revamp mod with a version aimed for 2.5 (say, LeUI), but I have zero idea if that would work.

13.4 was really just a compat update and it arrived before I finished mapping out the voiceovers to allow properly transferring the BG1 voicesets over.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Graion Dilach

[subtledoctor]

Or maybe I’ll just forget IWD... all I can find is a download from someone’s Google Drive, and it looks like an alpha that has not been updated in some time. Maybe not worth it. I’ll try EET 12.2 and first just see if I can get a bare-bones EET game working. Then try with mods. With all the mods out there and TotLM, I don’t think I’ll miss the IWD content. 

One thing that concerns me, I’d like to try Shadows of the Sword Coast, but EET v13 has some kind of compatibility patch for it. I can’t understand what the issue is, so I’m not sure if SotSC will work with EE 2.5/EET 12.2.

[Graion Dilach]

Okay, now that I actually am looking at the commit history - how does binary patching fare on OS X anyway? The 2.5 versions still used binary patching for NITEDAY and DAYNITE and only 13.4 doesn't... that alone can make this whole discussion moot.

There are a few things which I'd like to polish up in EET myself but I always neglect taking the time to map out the codebase to fill proper PRs... :S

[subtledoctor]

What is the implication of the NITEDAY/DAYNITE stuff? What if I simply omit that?

v13 simply deletes the .exe patching, so I commented it out of my 12.2 .tp2 file. Also commented out all biffing. If that means I don’t get the videos for day/night transitions, but instead just get abrupt transitions... I’m okay with that. If it results in a crash, obviously less okay with it. 

The NITEDAY code actually looks reasonably portable, I could probably move the v13 code back into v12 if I have to. 

[subtledoctor]

Okay, a basic EET+EET_end on iOS, from v12.2 with no .exe patching and no biffing, results in a malformed-but-functional main menu, and a CTD upon trying to start a BG1 campaign. 

[subtledoctor]

Well I got everything installed. The alternate UI crashes the game immediately, I assume because it uses some x/y values that are not valid for the iPad resolution. The basic UI with EET installed is a bit messed up at the first page, but is usable. I'll look into whether I can use LeUI or something like that.

Problem right now is, while I can start and play a game in the BG2 campaign, if I try to start a campaign in BG1 or SoD, it crashes the app before I even get to character generation. Anyone have an idea what could cause a crash at that point in the game-start process? Maybe it's the BG1 intro UI? Or the intro movie? BG1 has an intro movie, right? The Nietzsche quote? Maybe that is in a format the iPad can't play... Hmmm... I imported BG1 + SoD from the MacOS desktop versions of those games, I suppose it's possible some things are different in the iOS versions. Audio and video especially. Maybe I'll try copying stuff from the iOS BGEE/SoD music and movies folders into the EET music and movies folders...

[subtledoctor]

Well, some progress but unfortunately I am not in EET-on-iOS nirvana yet. After I got that basic version of EET v12 working, i realized that there were some important bugs fixed in several v13 commits, including one that makes EET work with Lava's SotSC mod. And I want to play SotsC. So I:

1. Modified some of the code in EET, copying newer code from several EET v13 commits...
2. Did not test that version of EET on my iPad...
3. Installed over 650 mod components on top of EET...
4. Copied everything over to the iPad...
5. It doesn't work.

I think you can see where I probably went wrong. 

Although it's weird - after making the huge modded install, when I moved everything over to the iPad and then started playing, it didn't behave like a buggy version of the game; it behaved like a completely unmodded version of the game. Usually when I Airdrop the modded files over to the iPad, it asks me if I want to import them into BG2, then it brings the BG2 app to the forefront, and then the game clock freezes while it processes the files. With my BGEE install or a bare EET install, with about 30,000 files in the override folder, this might take 20 seconds or so. But this time, with over 90,000 files in the override folder, weighing in at almost 5GB, that pause didn't happen. The clock was running immediately. And restarting the app shows no modded content. It's like the modded files were just ignored by the app. I don't understand why that would happen... maybe there's a size limit? Is 4GB file size limits still a thing these days??

Edited June 11, 2022 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

Success! Oh my gosh... this is not for the timid. But I officially have EET working on my iPad, with a 4.5GB/90,000-file override folder and more than 600 mod components installed. I've played as far as leaving Candlekeep, meeting Imoen and Grey the dog, and immediately traveling to High Hedge. Everything is working so far.

I'll start a new thread with a proper set of instructions.

Edited June 13, 2022 by subtledoctor