Can you uninstall or update mods mid-game?

[jacklhoward]

What kinds of mods can be uninstalled or updated mid-game? Can I uninstall some of the components of unfinished business in bg2 ee if I dont like them? How about AI mods? I am considering updating enhanced powergaming scripts from v7.3.1 to the newest mid-game but i am worried it would break things.

[temnix]

Two days, and none of the chatterboxes have said anything. You can uninstall anything anytime, it's only going to matter for the content you have already come across in this playthrough: areas you have been to, NPC who have already appeared in those areas, start-of-the-game conditions and so on. They may be kind of strange, but Weidu rolls back most changes cleanly. Scripts and dialogues are updated every time you launch the game, so there you don't even need to start over.

[jacklhoward]

On 6/18/2022 at 7:19 AM, temnix said:

Two days, and none of the chatterboxes have said anything. You can uninstall anything anytime, it's only going to matter for the content you have already come across in this playthrough: areas you have been to, NPC who have already appeared in those areas, start-of-the-game conditions and so on. They may be kind of strange, but Weidu rolls back most changes cleanly. Scripts and dialogues are updated every time you launch the game, so there you don't even need to start over.

Thanks a bunch, man.

[InKal]

That is really not true what he says. Only selected mods like some little tweaks like Lightning pack for example can be safely uninstalled mid-game. In most cases error will occur during reinstallation, because weidu will proceed to reinstall some mods depending where in the installation order was that mod you are currently uninstalling - I think it works like this. 

And never, ever update mods without completely uninstalling the prevuious version first.

[temnix]

Bullshit. All sorts of mods can be uninstalled. You are going to have problems in a few specific cases. For instance, if the party was in an area that doesn't exist any more, and a game was saved there. Then the game will crash if that save is reloaded. But if the party had an item that doesn't exist anymore, there is no problem, the ITM file will be gone from every slot. That's what he was asking about, not Weidu's order of installing and uninstalling. Weidu will uninstall them in the right order anyway, it can't even be helped except by manually hacking up the log file. Do you even know what you are talking about it all? I make mistakes sometimes, but the level of incompetence on these boards is staggering.

[jmerry]

On uninstalling - if you choose to uninstall something that isn't the last thing you installed, WeiDU will uninstall everything that came after it, before then automatically reinstalling those mods. Which means everything that got reinstalled might come out a little different, or throw errors. Doing this mid-game is, understandably, risky.

On installing new mods, or uninstalling whatever's most recent in the stack - some game resources are stored in the saves, and anything that updates those will update the base version of the resource but not anything that's already been locked into the save. Also risky, but a much more controllable risk if you know exactly what the mod does.

What's in the save? Party members. NPCs that could join the party, that start there - generally only the original Bioware NPCs. Areas that you have visited, and their contents including containers and NPCS. Stores that you have interacted with. Global variables.

So, you're thinking about the "Enhanced Powergaming Scripts" mod? The scripts themselves will update just fine. The hooks that let you select those scripts and use them for party members ... I don't know, because I don't know how the mod handles that.

[subtledoctor]

Broadly speaking, it's a question of risk vs. reward. If you do things right, everything that gets automatically uninstalled should get automatically reinstalled, strings should be preserved, and you should hopefully be fine.

But things do go wrong, occasionally - Weidu can be finicky, mods are written by amateurs, and no one can guarantee that some mod in the stack won't act up. If you have six mods installed and three of them need to reinstall it will probably be fine. That's probably the situation that temnix sees. But if like me your weidu.log has 600 entries, and 350 of them need to reinstall... well, the odds of something going wrong are a bit higher. Still small, but higher. And given that these games involve a real time commitment - an EET game could easily go over 100 hours, I will literally take more than a year to get through it - well, the potential harm is rather high.

Of course you can experiment! Hard drive space is cheap these days! Just make a copy of your entire game folder onto your desktop or something. Do the change, try it out, see what happens. If things get screwy, trash your game folder and put the copy back in its place.

Ultimately nobody here can tell you how things are going to go - you didn't even post a weidu.log. All we can do is give you basic information about the risks and then you can make an informed decision.

But me personally: once I have an install done, I never change it, except to install a hotfix for this or that bug. Some mod got updated? Cool, I'll get the update next year. If my game is working, I leave well enough alone and just play the game. A wise woman once told me, don't go chasing waterfalls. True story.

[jastey]

9 hours ago, temnix said:

But if the party had an item that doesn't exist anymore, there is no problem, the ITM file will be gone from every slot.

I am not too sure about that, or at least had problems with invisible, unremovable items (when in inventory) in stores that were traces of items that were present when someone made the store but now weren't. I think it was even BGII items in a store for BG:EE when I revised NTotSC. I know I had to remove those items for a BG:EE game to prevent glitches.

[InKal]

12 hours ago, temnix said:

Bullshit. All sorts of mods can be uninstalled. You are going to have problems in a few specific cases. For instance, if the party was in an area that doesn't exist any more, and a game was saved there. Then the game will crash if that save is reloaded. But if the party had an item that doesn't exist anymore, there is no problem, the ITM file will be gone from every slot. That's what he was asking about, not Weidu's order of installing and uninstalling. Weidu will uninstall them in the right order anyway, it can't even be helped except by manually hacking up the log file. Do you even know what you are talking about it all? I make mistakes sometimes, but the level of incompetence on these boards is staggering.

Install big quest mods, a lot of npc mods, lots of kits, tewaks and SCS on top and then try uninstalling something. You will see what will happen - errors all the time during reinstallation. And please.........competence and you??? Don't make me laugh, mister "modder".