IWD2: Reducing Override Folder

[Gimble]

After doing a fresh IWD2 install, and installing only the official 2.01 patch, I took at look at the override folder. 187 files, 2.06 MB.

 

Now, it's my simplistic understanding based on past forum browsing that the size of your override folder can impact performance (sometimes significantly) in game.

 

So, I was wondering... how might I go about rolling those changes back into the original BIFs (or whatever) to reduce finished install size and also increase in-game performance?

 

Weidu? Something else? Don't worry about it? Any information on where to start looking (if indeed the idea is sound ) is greatly appreciated.

[Smoketest]

You can try NI's BIF editor. It'll let you replace existing BIF contents with their updated versions in the override folder, but it's not entirely without bugs. So I recommend the following steps, which I've used successfully with other IE games.

 

1. Backup your CHITIN.KEY, the BIF(s) you're going to update, and your override folder, just in case you have to roll back.

2. Always execute a Refresh before editing/updating a BIF. This helps make sure NI's internal buffers are up to date.

3. Don't attempt to edit/update area BIFs containing tilesets. NI will corrupt the BIF almost every time, if it even manages to complete updating it.

4. If the BIF update hangs and you have to close NI, make sure to delete the _dummy.bif file in your data folder, or whever NI put it, before restarting NI. NI won't automatically delete this file if there's a crash, and will fail to overwrite it if present.

 

That's all I can think of. It should be easier with IWD2 because you don't have two sets of BIFs to play with, as with BG2 and it's SoA/ToB varieties.

 

I tried for at least two years to get Jon Olav to update NI's BIF editor, but he never saw it as a priority so it never got updated. Thus the above steps are absolutely necessary. The only reason I still use it for updates is that it color codes the files so you can tell what's new and what's already in the BIF. I've used the editor successfully in BG1 and BG2 with all non-area BIFs.

 

If you're successful, I recommend putting the updated files (CHITIN.KEY and all modified BIFs) on a CD or DVD for easy re-install.

[the bigg]

After doing a fresh IWD2 install, and installing only the official 2.01 patch, I took at look at the override folder. 187 files, 2.06 MB.

The number of files doesn't impact in-game performance (on some peculiar configurations, it can affect the time it takes to load your game), while the size of the files can bog down your system (after about 500Mb to 1Gb, according to your system), so I don't think that override size will be an issue for you.