My BWS-developing-related questions

Hi there.

I have some questions I want to put here.
So it's not really suited for install-problems.

I don't know when the BWS will be out and will be able to install selectable components.
It needs a lot of testing, I've have to change or (re)write a lot of stuff and I don't want to deliver broken code.
So here's the answer if you wanted to ask that question: When it's done.
I just need to think about some issues before I start to quarrel with the consequences.

So, here we go:

Can someone tell me how the Setup-GUI.tp2 is created? (Solved)
The full-fledged one looks like

0="Original SoA/ToB"
1="Neverending Journey"
2="Shadows Over Soubar"
3="The Darkest Day"
4="Check The Bodies"
5="Tortured Souls"
6="Tortured Souls" - just nice in-game Fonts
7="Region of Terror"
8="Baldur's Gate Trilogy" (Elminster wielding sword)
9="Baldur's Gate Trilogy" (Elminster wielding staff)
10="Neverending Journey"
11="The Darkest Day"
12="Shadows Over Soubar"
13="Check The Bodies"
14="Tortured Souls"
16="Region of Terror"
17="Baldur's Gate Trilogy" (Elminster wielding sword)
18="Baldur's Gate Trilogy" (Elminster wielding staff)
19="Big Picture"

If I run this with a recommended install, I get

Install Component [Game Graphical User Interface (GUI)]?
[N]o, [Q]uit or choose one:
 1] "Original SoA/ToB"
 2] "The Darkest Day"
 3] "Baldur's Gate Trilogy" (Elminster wielding sword)
 4] "Baldur's Gate Trilogy" (Elminster wielding staff)"

So the full-fledged one is taken and not installed mods are removed? So the component number will be 0, 1, 2, 3 here?
If that's true, including that in the BWS would be a bunch of if-then-queries, another bunch of dependencies and I don't see the advantage of that compared to other stuff.

Would a pause-function be needed? (Implemented)
I am including an exit/resume-function. So you can click the exit-button, the BWS waits for the current weidu to exit and you can resume from that point. Will a pause-function make any additional sense to you? (You would just have to click on the GUI and not on the BiG World Setup.vbs -- doesn't make a great difference to me, but since someone asked for it, it put it here.)

Would you like the BWS to create a separate game? (Implemented)
Adding a new folder for BWP should be quite easy. You just copy the BG2-folder, leave out the data (CDX-folders), edit the Baldur.ini and you can go on. Should something that "easy" be done by the BWS?

I think I'll come up with some other questions later.

Cheers
Dabus

Edited by dabus, 12 December 2009 - 11:57 AM.

Can someone tell me how the Setup-GUI.tp2 is created?

I remember that the mods have their own code that enables the Setup-GUI to include them as a possibility, don't know what though, the bigg or Ascension64 surely knows how it's implemented etc...

Would a pause-function be needed?

At least one as a separate selectable option in the "Further Customize your installation..." before the Generalized Biffing, yes at least that one. Of course I would put one choose-able pause at the end of every mod category.

Would you like the BWS to create a separate game?
Adding a new folder for BWP should be quite easy. You just copy the BG2-folder, leave out data, edit the Baldur.ini and you can go on. Should something that "easy" be done by the BWS?

Well, the 2,5 Gb's> isn't that big space addition requirement, and it has the same advantages that the EasyTutu has, having clean original game for EasyTutu, Classic Adventure, IWDinBG2, Epic Endeavours etc. etc. So my answer is yes.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 03 October 2009 - 06:38 AM.

Seems strange that components 10-18 of the full-fledged GUI.tp2 mirror the components 1-9

Would a pause-function be needed?

YES!!! If this is like those media player pause/play functions, it'd help a great deal (if nothing else than just to let the cpu cool down after some hardcore install-fu )

PS: The exiting/resuming (exit is a scary word ) may scare new users who won't exit afraid that they'll have to start over again. If you can make it crystal clear to these guys about how to pause-resume ... the current method would be enuff

Would you like the BWS to create a separate game?
... leave out data

Why are you leaving out the data folder?? (or is this some other data that i dunno about?? )

Are you suggesting that the second BGII-SoA folder can use the original data folder to run the game??

But about the feature ... YES!!! A great compliment to the backup/restore feature that the BWS already has

Cheers,
Lol

At least one as a separate selectable option in the "Further Customize your installation..." before the Generalized Biffing, yes at least that one. Of course I would put one choose-able pause at the end of every mod category.

Hm, you are talking about pauses/marks you can define before you start anything to add not supported mods or something.
That's another (though interesting) issue.
So
Should you be able to predefine pauses for further actions installations? (Implemented)

The question i asked above was if you should be able the pause while the installation is running. So you click pause, the BWS waits for pending weidu-actions and then waits for a click on the resume-button.

I thought that adding a hint in a messagebox before the installation would be enough. The BWS is closed and you can select to resume when you start anew.

@Lollorian:
Pause: See above. The hint will be displayed after the installation of the fixed, so right before the weidu-action.
Game-folder: I fixed the data-name. And I mean the solution from the FAQ.

Edited by dabus, 12 December 2009 - 11:57 AM.

Should you be able to predefine pauses for further actions installations?...

Ah, ... but I would like to have both options actually as one doesn't cover the other...
So I wish to have both, or at least the predefined options, cause I won't be there to push the pause at 4AM.

About pauses...

At least one as a separate selectable option in the "Further Customize your installation..." before the Generalized Biffing, yes at least that one.

This would be great !

Btw ... about pausing. I think some clarification seems to be needed:

Automatic pausing: Like Jarno mentioned and dabus asked in his second post, seems to work when you encounter some kinda error during mod installation, automatically pausing the installer (probably to allow you to try again after redownloading the errored mod )

Manual pausing: Like the one dabus asked in his original post and the one I'm interested to see implelmented, is when the user him/herself pauses the installation (like a media player) to pause/unpause so that you can do your stuff. As it stands, i find opening/closing windows/readmes (in general, any file) etc extremely tedious while the install.bat is doing its magic (Btw, it isn't the BWS that's using the cpu, it's WeiDU )

Cheers,
Lol

Edited by Lollorian, 03 October 2009 - 09:50 AM.

Jarno is interested in pauses because he wants to customize the installation, not to have a look at errors.

Oh, so do you mean presetting "exactly where" you want to pause?? Well, that would be great too IMHO But it still comes under automatic pausing ... right??

Cheers,
Lol

Can someone tell me how the Setup-GUI.tp2 is created?

It's build dynamically during installation of the mods.

In BGTs case, it checks if Setup-GUI.tp2 exists and if not creates it and adds the original GUI as first component.
Then it appends the new GUIs to the tp2.
I guess the other mods which provide a GUI will do the same.

There is a 2da file (gui_mods.2da) that keeps track of what the next available component number and the currently installed gui component is.

As it stands, i find opening/closing windows/readmes (in general, any file) etc extremely tedious while the install.bat is doing its magic

I thought the batch file already did a --skip-at-view for every mod. Anyhow, I suggested it ages ago and the BiG World folks agreed... (and it's been around forever).

Lollorian wants to open them.
He just said that it takes some time while weidu is doing it's job and eating up your cpu.

Also, the batch does include that. But some of the mods use batch-files and those include the lines that open additional readmes that halt the install-process.
So, since these batchfiles were used to "override" --skip-at-view, the installpack uses the patches from the included smoothpack to remove the readmes again.

Regarding the Setup-GUI.tp2, I think I may just parse the file and make an exception standard-wise.
But since it's not an issue that's that big, it's not a top notch priority.

Edited by dabus, 06 October 2009 - 12:42 PM.

To make it clear, I'm talking about readmes in general (cause the only non-cpu-intensive-but-still-can-work-while-installer-runs thing I could think of is word processing ) not listening to music/watching movies and stuff

Cheers,
Lol

Would a pause-function be needed?
I am including an exit/resume-function. So you can click the exit-button, the BWS waits for the current weidu to exit and you can resume from that point. Will a pause-function make any additional sense to you? (You would just have to click on the GUI and not on the BiG World Setup.vbs -- doesn't make a great difference to me, but since someone asked for it, it put it here.)

OH MY GOD! It took my four builds to get my BWP working. This would have allowed me to get it to work on the first.

Would you like the BWS to create a separate game?
Adding a new folder for BWP should be quite easy. You just copy the BG2-folder, leave out the data (CDX-folders), edit the Baldur.ini and you can go on. Should something that "easy" be done by the BWS?

I think I'll come up with some other questions later.

Cheers
Dabus

Meh. NEJ sucks.

Jarno is interested in pauses because he wants to customize the installation, not to have a look at errors.

Very true...

So to collect the thought, I would say that there needs to be 3 kinds of pausing;
1 - An optional Automatic one, if the BWS comes to an error during an installation, the BWS stops everything until the user give a go for it to continuer the next item in the process. It's optional so the user can turn it off so the BWS will install during the night even if it runs to errors...
2 - An optional pre-choose-able Automatic ones, so they are selectable from the "Further Installation option..."
3 - Pause via the Space bar/Pause button or the like, so the BWS will conclude the already running mods installation, but will not start the next until it's has a go from the user.

Would you like the BWS to create a separate game?

Meh. NEJ sucks.

Erhm, your opinion on the matter is still undetermined, Yes or No -is a well defined determinant, so use it if you can't use any other.

1 - An optional Automatic one, if the BWS comes to an error during an installation, the BWS stops everything until the user give a go for it to continuer the next item in the process. It's optional so the user can turn it off so the BWS will install during the night even if it runs to errors...

Yes

2 - An optional pre-choose-able Automatic ones, so they are selectable from the "Further Installation option..."

Yes

3 - Pause via the Space bar/Pause button or the like, so the BWS will conclude the already running mods installation, but will not start the next until it's has a go from the user.

Hell freaking punk-goth-rock YEAH!!!!

Would you like the BWS to create a separate game?

Meh. NEJ sucks.

Erhm, your opinion on the matter is still undetermined, Yes or No -is a well defined determinant, so use it if you can't use any other.

That's pure sig material

Cheers,
Lol

Hi.

I just wanted to state that the gui, pause and separate game-issues are done.

Now I'm not sure about another one.

Display of connections to other mods / components (Implemented)
I would like to add the infos that I got into the edit-box at the bottom and append it to the mods description.
This way, you could see the conflicts or dependencies asap.

The connections from the ini-file look like:

NTotSC Patch=D:NTOTSC(-)&NTOTSCv171(-)
NTotSC Patch Dependancy=D:NTOTSCv171(-):DSOTSC(-)&NTOTSC(-)
DSotSC NPCs in BGII=D:BGTTweak(1809|1810|1811|1812|1813|1814):DSotSC(-)
Extended ToB Item Descriptions=C:Item_Rev(-)>UB(20)

The automatic translation looks like:

NTOTSC and NTOTSCv171 are installed together.
NTOTSCv171 needs DSOTSC and NTOTSC.
BGTTweak (component 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812, 1813 or 1814) needs DSotSC.
Item_Rev is preferred to UB (component 20).

I'm currently not sure what to do now.
I could append all the mods connections to the mod-line itself. (The colored line)
I could move those that are related to one component to the component itself. (The line that tells you that I'm working on the selection of components.)

I could also use the key of the ini-file, too. That would look like:

NTotSC Patch=NTOTSC and NTOTSCv171 are installed together.

This key is or would be some kind of description of the value that follows.

The related thing that I'm unsure about is the component-number.

Should it be in front of the displayed name of the component? (Implemented)

20: Extended ToB Item Descriptions: v18
0020: Extended ToB Item Descriptions: v18

I currently think that those component numbers should be added like in the second example since it has the same format as in the pdf.

Or do you think that these are useless now that you should be able to select them with a click and they shall be left out?
If it's left out, would it make more sense to replace the component number from above?

Item_Rev is preferred to UB (component "Extended ToB Item Descriptions: v18").

The positive thing would be that you don't need to know the related components description, the downside may be a crowded line/bad readability. Think of the BGTTweak with long descriptions; that may use wrap and be crowded in 3 or 4 lines...

Or do you think that those information are only interesting for geeks so I should rather just attach the plain keys and values of the ini-file to the description?

I could really use some input here.

Edited by dabus, 12 December 2009 - 12:00 PM.

Well, since there is two issues, I'll point them shortly and reply to both...

Display of connections to other mods

Just put the specifics visible into the info box when one clicks the said mods name.

Mod components descriptions... and how to manage them.

Just put the specifics visible into the info box when one clicks the said subcomponents name, and the connections if the component if they are different from other components.

So essentially the info box has two/three points, the Description: and Requirements&Connections:

The related thing that I'm unsure about is the component-number. Should it be in front of the displayed name of the component?

20: Extended ToB Item Descriptions: v18
0020: Extended ToB Item Descriptions: v18

Yes, it's there to build structure to the build/order, I like the "20:..." far better, than the one with extra zeroes, as they'll just confuse the Imps larger than life mind, and I don't think the .bat will even work with the extra zeroes.

I currently think that those component numbers should be added like in the second example since it has the same format as in the pdf.

Ah, but the common cause why there is 2000+ component number is that there is no 2000+ components, but that the mods creator decided to spread the components into separated sections for easier install.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 27 November 2009 - 04:54 PM.

I'm currently not sure what to do now.
I could append all the mods connections to the mod-line itself. (The colored line)
I could move those that are related to one component to the component itself. (The line that tells you that I'm working on the selection of components.)

With the new component selection, the users will use the components in the mod-window, too. The users want to look through the mod-components and then un-/select them. So I think, the mod-description should be only for the mod-description and infos for the components itself, should be in the component-description. But that sounds for much work or is it easy to implement? But if you want all the needed infos in the mod-description, then it sounds fine, too.

Or do you think that those information are only interesting for geeks so I should rather just attach the plain keys and values of the ini-file to the description?

Do you mean this with plain description?

NTOTSC and NTOTSCv171 are installed together.
NTOTSCv171 needs DSOTSC and NTOTSC.
BGTTweak (component 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812, 1813 or 1814) needs DSotSC.
Item_Rev is preferred to UB (component 20).

If yes, then I mean that this is understandable and like you said not much work, because of the automatic translation.

Greetings Leomar

Edited by Leomar, 28 November 2009 - 12:57 AM.

It'd be cool if the end description looks like this:

NTOTSC and NTOTSCv171 are installed together.
NTOTSCv171 needs DSOTSC and NTOTSC.
BGTTweak (component 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812, 1813 or 1814) needs DSotSC.
Item_Rev is preferred to UB (component 20).

and not like this:

NTotSC Patch=D:NTOTSC(-)&NTOTSCv171(-)
NTotSC Patch Dependancy=D:NTOTSCv171(-):DSOTSC(-)&NTOTSC(-)
DSotSC NPCs in BGII=D:BGTTweak(1809|1810|1811|1812|1813|1814):DSotSC(-)
Extended ToB Item Descriptions=C:Item_Rev(-)>UB(20)

Although:

(for NTotSC)
Dependacies:
- DSotSC
- NTotSCv171

(for Spell_rev)
Conflicts:
- Spell50 (conceptual incompatibility)

(for UB)
Tip:
- Item_Rev has a similar but more recommended component instead of "UB (component 20)"

That looks very good too

Btw:

NTOTSC and NTOTSCv171 are installed together.
NTOTSCv171 needs DSOTSC and NTOTSC.

They're both automatic translations of Dependancy lines right?? What's the difference between,

NTotSC Patch=D:
NTotSC Patch Dependancy=D:

Cheers,
Lol

Edited by Lollorian, 28 November 2009 - 01:32 AM.