3 replies to this topic

[Thraxwhirl]

Hello, everyone.

I am new here, and indeed this is my very first post, so I hope you will not be too cross if I have put this thread in the wrong forum. If so, I apologise, but I would be very grateful if one of you more experienced users might be willing to help me with a technical problem.

I am trying to install and run the Baldur's Gate Trilogy Mod, starting from a completely new game, and ne adventure - ie. at Candlekeep.

Now, in the last two days I installed both BG1(with ToSC) and 2(with ToB) on my computer. I've played them both before(though not for quite a while), on my old PC, but this is their very first installation on this new PC.

All went fine in both cases. Now I have NO OTHER mods installed in either of them(not even XPCap removers), and the only custom files present at all are in BG1's override folder(all items and spells, etc. but NO mods), and I have deliberately kept BG 2 completely unmolested since installation, because right from the get-go, I wanted to run the Trilogy Mod so that I could combine the two adventures back-to-back.

NB: I thought I'd keep it simple, BTW, and NOT bother with the Darkest Day, Dark Side of Sword Coast and Never Ending Journey etc. that make up Big Picture, because I didn't want to over-complicate the whole thing. I just want to run BG1 and 2 back to back with ONE story/character(a Sorcerer, which is unavailable in BG1 of course).

So, I DL'd the 658MB file, and ran the .exe after extracting it. I told it where the BG2 folder is, and it did its stuff, so I thought. It ran the XP-modififier, and I set starting Exp to 100 as ordered in the instructions, and I then proceeded to try to run a brand new adventure from the very beginning, with no cheats, mods, custom items or ANYTHING but the Trilogy mod itself.

Well, firstly, I was rather dismayed to see that my character began his adventure not in the peaceful setting of Candlekeep, but rather in Irenicus' dungeon at the start of SoA.

I quit, re-read the ReadMe file that came with the Mod, wondering if I'd made an incorrect selection at the start of the game.

It told me this:

" To start a new Baldur's Gate game, start Shadows of Amn, go to new game, then the Baldur's Gate button. The New Game button will start a Shadows of Amn game. Once started, you can load either BG1 or BG2 games normally."

Well, firstly, I didn't spot thiis "Baldur's Gate" button to which it refers, but could only choose from the normal buttons that have always been a part of BG2. If the Trilogy should've added a new one, permitting me to run an adventure from the start, it's not there. Now, as for running "BG1 or BG2 games normally", well, I didn't exactly what to make of that, but I assumed logically that it meant that I could place a BG1 saved game into my BG2 folder, and run THAT... or how else could one play BG1 adventure in BG2 if there's no button to choose it?

Well, it seemed easy enough, as all I would have to do was generate a character, start the adventure, save it at Day 1 and 0 hours, then copy that saved game to the "Save" folder in BG2, right? Then run BG2 and load THAT. Well, it didn't work at all. As far as the game itself could tell, there were no saved games available to load in.

So I went back to the instructions. And I saw this:

"To start a new BG1 multi-player game, use the included multi-player savegame."

Aha! I thought. The Mod comes with a Multi-player game as created by the author himself, and no doubt it begins right at the very start of BG1. Thus, all I would have to do was load THAT in and then create or import a character into that game and off I'd go.

Well, the FIRST problem I encountered was this. The MPSave folder was completely EMPTY. The Mod's installer had failed to do its job to a lesser or greater extent. As a tryout, I looked inside the BGt3 folder and found this multi-player save in there. I put it into BG2's MPSave folder, and sure enough, the game FOUND it ok when I loaded it, and it correctly identified its time as Day 1 and 0 Hours(at Candlekeep one presumes)... BUT, as soon as it completed loading it in, it crashed back out to Windows.

In short, the Trilogy Mod hasn't installed correctly.

So... I've written as detailed a report as I can, so you know exactly what I've done, tried to do, and failed to do, and now I shall have to uninstall BG2 and BGT and start all over again. *Sigh*

BUT... may I ask for some assistance here? Can anyone recomend a pretty foolproof way of getting this mod to install itself correctly? There are no other mods present to conflict with it, afterall. Is there a list of do's and don'ts, in/during/prior to/after installation that I should know about?

Are there required game patches for BG2 that I should've installed FIRST? I'd already done one, which is called BGII-ThroneofBhaal_Patch_26498_ENGLISH.exe but should I have installed any others too?

Any assistance that someone could provide, so I can get this Trilogy mod to install and run correctly would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

Adam.

[horred the plague]

My guess is that the DOS installer for BGT din't recognize the path to your game, that you entered before hitting the "ctrl+z".

I always, for simplicity's sake, cut and pasted my entire BG1+ToTSC installation (all the files you find inside the ...black isle/baldur's gate folder) to a folder at path c:/baldur. It's because of the way DOS recognizes directories and folder names, that this became the best way. You can simply cut/paste the files back to the ...Baldur's Gate folder when the installer is done, if you wish.

[glx]

if you are a little bit experienced in dos batch progging. then simply edit the BG1_PATH variable, you can set your installed path instead reading it with ctrl+z at the end.
or have a look at the bgt-weidu version (much smaller).
but the orig bgt should work fine.

[Thraxwhirl]

Hello again, folks.

Thanks ever so much for taking the time to offer thoughts and assistance.

I've done a re-install, and sure enough I put BG1 into C:\Baldur temporarily, and I also followed a link provided by Ascension64, which gave me a newer Weidu version of the mod. NB: I am, alas, NOT experienced at Dos-progging, so I didn't feel I dared try changing the Path inf. lol.

Anyway I do believe it has all worked ok! I have a new character in Candlekeep running on the BG2 engine. Yaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy!!!

Thanks EVER so much for your help, everybody. I really do appreciate it.