Playing Multiple Versions/Platforms

Bloodstone

So I have BGEE, SoD, and BG2EE that I got on Steam way back when they came out at various points. In the interim I found the Beamdog site and turned my attention there for all things BG related. Over the last period of time I have now acquired BGEE, SoD, and BG2EE, and IWDEE, thru the Beamdog client. This makes me happy today because Steam is a major pain with having to manipulate files all over the place in order to play Mods and stuff, things I'm not good at. My question is this:

Since I have the Steam versions can I play those as a Standard Vanilla game without Mods, then use my Beamdog versions to set up The EET Trilogy thru BWS and adding Mods, and be able to play that Modded version thru the Beamdog client?

I have paid for complete versions for both, which is fine at this point, and my intention is to set up EET on a totally separate drive and Beamdogs client makes it easy to choose install path's, and I don't have to fool around with Modmerge.

Is this possible? Sorry I'm such a dummy, your talkin to a guy who has the original BG CD's in their folding CD jacket, with the Map, and the original play thru manuals all the way to ToB, so I just wanna have fun.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Gusinda

@Bloodstone, I mentioned this in a previous post about a similar occurance (having multiple installs) so I will just copy and paste...

-- Snip --
If you want to separate you saved games etc, in the 2.x games you can edit the 'engine.lua' to set the name of the saved folder.

As an example, by default BGEE 2.3.x is engine_name = "Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition". To prevent any conflict with the 1.3 games, I set my engine.lua to engine_name = "Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition.2.3". You can't change the 1.3 which seems to be hard set.

So in your case, you could prob use engine_name = "Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition.GOG" as the GOG saves or whatever makes sense to you.
-- End Snip --

This is about having 1.3 and 2.x games together but will still work for your scenario. Just work out what you want to call the save folders.

Gus

Bloodstone

Quick follow up. Let's assume I have BTS running EET on my other drive thru beamdog install, and vanilla game on my steam side. Instead of fooling around with changing the engine Lua could I just move the save game file for one of the two back and forth or just rename them so I'm loading them into the proper modded or unmoded sections? I know it's a pain, but it's just me and that sounds easier to my old self than trying to name files

Thels

Honestly, Gusinda's suggestion is probably WAY easier than that. EET is performed in the BGIIEE folder, right? The moment you installed that BGIIEE copy, edit Engine.lua in notepad, which should look like:

engine_name = "Baldur's Gate II - Enhanced Edition"
engine_mode = 1 -- 0 = BGEE, 1 = BG2EE, 2 = IWDEE

Just change the engine name to something like:

engine_name = "Enhanced Edition Trilogy"
engine_mode = 1 -- 0 = BGEE, 1 = BG2EE, 2 = IWDEE

Then save and close the text document and that's it. Your BGIIEE (from steam) .ini and .save files are now completely separate from your EET .ini and .save files.



Note that you don't need to use Steam AND Beamdog to do this. What you can do is something like:

Install BGEE to E:\BGEE
Install BGIIEE to E:\BGIIEE
Copy E:\BGIIEE to E:\EET

You now have 2 working BGIIEE folders, both of which run fine. Just tweak the engine.lua file in E:\EET, and then install EET there, and you're golden! Obviously, the above paths are just examples. You can make as many copies as you want if you are looking to try different mod configurations.

(Assuming enough harddisk space, obviously, something I often forget to warn about, as even like a 3.5 gig installation is still less than 0.1% of my available harddisk space.)

Bloodstone

Thanks Thels, that kind of makes sense to me now. I guess by changing the engine files that puts the saves in their own particular place for each installation. I will give it a run and see how that works. Am I correct that I only need BG II: EE installed in order to run the BWS setup for EET?

Thels

I personally have not messed with either BWS or EET, but I doubt it.

EET requires all the files from BGEE+SoD to run. While I don't think BeamDog minds a file here or there from one of their games to be included in a modpack for another of their games, including the entire games is an entirely different story.

Also note that if your BGEE+SoD version is from Steam or GoG, I think you need to run modmerge on it before installing EET. Not 100% sure on that, though.

Bloodstone

Great. That does make more sense, it's just in reading through the stuff in the forums everything points to BG2:EE. Your right though, wouln't make sense to just give away big chunks of the game. I have actually wound up buying both sets of EE products and SoD through Steam and Beamdog, so I actually have a Beamdog version of all of the games I planned on using for EET so I could avoid having to deal with Modmerge. I got them on the clearance sale so it didn't cost me an arm and a leg, and I can let my son play on the steam versions when he is on my laptop.

Bloodstone

OK, so I did what Thels and Gusinda, advised up top and edited the engine_lua file and got my save files separated into two different folder locations within the Documents Folder. (playing Vanilla on Steam, working on EET for Beamdog) Everything is good, but now my vanilla game, which is the one that I changed the "engine" file for doesn't allow me to open the console anymore. I checked the area out and there is no baldur.ini file in that location which is where I had to add the debug info before to have the console work.

So the question is do I need to add a baldur.ini file somewhere? copied over maybe? I don't know where to add the debug info since there isn't a baldur.ini in that folder.

Gusinda

@Bloodstone, it is more likely 'baldur.lua' that you are looking for (for version 2.x). When you changed the engine.lua, it created a new folder in documents named "whatever you called it in engine.lua". All you need to do is to copy the baldur.lua from the original folder into the new one. This will add all your adjustments to the new save area.
OR
Because I haven't used EET before, I am not sure what adjustments it makes in baldur.lua (if any at all), you can edit baldur.lua with a text editor like notepad (make sure it doesn't add .txt when you save) and add the following line:

SetPrivateProfileString('Program Options','Debug Mode','1')


Gus

Bloodstone

I will check that tonight! Thanks so much

Bloodstone

That worked perfectly. I just used Notebook ++ to edit the baldur.lua in the new save location to switch the debug mode # and it's in working order now. Thanks so much Gus