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What changed?

AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261
edited October 2018 in General Modding
So I just decided to come back to BG:EE after a while and now all my kit mods have their names and descriptions screwed up when they were fine the last time I played, which was immediately after the release of SoD and the modmerge (which I have on my game). I've looked through the tp2s to try and work out what would cause the SAY things to get screwed up, but no dice. For the ones that change strings I checked and they still point to the right place, so I have no idea. Can anyone help? What did Beamdog change between the release of modmerge and now that would explain this nonsense and how to fix it?

edit:

For the record, I also tried BG2:EE and it's screwed up there too, though less so

Comments

  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261
    edited October 2018

    Are you picking up and playing older games? After a game patch (and there have been several since SoD) you need to reinstall mids and start a new game. You can't really just pick up where you left off.

    No, I'm not. I uninstalled every mod and then tried installing one at a time and names and descriptions are boned, both in character creation and in(new)game, regardless if they're made with SAY or STRING_SET
  • jasteyjastey Member Posts: 2,780
    edited October 2018
    Did you run modmerge after the patch? There was an instance about modmerge not realizing it needs to be run again after the patch update and thus not working although it thinks it did, but I don't know what the solution to that was.

    EDIT: Instead of modmerge you can also use Argent's DLC Merger which operates like a mod (i.e. can be uninstalled, too).
  • AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261
    Well this is just nonsense... I re-installed the game and tried DLC merger to no avail. I did modmerge again - still no dice. Furthermore, it's not limited to just the old mods I had, I downloaded some from this thread of compatible mods and still ran into the same issue. WTF?!
  • jasteyjastey Member Posts: 2,780
    edited October 2018
    Did modmerge actually ran or did it tell you it doesn't have to?
    And DLC merger uses the same detection as modmerge, I think, so if the one doesn't run the other doesn't either, I guess.
    What I meant was that the effect of the modmerge is no longer present for a patched game, but appearently somthing modmerge uses for detection whether it ran or not is giving a false-positive. This can be fixed but I don't know how.
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  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @Allbrother Are you redoing your mods on a clean install, or just reinstalling the mods? As @subtledoctor says above, that doesn't work. You need a clean install to work with mods. Luckily, you shouldn't have to completely wipe and then reinstall the whole game. Have the installer verify your game files; it will wipe all the mods and modified files from your install and re-download clean versions of the modified files. Its dowloading about 16 mb vs. gigs for the whole game.
  • jasteyjastey Member Posts: 2,780
    ThacoBell said:

    @Allbrother Are you redoing your mods on a clean install, or just reinstalling the mods? As @subtledoctor says above, that doesn't work. You need a clean install to work with mods. Luckily, you shouldn't have to completely wipe and then reinstall the whole game. Have the installer verify your game files; it will wipe all the mods and modified files from your install and re-download clean versions of the modified files. Its dowloading about 16 mb vs. gigs for the whole game.

    I somehow got the impression that this might leave traces of modmerge that prevents it from running again successfully, since this happened for some players after the 2.5 patch was applied, or did I misunderstand?
  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261
    edited October 2018
    Ok, here's the complete sequence of events, also known as my descent into madness.

    1.Initially, I still had the game on my PC so I just uninstalled all mods and played fine on vanilla.

    2.Then I decided to do mods, installed one - names and descriptions were off.

    3.Made this thread to figure out if a change in one of the recent patches forced mods to do things differently and that was why my old mods weren't working.

    4.Uninstalled the game, deleted the remaining folder, downloaded and installed game again.

    5.Installed dlc merger

    6.Installed one of the old mods - same issue.

    7.Uninstalled old mod, downloaded and installed a couple of mods from the compatible mods thread - same issue.

    8.Uninstalled dlc merger as it was hanging up on first running the mods weidu's forcing me to close and run the mod setups again.

    9.Applied mod merge. I recall it saying "key not detected, extracting" or something along those lines.

    10.After running mod merge tried the mods again - still the issue

    11.Uninstalled all mods again, tried running mod merge again - displays some kind of error and closes immediately (too fast to read the error, can't see a log).

    12.Verified/repaired the game, tried modmerge again - same thing.

    13.Verified/repaired again, tried installing dlc-merge, it's aborting installation.

    14.Got annoyed at dealing with modmerge and dlc-merge and moved to test on BG2EE (old installation)

    15.Installed old mod - same issue. Uninstalled old mod.

    16.Installed new mod - it looked find but other classes/kits now had their names/descriptions wrong. What?

    17.Uninstalled new mod, opened the game to see the same thing with no mods installed. Grew suspicious of old mod (always started with installing that one) breaking the game even after being uninstalled

    18.Verified/repaired the game, didn't get fixed.

    19.Uninstalled, re-installed. Loaded up the game - all looks good.

    20.Installed new mod, loaded up the game - all looks good. Suspicions intensify

    21.Uninstalled new mod, installed different old mod (not the suspected culprit) - works like a charm

    22.Uninstalled old mod, installed suspected culprit, fired up game expecting to say AHA! - works like a charm... what?

    23.Installed other old mod and new mod and ran game with all 3 mods together - works like a charm. Uninstalled all 3 mods - still works fine.

    24.Uninstalled BGEE again (this time removing user data as I had done for BG2EE, but not the previous time for BGEE)

    25.Re-installed BGEE again, tried modmerge - got error and closed again.

    26.Tried DLC Merger again, aborted again... WTF?!

    27.Uninstalled (deleting user data) and re-installed AGAIN, tried DLC merger AGAIN, gets aborted AGAIN

    28.Posted this.

    29.Set my PC on fire

    30.Burned down my house and jumped out the window

    31.Now a ghost, this is still infuriating

    32.Help


    edit:

    So I managed to snatch a screenshot of the error on modmerge before it closes. It says something to the effect of sod key found, you've already done this, stop farting around. Also, I noticed that dlc-merger says it's aborting because DLC is already merged when using option 1 and because no dlc archives found when using option 3.

    So both tools think they're installed, despite this being a clean game install with the DLC being locked into the zip
    Post edited by Allbrother on
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,754
    Do you have BG:EE or BG:EE + SoD? Where did you buy the game from? If it's on Steam, do you have SoD checked in (in the Steam app).
  • AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261
    edited October 2018

    Do you have BG:EE or BG:EE + SoD? Where did you buy the game from? If it's on Steam, do you have SoD checked in (in the Steam app).

    I have BGEE + SoD on GoG. The DLC is installed (ticked on gog galaxy, zip present in folder and is available ingame.

    I tried disabling sod (by renaming the zip) which worked and the mods work fine with the BGEE base game. Enabling the zip breaks them again and both modmerge and dlc-merge now think they're installed (despite this being a clean game install) so they won't do anything
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,754
    Try uninstalling the game and manually deleting all the remaining files. Then install BG:EE + SoD. make sure the folder contains the SoD archive. Then install the ModMerge OR the Dlc-Merge (but not both). Then install one mod to check.
  • AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261
    I did that. I'll try again, this time I also deleted the documents folder before installing again. Downloading now...
  • AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261

    Try uninstalling the game and manually deleting all the remaining files. Then install BG:EE + SoD. make sure the folder contains the SoD archive. Then install the ModMerge OR the Dlc-Merge (but not both). Then install one mod to check.

    Well, I uninstalled (it deleted the entire game folder on its own), I deleted the documents folder as well just to be on the safe side, downloaded and installed BGEE+SOD again, tried modmerge again and it still thinks it's already installed. I even tried to disable cloud sync and delete documents folder again and it doesn't make a difference.
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,754
    I have a feeling it was installed into a different folder. Make sure you have only one BG1 folder on your PC.
  • AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261

    I have a feeling it was installed into a different folder. Make sure you have only one BG1 folder on your PC.

    Huh... windows search found a second folder on a different drive (the system drive), while gog and its library are on a different ssd altogether. How does that even happen? Anyway, I deleted the additional folder and tried modmerge again and it closes with an error again, only now the error is "open chitin.key: The system cannot find the path specified
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,754
    Can you provide a screenshot of your BG:EE+SoD folder?
  • AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261

    Can you provide a screenshot of your BG:EE+SoD folder?

    Sure, here it is


  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,754
    edited October 2018
    I don't see anything wrong about your game folder. Moreover, I've just tried and installed modmerge.exe myself.

    When you run modmerge.exe it should work.

    You seem to have done quite a bit of messing around with files. Maybe something went wrong in the process. Beamdog didn't change anything between the release of modmerge and now.
  • jasteyjastey Member Posts: 2,780

    I deleted the additional folder

    I barely dare to suggest this but maybe you should start anew once more with a clean new install with regard to having only one (clean) game folder.
    Modmerge rejecting to run is your problem, and I fear it does so because there is a marker file left somewhere due to the folder mixup.

  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @jastey I'll admit to not being familiar with modmerge, but my process works with literally any other mod setup. Is modmerge that weird?
  • AllbrotherAllbrother Member Posts: 261
    edited October 2018

    You seem to have done quite a bit of messing around with files. Maybe something went wrong in the process. Beamdog didn't change anything between the release of modmerge and now.

    Yeah, and I found out what - when I first got my games storage ssd, I just moved the gog folder from the hdd to the ssd and that must've caused issues. The weird thing is it was working fine when SoD and modmerge first released
    jastey said:

    I deleted the additional folder

    I barely dare to suggest this but maybe you should start anew once more with a clean new install with regard to having only one (clean) game folder.
    Modmerge rejecting to run is your problem, and I fear it does so because there is a marker file left somewhere due to the folder mixup.

    Tried it, didn't work. I had to wipe out galaxy entirely from my PC and re-install it and that seems to have done the trick.

    Thanks to everyone who responded
  • jasteyjastey Member Posts: 2,780
    edited October 2018
    @ThacoBell
    Not modmerge, but I have a faint recall that there were some problems with running it again after the patch was applied which should have lead to a clean install but somehow modmerge recalled being run in this game folder before.

    Argent gave some ideas how to fix this here in the modmerge thread which I could have seen earlier.

    @Allbrother Yay! :D
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