I'm confused about versions of mods and of baldurs gate

lollers

Typically if I do not care about mods the easy answer to the question of version is simply for me to play the newest one of whatever game I am thinking about... I always care about BG mods however, and the question of version compatibility is something people ask from time to time. What does it even mean for a mod to not be made for BG 2.6? Is there a way to figure it out? Is it generally something of little consequence or something that modding people wouldn't feel like it matters enough to mention? I know very little, but I know the game was 2.5 for several years before the current one of version 2.6, and I kind of assume that anything that runs well on 2.6 is equally smooth on all of the older versions but maybe this is incorrect?

Endarire

EE 2.6 made the game a 64-bit engine/game instead of a 32-bit one from 2.5. Regarding mods, if a mod says it has 2.6 support or was updated for 2.6 or somesuch, that likely means it isn't compatible with 2.5. Ask the author just to be sure.

For example, UI mods and Ascension have 2.6-specific versions because they do something in the engine that relies on 2.6's code. EEex only works on 2.5 because of how things were written.

@lollers

jmerry

Most version incompatibilities are usually about scripting issues. For example, game version 2.6 changed the way Aec'Letec and Sarevok die in BGEE ... which meant that mods such as SCS which modified these fights could cause them to become immortal.

Smaller mods, and those that don't interact with the big set-pieces of the original game, are more likely to be compatible across versions unchanged. Mods that make sweeping changes to practically everything - those will probably need updates for the 2.6 change.

lollers

jmerry wrote: »

Most version incompatibilities are usually about scripting issues. For example, game version 2.6 changed the way Aec'Letec and Sarevok die in BGEE ... which meant that mods such as SCS which modified these fights could cause them to become immortal.

Do gameplay mods and NPCs generally have this risk in common? I had that problem with one of the NPC mods before the 2.6 patch, and I believe I was also using spell revisions and SCS.

jastey

@lollers there is a lot of changes underneath in the 2.6 patch that are not even listed in the changelog. As an example, the devs changed the way the Dukes go hostile at the ceremony in case the player attacks the Dukes. This lead to the hilarious bug in EndlessBG1 and Transitions Mod that, after Sarevok's death, the Dukes would attack the PC on sight when they return ot the Palace. There is no way I could have known about this when looking at the 2.6 changelog, and it took me a while to understand what was going on (in the end, it's sloppy scripting, starting by what BioWare implemented, but to be fair noone ever expected the PC to return after Sarevok's death.)

One note of advice with regard to mod version numbers: highest version number being the most up-to-date (and hopefully bugfree) and therefore preferable version only applies if the mod was downloaded from the original mod page. Roxanne likes to give her mod versions higher numbers than the original mods although the original mod packages were debugged more intensely in several cases.

GraionDilach

There's also the recent discovery that EE 2.6 recoded the way how spells break Sanctuary and Invisibility and mods adding (items casting) new spells weren't prepared for the new system, so manual review is required for them.