How to find out specific issues with installed mods?
shevy123456
Member Posts: 536
So in my last run through which I recently finished (kind of; I got tired of ToB halfway since it feels so restricted compared to SoA), I ran into some strange issues, but not necessarily huge issues per se. I was also able to finish some gameplay, for instance, Aura NPC - I managed to get to the final fight this time. Still have not managed to explore all of the mod, there is just a lot of content.
So my last run through had these 20 mods installed:
- Graphical_Overhaul
- Unfinished_Business_mod
- Aura_the_artificer_mod
- Autumns_Twilight_mod
- Jazon_the_revenant_mod
- Gilbertus_mod
- Afaaq_the_Djinni_Companion
- Wares_of_the_Planes_mod
- Paina_the_NPC_mod
- The_Ink_gallery_mod
- Jimothy_the_Raccoon_mod
- Throne_of_the_Mad_God_mod
- Call_of_the_Lost_Goddess_mod
- Poisoned_Pathways_mod
- Dark_Tidings_mod
- Shadows_over_Soubar
- Region_of_Terror_mod
- Tactics_Remix_Mod
- Bridges_Block_Mod
- The_Worldmap_Map_Mod
I did run into some issues though. Prior to that run-through, I tested Duality's Odd Quest Mod,
which crashed the game. Interestingly enough, in Region of Terror, at Maribur, when I tried
to sleep, the game also crashed. The other areas of this mod worked fine though.
So, some examples of issues I ran into this time, aside from the above mentioned crash:
- Upon losing Bhaal abilities, my character never got the feature to transition into the
slayer. The ability just was not there. That never happened before, but I may have somehow
caused this in that I was "rushing" through here. For some reason it often helps to
play more slowly, but either way I don't know why that ability never showed up.
In Shadows over Soubar, there is a scroll that has to be delivered. I know from past play
throughs where the two NPCs show up. This time none of them showed up, despite
doing what I did several times before in prior play-throughs.
- When fighting Irenicus, Dusk turns hostile and becomes an enemy. Irenicus remains
in talk-dialogue (but I can kill him still). In prior play-throughs, I could then eventually
kill Dusk and resurrect him after sacrificing someone in the pit. This time, though,
strangely enough, a generic (???) peasant showed up instead of the place of anyone
else, and died. I assume this must be original code, e. g. to reserve a placeholder of
some sorts, but this was super-strange; Dusk at that point in time was dead. But
things did not remain like that, I revived Dusk but ... he never showed up at all.
The portrait was there, but where he would be a spinning kind of limb or so was
rotating; this is kind of the meat or flesh that seems to be part of when some NPC
is obliterated with over-damage or so. I also could not interact with Dusk (and
then expelled his nothingness anyway, to chose another NPC). The weirdness did
not stop there either; I transitioned into ToB, and I could neither rest nor save,
no matter where I would go, the game claimed there were monsters nearby, which
was a lie. I then quit the game, and reloaded from an auto-save, and lo and behold,
I could rest and save suddenly, so there must have been a bogus check. (This could
in part originate from me granting Afaaq his freedom; the game engine seems to
not always check correctly whether Afaaq is still alive or not, but the main bug is
not Afaaq and I don't think the bug actually exists in Autumn's Fall either - very
strangely enough, I think either Region of Terror or Shadows over Soubar causes
these or some of the issues).
- I also had a totally new bug which I never saw before. Lava has one mod where
we can get a humming skull. This one is a fun boost, but oddly enough, sometimes,
with a rare chance, NPCs and monsters would die. Even Dusk died to the skull
once. Or, when I first fought the red dragon ... Firkraag or what's his name, the
skull was humming ... and Firkraag insta-died. I also had the same with the
dragon guard in one of the Region of Terror areas; normally that dragon when
killed, reveals to have been an illusion and his true form appears. But when I
first tried to fight him, the humming skill nuked the dragon, but did not trigger
the transformation into the real form. I reloaded and fought the dragon normally,
killed him, all fine. Last but not least, the humming skull also appears to have
auto-nuked some of the giants sometimes. Suddenly all the frost giants were
dead, but not other enemies. As you can see, these are very strange bugs and
I can not even say which is responsible for what.
I also think that, while many of the bug reports I made over the years, there
may be something strange with my computer and harddisc. This is a secondary
computer which I don't use as much, but I have had problems saving data
sometimes; in particular right now when it is hot, I have more issues than
normally. But, even while this may be the case for some of the problems,
other issues seem to be unrelated. I have had real issues with some of the
older mods specifically, such as the messenger that crashes the game engine
due to using non-Unicode characters, or something like that. So I think that
there may be something wrong with Region of Terror, but even more so with
Shadows over Soubar. And I think this may be in part responsible for some
awkward behaviour that I had with other mods, such as the NPCs of morpheus
mod no longer fighting. In fact, in the Ritual, none (!!!) of the NPCs was doing
any action, except for the ritual skull. This was also totally new, and in prior
gameplays I did not have this, so I think some of the mods may do things
that they should not do; or I may have done something incorrectly doing
the installation, but still. I may eventually try this on my laptop, if only to
test whether this may work better (my laptop is more recent than the
secondary computer, so perhaps it works better).
Anyway. One reason why I think this issue happens more with olds mods,
is because when I look at mods such as those offered by Lava, Acifer or
Argent77, these have almost no issues at all on their own; and even when
they do, these issues are often quickly fixed or adjusted. So there clearly
must also be a quality-problem. Argent77 pointed this out with regards
to one item mod; morpheus pointed this out with another item mod and
this has also been an issue I had with some item mods, e. g. garbled
descriptions specifically (this time I had no garbled descriptions, excluding
with regards to the Region of Terror mod, where in the very last fight
in the god of the something eye cave or so, the boss guy spoke about
Sarevok, which made no sense, so something must have overwritten
something here). So for me, old mods, and item mods, seem to pose the
biggest issues usually. And some mods that really are too awkward,
such as duality odd; but also the messenger-crashing old mod or the
mod where 5 devas chase you non-stop even in a fairly early game state.
In the past I was quite experimental, trying to test out mods, which is
fine as it is, but I think I have played BG2 for quite some time now and
eventually I'll have to transition into much longer inactivity, simply if
only due to reallife constraints. But also because I know the game fairly
well at this point in time; vanilla play throughs no longer interest me,
though for debugging or testing these may be more useful.
I also would like to play Icewind Dale and Siege of Dragonspear before
eventual full retirement; and on my todo list I also want to offer one
mod (probably starting with a NPC mod that stays simple initially,
at the least that's what I'd hope it would be). Having said that, I would
like to do kind of ... one or two final big play-throughs, with as many
mods installed as possible, but only for mods that don't cause issues.
Region of Terror I don't want to give up, even though it has IMO many
issues, but Roberciiik happily has fixed a billion bugs here, which is
great. But I kind of suspect Shadows over Soubar to may be responsible
for some of the issues I have had recently, so I am planning to perhaps
abandon it, even though the money injection is pretty nifty. I also realised
I may not need the money injection anymore though, so I am considering
dropping SoS entirely.
Now ... with that lengthy statement made, are there viable strategies
to find out what is causing which problem where? Take the problem
where Dusk becomes hostile. I am just about 100% certain to know
that this must happen because of the later sacrifice-job in ToB, since
usually Dusk is then picked as sacrifice, and in prior play throughs
after he was revived, he was no longer hostile (e. g. the red circle
would no longer show). But I did not have this problem with prior
game run-throughs, so I highly suspect that something is done by a
mod or something like that. (The strange peasant that showed up,
was totally new to me though. And the issue of Dusk after being
ressed, being shown some rotating small flesh ball, I never saw
before. I need to do screenshots or videos of those things; people
don't seem to believe the kind of chaos I manage to encounter.)
I don't have any experience with any of those debuggers or what not,
but ideally what I would love to have is something like:
"For this or that scene or action, this mod modified something,
compared to vanilla."
Ideally I would like to weed out any mods that may cause issues (take
the prior bug I had with regards to Edwin spawning infinite cloaks via
delays), even if it may not be that mod that caused the issue - but then
some other mod that should not be installed. In other words, I would
ideally like to focus only on mods that work sufficiently well, and leave
the other mods alone, before I may do my final run through with as
many good mods as possible. (At this point I also have not tested
all mods available, by the way. I think I come at best only to about
110 or 120 mods I have tested, and I think there are several more mods
than that.)
(Jimothy I only found one of the NPCs, but I only wanted to test it, not necessarily
with a focus to complete. Completing Aura was a key goal though, as well as
completing RoT again. Also found more bugs in the latter ...)
So my last run through had these 20 mods installed:
- Graphical_Overhaul
- Unfinished_Business_mod
- Aura_the_artificer_mod
- Autumns_Twilight_mod
- Jazon_the_revenant_mod
- Gilbertus_mod
- Afaaq_the_Djinni_Companion
- Wares_of_the_Planes_mod
- Paina_the_NPC_mod
- The_Ink_gallery_mod
- Jimothy_the_Raccoon_mod
- Throne_of_the_Mad_God_mod
- Call_of_the_Lost_Goddess_mod
- Poisoned_Pathways_mod
- Dark_Tidings_mod
- Shadows_over_Soubar
- Region_of_Terror_mod
- Tactics_Remix_Mod
- Bridges_Block_Mod
- The_Worldmap_Map_Mod
I did run into some issues though. Prior to that run-through, I tested Duality's Odd Quest Mod,
which crashed the game. Interestingly enough, in Region of Terror, at Maribur, when I tried
to sleep, the game also crashed. The other areas of this mod worked fine though.
So, some examples of issues I ran into this time, aside from the above mentioned crash:
- Upon losing Bhaal abilities, my character never got the feature to transition into the
slayer. The ability just was not there. That never happened before, but I may have somehow
caused this in that I was "rushing" through here. For some reason it often helps to
play more slowly, but either way I don't know why that ability never showed up.
In Shadows over Soubar, there is a scroll that has to be delivered. I know from past play
throughs where the two NPCs show up. This time none of them showed up, despite
doing what I did several times before in prior play-throughs.
- When fighting Irenicus, Dusk turns hostile and becomes an enemy. Irenicus remains
in talk-dialogue (but I can kill him still). In prior play-throughs, I could then eventually
kill Dusk and resurrect him after sacrificing someone in the pit. This time, though,
strangely enough, a generic (???) peasant showed up instead of the place of anyone
else, and died. I assume this must be original code, e. g. to reserve a placeholder of
some sorts, but this was super-strange; Dusk at that point in time was dead. But
things did not remain like that, I revived Dusk but ... he never showed up at all.
The portrait was there, but where he would be a spinning kind of limb or so was
rotating; this is kind of the meat or flesh that seems to be part of when some NPC
is obliterated with over-damage or so. I also could not interact with Dusk (and
then expelled his nothingness anyway, to chose another NPC). The weirdness did
not stop there either; I transitioned into ToB, and I could neither rest nor save,
no matter where I would go, the game claimed there were monsters nearby, which
was a lie. I then quit the game, and reloaded from an auto-save, and lo and behold,
I could rest and save suddenly, so there must have been a bogus check. (This could
in part originate from me granting Afaaq his freedom; the game engine seems to
not always check correctly whether Afaaq is still alive or not, but the main bug is
not Afaaq and I don't think the bug actually exists in Autumn's Fall either - very
strangely enough, I think either Region of Terror or Shadows over Soubar causes
these or some of the issues).
- I also had a totally new bug which I never saw before. Lava has one mod where
we can get a humming skull. This one is a fun boost, but oddly enough, sometimes,
with a rare chance, NPCs and monsters would die. Even Dusk died to the skull
once. Or, when I first fought the red dragon ... Firkraag or what's his name, the
skull was humming ... and Firkraag insta-died. I also had the same with the
dragon guard in one of the Region of Terror areas; normally that dragon when
killed, reveals to have been an illusion and his true form appears. But when I
first tried to fight him, the humming skill nuked the dragon, but did not trigger
the transformation into the real form. I reloaded and fought the dragon normally,
killed him, all fine. Last but not least, the humming skull also appears to have
auto-nuked some of the giants sometimes. Suddenly all the frost giants were
dead, but not other enemies. As you can see, these are very strange bugs and
I can not even say which is responsible for what.
I also think that, while many of the bug reports I made over the years, there
may be something strange with my computer and harddisc. This is a secondary
computer which I don't use as much, but I have had problems saving data
sometimes; in particular right now when it is hot, I have more issues than
normally. But, even while this may be the case for some of the problems,
other issues seem to be unrelated. I have had real issues with some of the
older mods specifically, such as the messenger that crashes the game engine
due to using non-Unicode characters, or something like that. So I think that
there may be something wrong with Region of Terror, but even more so with
Shadows over Soubar. And I think this may be in part responsible for some
awkward behaviour that I had with other mods, such as the NPCs of morpheus
mod no longer fighting. In fact, in the Ritual, none (!!!) of the NPCs was doing
any action, except for the ritual skull. This was also totally new, and in prior
gameplays I did not have this, so I think some of the mods may do things
that they should not do; or I may have done something incorrectly doing
the installation, but still. I may eventually try this on my laptop, if only to
test whether this may work better (my laptop is more recent than the
secondary computer, so perhaps it works better).
Anyway. One reason why I think this issue happens more with olds mods,
is because when I look at mods such as those offered by Lava, Acifer or
Argent77, these have almost no issues at all on their own; and even when
they do, these issues are often quickly fixed or adjusted. So there clearly
must also be a quality-problem. Argent77 pointed this out with regards
to one item mod; morpheus pointed this out with another item mod and
this has also been an issue I had with some item mods, e. g. garbled
descriptions specifically (this time I had no garbled descriptions, excluding
with regards to the Region of Terror mod, where in the very last fight
in the god of the something eye cave or so, the boss guy spoke about
Sarevok, which made no sense, so something must have overwritten
something here). So for me, old mods, and item mods, seem to pose the
biggest issues usually. And some mods that really are too awkward,
such as duality odd; but also the messenger-crashing old mod or the
mod where 5 devas chase you non-stop even in a fairly early game state.
In the past I was quite experimental, trying to test out mods, which is
fine as it is, but I think I have played BG2 for quite some time now and
eventually I'll have to transition into much longer inactivity, simply if
only due to reallife constraints. But also because I know the game fairly
well at this point in time; vanilla play throughs no longer interest me,
though for debugging or testing these may be more useful.
I also would like to play Icewind Dale and Siege of Dragonspear before
eventual full retirement; and on my todo list I also want to offer one
mod (probably starting with a NPC mod that stays simple initially,
at the least that's what I'd hope it would be). Having said that, I would
like to do kind of ... one or two final big play-throughs, with as many
mods installed as possible, but only for mods that don't cause issues.
Region of Terror I don't want to give up, even though it has IMO many
issues, but Roberciiik happily has fixed a billion bugs here, which is
great. But I kind of suspect Shadows over Soubar to may be responsible
for some of the issues I have had recently, so I am planning to perhaps
abandon it, even though the money injection is pretty nifty. I also realised
I may not need the money injection anymore though, so I am considering
dropping SoS entirely.
Now ... with that lengthy statement made, are there viable strategies
to find out what is causing which problem where? Take the problem
where Dusk becomes hostile. I am just about 100% certain to know
that this must happen because of the later sacrifice-job in ToB, since
usually Dusk is then picked as sacrifice, and in prior play throughs
after he was revived, he was no longer hostile (e. g. the red circle
would no longer show). But I did not have this problem with prior
game run-throughs, so I highly suspect that something is done by a
mod or something like that. (The strange peasant that showed up,
was totally new to me though. And the issue of Dusk after being
ressed, being shown some rotating small flesh ball, I never saw
before. I need to do screenshots or videos of those things; people
don't seem to believe the kind of chaos I manage to encounter.)
I don't have any experience with any of those debuggers or what not,
but ideally what I would love to have is something like:
"For this or that scene or action, this mod modified something,
compared to vanilla."
Ideally I would like to weed out any mods that may cause issues (take
the prior bug I had with regards to Edwin spawning infinite cloaks via
delays), even if it may not be that mod that caused the issue - but then
some other mod that should not be installed. In other words, I would
ideally like to focus only on mods that work sufficiently well, and leave
the other mods alone, before I may do my final run through with as
many good mods as possible. (At this point I also have not tested
all mods available, by the way. I think I come at best only to about
110 or 120 mods I have tested, and I think there are several more mods
than that.)
(Jimothy I only found one of the NPCs, but I only wanted to test it, not necessarily
with a focus to complete. Completing Aura was a key goal though, as well as
completing RoT again. Also found more bugs in the latter ...)
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