Keeping saved games?

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:41 pm

I'm having crashes everytime my party tries to enter the Umar Hills. Everything appears to be installed correctly, though I was thinking at this point of copying my saved game directory, uninstalling BG2, then reinstalling, adding the directory, and filtering in mods to see if I can isolate the Umar Hills issue.

Here's my question: assuming I end up with the same group of mods, will I lose anything? Any items picked up during the game, and experience previously gained, any relationships established?

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:01 pm

If you have exactly the same mods as you did at the time when you backed up the saves, then nothing should be lost. However, it is important that you reinstall all of them or else the game will crash due to an unrecognized object.

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:08 pm

Crenshinibon wrote:If you have exactly the same mods as you did at the time when you backed up the saves, then nothing should be lost. However, it is important that you reinstall all of them or else the game will crash due to an unrecognized object.

Good point. I had removed COM Encounters over a month ago, which was causing CTDs in a different area. I'm suspicious that either the mod or the removal of it may have caused the difficulties in the Umar Hills. Hopefully, without COM Encounters even installed the first time, the potential for a crash will be minimized.

Do any of the mods set down roots in the registry, or can they simply be deleted after I uninstall the full game?

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:51 pm

The Darkest Day does, but no other mod I've installed has, but IIRC you haven't been using that. I also installed and uninstalled CoM, but no traces of it in my registry.

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 11:10 pm

I've reinstalled, without any problem, and loaded in my saved games.

The good news is that there are no more crashes. The bad news is that some journal entries are messed up, and some mod NPCs (not mod party NPCs) now have very odd names consisting of large parts of sentences. I'm willing to settle for this, if need be, but does anybody know a command or series of commands to straighten this out?

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 11:36 pm

I think it must be because the dialog.tlk file that the previous install used is different from the current one, as far as I know there's not much, if anything that can be done about it. Are you experiencing the same problems with some item names and descriptions?

Hopefully someone more who knows more about this, like Vondondu, will say I'm wrong and offer a solution.

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 11:40 pm

Not with item names and descriptions, no. Just with the journal/quest entries, and names of mod-related NPCs, such as mod merchants.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 11:47 pm

What might be the most crucial thing, if you can put up with things as they are, is can you upgrade items with Cromwell and/or Ruad?

Once when I had this problem Cromwell was pretty unusable, on two other occasions his dialogue was screwed up, but I was still able to get things upgraded, but it did entail a lot of trial and error with saving and loading between each upgrade.

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:10 am

No, Cromwell appears to be responding correctly. He finds the appropriate objects in my inventory, and suggests items he can make, based on the Item Upgrade mod.

Sounds like I should have saved my previous dialog.tlk file, in addition to the saved game files. Damn.

VonDondu · Post by **VonDondu** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 2:45 am

fable wrote:Do any of the mods set down roots in the registry, or can they simply be deleted after I uninstall the full game?

Mods do not make changes to the registry. Typically, they add files to the Override directory and in some cases overwrite the DIALOG.TLK file, or else add new pointers for external dialogue files (or something like that).

All of the information that specifically applies to a saved game is stored in the saved game files. This applies to items that are stored in containers, dialogue markers, global variables, etc. Character names are called up by a reference to a specific piece of text. If the reference is pointing to the wrong bit of text, then the wrong text will appear where the name should be. That's the problem with trying to use previous saved games with new installations. If the mods you install made alterations to the various dialogue links, you'll have a mess on your hands. I don't know of any way to rewrite all of the references to point to the correct bits of text.

I'm probably not using the correct terminology, but hopefully that will give you a rough idea of what's going on.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:57 am

VonDondu wrote:Mods do not make changes to the registry.

That's true of all mods I've used except for TDD, possibly the entry in my registry dates back to the pre Weidu version, in fact probable rather than just possible.

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:32 pm

So if I understand correctly, the data with the names of mod NPCs isn't stored in the dialog.tlk file, and there's no centralized file that can be edited?

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:42 pm

Not in the Dilog.tlk file no.

You could try editing the .CRE files in SK, and changing their names. You might have to save as a different file name, as the .CRE file probably exists in the override folder. Then deleting the existing file and renaming the new one.

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:31 pm

galraen wrote:Not in the Dilog.tlk file no.

You could try editing the .CRE files in SK, and changing their names. You might have to save as a different file name, as the .CRE file probably exists in the override folder. Then deleting the existing file and renaming the new one.

The CRE file, opened automatically in SK, doesn't appear to include mod NPCs, and all the NPCs it lists have normal names.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:48 pm

Did you check by resource? For example the resource label for Ruad is m#ruad. What are the NPC's you're having problems with, if they are in mods I've been using I can check their resource labels. Fade's resource labels all start with E3 if she's one of the problems.

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:57 pm

Not using Fade, but I am using Dungeon Crawl--it's one of the problems. Another is Unfinished Business. Ruad is a third.

How would I go about checking by resource?

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 11:11 pm

Open Sk, Select CB, click on resource to sort alphabetically. Some mods ( most Weidu mods I believe) have their owns directories and a copy of the .cre files are stored in a sub-directory of that directory.

Take Ruad for exemple, their should be a Black Isle\BGII - SoA\Ruad\Ruad folder, in which you'll find a m#ruad.cre file. That gives you the name of the resource to search for in SK.

Unfortunately I haven't run Dungeon Crawl or Unfinished Business, so I can't provide the information for those mods.

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 11:25 pm

galraen wrote:Open Sk, Select CB, click on resource to sort alphabetically. Some mods ( most Weidu mods I believe) have their owns directories and a copy of the .cre files are stored in a sub-directory of that directory.

Take Ruad for exemple, their should be a Black Isle\BGII - SoA\Ruad\Ruad folder, in which you'll find a m#ruad.cre file. That gives you the name of the resource to search for in SK.

Unfortunately I haven't run Dungeon Crawl or Unfinished Business, so I can't provide the information for those mods.

Definitely screwups visible, now. I've got one resource, "Mirriam," whose name is "The long bow is similar to the short bow, except that the staff is about as high..." and it goes on. Under type, this is "custom." There are only two of these that I could find. Should I repair the two I've found, and save those? Makes sense. Not sure where the others can be. I figure there are at least 10 or so, in all. They may be in the subdirectories, as you state.

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 11:31 pm

SK won't open in a subdirectory other than that holding SoA: just tried. I attempted to point it at the Dungeon crawl subdirectory containing CRE files for the characters, but it won't open. Even clicking on the menu choice to open Creature Browser or the CRE files reveal none.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 11:34 pm

You'll have to give the file a different name when you save it after making changes. Then move the original file elsewhere (as a backup) then rename the new file to the same name as the original file. Worst comes to the worst, you can always move the backup back to the override folder. The alternative of course is just to live with the messy names.

As to the missing .cre files they must be there somewhere. If not, you would have encountered worse problems. Probably crashes when entering an area where the program couldn't find the appropriate file, can't see that being true though, not after a complete re-install.

PS I don't think there's anything you can do about the log entries, but you probably know the game well enough to cope with it. New entries should be fine though.