incompatible but stable?, I've been playing v4.2 for months now with my megamod... Options

[coineineagh]

First of all thanks to Sikret for the BEST bg2 mod by far. Thank you for your time and effort, the result is an improved game experience for me and many others.
I love the fact that despite my acquired gear I'm most definitely not overpowered for most of the IA encounters.

<slight spoiler>The brain golems were an xp goldmine! Once I'd finished off the golems in the hallway 40-50 had spawned in the main room of the Illithid boss. Thankfully most were killed by two well placed Dragon's Breaths.
The new golems are tough and sturdy! just how I like my golems. Too bad I saved and reloaded the game at the wrong moment: The 3 amber golems [you know where] didn't spawn anymore. Now I probably can't make [you know what].
Zalladora was great fun - tactical thought required. But here I encountered an incompatibility issue: Not choppiness, but a frozen screen while the game continued, I heard everything, but only got to see what was happening when the game was paused.

This is where my big question arises: You list a ridiculous amount of mods as incompatible in your readme. Basically I would be forced to choose between quantity (megamod) and quality (IA). So far my install has worked fine. There were some issues, but I doubt they were all caused by IA. Also, on the site IA is often praised for it's stability despite altering many native game characters. What I fear the most is an incompatibility that results in a CTD or something that stops me from progressing. Anything that is fixable with a bit of CLUAing is no more than an inconvenience.

I'd like a bit more insight into this if you have time: Are the incompatibilities the result of mods overwriting eachother, and so not taking effect? Is the Zalladora issue above an example of what you mean by incompatible? And most important: Can I expect any CTDs or other insurmountable obstacles? I plan to uninstall an install it at the end, so that all of IA takes precedence, but I'd like to know in advance if there is a point where I definitely can't continue.

Thanks for your time. BTW it doesn't need to be Sikret - if anyone has some answers for me, by all means!

[lroumen]

Biffing into few large files is better than using many small files, but if you really have to resort to biffing then your installation must have an extreme amount of files, i.e. mods .

I believe that you can find a tool at www.teambg.eu that still does it and I'm sure that people there can help you work with it.
I also believe that DLTCEP allows biffing (http://www.gibberlings3.net/tools/dltcep.php). Avenger may help you there.
Other than that I'm only familiar with the simple modding stuff to get my game working.

Maybe you can also use Zyraen's Uber Weapon for killing unkillables (pocket plane group), but sometimes it's just a matter of global variable settings that allow a creature to die and you have to find the correct variable.


In all I think your tricks are nice and your effort to create your own compatibility for your custom megamod is good, but I think this thread is not suitable to discuss these things further.
I cannot help you very much because I'm not that wise with modding. Furthermore, I don't think that it's a good idea to tweak IAv4.2 without Sikrets advice on the matter (and I doubt he will give you much useful advice for your mod as he cannot even begin to derive which changes you've made and how each of your mods influences the other ones, let alone how they influence the IA4.2 installation. It would simply be too much work for him).

This post has been edited by lroumen: Jun 6 2008, 12:13 PM

[The Bigg]

Biffing into few large files is better than using many small files, but if you really have to resort to biffing then your installation must have an extreme amount of files, i.e. mods .

I believe that you can find a tool at www.teambg.eu that still does it and I'm sure that people there can help you work with it.
I also believe that DLTCEP allows biffing (http://www.gibberlings3.net/tools/dltcep.php). Avenger may help you there.
Other than that I'm only familiar with the simple modding stuff to get my game working.

Biffing helps if the size your override folder is about comparable to your RAM (in my personal experience, having more than 300MB of override with 512MB of RAM is ill-advised, but over one Gb of override and 2 Gb of RAM is still smooth), thus if you have lots of voiced NPCs and areas installed your limit will run out quickly, especially if you don't have lots of RAM. Having tons of small files doesn't affect performance (except for loading times on unusual configurations, like Linux on a FAT32 file system). If you meet those criteria (override and RAM have similar sizes), then you can try to use the biffing solutions currently offered at SHS.