That sounds good, but what about this, it takes up much less space, would it work for bgt though?
Heres a (possibly) simpler way, resulting in each clone installation being about 60mb (including the 34mb from the override folder).
How to Create a Minimal BG2 Clone for Modding
1) Complete a full install of BG2:SoA (and install the latest SoA patch, if ToB is not to be installed)
2) Complete a full install of BG2:ToB (if required) (and install the latest TOB patch)
3) Make new directory, e.g. "clone1"
4) Copy the following to "clone1"
Directories
\characters
\override
\portraits
\save
\scripts
\sounds
Files
baldur.ico
baldur.ini
bgconfig.exe
bgdxtest.exe
bggltest.exe
BGMain.exe
Chitin.key
dialog.tlk
Keymap.ini
Language.txt
5) Edit bgmain.exe at 0x00705E04, from "hd0:\dialog.tlk" to ".\dialog.tlk..."
"2E5C6469616C6F672E746C6B00000000" to "6864303A5C6469616C6F672E746C6B00"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How it works
The common files are stored in the initial install directory.
The core files (unique to each clone) are copied into each clone dir.
The .exe patch is to tell the .exe to search for the dialog in the local dir, as opposed to the \data dir.
This has the usual downsides:
I dont know how it will affect games which place new biffs in the chiten.key (likely all clones will be affected, since theres only 1 chiten.key). Same goes for new music (though this can easily be altered, by .exe patching the music entry from hd0:\music to .\music).
The registry entry only points to the initial install. So this will be the one runby the autorun feature, and wil be the one listed under add/remove (hence we dont need the uninstall files in our unique copied data).
I havent extensively tested this method. It's not been tested at all on non-english versions of the game. I suspect it would work fine, as long as the right offset is changed for the dialog.tlk reference.
Anyway, I hope it works, and helps.
Any questions, just ask.
/igi
ps. I know it involves .exe patching (generally bad), but weidu is capable of this, andit only needs to be done once (once the patch is done, the .exe looks in the local dir. So you can copy that .exe into another clone dir, and it will look in there). This could be distributed as a weidu component maybe, if we get enough game version offsets.
EDIT: Added language.txt to the list of files needing to be copied. - Idobek
EDIT:
heres the source
[ 05-03-2004, 11:00 AM: Message edited by: RoSs_bg2_rox ]