Yay! BG2 in Linux! (and instructions)

[shamrock_uk]

Hopefully some will find this of use - a guide to installing all the mods I use complete with any issues that may arise.

Game Issues
Character creation screen - audio stutters and lags - this is normal.

Confirmed working

1) Official patch
2) Baldurdash ToB fixpack
3) Baldurdash ToB game text fixpack
4) Banter Packs
5) Ease of Use
6) Tactics
7) Unfinished Business
8) Underrepresented Items
9) Rogue APack
10) Solaufein
11) Ascension
12) Saerileth
13) Kelsey SOA
14) keto
15) Virtue


Things to keep in mind.

When installing files through point2play, select BG2 in the right-hand pane and leave the name the same (ie. if the original install is called BG2, then don't install the patch as BG2patch, leave it as BG2) - it will not work otherwise.

Every time you install a Weidu mod, rename the executable!! Nearly all of my early headaches were because of this - if they try to auto-update each other it really creates a mess.

Obviously regularly backup dialog.tlk dialog.tlk.tob chitin.key baldur.ini and your override folder just in case one of the installs dies halfway through.

Patch/Mod Installation Issues

Throne of Bhaal
Install with point2play, as per above. Make sure you've done a full SoA installation - ToB won't be able to read CD2 of SOA otherwise.

Official ToB Patch
Install with point2play. Patch exits with an error - this is normal.

Baldurdash Fixpack
Graphical glitches for the install programme, this is normal.

Banter Pack
1) Extract with point2play - then it will extract to correct BG2 directory. No dialogue will be visible, use alt-tab to see when the window title changes. You need to click on the background to focus the invisible dialogue box. Just hit enter when it says 'choose directory' and enter again when it says 'installation complete'.

2) Running Setup-Banterpacks.exe with point2play seems to have no effect. Install a separate copy of Cedega then do it from the command line (ie cedega Setup-Banterpacks.exe) - it seems to work! Find and delete the massive Setup-Banterpacks.debug file in your BG2 folder (mine was 1.5GB)

3) Rename the Weidu file (to avoid auto-updating) (eg type cp Setup-Banterpacks.exe Banterpacks.old) and then delete the original file.

Ease of Use
Weimer-Ease.exe exits with a stupidly wide dialogue box (as in several screens wide) - just kill this with the window menu at the top left. I then got recurring mostly blank error messages. Ended up using top to kill the wine-preloader process. Everything seems to extract ok though. Run Setup-Ease.exe with cedega from the terminal as before.

Tactics
Exited with the same funny dialogue as Ease of Use. Found the folder and setup residing in a folder called t? and a couple of other funny symbols. Copying Setup-Tactics.exe and Setup-Tactics.tp2 plus the folder back into the main BG2 directory seemed to fix this and it installed without problems. Exits with a fatal error, but this is normal.

Deleted the nasty folder with ~10,000 files in it! Not sure what on earth that was...

Unfinished Business
Same initial install problem as BanterPacks - pressing enter when the title displayed in the application list (alt+tab) changes does the job. Apart from that, installs without incident. Exits with the usual fatal error. Warning - creates a huge Setup-Banterpack.debug file (like 700MB) in your BG2 folder - delete.

Underrepresented Items
Create another weird directory inside my BG2 folder - must be that particular type of extractor. Do the usual cedega terminal install once the files and folder are in the right place. Exits with the usual fatal error.

Rogue APack
Rogue_Apack.exe presents you with a blank dialogue with two amazingly tiny dots. Click the left one to get the file browser. On my computer this completely knackered though. However, this particular .exe file is actually a self-extracting RAR file. Therefore open with Ark or a similar programme and you can extract the files directly to the right place. Install from the command line.

Solaufein
Using Ark now to extract them as it seems to be less hassle than point2play. The old method should still work. Installs from the command line without a hitch.

Ascension
The usual Ark & install works fine.

Saerileth
Install goes as usual until its time to decode the .ogg files. Around this point my filesystem got completely knackered, but not sure if this is related. Anyway, we can take care of the audio decoding easily. Simply travel to your override directory in a terminal and type oggdec SAER*.ogg and watch the text scroll. When finished, type rm -f SAER*.ogg to remove the files (they're duplicated in the main Saerileth folder).

Kelsey SOA
Had to be installed using point2play. Same lack of dialogue as before, but strategic enter-pressing does the job. Banter-accelerator script doesn't install so don't select it. The Ease-of-use one does the job anyway. To install audio, same procedure as above - use the following commands: oggdec FW*.ogg AND ALSO oggdec fw*.ogg - linux being case sensitive will miss half of them otherwise. Then you can delete these to save space.

Keto
Requires a point2play extraction. Same problems as Kelsey. Installs fine, you'll need to decode the .oggs again though. It appears that she also uses FW*.ogg and fw*.ogg - I did Keto & Kelsey together rather than after each install but hopefully this won't be a problem. Keto also has another set too, so also oggdec pg*.ogg and PG*.ogg. Delete as you please [img]smile.gif[/img]

Virtue
You can extract this with Ark and it installs fine with Cedega from the command prompt.

[ 04-13-2005, 03:08 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[LennonCook]

I just found this thread on the Gentoo forums, which describes how to get BG2 + mods + a 'profile' function which achieves the same as the multi-install tool, without Cedega, and without a Windows partition. It does the same for other Infinity Engine games aswell. [img]smile.gif[/img]
It uses an ebuild, and so it will only work on distros with portage (Gentoo, VeritaLinux, maybe others), which makes me even happier that I use Gentoo. [img]smile.gif[/img]

It might also be possible to migrate those ebuilds to RPM or dpkg, since they would obviously need to install binaries (portage can install binaries or compile source on a package-by-package basis).

[shamrock_uk]

Nice, thanks Lennon! Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to get rid of the annoying stutters in-game - they just wouldn't go away for me. I posted a detailed message on the Cedega forums but no reply Looks like WinXP will still have a place for my games [img]smile.gif[/img]