0. Abstract
Play
- Baldur's Gate
- Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast
- Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
- Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal
- Icewind Dale
- Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter
- Icewind Dale: Trials of the Luremaster (free downloadable add-on)
Supported: de-version (you have to register for free before you can download) and us-version - Icewind Dale II
Get the latest tarball here.
1. News & Changes
24.6.2006: I just realized that it's almost a year that I last updated the ebuilds. How time goes by... unfortunately however, what with my thesis and whatnot, I won't have time to maintain this project for some time. Maybe in autumn I'll find the time and energy work in it, and maybe not. So - for the time being - I declare the project hibernating. If someone else steps up and wants to carry on, feel free to.
21.7.2005: WeiDU version bump.
8.7.2005: lynxnyl has improved his handy script for checking and downloading necessary stuff. Get it here.
13.06.2005: Added paragraph "10. Do-it-yourself mod installation"
11.06.2005: This update is quite a whopper and features support for the 5CD-version of BG1 (experimental, may even work
), The Fields of the Dead (fotd) for BG1, support for IWD1:Trials of the Luremaster/US version, Auril's Bane mod for Trials of the Luremaster, Kindrek NPC for BG2+ToB, game ebuild cleanups, bugfixes and enhancements, many updates for mods and tools alike and the Return of the Turnip Golem! Muahahaha!27.05.2005: Made available new game ebuilds for testing. Not for the faint of heart.
14.05.2005: Are you proud owner of IWD1 (+HoW) or IWD2, UK or US version? I need your help.
09.03.2005: Well, well, well, long time no see! But I haven't been idle; the installation routines have been rewritten completely and I added support for some more InfinityEngine games. 'Trials of the Luremaster' has only german support for now. Who can point me to english/french/italian/spanish downloads of the module (apart from that horrible FilePlanet site)?
22.12.2004: A few script fixes, changes in bg2mod.eclass. Please reinstall the mods 'd0quest' and 'longerroad' into your profile if you are using them. Some minor fixes in mod ebuilds. Added ebuilds for 'Desecration of Souls' (dos), 'One Pixel Productions' (1pp), 'Ruad the Blacksmith' (ruad) and the 'Gibberlings Three Anniversary Mod' (g3anniversary).
21.12.2004: Fixed the ToB ebuild for english users, thanks to liber!'s help. Minor fixes for the baldurdash packages. Beautification of the SoA ebuild, you don't have to reemerge it. Added support for 'virtue' mod: Splits the reputation in 'reputation' (if you do bad things and get caught, reputation suffers) and 'virtue' (suffers in any case if you do bad things, makes rangers and paladins lose their status, changes alignment). You should install it as last mod into your profile.
19.12.2004, again: AAAAHRG! I just noticed that someone renamed the rename app I'm using at a crucial point in mod installation to xmrename to avoid a name collision with one of the core-utils. Please update your overlay. Btw, added support for 'Unfinished Business' mod (-> 'emerge ub'). Includes, among others, a quest called "The Kidnapping of Boo".
19.12.2004: Ok, a lot of work has been done on my BG2 ebuilds. They have been properly 'gentooized', and bring optional support for 'Throne of Bhaal' and more than a dozen mods.
2. Supported Games and Game Distributions
This section will inform you which particular distributions of the games are usable with my installers. I only can work with the file setup of the games I can get my hands on, so different localizations or packagings may break the installers.
Some weeks ago, I bought a box called 'Black Isle Compilation, Part Two' (german) and the ebuilds are constructed for the included versions of the games. Btw, BG2+ToB from this box are identical to the original german distribution, the english version of BG2+Tob should work also.
Anyway, distributions with this installation media might work all right too:
Baldur's Gate I: 5 CDs (experimental as of 11.06.05), 1 DVD
Tales of the Sword Coast: 1 CD
Baldur's Gate II: 4 CDs
Throne of Bhaal: 1 CD
Icewind Dale: 2 CDs
Heart of Winter: 1 CD
Icewind Dale II: 2 CDs
If your game distribution is not supported, you can help me to support it. Please do a standard Windows installation of your game and find out its exact version (displayed at the bottom of the options window). Now, run
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emerge iescripts
/usr/games/bin/iescripts/fingerprint3. Installation prerequisites
Instead of performing all the steps in this paragraph manually, you can use this script by lynxnyl (btw thanks, lynxnyl!).
- Download this tarball and drop its contents into your portage overlay.
- Add the lines
to '/etc/portage/categories'
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games-ie games-bg1 games-bg2 games-iwd1 games-iwd2 - BG2 users get the BG2:SoA patch:
English users download this patch.
Owners of the european version of BG2 download this patch.
Sorry 'bout this, but the filenames include an apostrophe and let portage choke when it comes to downloading. Just drop the patch file into your distfiles directory. - Add your user to the 'games' group.
- Free roughly 7GB disk space for emerging BG1 or BG2. For the Icewind Dale games, 3GB should suffice.
- Have your game disks handy.
As of version 20050628, wine doesn't use the '~/.wine/config' file any more, all configuration parameters reside in the wine registry now. You can edit them (well, some of them) with the 'winecfg' GUI tool. For me, this latest wine version had some sound driver problems (artsdrv seems to be broken, alsadrv crashes the games), so I'm staying with the vintage version wine-20050111-r1 for now.
I'm using quite a minimalistic wine config (it goes into ~/.wine/config):
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WINE REGISTRY Version 2
;; All keys relative to \\Machine\\Software\\Wine\\Wine\\Config
# [wineconf]
[Version]
; Windows version to imitate (win95,win98,winme,nt351,nt40,win2k,winxp,win2k3,win20,win30,win31)
"Windows" = "win98"
[x11drv]
"Managed" = "N"
[WinMM]
;"Drivers" = "wineoss.drv" ; default for most common configurations
"Drivers" = "winearts.drv" ; for KDE
;"Drivers" = "winealsa.drv" ; for ALSA users
;"Drivers" = "winejack.drv" ; for Jack sound server
;"Drivers" = "winenas.drv" ; for NAS sound system
;"Drivers" = "" ; to disable sound
;"WaveMapper" = "msacm.drv"
;"MidiMapper" = "midimap.drv"
# [/wineconf]
In ~/.wine/dosdevices you should link to your CD drive and to some directory containing your profile (e. g. your home directory).
As for the version of wine you should use, you have to tinker yourself around a bit. For example, I played through the whole of Icewind Dale II with wine-20050111 (to which I had to apply a small patch, see 'Random Notes'), while with the same version I cannot create a new game in Icewind Dale I.
5. Installation
Several ebuilds are available:
bg1 -> Baldur's Gate
bg1totsc -> Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast
bg2 -> Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
bg2tob -> Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal
iwd1 -> Icewind Dale
iwd1how -> Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter
iwd1totlm -> Icewind Dale: Trials of the Luremaster (free downloadable add-on)
iwd2 -> Icewind Dale II
Environment variables:
LINGUAS: Determines the language used in the ebuild; specify exactly one; currently supported: en, de, fr, it, es
CDROM_ROOT: Path to your game CD mount point; default: "/mnt/cdrom"
CD_ROOT_<X>: Path to mounted installation CD <X>
The GAMES_PREFIX_OPT variable affects the 'iescripts' ebuild only, and the value you give will be 'frozen' at installation time and used in all dependant ebuilds. You can change the value in /etc/iescripts.conf, but beware: Installing games or mods to different locations will almost certainly break your game setup if you don't edit the config files in ~/.iegames accordingly. This command will install all components to '/data/infinity':
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GAMES_PREFIX_OPT="/data/infinity" emerge iescriptsCode: Select all
FEATURES="-buildpkg" CDROM_ROOT="/media/dvd" LINGUAS="es" emerge iwd2Code: Select all
FEATURES="-buildpkg" CD_ROOT_1="/mnt/iwd2_cd1/" CD_ROOT_2="/mnt/iwd2_cd2" LINGUAS="en en_US" emerge iwd2Your basic installation is done. Each of the four base games comes with its own management script (bg1, bg2, iwd1, iwd2). From now on, I will use the bg2 script as an example. Start BG2 by typing
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bg2Code: Select all
bg2 configCode: Select all
emerge officialpatch-bg2 games-bg2/baldurdash
bg2 install officialpatch-bg2 baldurdashCode: Select all
emerge officialpatch-bg2tob baldurdash-tob
bg2 install officialpatch-bg2tob baldurdsh-tobIMPORTANT: If the game complains about a missing CD, but you are sure the CD is mounted and the ~/.wine/dosdevices symlink is in place, just quit the game (but don't kill the process, just press ESC and click OK in the message box) and try again to start the game. It should work now. This is a bug and it will be fixed, eventually.
7. Mods
To use a mod, first emerge it, then install it into your profile. All bg2 mods are in games-bg2 and so on.
To get a list of all mods available on your system, type
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bg2 mod-listCode: Select all
bg2 install mod1 mod2 mod3 ...8. Profiles
A profile is a kind of carbon copy of your BG2 installation (via symlinks). Different profiles have different savegames and can have different sets of mods installed. To list and create profiles, use
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bg2 profile-list
bg2 create alt_profileCode: Select all
bg2 alt_profile
bg2 config alt_profile
bg2 install mod1 mod2 ... into alt_profileBasically, there are two kinds of BG2 mods: 'flat' and 'weidu'.
Flat mods consist of a directory containing files to add or overwrite in an existing game installation. When a flat mod is installed into a profile, only a change of some symlinks takes place. Therefore, two flat modules should not be installed into one profile, if they are not explicitly known to be compatible.
Weidu mods are resource bundles for compilation with Westley Weimers IE Resource Compiler. They can be installed in any order, but should be installed after flat mods. In principle, they can be uninstalled also, but creating a new profile is easier. As for compatibility with one another, most WeiDU mods get along fairly well, but there are also conflicting mods.
Mixing flat and weidu works if you follow this rule of thumb: First install flat mods, then weidu mods.
For some mods - especially those tweaking the game rather than adding stuff - it is necessary to start a new game in order to take advantage of the tweaks. Others, adding or changing encounters or quests, can be used from an existing savegame. Refer to the mods' homepages for more info.
Be aware that virtually all of the mods bring a readme-file with some tips and common gotchas, a
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find ~/.bg2/profiles/default -name *.txt10. Do-it-yourself mod installation
Perhaps you want to install an InfinityEngine mod I don't support with an ebuild. This is quite easy, actually. Let's take, for example, the nifty mod Dungeon be gone!, which lets you skip Irenicus' Dungeon at the beginning of the game (but you still get all the goodies and XP). Unfortunately, it uses an NSIS installer, and I know of no working tool to extract files from it, so I won't support it. But with bit command line work, you can still use it. First, obtain the installer and execute it
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wine dungeonbegone.exeCode: Select all
renamexm -Rl * #To avoid ambiguous file naming, all game related files are lowercase.
rm *.exe #We have our own WeiDU installed
mv setup-dungeonbegone.tp2 setup-dbg.tp2 #I'll call the mod 'dbg' for the sake of shortness, and a file setup-$NAME.tp2 is expected
find . -iname '*.tiz' #Are there any compressed area files to unpack with tisunpack? No.
find . -iname '*.ogg' #But there are ogg files to convert to wav!
cd jassy/audio
rm oggdec.exe
oggdec *.ogg
rm *.ogg
cd ~/.iegames/bg2/mods
mkdir dbg
cd dbg
mkdir weidu overlay
cd weidu
cp -R ~/dbg/* .
bg2 mod-list # 'dbg' will show up in the list.
#The next part is optional and will save a little disk space (or a lot of disk space for bigger mods).
#<optional>
cd ~/.iegames/bg2/mods/dbg/overlay
mkdir override
cd override
find ../../weidu -iname '*.wav' -exec mv {} . \;
find ../../weidu -iname '*.tis' -exec mv {} . \; #Actually there are no .tis files, but if there were, they should be moved here...
#</optional>
bg2 create testprofile
bg2 install dbg into testprofile # That's it! 'dbg' should install correctly now.
bg2 testprofileSometimes it can happen that a file in your mod you moved to overlay (*.tis, *.wav) or deleted (*.ogg, *.tiz) is explicitly wanted by the WeiDU script (the .tp2 file), and the installation into a game profile fails. The thing to do here is to leave dummy files around: Instead of
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rm *.oggCode: Select all
find . -iname '*.ogg' | while read FILE; do echo "WEIDU_DUMMY" > $FILE; doneQ: When I try to install the 5CD-version of BG1, the ebuild fails because a file called 'i5comp21.rar' is not found. Why?
A: i5comp is a windows tool to exctract Installshield5 archives and includes a DLL of which I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to redistribute it, so I don't. But I'm sure a resourceful Gentoo user will be able to obtain the file in question on his own... *cough* google *cough*
Q: Why is the game so slow?
A: Could be your wine sound driver. Try to choose a different sound output driver in your wine config, or disable sound output altogether by commenting out all wine sound drivers. In wine-20041201, the alsa driver works quite well. Another reason for this could be 3D support (or the lack thereof). Have you emerge wine with USE="opengl"? Is your DRI setup correct? Have you considered to configure your game with 'bg2 config' (or 'iwd2 config', and so on...) so it won't use 3D effects?
Q: Why is the game crashing all the time?
A: Again, your wine sound driver is suspect number one. Anyway, you can check the wine log of the latest session at '~/.iegames/$GAME/profiles/default/bgmain.exe.wine.log'. The log of the session before is preserved with an suffix '.old'
Q: My X Server crashes.
A: Check the 3D config of your system, see above.
Q: The game tells me that the cd was removed frome the drive or claims that there as a cpp exception at line X.
A: Some file has not be found, and that indicates a corrupt profile. Either a mod is buggy, or two mods are incompatible, or a flat mod has overwritten some files.
Q: Why is the game complaining about a missing CD? It's mounted!
A: Just quit the game (but don't kill the process, just press ESC and click OK in the message box) and try again to start the game. It should work now.
12. Random Notes
- Some mods can influence your gaming experience quite heavily, e. g. the spell50 mod for bg2. It allows the power of a range of spells to 'scale' up to level 50 ('Magic Missile' stops to get more powerful at level 20 or so otherwise) and thus shifts game balance in favour of high-level spellcasters. Look at the mod's readme to be sure that you want what it does.
- Khalid is a cissy.
- If you plan to play Icewind Dale II, use the wine version in my overlay. It fixes all crashes with the wine error
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err:ddraw:Main_DirectDrawSurface_Lock Invalid values in LPRECT !!!
My thanks and sincere respect for their hard work to bring us enhancements and mods for our favorite RPG game goes out to the Infinity Engine Modding Community, including (but not limited to), in no particular order:
- Westley Weimer, who wrote the WeiDU compiler and as well wrote and compiled various cool mods including solaufein, valen, underrepresented items, ease of use, spell50, itemupgrade and ascension.
- The good people at Baldurdash, for doing what would have been the games' distributors' job.
- The IE communities at Pocketplane,
Gibberlings3,
The Chosen of Mystra,
ForgottenWars and
BlackWyrmLair, who all do a great job in hosting and maintaining a host of tutorials, mods, tools and resources. - All Gentoo users who dig out their copy of Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, give my ebuilds a spin and tell me how they like it (hint, hint! ).
