Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
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Making your mod work with achievements (what I call a "loose" version), takes a little bit of work, but can be done.

The general idea is you're moving all your mod content to either the Public/Shared folder or the Mods/Shared folder in the game Data directory, depending on where they were originally.

There's a few caveats to be aware of:
Quote
â–  While a majority of your mod files need to be moved from Public/MyModName_GUID to Public/Shared. Some files need to remain in the original directory. More on this below.

â–  Assets need to be in their original paths that were set in the editor. Meaning, if your path to a texture file was Public/ModName_GUID/Assets/Textures/, that path needs to be preserved. So keep that in the same folder structure.

â–  Your texture atlas files (i.e. Public/MyModName_GUID/GUI/MyMod_Icons.lsx) need to be moved into the Public/Shared folder.

â–  Localization files need to be renamed to not override the base ones (Shout_DisplayName -> MyMod_Shout_DisplayName). Any localization files in Mods/MyModName_GUI/Localization need to be moved to the "Public/Shared/Localization folder".

â–  All your new StatusData entries need to be merged into the base game's StatusData.txt. Get this by extracting it from Shared.pak.

â–  For your other stats, simply renaming them appears to be fine (Potions.txt -> MyMod_Potions.txt).

â–  The rule of thumb is to be aware of what you're overwriting, and if it actually needs to be overwritten. In most cases, a simple rename may work, unless it's an integral file that the game only loads once (StatusData.txt, Data.txt).

â–  Mods/MyModName_GUID/meta.lsx does not need to be moved to Mods/Shared. Doing so will actually prevent the game from opening.


If all of this has been done correctly, you should get this message when getting to the main menu:

[Linked Image]

One final thing to note is that this can be done by users. You simple need to extract the mod's pak file and re-arrange/rename things to work correctly.

Thanks for reading. I hope this helps! rpg007

Last edited by LaughingLeader; 30/09/17 05:37 PM. Reason: Clarification
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Da guidemaster. A general thing to note is that packing files this way overwrites the WHOLE file, whereas modding the standard way will only overwrite specific entries. For example, a packed mod may have a Data.txt file that only has the 4-5 parameters it modfiies, but the loose version needs the whole Data.txt file with the modified parameters integrated in it.

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Originally Posted by Baardvark
A general thing to note is that packing files this way overwrites the WHOLE file, whereas modding the standard way will only overwrite specific entries. For example, a packed mod may have a Data.txt file that only has the 4-5 parameters it modfiies, but the loose version needs the whole Data.txt file with the modified parameters integrated in it.

Right! That's why you need to be very careful about what you overwrite, since you can inadvertently mess up the base game and create bugs or crashes.

Before I renamed my localization files, when I would get to the character creation screen, the first character it generated was invisible. This was from my localization files overwriting something. Weird bug.

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I assume this would only work for mods that don't touch the story editor, correct?


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Originally Posted by SniperHF
I assume this would only work for mods that don't touch the story editor, correct

I haven't tested that, but if it could work, you would put your story files in Mods\Shared\Story, like where they are in the Shared.pak. There may be some merging required depending on how the story scripts are loaded.

The small mod that I figured all of this out on required a lot of debugging to figure out what was causing issues, so I probably wouldn't make a "loose files" version if the mod was big in scope, and added new levels, quests, story stuff, etc. Just seems like a headache to get working.

It would probably be easier to figure out a way to patch out whatever's disabling the achievements, like they did for Skyrim. think

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Originally Posted by LaughingLeader


It would probably be easier to figure out a way to patch out whatever's disabling the achievements, like they did for Skyrim. think


I looked into this myself a few days ago but came up empty.

My guess is there's a check in the engine for specific information in the meta data of the main game and if something is sitting on top of it cheevos are disabled.

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Originally Posted by SniperHF
My guess is there's a check in the engine for specific information in the meta data of the main game and if something is sitting on top of it cheevos are disabled.

If I'm remembering/understanding right, the Skyrim achievement enabler required a DLL loader and SKSE, which basically means it got injected into the exe and modified the memory to enable achievements - It wasn't actually a "normal" mod. So we may be in similar situation, unless Larian changes it in the coming months.

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Originally Posted by LaughingLeader
unless Larian changes it in the coming months.

I doubt this will happen. It's fairly trivial to create a mod that awards all achievements.

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Update: Story files need to be placed in "Mods\DivinityOrigins_1301db3d-1f54-4e98-9be5-5094030916e4" to get them to load in the campaign. I assume Dialog follows the same rule.

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