Dakk, on Oct 19 2011, 05:20 PM, said:
Several people on this forum have been rather rude to me lately, so perhaps I am getting a little sensitive to it.
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I posted the thread-part because in my experience it's often more appreciated if one starts either a separate thread with ones problems or thoughts, or use an existing feedback/bug-thread. This is posted in the "Release"-thread. I did not mean, or indeed claim, this is in the wrong forum.
I was simply trying to follow the example of the Fixpack thread that is adjacent to this one, which is filled with posts about bugs and compatibility with other mods. Nobody said anything in that thread about such posts being in the wrong place.
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And the very reason I posted in the first place was to be helpful to you, mostly because of this part "I am starting to wonder if mods are really worth it for IE games". I wanted to show you, as you've had a lot of problems with BG1 also, that mods can work flawlessly. It was intended as encouragement (= use mods, they rule!) and to show you a combination that works.
My apologies if my previous post, or indeed this one, was non-helpful to you.
I appreciate the sentiment. I read it as "you're posting in the wrong place, and my games work fine with mods, so it must be you" which apparently was not how it was intended.
I have done a fair amount of modding myself for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and for Arcanum, and basically mod every game I play if I can. I love mods. But I hate bugs, and I'd rather play a bug-free game than a buggy modded one. I have played all the IE games without bug problems, and now that I am playing them again with mods, there are bugs. Planescape and BG1 both had to be uninstalled due to constant crashes I never had before playing them with mods. IWD1 is now behaving strangely, such as giving my mage an extra spell slot. Something like that seems highly unlikely to be a graphics card issue or an operating system issue or a disc corruption issue, it has to be coming from a mod or some interaction between them.
I played IWD1 with Auril's Bane before with no problems. I am wondering if combining it with other mods is what is making these weird behaviors happen. That is why I did not use the G3 Fixpack, there was some indication that it was not compatible with Auril's Bane.
I just had an incident where I couldn't talk to the innkeeper in Kuldahar. I could click on him but my character would not move toward him or initiate dialog. I left the inn and came back in and it was solved. The same thing happened to me with BG1 at Sorcerous Sundries. Those are two unrelated games, with different engines, and I uninstalled BG1 completely. What do they have in common? I used G3 mods with both of them this time around. I can't help but wonder if these mods are causing these strange problems.
There are a lot of posts around on the net about being unable to initiate dialog. One said "I have also heard that if you have a third party fix or tweak installed that changes the dialog.tlk file and do not uninstall that fix prior to installing ToB, this error can also occur. " So I really have to wonder if a mod's changes to dialog.tlk in BG1 and IWD1 is making me have these dialog problems.
I would not be using all these mods if I did not love the extra content and freshness they add to the games. But not being able to complete a game because of bugs and crashes is too high a price to pay. I have a friend I am just getting to play IE games now, for the first time. He is playing BG1, using the widescreen mod, and like me in Planescape has crashes when he enters small areas. He sees all my bugs and crashes and is becoming skeptical of the idea of using mods, tweaks, fixpacks or anything unofficial, as they seem to be causing me a lot of trouble. I am not sure what to tell him. I love the content, but I am not going to recommend buggy software to someone. (I steer everyone I know away from Temple of Elemental Evil after wasting my time trying to play it with the Circle of Eight unofficial patch - still buggy as can be.)
Anyway at this point I'm just venting. The problem is probably not with the Item Upgrade, but who knows. And that is what is frustrating. These games are very long and often don't go down in flames from accumulated problems until you have spent 50+ hours playing them, so finding what the incompatibility or bug issue is, is very frustrating for the user.