Help with GemRB

[Gein07]

I need some help getting Icewind Dale to work in GemRB. I've scoured multiple GemRB threads and have not found anything that has helped yet. I'm desperate to play this game as it was a childhood favorite.


My copy of Icewind Dale was bought via GOG, and I am running the latest version of GemRB which as of this post is 063. For copying the game files over I am literally copying everything within the Icewind Dale directory on my PC into the folder appdata/gemrb/iwd. (The documentation for GemRB says to copy into a folder called gemrb061, but that does not work, nor does using a folder with matching version numbers) When I run the pnd I get a dialog asking which game I want to run, I select IWD and then nothing happens.


I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, yet the documentation for this wondrous program is scattered at best. If someone with a bigger brain than I could give me a nudge in the right direction I would be most appreciative!

 

[cp_clegg]

I need some help getting Icewind Dale to work in GemRB. I've scoured multiple GemRB threads and have not found anything that has helped yet. I'm desperate to play this game as it was a childhood favorite.


My copy of Icewind Dale was bought via GOG, and I am running the latest version of GemRB which as of this post is 063. For copying the game files over I am literally copying everything within the Icewind Dale directory on my PC into the folder appdata/gemrb/iwd. (The documentation for GemRB says to copy into a folder called gemrb061, but that does not work, nor does using a folder with matching version numbers) When I run the pnd I get a dialog asking which game I want to run, I select IWD and then nothing happens.


I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, yet the documentation for this wondrous program is scattered at best. If someone with a bigger brain than I could give me a nudge in the right direction I would be most appreciative!

I can help with this as I just recently figured this out. I'm assuming that since you have the GOG version, like me you installed the full thing which includes Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster. That's one problem as the iwd config you choose with gemrb is not designed for those. To get around that you need to copy the iwd.cfg from the PND and modify it. To do this, start gemrb but don't choose your config yet. This will get the PND mounted. Open a terminal and type "mount" to see where you PND is mounted. It should be /mnt/utmp/gemrb and you should see an iwd.cfg file in there. Copy that to you your appdata/gemrb/iwd directory and rename it to custom.cfg. Edit appdata/gemrb/iwd/custom.cfg and change the "iwd" game type to "how". Then next time you run gemrb, choose the Custom config at the bottom instead of iwd.


The next problem you will likely run into is that not all the data files end up where they should be. You can help troubleshoot this sort of problem by looking at /tmp/pndrun_gemrb.out after you run the game and have any sort of problem. I like to ssh in to my Pandora and do a "tail -f" on that out file while I run the game. Anyway, you'll see that it can't find a bunch of bif files. If you go through that list of missing files you will see that these ended up some other directory under appdata when you copied all your files over (I can't remember exactly where right now as I am going from memory for all this). But you need to move those files into appdata/gemrb/iwd/data with the other files that are already in there. Also, as I recall some of the missing files ended with .bif extensions and some of the misplaced ones you are moving have the same base name but end in .cbf. Don't worry about that, they still work.


That should help get you going.

 

[Gein07]

I can help with this as I just recently figured this out. I'm assuming that since you have the GOG version, like me you installed the full thing which includes Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster. That's one problem as the iwd config you choose with gemrb is not designed for those. To get around that you need to copy the iwd.cfg from the PND and modify it. To do this, start gemrb but don't choose your config yet. This will get the PND mounted. Open a terminal and type "mount" to see where you PND is mounted. It should be /mnt/utmp/gemrb and you should see an iwd.cfg file in there. Copy that to you your appdata/gemrb/iwd directory and rename it to custom.cfg. Edit appdata/gemrb/iwd/custom.cfg and change the "iwd" game type to "how". Then next time you run gemrb, choose the Custom config at the bottom instead of iwd.


The next problem you will likely run into is that not all the data files end up where they should be. You can help troubleshoot this sort of problem by looking at /tmp/pndrun_gemrb.out after you run the game and have any sort of problem. I like to ssh in to my Pandora and do a "tail -f" on that out file while I run the game. Anyway, you'll see that it can't find a bunch of bif files. If you go through that list of missing files you will see that these ended up some other directory under appdata when you copied all your files over (I can't remember exactly where right now as I am going from memory for all this). But you need to move those files into appdata/gemrb/iwd/data with the other files that are already in there. Also, as I recall some of the missing files ended with .bif extensions and some of the misplaced ones you are moving have the same base name but end in .cbf. Don't worry about that, they still work.


That should help get you going.

Whoa, thanks cp_clegg! Thats exactly the kind of detailed response I was hoping for. I will try this tonight first thing and hopefully get it up and running. (kind of a newbie when it comes to using the terminal but everything you said seems to make sense.) Is there any other way to determine which files are not in their correct location aside from the ssh method you mentioned? I'm not familiar with the process of ssh'ing into anything really, so I fear that may be a tripping point. Thanks.

 

[cp_clegg]

I can help with this as I just recently figured this out. I'm assuming that since you have the GOG version, like me you installed the full thing which includes Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster. That's one problem as the iwd config you choose with gemrb is not designed for those. To get around that you need to copy the iwd.cfg from the PND and modify it. To do this, start gemrb but don't choose your config yet. This will get the PND mounted. Open a terminal and type "mount" to see where you PND is mounted. It should be /mnt/utmp/gemrb and you should see an iwd.cfg file in there. Copy that to you your appdata/gemrb/iwd directory and rename it to custom.cfg. Edit appdata/gemrb/iwd/custom.cfg and change the "iwd" game type to "how". Then next time you run gemrb, choose the Custom config at the bottom instead of iwd.


The next problem you will likely run into is that not all the data files end up where they should be. You can help troubleshoot this sort of problem by looking at /tmp/pndrun_gemrb.out after you run the game and have any sort of problem. I like to ssh in to my Pandora and do a "tail -f" on that out file while I run the game. Anyway, you'll see that it can't find a bunch of bif files. If you go through that list of missing files you will see that these ended up some other directory under appdata when you copied all your files over (I can't remember exactly where right now as I am going from memory for all this). But you need to move those files into appdata/gemrb/iwd/data with the other files that are already in there. Also, as I recall some of the missing files ended with .bif extensions and some of the misplaced ones you are moving have the same base name but end in .cbf. Don't worry about that, they still work.


That should help get you going.

Whoa, thanks cp_clegg! Thats exactly the kind of detailed response I was hoping for. I will try this tonight first thing and hopefully get it up and running. (kind of a newbie when it comes to using the terminal but everything you said seems to make sense.) Is there any other way to determine which files are not in their correct location aside from the ssh method you mentioned? I'm not familiar with the process of ssh'ing into anything really, so I fear that may be a tripping point. Thanks.

No you need to look at the output of that /tmp/pndrun_gemrb.out file. But you don't need to SSH to do that, I just think it makes things easier considering you have to refer to this list of files and then move them. I also used Filezilla from my PC to move files around on my Pandora via SFTP (again, not necessary, just easier than using terminal or Thunar on the Pandora itself). But if you would prefer not to mess with SSH at this point, simply open your Terminal on the Pandora (after a failed run of iwd) and type "more /tmp/pndrun_gemrb.out". Use spacebar to advance pages when using more and q to quit.

 

[cp_clegg]

I would like to add one more thing to this thread for you or others who may run in to performance problems with gemrb games. Specifically, the problem I was getting was stuttering (most noticeable in the audio) during the first 1 or 2 minutes of loading an area and occasionally thereafter. I found out what was causing this.


Using "tail -f /tmp/pndrun_gemrb.out" in an SSH session while playing IWD I noticed that all the stuttering problems were happening whenever gemrb was searching through the data files. Most of this happens when you first load into a new area so that is when the problem is the worst. You can see all the files scrolling by as they are searched for right at the same time the game stutters.


So at first I thought my SD card read speeds were not sufficient. But I have a good Sandisk class 6 ultra. Just yesterday I discovered what the real culprit was.


I had installed the improved pnd_run.sh from sebt3. This does a number of things to improve upon the behavior of running PNDs such as making the way they are mounted and unmounted more robust, among other things. However, it also comes with an added CPU performance cost. Quote from sebt3 in the above linked thread:

indeed, this version of pnd_run.sh does use a bit more cpu for each line written in the log (mostly for a awk, 2 sed, a date and a printf)
And it might have an impact on your application performance if it log a lot (aka several time per second).

Well gemrb logs a lot to /tmp/pndrun_gemrb.out as I already mentioned earlier. So there you go. I have reverted back to the stock pnd_run.sh and the performance problems in gemrb are gone.

 

[Gein07]

No you need to look at the output of that /tmp/pndrun_gemrb.out file. But you don't need to SSH to do that, I just think it makes things easier considering you have to refer to this list of files and then move them. I also used Filezilla from my PC to move files around on my Pandora via SFTP (again, not necessary, just easier than using terminal or Thunar on the Pandora itself). But if you would prefer not to mess with SSH at this point, simply open your Terminal on the Pandora (after a failed run of iwd) and type "more /tmp/pndrun_gemrb.out". Use spacebar to advance pages when using more and q to quit.

Okay so I got the custom.cfg file created and I have been monitoring my progress in terminal to see what is missing. First off it had issues finding the custom.cfg file when it was in appdata/gemrb/iwd, so I moved it up a level to appdata/gemrb/ and that seemed to fix that.


The next issue though is one I can't seem to get around. In terminal the loading stops because "Cache path ./iwd/Cache doesn't exist, not a folder or contains alien files!" Looking on my SC card there is a Cache folder at appdata/gemrb/iwd/Cache. I can't get passed this error to truly see what I am missing.


Also, as for the data files, I suspect the Data files from CD2 and CD3 in the GOG installation folder need to go in the Data dir on appdata for gemrb. That makes sense at least in my head, but I can't confirm that until I get around this Cache error.

 

[cp_clegg]

I'm going from memory so sorry if I told you the wrong folder for the custom.cfg but sounds like you didn't have trouble figuring it out. The Cache error is an easy fix. You'll find some file or subdirectory in there, can't remember which exactly, but you need to delete it. Do that and the error will go away. Yes, the contents of the CD directories need to go in iwd/data.

 

[Gein07]

I'm going from memory so sorry if I told you the wrong folder for the custom.cfg but sounds like you didn't have trouble figuring it out. The Cache error is an easy fix. You'll find some file or subdirectory in there, can't remember which exactly, but you need to delete it. Do that and the error will go away. Yes, the contents of the CD directories need to go in iwd/data.

Clegg you sir are a genious. Deleted the Data dir in Cache, moved the Data files from CD2 and CD3 to the Data dir, fired up the game and all is well! Woohoo! I think I might type up a quick GOG Icewind Dale to Pandora guide with credit to you for your super helpful advice and post to the general forum for whoever else might be struggling with this besides me. Thanks again for your help!

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I've followed these directions, but Icewind Dale still does not work.

 

[opticalgreen]

Hello there, very good information indeed and thank you guys a lot, I made icewind dale work on my Galaxy S! But (yes there is one), I noticed a few problems with the game: First, the characters you make have no voice sounds, I mean you can select the desired sound at char creation, but you hear nothing, not there and not in game. Second, I made a female half elf, specialized mage amongst my party, she had access to all schools of magic so I had chosen Invoker with magic missile, but when the game started, the spells I chosen (including MM) were gone and she had other spells instead. Now, I am not familiar with this version of AD&D, I played NWN alot so I know little about 2.0 something versions. On my PC I noticed that if I choose a female half elf specialized mage, I have no access at all to the Invoker school, so I guess the gemRB version didn't grey-out the normal restrictions. OK, one last point here, I know little to nothing about programming so I didn't understand much what cp_clegg said in his first post and I didn't do any of those things he advised Gein07 to do, I just followed what Gein07 said in his last post and moved all those files and deleted the data dir in cache If you guys can make a bit of light in this thread about ice wind dale on gemRB I will greatly appreciate it, Thank you!

 

[DaMummy]

we dont like yer kind 'round here.


you better get outta here 'fore sumtin baaad happens! ye hear!


sorry this isnt a smartphone forum, you should try your luck elsewhere, this thread is only for GemRB for the OpenPandora. its got nothing to do with Samsung phones, nor original GemRB devs

 

[opticalgreen]

I am sorry for the inconvenience for being here, I know what this forum is for, I do not intend to bother people with my smartphone. But this thread is also about gemRB and let's say that I am here for that. It is the only forum I found that gave me a really valuable information about ICWD and gemRB, besides the solution for making ICWD work was the same for both a smartphone and OpenPandora.

 

[DaMummy]

start here, http://www.gemrb.org/wiki/doku.php?id=start


end up here, http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showforum=91

 

[superatarian]

Boy, I just started getting into gemrb and was haviing some problems. Now I think I know just what to do in order to BG 1 and BG 2 working. Thanks for the tips....

 

[superatarian]

I got BG1 to work on the Pandora and it is great. I was wondering if anyone has increased the size of the fonts in the game. I have read where people have done this.

 

[superatarian]

Well I found out how to increase the font size. Now I can play the game without squinting my eyes. Makes the game much easier to play.

 

[PowerGod]

Well I found out how to increase the font size. Now I can play the game without squinting my eyes. Makes the game much easier to play.

How did you done that ? With the "TWM_GUI" mod ? Or with the ttf plugin ?


I din't try the first choice, and I'm lost with the second... I've only succefully installed the "G3 Widescreen" mod...


EDIT: Installed TWM_GUI mod and now I have the text 150% bigger... anyway it is bigger than some boxes sometimes

 

[superatarian]

Well I found out how to increase the font size. Now I can play the game without squinting my eyes. Makes the game much easier to play.

How did you done that ? With the "TWM_GUI" mod ? Or with the ttf plugin ?


I din't try the first choice, and I'm lost with the second... I've only succefully installed the "G3 Widescreen" mod...


EDIT: Installed TWM_GUI mod and now I have the text 150% bigger... anyway it is bigger than some boxes sometimes

Here is what I found:


Step 1


Download GhostDog's PS:T UI mod v2.1


Step 2


Open up the RAR file and do the following


1. Open up directory cp1250.


2. Choose the folder with the size font you want (13, 15, 16, 18). I chose 18 and it works perfectly and amazingly!


3. Once you open the folder of the size font you want unRAR the file TRMTFONT.BAM.


Step 3


Take the file TRMTFONT.BAM and copy it to your Override folder. If you bought BG1 from GOG odds are the folder is C:\Program Files\GOG.com\Baldurs Gate\Override


Step 4


Backup the file in the Override folder called "NORMAL.BAM". Make sure you do this because if you do something wrong and this doesn't work you may have to reinstall the whole game (unless someone sends you their NORMAL.BAM).


Step 5


After copying TRMTFONT.BAM to the Override folder and backing up your NORMAL.BAM file delete the NORMAL.BAM file.


Step 6


Now rename the TRMTFONT.BAM file to NORMAL.BAM.


Step 7


Start up BG1 and enjoy being able to keep your eyesight!


I have the needed RAR file. If you cannot find it, let me know. I can send it to you. My email address is edbaizjr@comcast.net

 

[PowerGod]

Thanks I found the v2.2 of the mod, but the fonts are still there I'll try your solution ASAP.


PS: it isn't a good thing to show your email address on an open public forum, the SPAM will seek and destroy you !! :lol:

 

[superatarian]

Thanks I found the v2.2 of the mod, but the fonts are still there I'll try your solution ASAP.


PS: it isn't a good thing to show your email address on an open public forum, the SPAM will seek and destroy you !! :lol:

Hope it works for you. Yeah I get a lot of SPAM, but I deal with it. Thanks for the concern though.