BiG World Project: A Huge Unofficial Baldur's Gate Series Expansion

Well I've found two copies of BG2, one of Bhaal and none of BG1 or expansion among my collection.

I should mention that I always find that while 1920x1200 looks good in Infinity Engine games, I usually play at 1440x900 or 1280x800. Otherwise the battles tend to not be tactical for me as everyone seems lumped together. I constantly keep trying to scroll my mouse wheel for a closer look.

Alright, quick first impressions. The horrendous install time is worthwhile. The game looks great, and playing BG1 with the BG2 engine is a smoother experience. The BiG world adds great value to the gog.com $9.99 Baldur's Gate deal. I've noticed with some of the extra dialogue -and this is nitpicking- the npc's have a tendency to break the fourth wall a bit, but that's not uncommon for fan-made mods. Attempts at humor often fall flat in these mods, so I'm hoping that they don't try to make the already witty core game funnier through the whole campaign.

Overall, the huge mod pack breathes new life into a decade old game, and I hope folks who didn't have a chance to try it back then will enjoy playing it now.

Yeah, I'm going to have to get this.

Thanks for the head's up, and the early reviews.

Le tag

Ok I found this information that fixed my neverending installation problem:

On the next screen, you see three directories. Even if the first two already match with your installation folder, click the [...] besides them and navigate to the according directories. Why? If you installed and patched the games according to my instructions, the [...] will turn green. Green is good. Leave the third directory intact if you don't have a good reason not to.

For some reason you have to re-select the directories so that they become green highlighted. Even if they were the proper directories to start with.

It's installing now...

*I know the install time is supposed to be horrendous, but mine has been running almost 30 hours so far...
Is that normal ?*

*Edited since I found out what I did wrong...*

30 hours? Wow. It depends on the speed of your computer. Mine finished overnight, but I don't know how long it actually took. I just upgraded my system, so ...

Oh ok, that sounds like the problem I was having. Might have to give installing the whole thing another go in that case...

Hm... As I recall I never finished BG1. Damn you all. *tagged*

Bahh I'm about to stop trying.
All was going well until just at the end it told me that my folder was not properly named...
I redid all the install and now it just says that my version og BG 2 is not patched.
And it is.
And I put the BG2-ToBPatchReadMe.txt and pasted it into the BGII - SoA folder.

I've spent way too many hours trying to make this work...

Ah yeah, you have to name it BGII - SoA. I had to restart it after seeing that too. Not sure if they mentioned that at the outset, I sure didn't see it.

Frustrating here as well..I'm having a problem trying to get it to update. Windows Firewall turned off and disabled the other and still not updating. When I go to the screen where it prompts for the 3 dirs, I click on the ... and it doesn't do anything.

Running Man wrote:

Ah yeah, you have to name it BGII - SoA. I had to restart it after seeing that too. Not sure if they mentioned that at the outset, I sure didn't see it.

I just changed the folder name and in the baldur.ini files to BGII - SoA and then after everything installed I changed it back. I was not going to restart the whole thing over.

stevenmack wrote:
Malor wrote:

One thing, though: you'd better absolutely love 2E D&D combat, because that's what you'll be doing for a hundred hours or so.

Or as I like to call it - the last time D&D was actually any good

SpyNavy wrote:

Are you going to play BG1 first and then roll into BG 2? How does combining the two work with the trilogy mod?

It literally combines the three into one epic game by pulling all the BG1, Tales and ToB content into BG2 proper. Which means you use BG2 rules, interface, character creation (with all the class kits and new classes like the Sorcerer), etc and it looks a LOT better.

The only thing that's a little screwed up is the music, but there's various levels of patch included to fix that.

O
I was quite proud of my mass-enabling. Then I read this post and realized I'll be hopping in now as well.

Holy crap I've forgotten so much about BG. I re-played a portion of BG2 sometimes in 2004 or 2005, but I don't think I've touched BG1 since ~2000. I don't remember a thing.

Oh, and I sunk three hours in last night without blinking yet I'm having trouble staying interested in the Witcher 2. Perhaps I just like group-based RPGs better or something.

Actually, I think it's because I have a wolf in BG1.

garion333 wrote:

Holy crap I've forgotten so much about BG. I re-played a portion of BG2 sometimes in 2004 or 2005, but I don't think I've touched BG1 since ~2000. I don't remember a thing.

I think that's part of the reason why I'm happy with just the Trilogy mod (that and it was a pain in the bum to install the rest of it). It's been long enough since playing BG1 that I've pretty mich forgotten everything post Naskel Mines , and I only every played the "Tales" content and ToB the once, so there's already rakes of content there for me to re-experience without any extra mods n' stuff.

Okay, I'm finding the game way too easy. I selected everything one above normal, but I think there's something wonky going on. Sure, I got ambushed while traveling once and died in 5 seconds, but there was no way to win that. Otherwise the battles are all really easy and I seem to get a lot of crits (by really easy I mean I never lose, though people do get hurt).

Is this happening to anyone else? I feel like I should make a "Am I A God at Baldur's Gate?" thread to compliment the "Do I suck?" thread (no, not the Boogle dating thread, this one).

What class did you pick? I started with a ranger then restarted with fighter, and it seems a bit easier, but I still have to reload if someone crits one of my people too badly. Also, are you playing BG1 or 2?

edit to add:

Spoiler:

Edwin kicks ass.

Running Man wrote:

What class did you pick? I started with a ranger then restarted with fighter, and it seems a bit easier, but I still have to reload if someone crits one of my people too badly. Also, are you playing BG1 or 2?

BG1. I actually chose a fighter (with emphasis on using spears), which is not normally how I play. And then there's the wolf. Perhaps it's just slightly unbalanced, but almost half the time my missile people kill normal enemies before my melee can get there. Something isn't right.

Is this actually new content, or is this just a bundling of a bunch of existing content? Playing BG1 in the BG2 engine is not new, and there have been a number of dialog packs for NPCs over the years.

The engine mod can be nice, but I prefer the pacing and feel of the original BG, so I'm disinclined to try this if it's the same new stuff.

It doesn't answer your question but I remember that dual wielding (which wasn't in BG1 originally) completely broke the difficulty of that game. There could be other things I'm not aware of, perhaps with some of the class templates.

TheHipGamer wrote:

Is this actually new content, or is this just a bundling of a bunch of existing content? Playing BG1 in the BG2 engine is not new, and there have been a number of dialog packs for NPCs over the years.

The engine mod can be nice, but I prefer the pacing and feel of the original BG, so I'm disinclined to try this if it's the same new stuff.

It's both. It's basically just one big collection pulled together to (supposedly) make it easier to install. There's nothing groundbreaking here in terms of new content.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

It doesn't answer your question but I remember that dual wielding (which wasn't in BG1 originally) completely broke the difficulty of that game. There could be other things I'm not aware of, perhaps with some of the class templates.

Yeah, I'm wondering if it'll even out after a while. Right now I'm still dealing with packs of easy enemies (bandits and such) or one person who's really strong, which my party kills without much hassle.

TheHipGamer wrote:

Is this actually new content, or is this just a bundling of a bunch of existing content? Playing BG1 in the BG2 engine is not new, and there have been a number of dialog packs for NPCs over the years.

The engine mod can be nice, but I prefer the pacing and feel of the original BG, so I'm disinclined to try this if it's the same new stuff.

I haven't tried it, but apparently you can pick and choose which mods you want in your game. Once you get the install paths straightened out, it really is a simple way to sort out the dozens of options.

Old topic, but I'm not sure the setup file works anymore--at least it seemed completely unresponsive on my computer. I bought the D&D anthology from Impulse and ended up using this guide to get the Big World Project working. Not as sleek since you have to download the mods (from a linked list) individually, but at least it worked. And hopefully it keeps on working.