Introduction
As is perfectly normal in the Infinity Engine games, at some point you will be accosted by a
complete stranger asking you to deliver a letter for him.
The recipient is your old friend Elminster (yes, he gets a bit part again). Elminster is very
concerned about the contents of the letter and asks you
to investigate why a village just south of Athkatla is being deserted by its inhabitants. You find
that a demon has taken up residence in the village's lighthouse.
The demon has a small favour to ask of you and in return, promises to tell why the village has been
deserted. And so it begins...
A few useless facts...
- Five new major areas
- 109 new internal areas
- One new piece of music
- Nearly 12,000 lines of dialog
- 221 new NPCs
- Sixty-three portraits for the major
NPCs
- Four cutscenes
- Seventeen new stores
- Twenty-nine new resource graphics
- Sixty unique new creature scripts
All of the 'new' areas have been created from cut-up and recycled BioWare originals.
All but around ten of the internal areas have been modified in one way or another to distinguish
them from the original areas - much as BioWare themselves did, in fact.
Some areas do have new textures but these are mainly restricted to 'easy' places such as floors and
walls.
The portraits derive from far and wide and in nearly all cases I cannot tell you who the original
artist was. If anyone recognises any of them as their own art and wants them pulled,
please let me know and I will remove them from the current version of the mod
immediately. Those instantly recognisable as BioWare's are, in most cases,
modified to distinguish them from the vanilla originals.
Fishing For Trouble is designed for characters at mid-level (eleven and above). You can attempt it
with lower levels (i.e. just starting out in BG2)
but it will get a bit difficult in places. If you are a high-level character then it will be a
complete walkover. You can start it at any point in the game but preferably before
Saemon Haverian takes you to Brynnlaw. If you start the mod after Chapter 4 (you can install it
during Chapter 4 but the plot won't start until you leave Spellhold) then some parts
of the plot may have to be railroaded because Brynnlaw and Spellhold are not available.
Those parts that you might have done will be done by Elminster instead: that is, he goes to
Spellhold 'to do things' after you've wrecked it.
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Compatibility
This mod works with Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal patch 26498 and Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced
Edition patch 1.3 and above.
This mod should be compatible with other mods. It should work with Baldur's Gate Trilogy and with
Enhanced Edition Trilogy
(EET).
If using ToBEx, make sure that is installed first.
If using Aurora's Shoes or Infinity Animations,
make sure those are installed after Fishing For Trouble to avoid animation incompatibilities.
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Installation
Note: If you've previously installed the mod,
first uninstall, then remove it before extracting the new version. To do this, run
Setup-FishingForTrouble.exe (or .command), uninstall all
previously installed components and delete the "FishingForTrouble" folder. When
installing or uninstalling, do not close the DOS window by clicking on the
X button! Instead, press the
Enter key when instructed to do so.
Important: Disconnect from the Internet and turn
off any antivirus, firewall or other memory-resident software when
installing this mod or any others. Not only will your installation
go faster, but some antivirus packages report false errors with
WeiDU mods.
You can extract files from the archive using Windows build-in "Extract all..." feature, 7-Zip,
build-in macOS 'zip extraction' feature, using unzip tool Linux or another file compression utility
that handles .zip files.
Windows
Extract the contents of the mod to the folder of the game you wish
to modify (BG2,
BGT or EasyTutu).
On successful extraction, there should be a "FishingForTrouble" folder and a
Setup-FishingForTrouble.exe file in your game folder. To install, simply
double-click Setup-FishingForTrouble.exe and follow the
instructions on screen.
Run Setup-FishingForTrouble.exe in your game folder to
reinstall, uninstall or otherwise change components.
Mac OS X
Extract the contents of the mod to the folder of the game you wish
to modify. On successful extraction, there should be a "fishingfortrouble"
subfolder in your game folder. Download the OS X version of WeiDU
(or copy another mod's
launcher) and rename it setup-fishingfortrouble. Put this and
the setup-fishingfortrouble.command file within the fishingfortrouble
subfolder in your main game folder. To install, double-click on
setup-fishingfortrouble.command and follow the instructions
on screen.
Linux
Extract the contents of the mod to the folder of the game you wish
to modify. Download the latest Linux version of WeiDU and copy WeiDU and
WeInstall to /usr/bin. Then open a terminal and cd to your game
installation directory.
Optional: run 'tolower' and answer 'Y' to both queries. You can
avoid running the second option (linux.ini) if you've already ran
it once in the same directory. To save time, the archive is already
tolowered, so there's no need to run the first option (lowercasing
file names) either, if you've extracted only this mod since the
last time you lowercased file names. If unsure, running tolower and
choosing both options is the safe bet.
Run WeInstall setup-fishingfortrouble in your game folder to
install the mod. Then run wine BGMain.exe and
start playing.
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Components
There are two components:
- Fishing for Trouble by Yovaneth
- Fishing for Trouble - Major character portraits
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Troubleshooting
Please report bugs on the mod's Spellhold Studios forum.
What will be very helpful for debugging is a savegame just before
the problem and clear instructions on how to reproduce it. The more
precise the instructions, the faster it will be fixed. Reports along
the lines of "this doesn't work - you've screwed my game - fix it
now" will ignored but the post will be left visible. Abusive posts
will be pulled with neither warning nor apology
and the poster reported to an administrator. You need to register
on the forum to post attachments, though you can post general
feedback as a guest without registering.
If you encounter a problem installing the mod, please open your
SETUP-FISHINGFORTROUBLE.DEBUG file with a text editor and post the
few lines of text before and after any ERROR message. If you
encounter a crash whilst playing the mod, make sure you have error
logging enabled (see below) and post the text related to the
assertion from your Baldur.err file (or TobEx.log
if you're using that). If you have a compatibility problem with
another mod, post your WeiDU.log in [SPOILER]
[/SPOILER] tags. However, if you have many mods installed, there is
no guarantee of help; you may have better luck posting in the Mega-Mod Help
forum.
Listed below are some general tips if you have problems getting the
game working, with or without this or other mods. Many times, errors
have to do with the game engine itself or the manner of installation
or gameplay. The game recommends deleting all files out of the /cache,
/temp and /tempsave subfolders in your game folder to see if that
resolves the problem before any further troubleshooting.
Symptom: Game freezes or crashes to desktop (CTDs)
Sometimes the game displays an "assertion error" in a pop-up window
when this happens, but often times it doesn't. To enable the full
error message, open the file baldur.ini in your
game folder with a text editor (such as Notepad). If you find you
can't edit it or save changes in Windows Vista or 7, see
this topic for assistance.
Under the [Program Options] section in the file, type
Logging On=1 (unless it's already there). While you're
there, you may also want to make sure Debug Mode=1
is there to enable the CLUA Console for
debugging and testing. Save the file and exit. Now go back into the
game and try to reproduce the crash. Then look in your game folder
again for the Baldur.err file and open it with a
text editor to analyse its contents.
Symptom: Game crashes with no Baldur.err log and shows
either a black screen or a pop-up window indicating an error
This is more difficult to troubleshoot, but may indicate an
animation-related issue (usually at offset 005ca8a8). Try
reproducing and pressing the Print Screen button
right before the crash. Then post the Baldr###.bmp file from your
ScrnShot folder in the forum. It will save space if you convert it
to a .png or .jpg with a graphics program like Paint or GIMP first.
ERROR: error copying [fishingfortrouble/bams/somefile.bam] or ERROR:
[SOMEFILE.CRE] -> [override/SOMEFILE.CRE] Patching failed
(COPY)
Stopping installation because of error. (with no other
error message)
Less-than-informative messages like these may indicate you're
installing to a hard drive with a low data transfer rate or an
antivirus program is active during installation (which can also
affect data transfer). Try installing to an internal drive with
antivirus protection disabled during the install. If unsure,
disconnect from the Internet (either unplug your network cable or
disable your wireless adaptor) and turn off all
memory-resident programs during the install. To get a list of these,
go to Start > Run and type msconfig where it says
"Open:" then click OK. When the System Configuration Utility appears,
click on the Startup tab. The only really necessary programs that
need to be loaded in memory at startup are those related to your
graphics chip (typically ATI or nVIDIA). Uncheck everything else,
reboot and try installing the mod again. There are well-documented
issues with installing mods while Avast antivirus is running, so
make absolutely sure all components of Avast are completely disabled.
Assertion failed in ChDimm.cpp at line #7641
Exp: pBiffHeader->dwFileType != mmioFOURCC('B', 'I', 'F', 'C')
Msg: c:\{path}\bg2\cd#\DATA\BIFNAME.BIF: attempted to use compressed
BIF from CD, check free hard drive space
Sometimes, the referenced BIF will exist, but the game expects it to
be in your main \data folder or in \cache\data. Copying it from the
cd# folder (or the CD itself) will sometimes work. Other times, you
may need to use DLTCEP to
decompress the BIF. To do this, go to Extraction >
Uncompress BIF. The decompressed BIF should end up in your
main \data folder. Relaunch the game and see if this resolves the
issue. The mod is designed to avoid these types of errors, but
please report any such issues we may have missed.
Assertion failed in ObjCreatureAI.cpp at line #16055
Exp: FALSE
Msg: AR#### missing Exit####
Usually, this means you have installed the mod and used a saved
game in which you've already visited an area changed by the mod.
You need to use a save from before this point, or preferably, start
a new game.
Other issues
If you have more than one large mod installed, please refer to the
Megamod FAQ for more troubleshooting tips. If none of this
resolves your issue, or you have mod-specific issues, please report
the problem in the mod's forum.
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Credits
This mod took six years (!!) to develop. Along the way, I received a
lot of help from SConrad for the tp2 code for patching the worldmap.
I badgered him for help and he badgered the bigg for help, and
between them they fixed my problems, improving WeiDU in the process.
Nythrun provided the code for patching in the new entrance graphic
from the Bridge District into the Government District Westside.
In the end I did not use the animation patch in the Bridge District,
as SConrad solved the worldmap patching problem, but I know at least
two other mods used it because I did the graphics and tp2 code for them.
So your time and efforts were not wasted. Someone else (probably
Nythrun) gave me the patching code to add new entrances and exits
to existing areas. Hlidskialf (no longer a member of the Infinity
Engine community) taught me how to use Near Infinity to read the
offsets necessary to code info points. Avenger answered many
questions on the use of DLTCEP.
All of
which finally resulted in the DLTCEP
area-making tutorials.
Erephine gave me two new potion graphics and she and Taimon also
provided some very nifty bgmain.exe-patching code. Miloch nailed
the ghoul transformation problem and became an all-round
troubleshooter for patch-code problems. Cmorgan performed
installation testing and helped debug the .tp2 file. Rich "Weeds"
Nagel, who is no RPG player, kindly gave me the music played by
Derval and Aine in the Blue Harpy Inn and did not object when I
butchered it to suit the game.
Finally, I have to give a separate mention to Shaitan who persisted
in testing build after build and provided high-quality feedback and
suggestions that improved many areas of the mod.
All other sins committed in the making of this mod are mine.
Tools used in creation:
Sources of information:
Fishing For Trouble is copyright © 2011 by Yovaneth.
This work (including all code and documentation) is licensed under
a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. You are
free to copy, distribute and transmit this work, except for
commercial purposes. See the Creative
Commons Public License for more details. All other copyrights
and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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Version History
- The latest changes are in FishingForTrouble-Changelog.md
- For changelog of 3.0 HF1: 19 February 2015 and older versions see the 3.0HF1.pdf in the FishingForTrouble\docs folder
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