Desperate Housewives fails to start in 5.0.6?

Discussion in 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' started by ash_mantle, Oct 20, 2008.

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  1. ash_mantle

    ash_mantle Member

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    Hello, everyone.

    First off, wonderful forum, thanks for the great game mods (The CMFs and Co8 mod packs in general are pretty damn robust for fan additions) and the awesome community for driving more modding.

    Anyway, this post is about getting a few things to run concurrently, namely, the Desperate Housewives mod in CMF 5.0.6 with a few custom portraits and the Co8 custom voicepack. I should note that this is running TFE-X, which means that while I don't expect support from the regulars because of the disclaimer about the Co8 crew no longer supporting portrait packs, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask on principle and maybe learn something about how to fix my own problems.

    So, in essence, what I'd like to do is get the Desperate Housewives scripts to fire so that when I speak to the Captain of the Guard's wife, she goes into a dialogue and gives me the first quest instead of giving me the random NPC banter in one-liners.

    My party is barely level one at this point; they have not yet left Hommlet. I have tried speaking to the NPC in question both with and without Elmo in the party.

    I have attempted clearing map cache; as I am running XP, I may've done it wrong - I've deleted all the files in the appropriate folder, but no subfolders, and no files inside the subfolders.

    As to the game, here's what I did and the order I've done it in:

    -ToEE installed, patched to v2.0, no-CD crack applied
    -Installed the Co8 5.0.0 Mod Pack with all subfeatures selected (filename was Circle_of_Eight_Mod_Pack_5.0.0_Final.exe)
    -Installed the CMF 5.0.6 patch on top of that
    -Installed the Co8 Portrait and Voice pack
    -Installed Gaear's new video pack
    At this point ToEEFE got sufficiently crashy (because of CMF 5.0.6, presumably) for me to investigate and install TFE-X, so...
    -Downloaded and installed TFE-X v1.1 and then v2.0

    After screwing around for a while with .mes files and a character editor (6 HP just isn't enough for level 0, sorry :p) I got everything to run; ToEE was stable and I had my custom portraits and voices, but I go down to Elmo's mom and no quest dialogue.

    I'm guessing installing CMF 5.0.6 on top of 5.0.0 might've done it, or the portrait and voice pack might somehow be the culprit. Otherwise I've no idea.

    I'm guessing the cure here would be to do something a little more clever with the old portrait pack and .mes file, like importing only the custom portraits I want to use after installing all these mods. No clue about the old voice pack.

    In any case, I'm off to drag my party outside of Hommlet and clear map cache again. We'll see what happens.
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2008
    ash_mantle, Oct 20, 2008
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  2. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Hi ash_mantle,

    The Desperate Housewives bug is a known issue with the latest CMF patch. It has since been fixed, but the fix hasn't been issued in an updated CMF patch yet. See the Cumulative Mods and Fixes Submissions thread in the General Modification forum if you want the specific fix itself, which will need to be downloaded and installed by you individually.

    The better course of action would be to wait a few days until we release the next version of the modpack, v5.5, which will include the 5.0.0 mod and all the cumulative mods and fixes up to the present.

    Also, while I understand your desire to customize your game, we strongly recommend that you don't use the old portrait and voice packs. They will only cause problems with your game. If you want to customize your portraits, it's best to do it the old way via Chris Glenn's method, available at Sorcerer's Place here. The download contains a tutorial on how to do it.

    Good luck. :)
     
    Gaear, Oct 20, 2008
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  3. ash_mantle

    ash_mantle Member

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    Gaear, you are a prince among modders. My thanks for the quick reply.

    * punishes his weak forum search skills *

    Any recommendations for removing the portrait and voice pack aside from doing a fresh install of everything short of it?

    In addition, does this recommendation extend to the voice packs as well as the portraits? I was hoping I could at least cannibalize the voices for my PCs.
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2008
    ash_mantle, Oct 20, 2008
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  4. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    You seem pretty handy with computers, so you could try this:

    1. Go to your ToEE\data\art\portraits directory and delete everything inside it. Yes, everything. ;)
    2. Pop open the CMF 5.0.6 .rar archive and navigate to data.Co8-5.0.0\art.
    3. Grab the portraits subfolder from there and copy it to your ToEE\art directory (in your game install). This will add all the new portraits and control files to your game while eliminating all the old.
    Otherwise, just uninstall/reinstall everything again.

    The voice packs work differently in that they are pretty much non-destructive, unlike the portraits, although if you've installed the latest CMF the new voice sets contained therein will overwrite the old custom ones. The new ones add something like 30 new sets from NWN and IWD, so you should have quite a wide variety to choose from with that. :)
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2008
    Gaear, Oct 20, 2008
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  5. Ausdoerrt

    Ausdoerrt Veteran Member

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    Just go to the CMF submission thread and look for the fix in the last two pages, it's there somewhere.
     
    Ausdoerrt, Oct 20, 2008
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  6. ash_mantle

    ash_mantle Member

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    I figure after that I can stick in any custom portraits I'd want to use with a .tga viewer if I did a bit of text editing with the .mes file, or by hex editing the character files themselves.

    Yay no destruction from voicepack \o/ Thanks much.
     
    ash_mantle, Oct 20, 2008
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  7. ash_mantle

    ash_mantle Member

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    Yeah, thanks to the above help of the bastard maestro, we're back on track for Desperate Housewives and have already met Frank the Hellbaker. In this episode, he gives my level one rogue some sugar.


    ... ;)
     
    ash_mantle, Oct 20, 2008
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