GemRB support?

ecto

@stuffu Hi stuffu, you seem to be very committed to GemRB. I just dived into it some days ago, and already had some moderate to huge success. I installed the five games on my Windows computer, updated them to the last official version, applied some WeiDU community fixes and transferred the files over to my Retropie. So far so good: The games run without any complaint (though I had to adjust the GemRB.cfg for the fact, that I put all files from the different disks into the one datafolder).

Now comes the tricky part: I wanted to apply some widescreen resolution and GUI patches:

After some lengthy experiments I managed to install biggs widescreen patch (set to 1280x720) and Ghostdog's UI patch for PS:T. It really looks gorgeous on my TV set!
Fo BG1 I had no such luck. While I can install the widescreen resolution patch, no GUI patch seems to work properly. I tried and tried and gave up eventually. I have the feeling that something with the font handling isn't working, because as soon as I installed the 1280x720 BG1 UI patch by ikonomov I get some error "Assertion 'TextFont' failed".

I also wasn't able to install some ttf font for the higher resolution for any game. That's why I hope to get it to run on a newer GemRB version.

As the v0.8.6 branch is now outdated but the scriptmodule isn't updated yet, I want to try and just make those changes mentioned above manually. Would you suggest to rather use the master branch insead of v0.8.7? Have you tried and successfully installed any widescreen patches?

chilvence

@ecto I have not tried any BG1 widescreen patch for a long time (even though it's pretty much mandatory) but for what it's worth, the future 0.8.8 GemRB release will have resolution independence built in to the UI - it does not actually patch the UI graphics like these mods do, but it places the different panels at the edges of the screen sensibly (so it looks sort of NWN/PoE style)

It's a bit of an awkward issue to solve, since the game originally required a full set of UI 'config' files for every single resolution. These are called CHU files and they should end up in your override folder after running the widescreen patch. You might have more luck if you just use those files and nothing else from the patch - there should (hopefully) be nothing they can do that will cause GemRB to error like that.

ecto

@chilvence Wow! Thanks for your quick reply! I guess that waiting for 0.8.8 is the way to go! In the meantime playing in 4:3 hasn't hurt us in past, right? ;-)

One thing I noticed with the 1280x720 widescreen GUI mod is, that there is a normalN.bam file installed into the override folder. I thought that this might me the font file and tried to delete or replace it, but the error persisted. :(

If I have the time, I will look into the CHU files. Thanks for the hint!

chilvence

@ecto Ah, CHU and MOS files will be what you are looking for, nearly forgot (MOS are the actual images, CHU is the control layout)

Some of these patches were quite creative how they got the original to display bigger than 640x480, and GemRB doesn't necessarily need all of it. It's quite awkward to extract the useful bits out of a weidu patch though, you might need a clean BG1 install again to see what it actually changes.

chilvence

By the way, I'm not really sure what the normalN.bam is about, the font is originally named just Normal.bam - maybe this is some increased size font, but they patch the EXE to load it ?

Anyway, not sure if I found the exact same version, but the iconomov rar file on spellhold studios, all I did was extract the chu and mos files to my BG1 override folder and change the gemrb config file to 1280x720, and so far appears to work fine.

As I say though, hopefully soon no one will ever have to jump through these hoops to get a sensible resolution...

ecto

@chilvence said in GemRB support?:

By the way, I'm not really sure what the normalN.bam is about, the font is originally named just Normal.bam - maybe this is some increased size font, but they patch the EXE to load it ?

The mod installs an increased font size, that's true. And there is a patched exe bundled in this mod afair but I have no knowledge of what it does. I just started using GemRB and the whole Infinity mod scene some two or three days ago.

Anyway, not sure if I found the exact same version, but the iconomov rar file on spellhold studios, all I did was extract the chu and mos files to my BG1 override folder and change the gemrb config file to 1280x720, and so far appears to work fine.

Yeah, that's the one. Ill try your patching route, too. But as I said, maybe the GemRB Version I use (0.8.6) is outdated and produces this error. (?)

But just to be clear: There is no need to install bigg's widescreen patch? I just have to set the resolution in the cfg and I'm good to go (apart from the GUI)?

As I say though, hopefully soon no one will ever have to jump through these hoops to get a sensible resolution...

That's true and I'm very exited! It's really amazing seeing such a lively scene around the Infinity games after all this time. This is btw. the most important part for me in retrogaming: Being amazed by all this compassion for old games!

chilvence

It's complicated. GemRB itself does not need to be patched to support any arbitrary resolution, you can even have 1200x1600 if you like having your monitor sideways.

The only thing is the widescreen patches usually bundle the required UI files to position the windows correctly. It used to be the case that you would simply assume that people already had widescreen patches installed, since the small window size is intolerable. However it should not cause an error if you install them. GemRB shouldn't be crashing, it should just ignore the parts it doesn't need.

If you still don't have any luck, then if you can tell me exactly which patches you applied (if there were any others), I might be able to reproduce the error and find out what is going on. I am actually following this thread, but I only tend to break out my pi when I am away from home, which is less and less these days...

I'm also curious to hear what problems you had setting up the TTF fonts. Is there a problem building the TTF plugin or is it with setting up the data or paths?

Stuffu

@ecto sorry late to the game, I’m just a happy user, not even close to @chilvence so I guess you met your man already. I’m running in 4:3 like the old days but don’t have anything against having widescreen support in the future...

ecto

@stuffu @chilvence
So I made another little test:

I installed GemRb from source using the master branch
I deinstalled the GUI mod so that only the widescreen mod (1280x720) is installed

The game runs in 1280x720. The bottom part of the GUI is flushed left, but everything is playable just fine. Submenus are in 4:3 in the center of the screen.

When I now copy over the MOS and CHU files from the GUI mod into the game override folder, I get the same error as before. :(

I'd say that I will leave it at that. I'd rather wait patiently for the next release than to fiddle around for hours just to get something that will be obsolete in the future. As the most important part of the game is in 16:9, I'm a happy gamer!

I will look into the external ttf fonts though, but that is for another day ;)

chilvence

It may be better to wait yes if you can already comfortably play the game. I think development on the new 'subviews' branch is largely complete, but currently it is in a testing/bugfixing phase. I'm not 100% sure it can be built on the pi right now.

ecto

@chilvence

Ok, I tried one more little test. I installed GemRB on my windows machine and here the 720 Widescreen GUI patch works fine. So there seems to be a compatibility issue with the Retropie build and the GUI patch.

chilvence

@ecto That is quite strange indeed. Is this the widescreen patch from Gibberlings 3? (just want to make sure I get the same one when I test it)

ecto

@chilvence I installed BG1 and ToSC fully and then:

The latest offical patch (BG1-ToSC-5512-International)
BG1 Fixpack (Gibberling)
Widescreen mod (Gibberling / the bigg)
and on and off again the GUI 720 mod (Spellhold / iconomov)

I think that the game works nicely without the GUI mod. I will try to load a larger ttf font, but so far I am not sure which one would look and work best and which of the many fonts should be replaced (I guess NORMAL is the most important?).

chilvence

@ecto sherwood is what bg:ee uses, unical is also kind of fitting. And yes normal is the main text one.

chilvence

@chilvence actually thinking about it, it could be " realms" is the dialog font. I can't remember offhand an am away from my PC

shavecat

Hey i saw this...
does anyone know how to install gemrb ? (pi4 retropie)
or just the gemrb.sh file ?
thanks