BG/BG2 - EasyTutu Mod Review

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EasyTutu by Macready
Version 1, (seems to be only one version that has been updated several times)
Review written: 7/19/06
Review updated:
Download Location: http://usoutpost31.com/easytutu/

I don’t know about other people, but I could never make the original Tutu work for me. I tried three times and had no success, so when I saw Macready’s thread about EasyTutu, I just about flipped. Now was my chance to finally try out Tutu. EasyTutu is a slef-installing mod that should be compatable with WEIDU mods, and uses an installer wizard for those of us that need a “Tutu for Dummies” book. Macready took Baldur’s Gate Tutu made by the guys at http://www.pocketplane.net/,
and spiffed it up with a professional installer, and added a few options and fixes. If you have no idea what Baldur’s Gate Tutu is all about, check out that link. I have no idea if it runs any better than Tutu, because I never could get Tutu to run.

If you are only semi-computer literate like me, or simply don’t like to fuss around with installing a bit more complicated software, you might want to try this out. Here is why:

a. EasyTutu uses a professional InstallShield- based program that does all the complicated (at least to me) stuff for you automatically.
b. EasyTutu installs a stable, tried and true version of Tutu, so you aren’t getting an untested version of Tutu. This should relieve possible worry about using a program under ongoing development.
c. EasyTutu installs cleanly with no messy setup-related files often found with the traditional Tutu.
d. EasyTutu also includes some features, bug fixes, and add-ons that aren’t included with traditional Tutu and Tutufix.
e. You have to meet all the prerequisites before you install, so you aren’t as likely to have unexplained game crashes later on.
f. Your Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 installations are untouched by EasyTutu installation. The advantage to this is that you can still play Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 with EasyTutu installed. The other advantage is that if something messes up with EasyTutu (not a problem for me so far) you can uninstall it and not mess up any games you have going in Baldur’s Gate or Baldur’s Gate 2.
g. EasyTutu doesn’t require that you keep Baldur’s Gate or Baldur’s Gate 2 installed once you have the program up and running, so if you have limited hard drive space you can dump them once you have EasyTutu installed.
h. EasyTutu also offers a shortcut to be placed to the start menu, and even an Icon on your desktop if you want it.

Installation

I did have some minor troubles at first (it installed but had a broken link), but the problem was in the installer, and Macready fixed it. It now installs without a hitch. I had tried to install the original Tutu but was unable to get it going. This mod is WeiDU and installs itself, so you just follow the prompts. In order to install it, you have to have both Baldur’s Gate with TotSC and Baldur’s Gate 2 installed with a full install (requires you to choose custom install and check all boxes) and the patches, but after installing it, you can uninstall both Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 if hard drive space is an issue. There are two choices on the download page, one for if you have ToB, and one for if you don’t. Macready is working on updating it so you can install it without TotSC, but it is only Beta form at this time.

If you like to use mods, you will need to install them prior to installing EasyTutu. If you use the CLUAConsole, you will need to activate it prior to installing EasyTutu. I had the Ease of Use mod installed, and used the CLUAConsole a fair amount trying out different classes to see how they would play and had no problems.

Game play

I never was able to play the traditional Tutu, but from what I have read, EasyTutu works the same as Tutu. Game play is essentially unchanged from Baldur’s Gate, except for the fact that all of the improvements in Baldur’s Gate 2 are now available. Higher resolution, pausing while in inventory screen in single player mode, faster movement, and all the stuff that was improved in Baldur’s Gate 2 engine is now in Baldur’s Gate 1. Of course, with that also comes some not-so-good stuff. Thieves get the Baldur’s Gate 1 amount of skill points when leveling up, but have more slots to put them in.

You also get all the spells that were added in Baldur’s Gate 2, but your opponents don’t, so things can get unbalanced if you are not careful. I personally don’t use many spells, so it didn’t affect my style of play much at all.

Cheaters beware, if you cheat out very much stuff, the game becomes a monotonous trip up the Sword Coast slaughtering everything with ease. Aslyferund’s elven chain mail armor is especially overpowered, as it makes you immune to any non-magical weapons. I used it on my low level characters when I was testing out different classes so I wouldn’t have to keep reloading when they died.

Bugs

I found that sometimes my thief didn’t detect traps as well as he usually did. (I would know where a trap was and still couldn’t get him to find it for disarmament) There is also the known issue of the green water, but there are fixes for that. You can disable your 3D Graphics acceleration, or you can download EasyTutu Degreenifier. For more detailed instructions look under Known Issues on the page linked to above. The Degreenifier option requires about 1.5 GB hard drive space though, because it copies a bunch of graphics tile sets and then patches them. I was lazy, and the green water didn’t bother me, so I left it alone.

There is also a known bug that causes occasional crashes with saved games that seems to be centered on Beregost. It can be handled by saving before you enter Beregost, and after you leave in two separate save slots. I never had any problems with this, and I even tried to make it happen without success.

Wrap Up

Overall I rate this mod as awesome! When you have it installed, you can play Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate Tutu, and Baldur’s Gate 2 all separately. EasyTutu simply uses your files and doesn’t change any of your game files. It is simple to uninstall: just use the add/remove programs option to remove it, and delete the folder you had it saved to. I personally have no intention of uninstalling it, because I can still play Baldur’s Gate, and Baldur’s Gate 2, and hard drive space is not an issue for me.

I want to make this perfectly clear; this mod is Baldur’s Gate Tutu with an easier installation and some additional features. Macready put a lot of work into this to make it easier to install, but he didn’t make Baldur’s Gate Tutu, he made it easier to install for boneheads like me. Thank you Macready for all the time you have put into this mod! The fact that you could do the work makes it clear that you would be able to install Baldur’s Gate Tutu just fine, and you undertook the work for us morons.

If I have made you interested, check out the link at the top of the page. Read carefully and download and install. What have you got to lose? If you don’t like it uninstall it and all you are out is some time, and very minimal effort.

[ August 02, 2006, 14:08: Message edited by: Brallrock ]

 

Yes indeed, EasyTutu also made life easier for me. As Brallrock mentioned I also couldn't get the original Tutu to work.
It's all about usability, EasyTutu is the essence of that.

 

If not for this, I would have never even tried Tutu. Because I love my vanilla BG too much to give it up. But unfortunately, most modders don't seem to give a **** about it, so Tutu is a must for trying out any of those mods. It's also necessary for taking a Wild Mage, Barbarian, or Monk through the whole series, to say nothing of the other kits (though the others can be applied to a vanilla class from BG1 when importing to BG2, as can the Wild Mage, but WMs are just too much fun ).

You forgot the Tab function if you had ToB installed.

I doubt that. Though my elven assassin only gets 15 points on level up, that's what an assassin is supposed to get, and she did get 40 on creation. I'd check again if I were you.

 

I've never tried Easy Tutu, since I use regular Tutu -I'm nigh useless with computers but I was really motivated to get Tutu working (as Fel pointed out kits and wild magic is just too good).

I'm interested, what sort of "features" are you referring to?

 

Hello -

Brallrock, thanks very much for the nice review. It is certainly encouraging to see positive feedback, and I very much appreciate your taking the time to write your thoughts and impressions up in this manner.

I thought I'd chip in with a few points, if that's OK.

This probably isn't the right way to phrase it. I do use WeiDU internally to do the work on the game files, but the installation mechanism is InstallShield rather than WeiDU. EasyTutu is, of course, still WeiDU-mod friendly.

I did get this working in testing, and I do have one field confirmation of it working (on the no-TotSC front right now, things are very reminiscent of the first days after the initial release when you found that broken shortcut issue ), but I haven't gotten much feedback aside from that. I do believe it to be working as intended, though, and I am dying for feedback, so if you have TotSC-less BG1, please give it a go!

Best practice would be to install everything cleanly first. That is, BG1 (plus expansion, optionally) + patch; BG2 (plus expansion, optionally) + patch; EasyTutu. Then mod any or all of the three installations to taste.

This is a very real and vexing bug. I am happy that you didn't suffer with it, but do maintain the careful savegame practices before / during any trip to Beregost. Having to fall back on an old savegame stinks!

You are definitely selling yourself short. And I do want to say that EasyTutu targets every english language, PC-based player of the Baldur's Gate games as a desired end user, so please don't think EasyTutu is only a "Tutu for dummies." It was meant to make installation easier by reducing complexity and addressing commonly recurring issues, yes, but it also adds a number of new features and a slew of bug fixes to the game content itself.


Thanks again for the kind words and for the time involved in putting the review together.


@Felinoid:

I think it would be fairer to say that the BG2 engine offers a much more robust modding platform, and thus draws more modders.


@Caradhras:

The EasyTutu change log documents everything I've added over and above what you'd get from a vanilla Tutu installation.

 

my I didn't have any problem with Beregost either but I did pay attention and saved before entering and after exiting...just in case.

Also, I have some computer training but was never able to install vanila Tutu. Tried at least 3 times. Easy Tutu is great!

 

Macready, you, my friend are a legend!

I've been hping for a mod like this ever since I lost half the hair on my head trying to get TuTu to work way back when.

Thanks!

 

Just installed this , Do I need to start my BG1 game again as my saved games dont seem to be there anymore ???

 

That is something I haven't heard of before. My saves were all intact after I installed it. Have you tried to look for them with Windows Explorer?

 

Easy Tutu works almost like a seperate game to BG, using different save folders. This means you can play both Easy Tutu and BG without having to uninstall one.

This is how it worked for me anyway- I have a seperate folder for each one in my Black Isle folder.

As the game does work a bitty differently, I'd advise you to start a new game.

 

Hello -

BG1 saves and Tutu saves are not compatible with one another. Too much has changed: the engine itself, game resources, etc.

This and other commonly asked questions are addressed in the EasyTutu FAQ.

 

I was about to ask if I could use this with a French installation, but the FAQ pretty much answered that, hopefully I can get it going (Tutu never worked here either). English text isn't a bad thing, seeing the French dialogs are sort of... sort of devoid of personality, I mean, they still have different personalities, but... not sure how to explain. A shame that probably won't let me get rid of those horrible NPC voices (I'm looking at you Imoen, I don't know how you sound in the English version, but you're oh so annoying in the French one, what with that 10 years old kid-like voice).

EDIT: Getting "BG1 resource mismatch" error once it gets to updating, I guess that means a no.

EDIT2: Heh, I'll try patching BG1 with the American patch, this changed the dialog and such in English, so maybe I can just do that and then patch it back to French after.

[ September 07, 2006, 22:54: Message edited by: ObviousDelirium ]

 

Hello -

Are you playing sans TotSC? I'm pretty sure EasyTutu will not work with a non-English TotSC-less installation of BG1. I should probably update the FAQ to reflect that.

To date, every one who has gotten a foreign language distribution to work has been a TotSC owner. But again, I can make no promises... EasyTutu has been developed for and tested on English language distributions only.

 

Thread from the dead...

I know how much disc space it takes up after installed, but I want to know how large the actual download is?

 

Thanks, I guarantee it would’ve taken longer to download… Go Dial-up!

 

Hey Fel I think what Brallrock was reffering to when he talked about thieves was that in BG1 you only had four abillities to put points in while in BG2 you have double the abillities to put points in but have a similar load of points thus making those points a lot more precious.

 

Not at all. Detect Illusions is next to useless when everyone and their mephit isn't using illusions in BG1, and Set Traps is similarly useless with so few traps at such low levels. So you've got five skills compared to four, and you're getting equivalently more points per level (25:20::5:4). You do have to prioritize at the start since you start at level one, but it's not like you don't have to do that in vanilla BG1 as well, or even BG2 for that matter, actually having seven skills to split points between there. If anything, it's easier to get your skills up than it is in vanilla BG1, since you can max out skills faster (with the exception of stealth since it's now split).

Well, unless you take the Assassin kit. Yargh, that's not a lot of points to split between even 5 skills. Not sure how Bounty Hunter pans out, but I'd guess just slightly harder than vanilla. Probably on par with Assassin if you actually put points into Set Traps instead of just accepting the failure chance.

 

Assassins are most likely to rely on ranged attacks and poison rather than backstab. In fact low level Assassins won't use Hide and Move Silently at all.

All in all it is harder than BG1 because it's way harder to make an efficient backstabber (Hide and Move, that's a lot to handle at lower levels).

I wouldn't give a bad rep to Detect Illusions. It might not be as useful since you don't need it as often but it's always handy to dispel Mirror Images and the like.

Anyway, I used to run vanilla Tutu and I decided to give Easy Tutu a try and I must say it's great. It requires less disk space and leave your BG1 install clean. Plus you can still play BG2 without making multiple installations of the game. It's perfect.