Well, I have a long and beautiful guide that handholds players new to installing mods through the entire process, but the hamster that powers the GOG forums apparently can't run around the wheel fast enough to handle it.

So, instead, here's a link to the version on G3.

I'll still be happy to answer any questions or comments here.

Is there a reasonable solution for using mods that does not involve installing WeiDU? I've mostly given up on mods because it's so hard to find anything noteworthy that does not start with "First, install WeiDU." Having it bundled with the mod doesn't help. I'd really like to see mods that were just unzip & play, or failing that, had an installer that wasn't so crazy.

The problem with 'unzip and play' is that the game only has one folder to override game resources so it would quickly become a game of every mod overwriting changes from other mods. None of these games were built to be modded. As such, you could only be assured that one component of one mod would work--all of that nice compatibility between mods (and even with components of a single mod) relies on an intelligent installer.

Right, and for my interest, one at a time is fine. So far, I haven't actually found an intelligent installer. I see you posted a similar thread in the Baldur's Gate forum, and the one response to it (from osm) is largely in line with my thoughts about WeiDU. So - is there any point in thinking about mods if WeiDU is excluded, or should I just give up and treat this as a no-mods-available game?

[Edit to add: Just getting an XP cap remover for Baldur's Gate 1 was a surprisingly frustrating experience. It's one file, but most references I could find had that one file wrapped in a complex WeiDU mod.]

Yes, if you're going to forego WeiDU, you're going to skip the modding scene altogether.

As for an XP cap remover: yes, a bad one will modify one file. A good one will modify the same file, then extend about 10-50 (depending on the game) rules tables that base abilities on level.

To be fair, WeiDU doesn't need to be installed. A mod could be written (in WeiDU or whatever language) by just copying some files to "override", but as pcamagna says, good mods need to do something more because need to check if the user has already overridden something (manually, or through a previous mod).

If you are on Windows, you just run WeiDU to interpret (execute) the code of the mod that you extracted. Just one step more than extracting. Granted, for a complex mod, the installation phase takes a lot of time. For most of them it's very fast, so I don't see the issue. For one like Tweaks Anthology the main deal is answering which parts you want to install. WeiDU isn't great there, everyone knows that. But compared to the time spent playing the game, is not a biggie.

If you are on Linux, like the other poster on the other forum, you need to put WeiDU somewhere on your disk, then run it against the mod that you just unpacked. Again, not a huge deal, but I understand that it might be annoying. It's an old game, and it has what it has. I'm quite grateful that some modders have put that much effort into making the game so fancy in some ways that I would not have put the effort to do it myself because I dislike how WeiDU works. But as a user, you are shielded from 90% of that pain, and you get a lot of benefits.

That's sad to hear. I have nothing against mod managers. However, WeiDU in particular is horrible.I only needed it for Baldur's Gate 1, and the game seemed to do the right thing with the additional class levels I was able to reach. Since I had no other mods or special plans, I only got a few levels beyond what Baldur's Gate 1 would normally allow. Apparently, the Enhanced Editions define enough extra class level entries that everything worked fine. This is probably a happy side effect of how much logic is shared between BG1EE and BG2EE. If I had exceeded what Throne of Bhaal allowed, I might have gotten in trouble.

Indeed, after I had finished Baldur's Gate 1, I returned to an earlier save and used the debug console to push character experience up to see how high it would go. The BG1EE engine got a bit confused trying to offer me High Level Abilities, but managed not to crash. I abandoned that without saving.I don't mind that the mods want some extra sanity checking. What I find frustrating is that something as simple as installing a few files is wrapped up inside the exceedingly ugly WeiDU command language, so even if I decide that the sanity checks are unnecessary, I can't readily get at the underlying data - or if I can, it's not at all clear that such is possible.I'm from the generation where downloading and running arbitrary code from the Internet was considered a bad thing, so I am very averse to custom installers just to put a few files in place. I understand that level of caution is not in fashion among the younger users, sadly.Actually, not everyone knows that. :) I wasn't aware that WeiDU was a pain to use after you get over the hurdle of needing a custom installer.Putting it somewhere supposes I got it to build at all. The build instructions are a bit bizarre, to say the least. An obscure language interpreter, of a specific version range, and "configured without forced safe strings." I don't even know how to check whether safe strings are enabled by my distribution or not. I've heard of OCaml in passing a few times, but never encountered something actually written in it.

It also wants something called "Elkhound", which I don't see packaged at all. Reading much farther down, I see it is apparently mirrored under the WeiDU organization in a separate repository.

Put all that together, and just getting to the point where I can run "weidu --version" seems like a huge hassle.I appreciate that people tried to make this easy, but tying it up in WeiDU makes it harder, not easier. I get none of the benefits and plenty of extra pain. I'd be perfectly happy with a mod where the install instructions were:
- Unzip this archive in the override folder
- If you get a file collision, stop. You have a conflicting mod installed, and cannot use this mod with that one.
- If there are no collisions, start your game.

Yes, such a mod would be less friendly to people who want to compose several mods, but for the simple cases, it's much simpler.

WeiDu isn't a simple exe - it actually writes codes in files rather than just placing them in appropriate folders, thereby enabling compatibility between different mods. There's no way around it, really, but it's very easy to open the respective .tp2 file and check exactly what it does - no danger there.

Yes, when stacking mods, a composer program is needed. My point was that if you aren't stacking mods, you shouldn't need a composer. If you don't need a composer, then a simple unpack would be sufficient.

As noted above, tp2 files may be text, but they're hardly reader-friendly or easy to work with. I did try reading some tp2 files to see how to hand install a simple mod that, as far as I know, really should be just a matter of unpacking a few files. Even that level of simplicity is obfuscated by the tp2 language.