This is a second try to install & play Baldur’s Gate Trilogy on Linux. The first try was alright, but I didn’t finish the game and some of the mods were updated (as well as my system), so I’m updating the guide. This guide assumes you are well familiar with Wine already, it’s more of a reminder for me next time I want to install it 😄.

Versions used

Games install

I did everything in a specific Wine prefix as usual. First, install the games and WeiDU :

  • Install BG1 with wine
  • Install BG2 with wine
  • Put WeiDU binaries in the path (~/bin in my case)

Mod install

Then put all mod installations in BG2 folder :

  • bg2fixpack folder
  • bgt folder & setup-bgt.tp2
  • bg1ub folder
  • ub folder & setup-ub.tp2
  • bg1npc folder & bg1npc.tp2
  • widescreen folder
  • bp-bgt_worldmap folder & bp-bgt-worldmap.tp2

Tweak BGT install or it will fail on x64 systems, and lower all filenames :

  • Copy bgt/install/unix/x86 to bgt/install/unix/amd64. If you don’t, weinstall will complain about missing binaries. This should only happen on x64 systems, not on i386 I suppose.
  • Run tolower from BG2 folder, answer Y to questions. Here, I had problem with linux.ini generation… it seems this tool expects the regular wineprefix, so I created ~/.wine before running it. The generated ini was wrong, so I edited the path like this :
CD1:=PREFIX_PATH/drive_c/GOG Games/Baldur's Gate 2
CD1:=PREFIX_PATH/drive_c/GOG Games/Baldur's Gate 2/data/

In my case it looks like :

CD1:=/home/USER/wine/bgt/drive_c/GOG Games/Baldur's Gate 2
CD1:=/home/USER/wine/bgt/drive_c/GOG Games/Baldur's Gate 2/data

Then, install the mods in this specific order, running everything from BG2 folder, always in english (choice 0 in all mods). Follow instructions to install the parts you want.

  • Run weinstall bg2fixpack. Install whatever you want. I only installed the core fixes.
  • Run weinstall bgt
  • Run weinstall bg1ub
  • Run weinstall ub
  • Run weinstall bg1npc
  • Run weinstall bp-bgt-worldmap.tp2

Configuration

Now, BG configuration. This was the longuest part to get right. I tried A LOT of possibilities, from regular 640x480 with Wine to 1920x1200 with GemRB (implementation of Infinity Engine with native Linux binaries), and also unsupported resolution available in BG config tool. My screen native resolution is 1920x1200, and I wanted to play in fullscreen if possible. Here are a few comments about the possible solutions :

  • Anything windowed : text is way too small.
  • GemRB : buggy with my old saves, Jaheira & Khalid would talk to me nonstop, I could not do anything. This did not happen at all with Wine. Probably something in one of the mods. It’s a shame, because GemRB allows to play in 1920x1200 with text big enough when using the TTF plugin.
  • 1920x1200 with widescreen mod : nope. Text is way too small.
  • 1280x800 with widescreen mod : nope… 1280x800 is not is the resolution list returned by xrandr, and I suspect this is the reason why it does not work. No idea how to fix it.
  • 1600x1200 from BG config tool : nope. It looks great (only a small error in the menu GUI), since it’s using the 800x600 scaled GUI so the text looks good, and the actual world is not scaled, so we can see a LOT of the world around us. Unfortunately, it’s buggy. For example, my thief could not equip offhand weapons without crashing the game.

I finally settled for 1024x768 from the BG config tool. The text is readable, and I see a bit more of the world than lower resolutions. Unfortunately, I got crashes as soon as I tried to display the worldmap or change area. This is the reason I installed BP-BGT Worldmap addon, which fixes the issue !

Finally, run the game and enjoy ! 😄