Need help increasing view distance

[Neofit]

Hi,

I am trying to increase the NPC view distance and am having problems. I gleaned some information from these forums, so please tell me what I am doing wrong. I am playing the English retail DVD (not Steam) version patched to 1.3, Windows 7/64. What I did so far:

* Downloaded the latest versions of TW2WDTool and TW2ParamReader from this site. (btw TW2ParamReader is recognized as a trojan by Vipre)

* Used TW2WDTool and unpacked the startup.wd file into another directory. (made a copy of the original of course)

* Used TW2ParamReader to open the unpacked TwoWorlds.par

* NPCs tab, column 9 "Draw Distance", r-click -> "Batch Edit" -> "Expression" = 1200 -> "OK", Save

* Used TW2WDTool to make a startup.1200.wd file, then copied it into startup.wd

Doesn't seem complicated. I start the game and the main menu loads without a problem. Then when I load a game, the loading gauge stops at about 50%, the small disk below it (hourglass) keeps spinning and gameplay hints keep changing, yet no progress past 50% for even a couple of minutes (normally a save loads in about 5 secs, I barely have time to read the hint).

I tried something else. I unpacked the original startup.wd then repacked it without changing anything. Again, the game is stuck half way through the loading process, as with the startup.wd where I modified the view distance.

Of course when I use the original startup.wd everything is fine.

Is there a problem with the WD packing tool, or am I doing something wrong? I noticed something. When I unpack the original WD file, the tool says:

Unpacking ... 879 files in archive.
366 encrypted files in archive. 366 files was decrypted
879 files unpacked
All done.

When I unpack any of the WD files that I packed with the tool, I get:

Unpacking ... 879 files in archive.
0 encrypted files in archive. 0 files was decrypted
879 files unpacked
All done.

Maybe it's the non-encrypted files that break the game?

PS: I know draw distance is increased in the Worldmerge mod, but this is my first playthrough and I want to experience the vanilla content as much as possible.

Thanks

[Toccatta]

See if this helps solve the problem:

http://www.insidetwoworlds.com/showthread.php?p=228010

Also... never attempt to include a .wd file inside another one. The .wd file is already compressed. Everything you put into it should be uncompressed so that when the game extracts the archive, it can read everything inside.

[Neofit]

Thanks. I see what I was doing wrong now.

Not to pollute that new thread, I am still not sure about one thing. If I modify the latest twoworlds.par from update13.wd, I must repack only that .par file into another wd file. Does the name matter? Does the game process them in alphabetical order? In the order of the timestamp inside the file header?

[Toccatta]

The name of the .wd file doesn't matter. Only the time stamp and the files (and file structure) inside it matter.

If, however, you're using the WorldMerge mod, that also makes changes to the TwoWorlds.par file. If you edit the original one in Update13.wd and repack it, the new TwoWorlds.par file you edited would have a newer time stamp than the one in the worldmerge mod, and would be missing key information. This would cause the worldmerge mod to fail.

The advice in the sticky thread is intended primarily for people doing their own modding work rather than editing an existing mod. However, I did include information on what to do if you already use a mod. You must first decompress the existing mod to see what files it uses. If it includes a copy of a file you wish to edit, you need to edit the modded copy. For the purposes of keeping your existing mod working correctly, you should treat it as if it were an original file with respect to unpacking and repacking. i.e. edit only the specific file you need to edit and repackage it as a separate .wd file, leaving the mod's .wd file unchanged.

While you're still wanting to explore the unmodded game content, the twoworlds.par file from update13.wd is definitely the one you want to work with.

[Neofit]

Thanks, I made a new .wd file and the game is loading fine.