Icewinddale animations for BG2

[Guest Astrallionheart]

I understand that Weimar's Icewind Gate II is on hold indefinitely.

 

However, seeing as how the BG2 Tweakpack provides Icewind Dale casting animations for BG2, is there any plans (or possibility) of adding Icewind Dale 2 creature animations to BG2? The elemental and umber hulk avatars, plus an assortment of other creatures (bugs come to mind) were IMO much better looking from the IWD/IWD2 engine, and were implemented with IWG2, although certainly that was about porting BG2 to the IWD2 engine, rather than vice versa.

 

Any thoughts?

[Nythrun]

I think Icewind Gate is farther gone than on-hold, unfortunately: there are too many scripting triggers and actions that are in BG2 that aren't in IWD.

 

Adding animations from an IWD to BG2 is surprisingly painless, especially if you just want to override an existing animation with its counterpart in a different game.

[Miloch]

There's a mod that does this already (Bestial Animations I believe).

[Guest Guest]

Interesting.

 

The author hasn't said anything for over a year, so I'm gonna backup my BG2 megamod install (13 gigs !) and see what happens when I install it.

 

I'm guessing it's going to cause the game to crash spontaneously alot though, given Tactics already crashes my game quite often because I like using the boots of phasing for my meatshield and this tends to cause the game to crash from nonexistent death animations for ported IWD monsters.

[Guest Guest]

Ack...nevermind. The mod is not compatible with BP, TDD, or BGT. It seems to just dump some animation resources rather than give the option to replace certain animations (this would make compatibility easier).

 

I have no idea how to use WEIDU of course so who am I to complain...

[Miloch]

From what I understand, it's more of a tool for modders. You wouldn't notice much as a player. But it would allow you to mod creatures that have the IWD animations. From the readme:

* Provides greatly increased slot capacity, filled with creatures from various other IE games (IWD1: HoW, IWD2, BG1: TotSC). A player will not notice any of these changes, but a modder will notice them.

 

* Adds casting animations for mummies, mindflayers, cornugons, glabrezu, tattered skeleton warriors, and yuan-ti spellcasters

 

* Modifies the Fire Giant appearance to something more savage and barbaric (the current ones are fit for titans, rather)

 

* Modifies the Pit Fiend appearance to something more close to PnP

[Guest astrallionheart]

From what I understand, it's more of a tool for modders. You wouldn't notice much as a player. But it would allow you to mod creatures that have the IWD animations. From the readme:

* Provides greatly increased slot capacity, filled with creatures from various other IE games (IWD1: HoW, IWD2, BG1: TotSC). A player will not notice any of these changes, but a modder will notice them.

 

* Adds casting animations for mummies, mindflayers, cornugons, glabrezu, tattered skeleton warriors, and yuan-ti spellcasters

 

* Modifies the Fire Giant appearance to something more savage and barbaric (the current ones are fit for titans, rather)

 

* Modifies the Pit Fiend appearance to something more close to PnP

 

I've gone through most of the animations.

 

The original IWD/BG2 avatars are still used. It doesn't introduce any of the new IWD2 animations. It basically makes some of the older monster paper dolls playable as PCs as it gives them weapon attack animations, but the "new" IWD2 paper dolls are not present as Icewind Gate 2 had implemented earlier. At this point I'm guessing it's just a fantasy.

[Miloch]

Well it adds nearly 2800 creature animations. And it's a massive download, as you probably noticed. Whether the animatinos are from IWD1, IWD2, somewhere else, or a combination thereof, I dunno, but I doubt they're from BG2. That would be kind of pointless for a BG2 mod.

 

It's possible your BP megamess is preventing the extra animations from being installed (the readme does say something to that effect). Also, the readme states it does something with animation "slots" for additional creatures, so you won't necessary see the animations unless you know where to look (and code, since as I said, it's a modder resource).

[Guest Guest]

Well it adds nearly 2800 creature animations. And it's a massive download, as you probably noticed. Whether the animatinos are from IWD1, IWD2, somewhere else, or a combination thereof, I dunno, but I doubt they're from BG2. That would be kind of pointless for a BG2 mod.

 

It's possible your BP megamess is preventing the extra animations from being installed (the readme does say something to that effect). Also, the readme states it does something with animation "slots" for additional creatures, so you won't necessary see the animations unless you know where to look (and code, since as I said, it's a modder resource).

 

 

Ah I see. I just loved some of the replaced IWD2 avatars like the elementals, the better umber hulks (I did find the IWD umberhulks which were a little different from the BG2 ones, but I didn't find the bigger IWD2 variants), and especially the worms like the remoraz (sp?). Ack! My skills are too noob.

[Guest Guest]

Yeah, I think maybe BP prevented some of the installs...the WEIDU install took about 2 mins instead of the 10-20mins that the install warned about. Gah.

[Guest Guest]

After perusing the forums I'm not entirely sure if it is "me" who is missing the animations or if they were never implemented.

 

According to the author Shadowkeeper should categorize all of the animations (CLUAConsole CTL+6/7 will not display any of the new ones) but many of the animations simply come off as blanks. Additionally among the new animations only one IWD2 creature is included--the improved fire giant, which is only available through Shadowkeeper.

 

According to the readme's and the FAQs, as well as forum talk, I think it was implied that this project never really completed itself. Only a few additional animations were ever added. Most of the stuff, as I eluded to earlier, included weapon slot animations for the older creatures.

[Rabain]

Shadowkeeper may list the animations but you will only see most of them by equipping specific items on specific types of creatures.

 

This is because the new creature animation uses a weapon animation slot rather than the limited number of creature animation slots.

 

Believe me Galactygon would not have released a 300+mb mod if only a few animations were implemented.

 

What you want is the mod readme.

 

As in the first example if you select Ettin in Shadowkeeper and equip it with an Axe the ingame animation will be that of a Frost Giant. Or at least it should be if you have installed the mod correctly.

[Guest Guest]

Yeah there are more animations than I originally anticipated, and it does some of the IWD2 animations, there are about 15-20 of them that aren't already in the ToB animation archive.

 

It's too bad the project never got finished tho, there are still about half of the animations left (the elementals, umber hulks, some of the underdark critters) are missing still.

 

The author said about a year ago he was "weeks" away from porting all of the IWD2/PST animations...I hope if he had finished it at some point if he could host the updated files.

[Chev]

Guest

 

I really don't think so, unless someone takes up the project (Bestial Animations) is dead.

[Guest Guest]

Oh well, I created a custom character that looks like Isair (dual-wielding scimitar demon with wings, one of two end bosses of IWD2) and gave him the perma affect "protection from evil" so this way it's like he's a real demon xD