Theoretical Kit Implementation

[Caedwyr]

I have a theory, which is to say that it is mine and my theory...

 

Goal: To overcome the 9 kits per race/class restriction

Bonus: Make stat requirements for kits an actual drawback.

 

Mod installation: After all other kit adding mods.

General Structure of the mod:

 

On installation, the mod scans the K_C_H.2da et al and Kittable.2da files for a list of kits selectable by a PC. The mod also scans the kits for their restrictions (minimum stats, race, class) and generates strings in the following format:

 

KITNAME, CLASS, RACE, ALIGNMENT, Minimum Stats: STR, AGI, CON, INT, WIS, CHA

 

These strings are then appended onto the class description in alphabetical order.

 

Possibly, after the alphabetical list in the class description, the kit descriptions can be listed as well.

 

The K_C_H.2da and similar files are changed/removed so that the kits do not show up as selectable during character creation.

 

 

During character creation, a player will now select a gender, race, name, alignment, appearance, class, roll for stats, choose weapon proficiencies and any spells (Hopefully I am remembering all the steps of character creation here)

 

When the game starts at some point (most likely after Irenicus does his little song and dance, but before Imoen comes over) an internal monologue, similar to the internal dialogue at the Tree of Life comes up asking the player to choose a kit. The list of kits will be tailored to the player's race/class/alignment/current stats, so invalid choices should not show up on the list. The player can click on the name of a kit to get the full kit description. Dialogue structure should be such that the player can go back to the main list of kits, or accept the kit. If the tailored list method is not possible, then all possible kits for that class should be listed, and if the player tries to choose an invalid selection, they should get a message that it is an invalid selection due to class/race/alignment/stats, and take them back to the complete list

 

 

So, dialogue structure

 

KITLIST

"Please select a kit from this list for more details"

 

AKIT GOTO A

BKIT GOTO B

CKIT GOTO C

DKIT GOTO D

EKIT GOTO E

etc

 

A:

"KITDESCRIPTION FOR AKIT"

 

Choose AKIT? END DIALOGUE AND APPLY CHANGES

Back to Kit List GOTO KITLIST

 

 

Once the player has selected their kit a script then wipes out all weapon types and style proficiencies, reduces them to level 1, gives appropriate hitpoints for a level 1, appropriate saves for level 1, gives the appropriate amount of xp for starting a game. And the player is free to level up selecting weapon proficiencies.

 

Sticky points: How spell selection works. Its been a bit since I played so this may need more attention.

Starting hitpoints may also be a problem, especially since Irenicus does damage at the start.

 

Of course, you can also argue that this is a complete waste since the player could always just choose to not install as many kits that overflowing kits would be a problem.

 

This could be adapted for BG1Tutu fairly easily I'd expect as well (BGT).

 

Another problem is running the scripts at the start of the game might be a little problematic, particularily if a lot of other scripts are also running.

[Andyr]

I don't think it is too big a deal. You can have more than 9 kits installed at once, for a particular class. It is just that only the first 9 for each class/race combination will show up at the character generation scheme. Although you couldn't start as one of those not shown at generation, you could use scripting or a game editor to change to it later.

 

... but really, with a 6-person party, even if everyone in the party chose the same class with a different kit, and you swapped 3 of the party members out for others during the game, you'd still have enough slots.

 

The only pitfall I can see with the game at the moment is if you happen to play several dozen games in parallel, with heavy use of kits, but I suspect such players are a vast minority.

[Caedwyr]

Yeah, that was the biggest issue I saw with this entire thought experiment. Sure, you could do it, but with the number of slots available for kitting, I could only see something like this used if one wanted to offer additional Mage, Monk, Sorcerer, or Barbarian kits. (Which are all supposedly doable, just not displayable on the character creation screen).

[Rabain]

In order to keep things tidy you could do something like change Sorceror to Psionic in the character screen and place various sorceror kits throughout the other classes as standard kits e.g Sorceror Priest, Sorceror Druid, Sorceror Cleric etc

[Mike1072]

I could only see something like this used if one wanted to offer additional Mage, Monk, Sorcerer, or Barbarian kits. (Which are all supposedly doable, just not displayable on the character creation screen).

Barbarians are already a kit of Fighter, so they can't be kitted again, but the rest can. Also, in a bit of testing I was able to easily remove everything BUT the Mage kits from the chargen screen.

 

I would love to see a well-done mod that would allow more freedom in the creation of new kits. I don't even think I've heard of mods that have Monk kits! After a Google search, the only idea I found that didn't look to be completely abandoned was an Assassin Monk kit for LoI - maybe Andyr remembers?

[Andyr]

It's not something we have done yet.

 

(Implementation of Monk kits cleanly is not possible.)

[Caedwyr]

Barbarians are already a kit of Fighter, so they can't be kitted again, but the rest can. Also, in a bit of testing I was able to easily remove everything BUT the Mage kits from the chargen screen.

 

I would love to see a well-done mod that would allow more freedom in the creation of new kits. I don't even think I've heard of mods that have Monk kits! After a Google search, the only idea I found that didn't look to be completely abandoned was an Assassin Monk kit for LoI - maybe Andyr remembers?

 

 

Hmm, sounds like mages are something left over from BG1, and not following the usual kit format. Has anyone had any luck in stripping the assorted mage specializations out from the chargen screen?

[igi]

I am pretty sure I removed the mage kits from the char-gen screen.

Then I decided to work the other way around and remove everything except the mage kits, so I no longer have any of the relevant files.

[Avenger]

You can remove them by altering the .chu file

[Mike1072]

So... I was thinking about this again lately and decided to do some digging. It's not too hard to get rid of all the mage kits from appearing in character generation (if you know where to look), but I don't think it's at all possible to get a custom mage kit in their place, which puts mages in the same boat as sorcerers and monks (but with less funky behaviour, yay).

 

If anyone's looking to disable certain character creation options for a mod, here's what I discovered in the character generation CHU. I found the easiest way to disable a button was to set its width/height to 0.

 

GUICG.CHU

Window 0: - Main Screen

Window 1: - Gender

Window 2: Class

Window 3: - Attribute Rolls

Window 4: Alignment

Window 5: - Name

Window 6: - "Skills" (from label)

Window 7: - Mage Spell Selection

Window 8: Race

Window 9: - "Proficiency Slots" (from label)

Window 10: Multiclasses

Window 11: - Large Portrait Select

Window 12: MAGE KITS!!!

Window 13: - Paperdoll Appearance

Window 14: - Color Menu

Window 15: Racial Enemy (disabled buttons behave strangely with scrolling)

Window 16: - Mage Spell Memorization

Window 17: - Priest Spell Memorization

Window 18: - Custom Portrait Select

Window 19: - Soundset

Window 20: - Import Character

Window 21: - Export Filenames

Window 22: Non-Mage Kits (disabling, say, the second kit button here will disable every non-mage's second kit)

Window 23: - Biography

Window 24: - Export Dialog Box

 

Items starting with a dash are ones that I didn't test, but guessed at the function by the appearance of the MOS and label controls.