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NPC portrait mod?


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The code for this is pretty much complete.

 

It's handy having a spreadsheet for this as the code can be generated on the fly with formulae (Concatenate rules!).

 

Expect to see something middle of next week.

 

Does anyone know if dumping 1800 cre files and portraits into the override will have any negative effects?

 

EDIT: for informational purposes I've taken the majority of portraits from portraitcity.blackwyrmlair.net. I downloaded the whole lot of portraits and weeded out the dross to arrive at, what I hope is, a large set of acceptable portraits. This means it will be possible to give unique portraits to all creatures. I've also removed most of the common PortraitPortal portraits and any other common custom portraits I could see so the player will at least still have a large selection to choose from for their own character.

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I guess I need to biff then though the actual size of data being loaded into the override is less than 20mb.

 

EDIT: I take it weidu updates the game somehow on what bif contains the cre...even though the original cre exists in one of the original biff files?

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I was thinking of how big the size of 1800 portrait's would be (yes I know each one would be small, but thats a lot!) and I was not sure how much file number vs. file size made the difference. With a BiG World Project install (biffed twice during install) my override is still 107mb so that would bring it to 127mb, not so big but it adds up. My non-biffed installs the override folder is about 3 gigs. Over in the Mega Mod Forums we deal a lot with stuttering, so an install option to biff would be useful for some.

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Over in the Mega Mod Forums we deal a lot with stuttering, so an install option to biff would be useful for some.
But is the stuttering due to heavy scripts, size of the override or number of files in it?

 

I would think adding (small) portraits would be fine. And no one's going to mod them subsequently (let's hope) so I'd think biffing them would be fine too (though as I've said before, I'm not familiar with this whole biffing thing).

 

As for CREs, well you're not really adding them to the game, you're just patching them with small portraits and maybe colours, right? Maybe the net effect is the same, but as berelinde said, they might already exist in the override due to the Fixpack etc.

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To be honest I'm not sure how the whole biffing process goes with weidu.

 

I assume the order the engine looks at files is Override then biff. I also assume biffing files in the Overried also updates the chitin.key (?) so that it looks in the new biff first instead of the old biff (that came with the game) and that subsequest mods installed will COPY from the biff created while installing the portraits...are you beginning to see how complicated this would get if it wasn't part of a mega-mod?

 

Uninstalling a component installed before the portrait biff would require restoring the backup files and then re-biffing as part of the weidu re-install process. It could quickly become a method for fubaring everything.

 

Initially, I think I'll just release the mod to the public and see what feedback reports with regard to performance.

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If I only want to write portraits to files that have no portrait currently what do I add to the code?

 

BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES only applies if the entry I'm making is the same as the current entry right?

 

Some form of UNLESS ?

 

Stupid Question: if a portrait says None in NI is that the same as having a portrait called None.bmp? I ask because there seems to be a difference between None and -1 as the string...or is that just me being wrong?

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If I only want to write portraits to files that have no portrait currently what do I add to the code?
I suppose it'd be something like this:

COPY_EXISTING ~sample.cre~ ~override~
 READ_ASCII 0x34 ~smp~ //Small portrait
 PATCH_IF ((~%smp%~ STRING_EQUAL ~~) OR (~%smp%~ STRING_EQUAL_CASE ~none~)) BEGIN
WRITE_ASCII 0x34 ~portrait~ #8
 END
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES only applies if the entry I'm making is the same as the current entry right?
It'll only copy the file to the override if you actually patch it with a new portrait.
Stupid Question: if a portrait says None in NI is that the same as having a portrait called None.bmp?
Yep (not a stupid question - stupid way of filling fields when they should be blank instead...).
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This is going to sound kind of strange but I need pictures of children.

 

I have about 10 portraits that would suit girls but only 2 for boys and there are far more boys in the game than girls.

 

Anyone know any sites/games that might have suitable portraits for BG2 children? Anywhere I could download a portrait pack etc.

 

I need about 40 images.

 

Djinni's too if anyone can recall some.

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Hmm. That's kind of a toughie since most fantasy portraits are of adult (or non-human) characters. And you don't want to use the halfling portraits, since you'll have enough halflings to assign those to.

 

The only thing I can think of is to grep around the web for images from fantasy movies with children like Narnia, Harry Potter, Golden Compass (q.v.), etc. 40 is a lot of portraits to ask someone to draw, but all you really need are small thumbnails. So even if you just get little clips here and there, I'm sure someone could photoshop them up enough to look "baldurized." Just a question of getting the source material - it'll just take some hunting around.

 

As for djinnis, that should be fairly easy, without having to resort to the animated Aladdin or whatever - you probably don't need that many of those.

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To cut download size, there are command-line programs that can convert jpg to bmp's on the fly. NiGHTMARE did this for the LoI project and it cut down the size immensely. It'd be nice to have an equivalent for OS X and Linux. (edit: actually, it appears that djpeg is simply a Windows port of a Unix program, so it's probably easier than we think.)

 

Basically, it copied the jpgs to the override, then ran a batch file:

 

@echo off
djpeg.exe -bmp override\*.jpg
cd override
del *.jpg

 

I've attached djpeg.exe.

djpeg.rar

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What would be useful is a GIF>BMP command line converter. I found several that did it the other way, but not vice versa apparently. I wouldn't save small portraits as JPEGs - for one thing it's a lossy format, which is detrimental especially when the images are so small, and for another, the final format you need is 256 colours, so you'd have to trust a utility to be able to reduce that for you accurately. GIFs of files this size end up being smaller anyway, unless you crank the compression (and loss) on the JPEGs up really high.

 

Speaking of LoI though, did you ever get a hold of Nightmare to see if those portraits are available?

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