How to change weapon proficiencies and attributes with Near Infinity?

[Nemo]

Could someone give me a step-by-step explanation how to change weapon proficiencies and attributes with Near Infinity?

Thank you very much.

[devSin]

It should be fairly self-explanatory.

 

What version of NI are you using? What exactly do you want to do?

[Nemo]

I downloaded Near Infinity from Mac Infinity.

I would like to change the attributes of my character and change the weapon proficiencies of Minsc. However, since I never used NI before, I do not know, which file has to be modified and how I have to do this.

[devSin]

Download the latest release.

 

In your BG2 - SoA folder, create two files: "baldur.exe" and "BGConfig.exe" (you can just duplicate an existing file in the folder, say Baldur.log or Baldur.ini, and rename as appropriate).

 

Double-click NearInfinity.jar and select your Chitin.key file when prompted. In the resource list on the left-hand side of the window, navigate to the saved game (would be something like Save -> 00000000-Auto-Save, for instance) and click on the BALDUR.GAM entry. In the "Player characters" list, select the entry for Minsc (will be titled something like "*INSC7") and click the View/Edit button. In the resultant window, you can select any of the existing "Modify proficiencies" entries in the "Effects" list by clicking on the CRE tab, or you can click on the Edit tab, scroll down to the CRE file item at the end of the list view, and double-click it to open a new window (here, you can modify resistances or add new effects, etc.).

[Nemo]

I use a Macintosh wherefore I cannot create .exe-files. Which changes are therefore necessary?

[devSin]

The filename is all that's important. As said, just select Baldur.ini, hit Command-D to duplicate, and rename the copy "baldur.exe"

 

Do this one more time and rename the copy to "BGConfig.exe"

[ericp07]

The filename is all that's important. As said, just select Baldur.ini, hit Command-D to duplicate, and rename the copy "baldur.exe"

 

Do this one more time and rename the copy to "BGConfig.exe"

 

Do those two dummy files need to be present because NI wants to see them in order to work, or something?

 

I obviously have an older version, so I just now downloaded the one you (devSin) linked to above. I hope it'll be a bit less cryptic

 

Thanks,

Eric

[devSin]

Since NI works with a number of different Infinity Engine variants (each with their own differences in file structures, etc.), it needs to figure out which game you're trying to use it with.

 

For these checks, it first looks for the Windows executables (only that a file or files named blah.exe exist; they can be 0K files -- a simple `cd /path/to/my/BG2/folder; touch baldur.exe BGConfig.exe' would work fine since NI checks by name only). After it figures out the base game (by looking for the .exe files), it then checks available resources to see which expansions are installed (it looks for movies specific to an expansion, as indexed by Chitin.key).

 

If you look around and find my build of NI, I made several changes so that it will automatically detect the game version on Macs without needing these files (and has rudimentary support for handling the relative paths used in the Mac .ini files for finding CD2, CD3, etc.), but it inherits bugs from the last beta that Jon put out (1.33b19), and you need to be very careful when using it to edit files (which is why I haven't linked to it here).

[Nemo]

Thank you for your advise.

[ericp07]

Well, I don't see any difference between this version of NI and the one I had before; maybe they're the same. In any case, the area where we can view and edit a character's weapon proficiencies couldn't be more cryptic to my eyes. What I see looks a lot like machine language, and I don't recall any of the machine language code I used to know *L* Is there a way to make sense of it? Are we supposed to cross-reference with IESDP? I'm lost...

 

- E

[devSin]

It shouldn't be that difficult (and doesn't look like machine code BTW). There's a field that says # stars (or similar) with a number that you can edit to change the # stars, and another field that says Proficiency (or similar) where you can select a PROFICIENCY_ value.

[ericp07]

It shouldn't be that difficult (and doesn't look like machine code BTW). There's a field that says # stars (or similar) with a number that you can edit to change the # stars, and another field that says Proficiency (or similar) where you can select a PROFICIENCY_ value.

 

I've never seen such a field. I do see entries for things like large swords and small swords, and their default values are all 0. This is in the Edit window when I call up a character. I'm probably looking in the wrong place. I said it looked like machine language because of the rows of double digits. It reminded me of a line that would look something like this in machine language: A9 FF 00 00 AA 3C F0 00. Stuff like that. Just a curious coinkidink

 

- E

[WizWom]

First, get to a CRE file. Fir Minsc, these are MINSCxx.CRE Then click the Edit tab.

 

In the BG1 engine, proficiencies are in the CRE in offsets 0x63 to 0x75.

In the BG2 engine, proficiencies are effect 233; these are at the very end of the CRE files. Double clicking one brings up the editor for the effect, which will be somewhat different depending on the effect. For Proficiencies, the Proficiency type is offset +0x18; the number of stars is offset +0x14 (from the start of the effect structure).

 

It's much easier with ShadowKeeper, but that's a PC executable.

[devSin]

To repeat:

Double-click NearInfinity.jar and select your Chitin.key file when prompted. In the resource list on the left-hand side of the window, navigate to the saved game (would be something like Save -> 00000000-Auto-Save, for instance) and click on the BALDUR.GAM entry. In the "Player characters" list, select the entry for Minsc (will be titled something like "*INSC7") and click the View/Edit button. In the resultant window, you can select any of the existing "Modify proficiencies" entries in the "Effects" list by clicking on the CRE tab, or you can click on the Edit tab, scroll down to the CRE file item at the end of the list view, and double-click it to open a new window (here, you can modify resistances or add new effects, etc.).

As Wiz says, you need to actually go to the effect (if you're editing a saved game); you should see the effects list on the "View" panel for the character selected (or you can scroll down in "Edit" view to the effects, at the bottom of the list. Double-clicking those will bring up the viewer for the particular effect (some of which will be "Modify proficiencies" effects if you're looking at party members).

 

I said it looked like machine language because of the rows of double digits. It reminded me of a line that would look something like this in machine language: A9 FF 00 00 AA 3C F0 00. Stuff like that.

That's just hexadecimal output of data in the file. Worry when you see stuff like:

stw	  r31,-4(r1)
mr	   r31,r4
stw	  r30,-8(r1)
mr.	  r30,r3
stw	  r0,8(r1)
stwu	 r1,-80(r1)
beq-	 0x24		  0x002A7780
lwz	  r0,-20756(r2)
li	   r4,0
stw	  r0,0(r30)
bl	   0xFFEA4554	0x0014BCC0
extsh.   r0,r31
ble-	 0xC		   0x002A7780

[ericp07]

So, it's a .gam or a .cre I need to open in order to edit the proficiencies in this manner. Got it. Can the same be done with a .chr file?

 

As for changing the code, I see where it says Modify Proficiencies (233) several times in a character's .cre (when opening BALDUR.GAM from a saved game), but double-clicking the entry gives me a list of categories to change this to, but nothing about altering the number of stars. Clearly, I'm in need of a bit more enlightenment.

 

Thanks for the information!

- E