Mini quest idea for xvart farmer

[jastey]

That's a good idea. I'll have a look at existing cave areas.

[Miloch]

Eh, the one good thing about SHS's upgrade is the ability to collapse text and even images in spoiler tags, but these are cropped so small they're probably not spoiling much. Anyway, don't read if you don't like spoilers .

 

 

If you put the entrance in one of these places, you could get away without even adding a BAM, or adding a very minimal one:

Both places look a lot darker in my game (like cave entrances) but they'd only have to be darkened a bit more to work completely. (The first one could presume to be hidden behind the tree also.)

 

I exported a few maps from PST that might work. They're all fairly large (these are just the mini-maps). PST is better than the other games because few people have ported areas from it (a lot of the megamods have mined the other IE games to death).

 

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

 

#6

 

 

I have not, as yet, figured out a way to export the tilesets from the .cbf files (an odd type of compressed .bif I guess) in the 2CD PS:T. WeiDU and DLTCEP both bomb just reading them. NI comes close - it can actually read the tilesets. It exports .tis files of what appear to be the correct size, but they contain garbage (starting with a bunch of blank bytes - probably just has an offset wrong or something).

 

Edited September 25, 2013 by Miloch

[the bigg]

WeiDU and DLTCEP both bomb just reading them.

WeiDU does support .cbf files, and I'm pretty sure that widescreen does COPY_EXISTING on .tis files in .cbf files. Create a cache directory, if it doesn't exist.

[Miloch]

Create a cache directory, if it doesn't exist.

Huh... well I guess it might've helped if I'd fired up Torment on this machine at one point...

 

Got a little further but bombed on 1 file at least:

Copied [AR0104.TIS] to [1pst/AR0104.TIS]

BIFF may be in hard-drive CD-path [C:\Games\PST\cd2\/AR0105.BIF]

BIFF may be in hard-drive CD-path [C:\Games\PST\cd2\/AR0105.BIF]

BIFF may be in hard-drive CD-path [C:\Games\PST\cd2\/AR0105.BIF]

BIFF may be in hard-drive CD-path [C:\Games\PST\cd1\/AR0105.BIF]

BIFF may be in hard-drive CD-path [C:\Games\PST\/AR0105.BIF]

BIFF may be in hard-drive CD-path [./cache/AR0105.BIF]

BIFF may be in hard-drive CD-path [C:\Games\PST\cd2\/AR0105.cbf]

[C:\Games\PST\cd2\/AR0105.cbf] decompressed bif file 19110848 bytes

[./cache/AR0105.BIF] 19110848 bytes, 5 files, 1 tilesets

ERROR: BIFF [./cache/AR0105.BIF]: unable to extract tileset 0

Stopping installation because of error.

 

ERROR Installing [uncompress Areas], rolling back to previous state

[1pst/backup/0/UNSETSTR.0] SET_STRING uninstall info not found

Will uninstall 5 files for [1PST/SETUP-1PST.TP2] component 0.

Uninstalled 5 files for [1PST/SETUP-1PST.TP2] component 0.

ERROR: Invalid_argument("String.create")

Guess I don't need that one - maybe I can just skip it (I just used a C_E_R on all .tis files).

[the bigg]

The file is over 16MB and can't be handled by COPY_EXISTING; I think it works with --biff-get.

[Miloch]

The file is over 16MB and can't be handled by COPY_EXISTING; I think it works with --biff-get.

Well... that extracted all the .tis files, but seemed to output exactly the same thing as NI. A closer look shows they seem to be missing the .tis header (0x18 bytes) and just start with the actual tile data. What's up with that?

[the bigg]

Uh, probably some sort of bug.

[Miloch]

Well it actually works if you append 0x18 bytes to the otherwise unreadable .tis and then WRITE_LONG at 0x8 the number of tiles. Which you can determine by opening it in NI and scrolling right like 500 times. Maybe there's some sort of calculation you could determine from the filesize, since they're of fixed size I believe. Of course, you can't do any of that via WeiDU with COPY_LARGE though... had to use a hex editor.

 

I wonder if the header is buried in the .cbf or .key or something. Not that I can really tell without being able to read them, but maybe devSin or Avenger will know.

[the bigg]

The .tis header is buried in the .bif file - http://iesdp.gibberlings3.net/file_formats...mats/bif_v1.htm.

[jastey]

Go, Miloch, go! That is really great. I would have two wishes for a cave area: Not too big in terms of download size and not too much looking as if humans lived in there. I have to admit some of the areas you linked look awfully like human-populated ones. The other ones I can't see properly. Could you give me the area code for ##3 and 4, so I can have a closer look?

[Dakk]

Go Miloch, bigg and jastey, go!

 

Poor little creatures! Well, not if they take prisoners for torture.

That's the funny part - you feel like "oh poor little critters, why do I chop up scores of you" and then you know from PnP they kidnap, torture and murder. And if they find any racer actually smaller in stature, like kobolds, they terrorize them as much as possible. And then you feel good again, and reload just to plunder the xvart-village again

[the bigg]

Could you give me the area code for ##3 and 4, so I can have a closer look?

1) Look at the image's name

2) ?

3) PROFIT!!!

Edited September 24, 2010 by the bigg

[Miloch]

They are (these I can mask at least):

 

#1 AR0108 Trash Warrens

#2 AR0109 Buried Village

#3 AR0508 Lothar's Home, Skull Room (southern cave part)

#4 AR0708 Curst, Underground

#5 AR1600 Warrens of Thought

#6 AR1700 Drowned Nations

 

 

The first two are probably the "trashiest" . A lot are very "tomb" looking, but that's PS:T for you. I reckon xvarts are probably a step or two above goblins and kobolds (more intelligent at least) plus they'd have goods and furniture from humans they've ransomed. But if you want smaller, more "cave-like" caves your best bet might be IWD or IWD2 (Aurora uses some of these from both). The south part of #3 is very generic and fairly small... with tispack filesize won't be too much of a problem (it's not like you're adding a bunch of tilesets).

 

(@Dakk: I like the idea too, because squashing xvarts is like squashing smurfs, the little blue buggers... or maybe Terry Pratchett's "pictsies"...)

[Avenger]

Could you give me the area code for ##3 and 4, so I can have a closer look?

1) Look at the image's name

2) ?

3) PROFIT!!!

 

2) find mapname.2da and resolve the strref

[jastey]

I would be interested in area #3, and an area transition behind the tree. I would need an area that can be used for BG1 and BGT/Tutu (not sure what differences there are). For the creation of the area transition, did I see correctly that this is implemented into WeiDU nowadays? Or at least there exist some cool macros. I hope they work for BG1, as well.

 

Since I am reluctant to let others work if I can't guarantee it will be finished, I think I will take an existing cave and recycle it, first. The tis can always be changed to some fancy custom artwork later. Thank you for your input so far! (In case you get overexcited and want to provide the area soon I wouldn't say no, of course.) EDIT: This was addressed to Miloch.

Edited September 26, 2010 by jastey