Could someone fill me in on modern IE modding, please?

[Sorrow]

So, I have to admit that I'm kinda behind with work methods. Actually, I have never used WeiDU beyond most basic functions.

 

I wonder, what are modern methods of working on mods?

 

What tools to use when working on a small TC?

Are there any tutorials that you consider necessary to read?

[Ipsy]

Asking for a "summary of modding" is like saying "summarize the decline and fall of the Roman Empire."

 

Tools: WeiDU obviously, NearInfinity, Infinity Explorer, DLTCEP, and a text editor--Notepad 2, Crimson Editor, or ConTEXT.

 

Tutorials: I'll link to all the ones I consider important. Packaging a mod, coding friendships and romances, getting a non-joinable NPC in game, how to ensure your banters always run when you want them to, journal entries for dummies, Ace's NPC creation guide, Definitions Tools and Resources, Organize before you write, the NPC joining dialogue, NPC-NPC banter, writing in .D for real beginners, CD_STATE_NOTVALID, and Sim's Complete Scripting Guide.

 

Check here for more tutorials. Best of all is to look at examples of code in existing mods.

 

In general, DLTCEP is used for creatures, spells, areas, and items, and Infinity Explorer for browsing existing game dialogues.

 

Why are you starting with a TC, though? Wouldn't it be better to start small, like with a quest or NPC mod, and see how it's received first?

[Jarno Mikkola]

Why are you starting with a TC, though? Wouldn't it be better to start small, like with a quest or NPC mod, and see how it's received first?

Well, it's not just started project, as it has been going sometime now... if you could open the www.teambg.eu site, you would know what's he is talking about... but as that's been offline now for a while already, so Sorrow came here.

... I think, the term TC doesn't really apply... as Sorrow isn't really doing a Total Conversion mod(as there is no real raw data), but more like an Engine Conversion mod with it's own story etc. And the rules change "a lot" too.

 

So, I have to admit that I'm kinda behind with work methods. Actually, I have never used WeiDU beyond most basic functions.

It might be helpful to know what those "basic" functions are ... and what you would like to be able to do? As one can patch items, areas, creatures, spells etc. files with "basic" Macro knowledge, but if you have never heard of macros, it's not basics anymore.

[Sorrow]

Asking for a "summary of modding" is like saying "summarize the decline and fall of the Roman Empire."

 

Tools: WeiDU obviously, NearInfinity, Infinity Explorer, DLTCEP, and a text editor--Notepad 2, Crimson Editor, or ConTEXT.

 

Tutorials: I'll link to all the ones I consider important. Packaging a mod, coding friendships and romances, getting a non-joinable NPC in game, how to ensure your banters always run when you want them to, journal entries for dummies, Ace's NPC creation guide, Definitions Tools and Resources, Organize before you write, the NPC joining dialogue, NPC-NPC banter, writing in .D for real beginners, CD_STATE_NOTVALID, and Sim's Complete Scripting Guide.

 

Check here for more tutorials. Best of all is to look at examples of code in existing mods.

Thanks a lot, I'll check them out .

 

Why are you starting with a TC, though? Wouldn't it be better to start small, like with a quest or NPC mod, and see how it's received first?

Well, I'm not exactly starting. I actually started modding BG1 soon after the Heart of Winter was released. I think it was in 2002.

I changed some 2da files and modified NPC HP with hex editor so that non-giant humanoids would have only 1D of HP.

 

I'm mostly interested in combat mechanics and stuff like that. Actually, I'm not very fond of Baldur's Gate and AD&D.

 

I learned about TeamBG around 2003 and downloaded some tools from there and started modifying other stuff.

I started working on the improved combat system.

I added more features:

-Reusable combat abilities like defensive fighting, full defence, power attacks, reckless attack, full attack etc. that would give player greater control (inspired by ADOM).

-Gaining weapon proficiences by using them (inspired by ADOM).

-I tried to add gaining defence proficiency, but I found out that increasing a local Global during combat makes character cease what he/she is doing, which isn't a good thing.

-I got rid of weapon and armor class limits.

-I created a different weapon system with weapon speed being represented by amount of attacks and reach being represented with which weapon strikes first (speed/delay?)

-I added a bonus to hit against armor types for certain weapons.

 

Some time later (spring 2004), after reading CP2020 manual, I've decided to try to create an alternative damage system.

-I changed the base hitpoints of characters to 20 + con mod. When the amount of HPs fallen to 15, the creature would have to have to make a save against death to avoid losing consciousness (IIRC even if the character would make the save he/she would have some skill/stat penalties).

When the amount of HP fallen to 10, character automaticaly lost consciousness and received temporary Condition damage every turn until healed above 10 hp.

Sadly, after some playtesting it turned out that creature's actions (attack, panic etc.) interfered with script that checks the creature's health state and applies penalties.

Sometimes, just like BG2's trolls, creatures refused to drop, and fought on ignoring "deadly injuries".

I tried to replace scripts with conditioning, but it didn't work properly either, so I had to drop the idea.

 

-The next attempt of adding a bit of realism was creating a bleeding effect by adding proper spells to a weapon's extended effects. I created two secondary spellschools: "bleeding" and "weakness".

All healing spells removed effects from "bleeding" school and some of them could remove "weakness".

When character was hit, a proper "weakness" spell was cast on him/her and a "bleeding" spell was cast round later. The character could suffer a temporary stat damage, lose consciousness, bleed to death, etc.

Healing spells could stop bleeding and remove stat damage.

It seemed that it works. The "only problem" was that some of protection spells like Mirror Image or Stone Skin don't protect from any effects from weapon's extended header, which leads to absurdities like getting paralysed by a ghul that hit a mirror image or bleeding to death despite having Stone Skin.

-I started experimenting with alternative, non-level-based method of character advancement.

 

I have some screens from that period:

1.Drizzt

Drizzt has an accident in work. Judging by the sword graphic, I had some other mod installed.

 

2.Bandits Camp

A battle near the Bandits Camp involving some backstabing goblin thieves and an ogre berserker.

 

Around that period I realised that I need a platform for testing combat and created a "Baldur Kombat: Arena of Bhaal" minimod.

It was a dark mod about fighting on arena, killing oponents and buying better equipment.

-I tried to add wrestling. I created a special unarmed attack that bypasses the armor and if succeeds, forces the opponent to make saving throw or suffer a one-round dexterity penalty.

-Was unhappy with current character current character creation system and after doing some on knight training I tried to create a new, dialog-based skills system with stat-checks, that could assign different skill sets to different characters.

-I removed leveling-up for all non-spellcasters.

 

Screens:

1.MinMax

1a.Me smash!!!

A miserable result of min-maxing.

2.Fighter

2a.Common Abilities

In my mod fighter is a result of years of training.

 

The project was inactive for about 4 months (I was busy modding Fallout Tactics.). After receiving some positive feedback on my ideas, I decided to return to modding BG and to move the mod to polish version of BG2 (the mod wasn't WeiDUized, so I have no I idea how I did thatXD).

 

Also, I decided to abandon the BG1Tutu mod (because of incompatibility of bleeding and magic protections, problems, various innate BG2 bugs and modding limits etc.) and to create a small fighter-only combat system-demonstration mod. My intention was to resume working on the BG saga part of the mod when GemRB will be finished.

 

I started to work on a parody of Fallout Tactics - Baldur Tactics: Brotherhood of Rose.

Since its main aim was to show off the combat system, it was all about combat and absurd.

The main location was a nameless village (Nashkel map) and the player was an initiate of Brotherhood of Rose.

Instead of quests, it had linear missions (just as FT:BoS) and the map was also a "world" map with random encounters based on reptraps.

The first mission was to kill a farmer that doesn't want to pay taxes. It included killing his wife and kids.

Also, the mod punished player for killing children by giving him/her a childkiller reputation, which resulted in encounters with angry farmers led by a Holy Knight.

 

It didn't feature any changes to the combat system. After demise of TBG I didn't want to do any serious technical modding.

 

Screens:

"I won't let you hurt my family!

The rebel's words lingered in the air as he went down, hit by a crossbow bolt.

Farmers Family

Special Reputation: Childkiller

 

I started to recruit a team of polish modders/testers and it turned out that most of them don't have BG1 or BG1Tutu. I decided that using locations, graphics and sounds from BG1Tutu for a small TC is an overkill.

I created a small TC, Iron Throne Tactics: The Palace of Fiery Virgin (don't ask) using BG2 tutorial locations.

It features 4 silly missions, absurd encounters (drunk students, halfling duelist, warriors from the Netherworld, etc.) and sick sense of humour.

It was my first weiduized mod.

The mod didn't have any changes to combat and character generation system. During that time, I had no idea how some parts of the combat system work.

 

I got some good reviews from the team and some bug reports, but shortly after the team fell apart due to disappearance of 2 of 4 team members. I was planning to move the mod to a different area, but BG2 lacked a proper map.

After some time I decided to remove all races except Elves, Half-Elves and Humans. I was planning to move the mod to a different area, but BG2 lacked a proper map and I didn't have any mapper, so I decided to put it on hold.

 

Screens:

1.Canon Fodder

Henchmen recruitment menu. Most of them are armed peasants.

2.Raid... err... Travelers

A band of misguided commoners protected by an armed militia. They want to get out of the Palace and they attack anything that tries to stop them.

3.One of the henchmen gets wounded

He makes his save against death and doesn't lose consciousness. On the other hand he is bleeding and will die if he doesn't get help soon.

4.The henchman becomes weaker from bloodloss...

5.but gets saved by squad medic's first aid skill.

6.The party gets ambushed by a band of bloodthirsty travelers

7.Drassana uses the Continuous Attack skill

The Continuous Attack skill allows professional fighters to make an additional attack without suffering penalties (actually, there's a penalty - they can't use any other special abilities in that round of combat.).

8.Drassana goes Kill Bill on the Travelers

3 and 1/2 attacks per round - results: one of her opponents is dead, one is dying and one is going to die next round.

 

 

In 2006, I returned to IE modding. I wanted to play BG2, so I simply decreased the HP of everyone to 1d + 1hp/level. It took me about week. Then, came to conclusion that the level demographics in the game are very weird. I started to decrease levels of everyone that shouldn't have a high level. After playing the modified game for few days I added Special Abilities from ITT:TPoFV. Then I started modifying dialogs, scripts, weapon stats, etc. Recently, I was experimenting with removing some parts of the old Iron Throne Combat System/adding some of them (armor piercing weapons for example) to BG2:ToB.

I planned to make a mod based on BGT but it turned out that I have trouble modding it because of some weird file naming, which made finding out what is what pretty difficult.

 

So, I returned to the idea of making a small tactical TC. This time I got a writer, which sadly disappeared from the internet some time later.

Some time later I decided to write dialogues myself and started learning mapping. And then TeamBG disappeared again.

 

Recently, I came to conclusion the way I'm doing modding is probably completely outdated and that there may be methods of doing stuff that are much more efficient.

 

So, I have to admit that I'm kinda behind with work methods. Actually, I have never used WeiDU beyond most basic functions.

It might be helpful to know what those "basic" functions are ... and what you would like to be able to do? As one can patch items, areas, creatures, spells etc. files with "basic" Macro knowledge, but if you have never heard of macros, it's not basics anymore.

Well, I have used only dialogue and script compilation and decompilation and traify or something like that.