ADD_KIT and ToBEx

[phordicus]

Some of the BiG mods add almost a hundred new kits EACH; on top of that, Refinements roughly doubles the number of installed kits for scripting reasons.

i am both intrigued and scared by this.

[Ardanis]

You should be. Said mods also add an equal amount of new items, spells, monster types, quests and NPCs...

[phordicus]

to really go off on a tangent here, i already feel like even vanilla bg2 has more than enough "side" content. i won't say it's too bad that there's so much extra to do via mods but really, if someone could come up with a suitably well-written main quest, all that extra side content could power an entirely new game.

[the bigg]

"Just a quick heads up - new changes in ToBEX and WeiDU have made it important to do a minor update on how kits get coded into your .cre files. The source thread is http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showtopic=21964 .

Since some people are going to say "why don't you fix WeiDU instead?" (and it's not really a ToBEx or a WeiDU issue, but more like a mod compatibility issue), I suppose you could say something more neutral: "Just a quick heads up - on large installs it is possible that more than 256 kits are added to the game, and the way kits get coded into your .cre files doesn't work properly in such conditions. <...>".

 

(Yes, it's sad that you have to carefully weight your words to ensure people take what you say in consideration)

 

Almost done with mod prep. I'll toss the list of mods to search when I have it extracted so if I am missing something blindingly obvious someone can poke me.

I'm always scared by the amount of mods people pump out. As long as you include Level1NPCs, all mainstream NPCs and the BiG Mods you should be OK (nobody cares if Improved Anvil or an one-day NPC with two banters doesn't work properly in BiG installs).

 

to really go off on a tangent here, i already feel like even vanilla bg2 has more than enough "side" content. i won't say it's too bad that there's so much extra to do via mods but really, if someone could come up with a suitably well-written main quest, all that extra side content could power an entirely new game.

In theory I agree with you; in practice, BiG content tends to be... average, rather than good.

[Miloch]

to really go off on a tangent here, i already feel like even vanilla bg2 has more than enough "side" content. i won't say it's too bad that there's so much extra to do via mods but really, if someone could come up with a suitably well-written main quest, all that extra side content could power an entirely new game.

Well, that's what total conversions are for (Classic Adventures) etc. But those require you to either have another instance of BG2 installed or not care about overwriting main BG2 content, whereas the big quest mods allow you to have total-conversionish content whilst keeping BG2 playable (in theory, though some of the big mods take egregious liberties with the main storyline too).

 

So uh, like Ardanis said, this is only really an issue with kit-adding mods?

 

@cmorgan, I didn't see yarpen's Paladins of Faerun on your list. No idea where this lives with igi's teambg.eu being down - I think it's attached somewhere on SHS. You've got some roguish-looking mods on that list that I don't even recognise though (probably obscure for good reason).

 

Edit: eh, crikey... so this is something I've got to change in L1NPCs?

[the bigg]

Edit: eh, crikey... so this is something I've got to change in L1NPCs?

L1NPCs is fine because it's setting the whole LONG in a single go. Even if it wasn't, it's a matter of changing a single line.

[cmorgan]

@miloch - thanks for the look-over - I have Paladins_of_FaerunV2.rar, which is hopefully the latest. I am missing some of igi's stuff, as I only have LearnThroughUse and iiItem v5, but neither of those deals with kits. But... I am not sure I have Classic Adventures.

 

For now, I am just going to unpack the ones described by the bigg, plus every NPC and kit mod I can, and work with those.

 

@the bigg - got it. Reword the explanation to make sure folks understand that this is supporting the players, not something about the way the coding was accomplished.

 

How about

 

"Just a quick heads up - on large installs it is possible that more than 256 kits are added to the game, and the traditional way kits get coded into .cre files does not take that into account. To make sure players using lots and lots of kits in their game don't have troubles, the suggested recode is...."

[Miloch]

@miloch - thanks for the look-over - I have Paladins_of_FaerunV2.rar, which is hopefully the latest.

I think v5 is (see here).

[cmorgan]

Thanks, Miloch! Snagged it.

[cmorgan]

I can't check the German kit mod as it does somethng interesting - it tosses .bif files in the \data\ subdirectory and then just uses STRING_SET and a .tra to link things. Not sure how it works - flagging it for further research. It looks like it does not add kits to .cres.

 

TDD v1.14 handles this with what looks like the right stuff - sample, in case I am wrong...

  //If Kit-Pack is not installed there'll be no kit set for the following NPCs, but effects will be applied

 //Here we should determine a REAL ID of TROLLSLAYER kit and set it for KAGAIN11.CRE, but only if there's no BGT
 //'coz Kagain will be continous in that case, without a kit
 COPY_EXISTING ~KAGAIN11.CRE~ ~override~
  SET troll_idx=0xffffffff
  INNER_ACTION BEGIN
  COPY_EXISTING ~KITLIST.2DA~  ~override~
	COUNT_2DA_ROWS 9 "rows_cnt"
	FOR( cnt=0; cnt<"%rows_cnt%"; cnt=cnt+1 ) BEGIN
	  READ_2DA_ENTRY cnt 1 9 "kit_name"
	  PATCH_IF( ("%kit_name%" STRING_COMPARE_CASE "Troll")=0 ) BEGIN
		SET troll_idx = cnt
	  END
	END
  END
  PATCH_IF( troll_idx>=0 ) BEGIN
 WRITE_LONG 0x244 ((0x4000 | troll_idx) * 0x10000)
  END
 BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

 

Most other folks are using things like

READ_LONG 0x244 "current_kit_value"

WRITE_LONG 0x244 0x40010000

 

WRITE_LONG 0x244 128 //Kit

which looks right.

 

but for recheck, this is the list prior to individually recjhecking each one:

 

<<snip of obsolete data>>

 

Removed Refinements, 580 and 582 seem to be unused in kit manipulation.

 

I am a little suprised... I was expecting more. Plenty of ADD_KIT calls, but few assignments of the kit to .cres this way.

 

Going in for a second pass to check and begin reporting.

 

(reminder to self - add in some more kit responses to my own stuff, but forget getting every kit - you were not kidding when you said hundreds. Yarpen + SixOfSpades + DR plus Sword & Fist will be more than enough extra to make it impossible to actually complete. I started looking at TDD, then PPK, then rttkit, and then looked at the list of other mods that add 1, 2, or more kits.... heh.)

[the bigg]

Looks like a decent number of mods that need fixing. Good luck sending contributions to Improved Anvil or NeJ, though

 

(580 and 282 are decimal for 0x244 and 0x246 - in case some modder decided to be a smartass).

 

Can you upload that pile o' *.tp* somewhere? I have another test to run (to check for DECOMPILE_* not followed by a COMPILE_* and vice versa), but it's more complex than grepping through a hundred files.

[cmorgan]

Sure thing - I'll build it this afternoon and upload. To create/check this, I just did a filtered regexp search for your requested targets in NotePad++ (*.tp2;*.tpa;*.tpp) on the unpacked mods themselves. You want just a single folder of all *.tp2;*.tpa;*.tpp, right?

[the bigg]

That would be sufficient, yes (although you should also search for *.tph and *.tp). Of course, you should double check that both files are preserved if a collision is found (E.G. if mymod/file.tpa and othermod/file.tpa both exist, I want a copy of both).

[cmorgan]

Cool - and I had better triple-check and rerun that search and make sure I covered *.tph and *.tp - I know I did not include *.tp

 

You don't care about installable, so I can rename mod1/mytpa.tpa mod2/mytpa.tpa to mytpa_mod1.tpa and mytpa_mod2.tpa, right?

[the bigg]

Yes. I doubt you'll find any *.tp file (they were used by like WeiDU 10 and then moved to *.tp2 because of "compatibility concerns"), but I know some mods use *.tph, and you didn't mention them in the post above.