Is a newer version than v8 in progress?

[Erg]

 

Actually, it's optional in just the same way. If you want to play IWD-in-BG2, here's the process:

1) Install IWD

2) Install BG2 and run the IWD-in-BG2 converter.

3) If you want to play IWD-in-BG2, run the converted game. If you'd rather play vanilla IWD, run that instead. (Installing IWD-in-BG2 doesn't touch your IWD install.)

 

If you want to play IWDEE, here's the process:

1) Install IWD

2) Install IWDEE.

3) If you want to play IWDEE, run that. If you'd rather play vanilla IWD, run that instead. (Installing IWDEE doesn't touch your IWD install.)

 

In other words, neither IWD-in-BG2 nor IWDEE provide you with a copy of vanilla IWD, and neither IWD-in-BG2 nor IWDEE prevent you from acquiring a copy of vanilla IWD and playing it.

 

I would agree with the above if IWDEE were just IWD + an enhanced version of IWD-in-BG2. Unfortunately, if BG:EE is any indication, IWD:EE will include also a lot of other stuff that I don't want. Yes, in theory I could mod that stuff out, but it would be very time consuming and unnecessary as "IWD" + "IWD-in-BG2" + "other selected exiting mods" already do what I want.

 

To reiterate, it would be a pity if this mod were to be discontinued just because IWD:EE exists.

[egbert]

One difference: IwD_in_BG2 exists, IWDEE does not.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I would agree with the above if IWDEE were just IWD + an enhanced version of IWD-in-BG2.

This makes no mathematical sense. Well, if we take you meant: BGEE + an enhanced version of IWD-in-BG2 then it could, or IWD and BGEE engine... but as it is, no. By the by, you can make them on your own, yeah, you can't take money out of it cause of reasons*, but you can still do it, if you think that you can make it better. Yes, this is the reason why they do it, they think they can make money out of it.

 

One difference: IwD_in_BG2 exists, IWDEE does not.

Erhm, well depends... where does the concept of existing start and the concept of an idea stop ?

There's an alpha version somewhere I am sure of, DavidW telling us of having made a part of one. Yeah, it might still lack a few features, but hello that's what the alpha's, beta's and delta's are for.

 

*well, by literally selling the end product, you can take donations...

 

Nevertheless I hope that the overall meaning of my post is understandable enough

Well, these edits hopefully reflect that.

[Erg]

 

I would agree with the above if IWDEE were just IWD + an enhanced version of IWD-in-BG2.

This makes no mathematical sense.

 

Agreed

 

Nevertheless I hope that the overall meaning of my post is understandable enough

[egbert]

Very wrong: Everyone can test (and play) IWDinBG2, IWDEE is just a rouse...

 

... and btw: People paid for a finished BG1:EE. What they got was buggier than the first release of BG1! I would pay for good work, but not for beta-testing!

 

 

If the authors of IWDinBG2 would sell a final version ("all known bugs removed") for p.e. $10 for beta-testers, I would buy.

[Jarno Mikkola]

... but not for beta-testing!

Where is the consistency in your mind ? First you tell us that you want the IWDEE NOW, and then don't like to pay for beta testing ...

This is WHY they put the so called "when it's ready" to the contract...

 

Very wrong: Everyone can test (and play) IWDinBG2, IWDEE is just a rouse...

And how well does it play the TotLM portion of the game ? Just guessing here, but the lack of the dialog might be a bit of a problem. Also the hacky way the smoke animations are made could lag a computer with low standards even today. Unlike the original or the ...EE will.

Ruse you tell, yeah, people usually just put money up for no reason.

[CamDawg]

Any idea when IWDEE will be available?

I know, yes, and I suspect it'll be sooner than a lot of people think. Some of the devs will be having a playthrough on Saturday on Twitch, so that should give you a pretty good idea of where we are.

 

Lack of time, but also lack of interest. IWD-in-BG2 doesn't (in my judgement) provide anything that isn't done better in IWDEE. (Indeed, IWDEE is pretty much what IWD-in-BG2 would be if I'd been able to meddle with the source code.)

Yes. IWDEE fulfills pretty much all of the design goals I had hoped to accomplish with IWD-in-BG2, and in a much more robust, thorough, and stable fashion. It's amazing how much a small army of testers and QA helps.

 

... and btw: People paid for a finished BG1:EE. What they got was buggier than the first release of BG1! I would pay for good work, but not for beta-testing!

The initial BGEE and BGIIEE release were rough, to say the least, and this is entirely fair criticism. BD learned a lot from the mistakes and some of the external factors have been addressed, so while not perfect I think we've come a long way. Both the IWDEE beta and BGEE 1.3 patch have been well-received, even if they haven't been as prompt as players would have liked.

 

But talk is cheap. Beamdog will earn back that reputation, or not, with future work.

 

Where is the consistency in your mind ? First you tell us that you want the IWDEE NOW, and then don't like to pay for beta testing ...

This is WHY they put the so called "when it's ready" to the contract...

While both free mods and commercial products strive to be bug-free, it's entirely reasonable (expected, really) to have higher expectations from the latter.

[DavidW]

Unfortunately, if BG:EE is any indication, IWD:EE will include also a lot of other stuff that I don't want. Yes, in theory I could mod that stuff out, but it would be very time consuming and unnecessary as "IWD" + "IWD-in-BG2" + "other selected exiting mods" already do what I want.

All I can say is that I'm perfectly happy with everything in IWDEE, so if you don't like it, you probably can't trust my judgement about what should go in IWD-in-BG2! (IWD-in-BG2 includes the option not to use BG2 spells, but that's a trivial mod to write - orders of magnitude less work than fixing the remaining bugs in IWD-in-BG2, and even then there are lots of unfixable limitations.

 

One difference: IwD_in_BG2 exists, IWDEE does not.

Perfectly fair point, but it's likely to be released a long time before I would have ever got around to fixing residual critical bugs in IWD-in-BG2! If it's not out by next summer, bug me for an IWD-in-BG2 bugfix.

 

If the authors of IWDinBG2 would sell a final version ("all known bugs removed") for p.e. $10 for beta-testers, I would buy.

That's probably not legal. But anyway, IWDEE costs $20 and you don't need to acquire IWD and BG2 first. (I should stress that I'm not getting paid here, so I don't have a financial interest.)

[Erg]

DavidW and/or CamDawg, could you please consider at least releasing the more up to date sourcecode for this mod? If I'm not mistaken, it is available only the sourcecode for v7.

 

If you do, maybe some other modder will be able to update, with your permission, this mod (at least to fix some of the most annoying bugs).

[Promilus]

Can't persuade anyone to push this mod further if you're not interested in it anymore but I'd have regrets if I didn't point out something. Long time ago guy name Bardez made some extremely complex mega mod named Baldur's Gate Trilogy. It was non-weidu version and (IIRC) basically was a big chunk of BG1 game translated to BG2 versions (areas, items and so on) inside installer. It actually might be found as illegal and since it was incompatible with anything else (except of special BP which consisted TDD, SoS and some other mega mods) it didn't lived long. But some time later Ascension64 started his weidu-ification of BGT. I joined that project after brief but enjoyable BG1Tutu game run. It was 0.94 at that time or something like that. Game crashed on simple encounters and some side quests didn't even kick in as they supposed to. List of bugs was way longer than what you have in IWDinBG2 v8 atm! And he managed to get that mod going even despite some ppl saying "hey, are u crazy! leave that old junk, we already have Tutu and it works, no need to support some useless BGT-Weidu by our mods". Some time later BGT-Weidu rose up to be core of a new mega modification which gathers plenty of mods into one, big, unique game. It did end up on DVD release of BG Saga here in Poland. So something unexpected, unwelcomed by community could've turn into desirable, main mod. If you have no time dealing with those problems left in v8 I just hope someone else shows up to "carry the torch". Despite of IWD:EE showing up it would be a shame to leave such a masterpiece behind. And yes - I mean it. For many, many years modders were saying it is insanely tough job to convert IWD to BG2 version of IE. And yet you did! So maybe I am kinda naive but I'd rather enjoy IWDinBG2 v9 and play it to tribute your hard work done so far...

Cheers

[DavidW]

I didn't leave it behind. I updated its code base and donated it to Beamdog. I'm fairly confident IWDEE wouldn't have happened (or at any rate wouldn't have happened anything like so swiftly) without IWD-in-BG2, so I'm very happy that my work isn't being wasted.

[Erg]

I didn't leave it behind. I updated its code base and donated it to Beamdog. I'm fairly confident IWDEE wouldn't have happened (or at any rate wouldn't have happened anything like so swiftly) without IWD-in-BG2, so I'm very happy that my work isn't being wasted.

 

Does Beamdog have exclusive rights on the sourcecode? Unless it has, you could still release it (at least the last version compatible with the original games) also to the community. I don't see why they should be considered mutually exclusive. We can still have both IWD:EE and IWD-in-BG2 (maintained by someone else, if you don't want to work on it anymore).

 

Edit:

I have a last question. In case you can't or simply don't want to release the latest sourcecode, is it possible for other modders to release their own modified version based on the publicly available sourcecode v7 ?

[CamDawg]

Can't persuade anyone to push this mod further if you're not interested in it anymore but I'd have regrets if I didn't point out something. Long time ago guy name Bardez made some extremely complex mega mod named Baldur's Gate Trilogy. It was non-weidu version and (IIRC) basically was a big chunk of BG1 game translated to BG2 versions (areas, items and so on) inside installer. It actually might be found as illegal and since it was incompatible with anything else (except of special BP which consisted TDD, SoS and some other mega mods) it didn't lived long. But some time later Ascension64 started his weidu-ification of BGT. I joined that project after brief but enjoyable BG1Tutu game run. It was 0.94 at that time or something like that. Game crashed on simple encounters and some side quests didn't even kick in as they supposed to. List of bugs was way longer than what you have in IWDinBG2 v8 atm! And he managed to get that mod going even despite some ppl saying "hey, are u crazy! leave that old junk, we already have Tutu and it works, no need to support some useless BGT-Weidu by our mods". Some time later BGT-Weidu rose up to be core of a new mega modification which gathers plenty of mods into one, big, unique game. It did end up on DVD release of BG Saga here in Poland. So something unexpected, unwelcomed by community could've turn into desirable, main mod. If you have no time dealing with those problems left in v8 I just hope someone else shows up to "carry the torch". Despite of IWD:EE showing up it would be a shame to leave such a masterpiece behind. And yes - I mean it. For many, many years modders were saying it is insanely tough job to convert IWD to BG2 version of IE. And yet you did! So maybe I am kinda naive but I'd rather enjoy IWDinBG2 v9 and play it to tribute your hard work done so far...

Cheers

Bardez's original BGT was definitely illegal, as it was just a 5 GB distro hosted on his home server. It had no BG checks since it was just meant to be dumped into a BG2 game's override. It wasn't until some young buck* decided he could trim that to a lean 650 MB (it fit on a CD!) with some batch scripts and WeiDU installer that it started to approach legality, as that crude installer pulled assets from an existing BG install. That young buck got drafted into the then-secret Tutu project, and many years later a much smarter, much more talented group turned that gigantic BGT mess into the BGT-WeiDU we have today.

 

Does Beamdog have exclusive rights on the sourcecode? Unless it has, you could still release it (at least the last version compatible with the original games) also to the community. I don't see why they should be considered mutually exclusive. We can still have both IWD:EE and IWD-in-BG2 (maintained by someone else, if you don't want to work on it anymore).

It's not a matter of rights, it's really more that the updates aren't relevant to IWD-in-BG2. The updates were made specifically for the IWDEE project, so it does stuff that really would not work in IWD-in-BG2. E.g. it starts with the IWD tlk and adds BG2 strings instead of the other way around. A lot of the opcode mapping was updated to use some new EE opcodes, as were scripting actions/triggers and other conversion routines.

 

I'd be more than supportive if someone wants to take on IWD-in-BG2, though there's really no 'source' to be had. Both the main package and post-install fixpack are all some flavor of text, be it WeiDU tp2, DOS batch scripting, and maybe some of David's SSL. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out a couple of flaws with the BGT/Tutu comparison, though. The functionality that made BG run was either included outright or superseded by BG2 engine features (on a Venn diagram, you'd get concentric circles). This is not true between IWD and BG2--there's no code to make Mold Touch work, for example, and the more exotic projectiles like Wall of Moonlight can't really be simulated well (or at all). This is the type of thing that David is talking about when he says we'd need source access to really make IWD-in-BG2 work. Hammering out all of the bugs in IWD-in-BG2 would make for a fun game that's very close to a modernized IWD, but it still won't get you Seven Eyes.

 

If you have no interest in IWDEE, fair enough. I don't want to speak for David, though I think his thoughts are in line with mine. It's really a matter of being spread really, really thin, and working on a project that already has a successful and working (and IMO superior) analogue is going to be well down my priority list.

 

 

*The young buck was me

 

[egbert]

My conclusion:

 

Both authors of IWDinBG2 will not continue their work, because they think the coming IWD:EE will be much better.

At least one of them will overthink the decision, if there is no IWD:EE next summer.

 

That's without any doubt their right and I will not discuss that.

 

But the decision should be published in the G3-News.

(It's very frustrating to test a program, send bug reports, and hear about the abandoning after.)

 

-----

 

After testing IwDinBG2, and following the discussion here my decision is clear:

 

- After the BG1:EE disaster I have no trust in Beamdog. Means: I will not buy IWD:EE in the near future.

- I never wanted an BG2-IwD (but an IwD with a better UI and more classes).

- I like IwD and will play it (with some mods) furthermore.

[Promilus]

Well I tried at least to fix TotLM dialogues some time ago but just couldn't get it working. Using DLTCEP I exported dialogue to .d file from vanilla IWD, then imported to IWDinBG2 only to... still have blank dialogue screen :/ duh All conditions, cutscenes etc works as they should but there's no text at all. Maybe I missed something along the way. As I said before I have basic scripting understanding and I know how to operate DLTCEP (but not exactly weidu expert) so with some help I just *might* be able to continue bug fixing but I don't want to do anything behind your backs guys.