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Grammarsalad

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Regarding travelling to and from Icewind Dale. I think I've found a way to make it both convenient and believable. I think it will be hard to come up with something better than the proposed idea of travelling to IWD for the first time via boat (it's just very convenient considering the plot for it is already there in the beginning of IWD2). Than how exactly we come back to old areas? Well, by boat of course. But there is no need to speak with anyone or anything like that. You click on one of the BG areas on worldmap and than there is let's say 33% chance for "random" encounter on the way. The area of this random encounter is a ship:

 

j6yL6FQ.jpg

 

This is how player knows that going to and from Icewind Dale always takes place by boat, so the "suspension of disbelieve" is preserved even though the travel takes just about a week or two, without changing anything in a way we are travelling via worldmap. It's just an eye candy to make such travel times believable.

 

Anyone interested in removing githyanki ship from AR1607.TIS? Here is how the area looks with it:

 

 

arvnkI6.png

 

btw. IWD-in-EET will have random encounters in normal travelling between IWD areas too (for some reason there were none in vanilla games). Take a look at WhiteAgnus' WIP:

 

 

2. Getting a clue from someone in Ulgoth's Beard or somewhere else is fine - if some mod requires some delay to evolve a plot, this may still be done, e.g. by the need of some artifact from the Sword Coast that allows you further action in IWD plot (you get some initial part of IWD but to advance beyond a specific point you need to have something that you only find in the main plot at some point).

sounds like a good idea. IWD-in-EET is meant to be treated like vanilla content, so feel free to adjust it hoever you wish with Sandrah mod.

I have done the ship with the githyanki part removed already for my RtF mod, including the concept to travel between far apart maps by ship (if you have enough money) and also having random encounters on the way.

In RtF this was sometimes a workaround since the BGT worldmap required some *tricks* to travel between maps of different game parts (something no longer necessary in EET)

 

 

Would you be ok for us to use it natively in IWD-in-EET than? If you don't mind please let me know the name of the ARE/WED/TIS files in RtF, so I can check if the graphic resources can be implemented as it is or needs some additional tweaking for this purpose.

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Hmm, using the ship travel screen everytime is not a good idea, I think... :p

 

Here is some screen how small this area is: NID4X4A_1.png

 

 

If someone is lurking for other resources from the demo, I think I found all of them (some was not extractable, because they was hardcoded in the exe... :()

the image doesn't work for me. Please host it somewhere else. Or even better upload everything you unbiffed from that awesome demo and post here, so we could view it in NI :p

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Have the time restraints for the BG2 strongholds been addressed in terms of travel times from IWD/IWDII? I seem to recall that I would have lost my stronghold (Ranger) one occasion after being summoned there for one of the quests because I was in Watcher's Keep and the travel time was simply too long for me to get there in the allotted amount of time. I ended up having to CLUA myself there so I wouldn't lose my stronghold. Now consider being more than a week away (even by boat), and it may be impossible to maintain certain strongholds.

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Have the time restraints for the BG2 strongholds been addressed in terms of travel times from IWD/IWDII? I seem to recall that I would have lost my stronghold (Ranger) one occasion after being summoned there for one of the quests because I was in Watcher's Keep and the travel time was simply too long for me to get there in the allotted amount of time. I ended up having to CLUA myself there so I wouldn't lose my stronghold. Now consider being more than a week away (even by boat), and it may be impossible to maintain certain strongholds.

Well, if the timer starts when you are summoned, and not when you are away without ever receiving a note that you are needed... you shouldn't loose the hold. Or even be too far away from them to get back.

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Hmm, using the ship travel screen everytime is not a good idea, I think... :p

 

Here is some screen how small this area is:

 

 

If someone is lurking for other resources from the demo, I think I found all of them (some was not extractable, because they was hardcoded in the exe... :()

Or even better upload everything you unbiffed from that awesome demo and post here, so we could view it in NI :p

You may find some interesting info at Alpha Baldur's Gate Builds, Any Exist?

 

At any rate, I extracted everything as thoroughly as I could. Here is a download: Baldrnid-.rar

A while back, I started comparing the files from the NID from ToSC to see what may have/have not changed, but I never finished...

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Thanks Sam, that's interesting. I've checked the ship map and it's indeed tiny:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35433122/demo.bmp

From what I see all areas from the demo are presented in a single TIS, so it's not usable as it is. WED file would need to be trimmed, BMP files related to it seems to be missing. Water would probably need to be converted. Not sure if it's worth the effort, but if someone manages to convert it into proper area than it could be used as a random encounter in this mod.

 

edit: HT / LM / SR bmp files are there in the package, so a little less work if someone would be interested in making this area usable.

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The timer question is a good one. Some quest charakters (e.g. messengers) are spawned by the NPC's script no matter the area (only restrictions like no dungeon, e.g. Anomen). Or the NPC states a wish to go some place in some amount of time (e.g. Keldorn). If the quest timer then ticks in a far away area, the original NPCs' quests could lead to very unhappy and leaving NPCs.

I fear, for not having to adjust all original BG content (especially quest timers) and for not breaking many (NPC) mods, it might be easier to realize a quick possibility to travel back to where the player started. (Or does it make sense to add area checks to exclude IWD areas? Still, the problem with mod NPCs remains.)

 

I am highly excited by the whole project, bzw. Really looking foreward to playing this!

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Have the time restraints for the BG2 strongholds been addressed in terms of travel times from IWD/IWDII? I seem to recall that I would have lost my stronghold (Ranger) one occasion after being summoned there for one of the quests because I was in Watcher's Keep and the travel time was simply too long for me to get there in the allotted amount of time. I ended up having to CLUA myself there so I wouldn't lose my stronghold. Now consider being more than a week away (even by boat), and it may be impossible to maintain certain strongholds.

 

 

 

Have the time restraints for the BG2 strongholds been addressed in terms of travel times from IWD/IWDII? I seem to recall that I would have lost my stronghold (Ranger) one occasion after being summoned there for one of the quests because I was in Watcher's Keep and the travel time was simply too long for me to get there in the allotted amount of time. I ended up having to CLUA myself there so I wouldn't lose my stronghold. Now consider being more than a week away (even by boat), and it may be impossible to maintain certain strongholds.

Well, if the timer starts when you are summoned, and not when you are away without ever receiving a note that you are needed... you shouldn't loose the hold. Or even be too far away from them to get back.

 

The timed quest issue has existed for a long time already with a number of mods that take you from the main game area for significant time (like Hlondeth quests, Soubar, all of NEJ). Except for the strongholds, all of these are triggered/installed by mods. There are different solutions possible, but the problem is much related to the earlier discussion - if you do not want the IWD travel to be at a specific point in the game (like Underdark, where all timers like these are stopped) which you can control with a Global that inhibits messengers/summoners to appear while in IWD, you leave the issue open to the individual modder and/oe player himself.

For my own mod, I will simply install such a Global ("WeAreinIWD","Global",1) to disable issues, I have done this for other parts ot the game in a similar way already.

PS - the Global is set when entering one of the master areas in the extension and re-set to 0 when returning to a key area of the main game. Maybe there could just be one such global for IWD and all mods that require it may make use of it, instead of every mod inventing its own technique?

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For my own mod, I will simply install such a Global ("WeAreinIWD","Global",1) to disable issues, I have done this for other parts ot the game in a similar way already.

 

I think it's better to just use:

AreaType(IWDAREA)

or

!AreaType(IWDAREA)

all IWD-in-EET areas have this flag, so you don't have to worry about changing variables while leaving IWD content.

btw. BG1 areas in EET also sets similar area type flag: BG1AREA. I'm recommending mods that adds areas to BG1 portion of the game to set it like this in new ARE files:

    PATCH_IF GAME_IS ~eet~ BEGIN
        SET BG1AREA = IDS_OF_SYMBOL (~areatype~ ~BG1AREA~)
        WRITE_SHORT 0x48 THIS | (1 << BG1AREA)
    END

Jestey, we will patch vanilla content. It's easy to find such instances by simply searching for something like !AreaCheck("AR1100") in Near Infinity or some other trigger that is used in such blocks. For now I've found blocks that needs additional filtering in following BCS files: ANOMEN, JAHEIRA, JAN, KORGAN, MINSC. Technically we could use something like

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~.+\.BCS~ ~override~
  DECOMPILE_AND_PATCH BEGIN
    REPLACE_TEXTUALLY ~!AreaCheck("AR1100")~ ~!AreaType(IWDAREA)
!AreaCheck("AR1100")~
  END
BUT_ONLY

and cover all mods installed before IWD-in-EET that uses similar code as vanilla content, but not sure how that would be received by modders - some may be not happy that external mod modifies their code, so probably not worth it.

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For my own mod, I will simply install such a Global ("WeAreinIWD","Global",1) to disable issues, I have done this for other parts ot the game in a similar way already.

 

I think it's better to just use:

AreaType(IWDAREA)

or

!AreaType(IWDAREA)

all IWD-in-EET areas have this flag, so you don't have to worry about changing variables while leaving IWD content.

btw. BG1 areas in EET also sets similar area type flag: BG1AREA. I'm recommending mods that adds areas to BG1 portion of the game to set it like this:

    PATCH_IF GAME_IS ~eet~ BEGIN
        WRITE_SHORT 0x48 THIS | (1 << BG1AREA)
    END

Jestey, we will patch vanilla content. It's easy to find such instances by simply searching for something like !AreaCheck("AR1100") in Near Infinity or some other trigger that is used in such blocks. For now I've found blocks that needs additional filtering in following BCS files: ANOMEN, JAHEIRA, JAN, KORGAN, MINSC. Technically we could use something like

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~.+\.BCS~ ~override~
  DECOMPILE_AND_PATCH BEGIN
    REPLACE_TEXTUALLY ~!AreaCheck("AR1100")~ ~!AreaType(IWDAREA)
!AreaCheck("AR1100")~
  END
BUT_ONLY

and cover all mods installed before IWD-in-EET that uses similar code as vanilla content, but not sure how that would be received by modders - some may be pissed that external mod modifies their code, so probably not worth it.

 

Good to know. I think that

AreaType(IWDAREA)

will solve this and a number of other issues - also in the positive sense of letting specific events only happen when in IWD. Can you just confirm that all IWD and IWD2 areas will have these flags??

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