IR Revised V1.3.800 (2022 January 11th)

[Salk]

Thanks for this update, Bartimaeus.

Now the next one is going to be SRR... 

[Bartimaeus]

9 hours ago, Salk said:

Thanks for this update, Bartimaeus.

Now the next one is going to be SRR... 

Y'all do know you can just download the latest repository and it makes no difference whether it's called V1.3.256 vs V1.3.300, right?

[Salk]

16 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Y'all do know you can just download the latest repository and it makes no difference whether it's called V1.3.256 vs V1.3.300, right?

Yes, we do but we like to celebrate. 

[pochesun]

17 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Y'all do know you can just download the latest repository and it makes no difference whether it's called V1.3.256 vs V1.3.300, right?

non-round numbers make me feel uncomfortable.

[ptifab]

Minor bug:  Shield of the Falling Star (SHLD07A.ITM)  the shld07.pro should be on the first spell (shld07.spl) for the aura to take effect (instead of shld07a.spl, wich does only apply the actual effect)

[Bartimaeus]

17 hours ago, ptifab said:

Minor bug:  Shield of the Falling Star (SHLD07A.ITM)  the shld07.pro should be on the first spell (shld07.spl) for the aura to take effect (instead of shld07a.spl, wich does only apply the actual effect)

Can you further explain what you mean? Functionally, the aura seems to work as I want it to, so what's the intent of switching it?

[ptifab]

In game, the effect does not apply the AC bonus on my party with the actual setup. If i switch the projectile SHLD07.PRO from SHLD07A.SPL to SHLD07.SPL, the AC bonus is correctly applied. I dunno why it has to be like this, but it's the only way in my game for this to work correctly. Maybe it's an engine difference between the enhanced editions and the base games ?

Edited March 30, 2021 by ptifab

[Bartimaeus]

I went ahead and installed a brand new copy of BG2:EE, then installed the latest version of IRR without making any changes. The Shield Others effect seems to work perfectly fine - however, I was curious to see if your alternative idea would work as well. Putting the projectile to SHLD07 and removing it from SHLD07A made it no longer work at all for me. So consider me very confused.

Edited March 30, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[ptifab]

I don't have any clues for that. I'll try on a fresh EET install to check that out.

[Salk]

Hello, Bartimaeus!

I need to do some testing so I thought I would go again for a full BGT install after many months. I looked at my Installation Order file and I checked in here to confirm nothing changed but it seems quite much did in this respect.

In my file I have:

- SRR All Components

- IRR Main Component

- 1PP (with your changes)

- Infinity Animation

- IRR All Other Components

And of course a slew of other modifications that would go in between (including a couple of my own customizations). But just to give an idea: the Unfinished Business 1 & 2 and Quest Pack would be installed after Infinity Animation and AI/Tweaks modification would be installed before IRR All Other Components.

But now I read that your recommended installation order overturns this completely. What prompted this change?

I am also uncertain what position a mod like Refinements should have. In my notes, it is installed after SCS and Rogue Rebalancing. Another question I have is about your 1PP fixes. Are they still needed for 1PP v4.2.0 or have they been integrated?

As a side note several years ago Wisp suggested an install order of SCS -> RR -> Atweaks to resolve a compatibility issue with these three modifications together but it can as well be that newer version of SCS no longer requires that.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Salk

[Bartimaeus]

On 4/17/2021 at 12:46 PM, Salk said:

Hello, Bartimaeus!

I need to do some testing so I thought I would go again for a full BGT install after many months. I looked at my Installation Order file and I checked in here to confirm nothing changed but it seems quite much did in this respect.

In my file I have:

- SRR All Components

- IRR Main Component

- 1PP (with your changes)

- Infinity Animation

- IRR All Other Components

And of course a slew of other modifications that would go in between (including a couple of my own customizations). But just to give an idea: the Unfinished Business 1 & 2 and Quest Pack would be installed after Infinity Animation and AI/Tweaks modification would be installed before IRR All Other Components.

but now I read that your recommended installation order overturns this completely. What prompted this change?

I am also uncertain what position a mod like Refinements should have. In my notes, it is installed after SCS and Rogue Rebalancing. Another question I have is about your 1PP fixes. Are they still needed for 1PP v4.2.0 or have they been integrated?

As a side note several years ago Wisp suggested an install order of SCS -> RR -> Atweaks to resolve a compatibility issue with these three modifications together but it can as well be that newer version of SCS no longer requires that.

For the life of me, I cannot remember what exactly...oh, yes, right!

Okay, I think the main thing that set all of this off was because 1pp officially updated and rejected some of my fixes (or at least what I would've considered fixes), and almost categorically rejected all of my changes (i.e. the more subjective things I did...which was actually quite a lot, probably a hundred-plus changes, a lot of them color fixes for stuff that seemed plainly wrong to me). Additionally, the entire mod was completely more or less remade from the ground up, so the question was - was I going to remake my unofficial "1pp fixes" update from scratch for the new mod structure to just create yet another unofficial abomination like IRR and SRR...OR was I going to do it properly and include all of the patching that I needed inside of IRR/SRR instead? I decided to go with the latter, especially because it would make everything less troublesome for people trying to install these mods for ToBEx games (that, and and almost literally everybody understandably hates it when I make my unofficial 'revisions' that simply straight up replace files from the official mod - trying to minimize when and where I do that from now on, ). Note that I did this in such a way that it should react to the exact 1pp components you install, which I felt was important in case there's anything in 1pp that somebody finds truly transgressive. Additionally, you may or may not remember me tagging you to note this, but I even included an option to change all BG2-style shields to BG1-style shields inside IRR's setting.ini (where possible - there are a very few unique BG2 shields that simply do not have any appropriate BG1-style icons to be able to do them, but I figured this was acceptable for just a few unique shields - let me know if you use this component and see anything wrong, I feel like I tested everything pretty thoroughly, but...).

No, you do not need my 1pp fixes anymore - they're deprecated in favor of being integrated directly into IRR/SRR where appropriate.

So that's what set off the 1pp installation order change. But as you may have noticed, I also made it so that IRR and SRR are reversed from how they were installed previously as well (instead, they now match the officially suggested IR/SR installation order) - this happened at the same time as it was a change I had planned for a while but was waiting for the whole 1pp thing to settle before I could truly figure out how I wanted to do everything (as the 1pp update was announced years ago...but only came out fairly recently - it had been a long time coming!). The reason that happened is, well...quite honestly, it's the way it should've been done, because there's a much larger quantity of stuff in SR (that are also much more important) that I was kind of hackily handling to be retroactively applied when you installed IRR after SRR, like the petrification stuff, the dispelling stuff, the AoE SD stuff, SR -> IR spell abilities, etc. So now all of that is handled way better with way less silliness and room for potential errors/oversights, and the very few things that need to be set in the event of an IRR + SRR installation are instead set when you install SRR after IRR. One reason I originally did it the other way around was because I could not actually figure out how to do some of the IR -> SR consistency fixes that I wanted to apply...but that's no longer the case, with a little help from Mike and Subtledoctor. The end result is that things should be the same for the end user...but things have been handled in a more safe and sane way with less unofficial additional stuff. The trade-off, of course, is that you do you have to change your installation order, .

To be honest, if it were me making IR/SR, I would've split all but the main components of both off into separate .exe/.tp2s, just because I really hate having to split up installations of mods in the way that is recommended (e.g. main components of IR/SR before the main component of Infinity Animations relatively early into the entire mod install, then install almost everything else in your mod installation base...then install the additional components of all three waaaaay later - this is really silly and I don't like it, but it's the only way to make sure that the global changes of these mods apply to everything correctly). But that's not up to me and it's kind of a ship long since sailed, . As for atweaks/RR/SCS...I still install all three, and I'm actually not entirely sure what the problem is supposed to be between all them - but that might just be my own ignorance, :shrug:.

If it helps you at all, you can review my (admittedly pretty minimalist) weidu.log for guidance: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/5dm1tg4rw3wmi4b/WeiDU.log

Unfortunately, I do not use Refinements and I don't...remember much of what it does since it was never something I was interested in - most likely, what you did before would be fine. Regardless, your judgement is better than mine in this case. Let me know if you need anything else.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Salk]

Hello again, my friend.

Now it all makes sense, of course. Thanks for the very detailed explanation about it all. I am sorry that your 1PP changes were rejected. Probably the maintainer (Gwendolyne, I think) thought the main priority was to preserve the body of the original modification without straying off from Erephine's vision of it. The only thing that I might find really weird is that some of your changes were plain fixes and I didn't see a single reason for not wanting them. The new 1PP structure that requires changes to the .ini is not something I am very fond of at all. This of course applies to other mods as well, including IRR. I understand its practicality but I'd rather make things happen at WeiDU install time every time it is possible.

I am also not fond (like you) of having to install the main component of some modification first and then the rest later. But considering some of my own customizations (perhaps you remember Salk's Tweaks - I need to install some stuff in there not at 2 different times but 4! ).

I hope you have had a nice and restorative weekend and thanks again for all the work you have done for us.

 

[Bartimaeus]

6 hours ago, Salk said:

Now it all makes sense, of course. Thanks for the very detailed explanation about it all. I am sorry that your 1PP changes were rejected. Probably the maintainer (Gwendolyne, I think) thought the main priority was to preserve the body of the original modification without straying off from Erephine's vision of it. The only thing that I might find really weird is that some of your changes were plain fixes and I didn't see a single reason for not wanting them. The new 1PP structure that requires changes to the .ini is not something I am very fond of at all. This of course applies to other mods as well, including IRR. I understand its practicality but I'd rather make things happen at WeiDU install time every time it is possible.

Yeah, it's fine, really - all of my changes/fixes are just in these mods instead, which is how it should've been to begin with, .

I dislike the .ini system myself. I've always wanted to just introduce more components, but because these aren't my mods and a lot of people use auto-installs, my hands are kind of tied - if I were to start separating stuff like SR's revised saving throws or its global petrification changes off into their own components, then anyone trying to install SRR via an auto-installer is never going to be able to install that component, since it wouldn't be known to the auto-installer (which will only know the official set of components). So...sadly can't do much about it.

(e): Also, I've made a slight edit to the suggested install order in the original post - the secondary components of SR should actually be installed before SCS. I've already been doing it for forever, but for some reason I overlooked it when I was writing that order.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[AL|EN]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I've always wanted to just introduce more components, but because these aren't my mods and a lot of people use auto-installs, my hands are kind of tied - if I were to start separating stuff like SR's revised saving throws or its global petrification changes off into their own components, then anyone trying to install SRR via an auto-installer is never going to be able to install that component, since it wouldn't be known to the auto-installer (which will only know the official set of components). So...sadly can't do much about it.

Nope, you repository contain your own version of tp2 file so you can do whatever you want. Trust me.

[Salk]

Hello again, Bartimaeus!

I have one more question about the installation order. You have Infinity Animation to be installed after 1PP. What version are you considering here? The readme file of the version I have (upcoming version 6) explicitly says that Infinity Animations should be installed before 1PP. 

Is there a particular reason why you recommend differently?

Thanks!

Edited April 20, 2021 by Salk