Progress

[K4thos]

Quick summary how things are. I've been burned out of IE modding for quite some time (I'm actually shocked checking my last post date), so I'm afraid there was not much progress made. The mod is still in a state that it somewhat playable and yet still far from something that could be released.

- IWD:EE content - on-the-fly conversion code is very similar to EET, so should be very playable, although the testing has been done only on surface level and the codebase has not been updated to latest patch yet. Awesome vanilla NPC banters by @AWizardDidIt are implemented (although not tested).

- IWD2 content - ongoing testing of story content, finding bugs and improving conversion code based on those tests. Rise and repeat over and over. This one still require massive amount of work before being ready for release and is what led to my recent hiatus. On the other hand experimenting with EEex, porting 3E rules and gameplay systems is a lot of fun Dialogue side of things has been started by @Grimo but only Targos was covered as far as I remember.

There have been some good points raised in the comments and interesting alternatives surfaced, so let's move on to replies.

On 3/5/2021 at 4:35 AM, subtledoctor said:

At this point I’d be much more interested in discrete adventures - add the IWD main quest and HoW to the BG games in precisely the same way Argent77 added TotLM. Put Hjolder in the Druid Grove after Faldorn’s defeat, and let him Wnd Walk me to the North! IWD, HoW, and TotLM can all be separate adventures, no need for them to hang together as one massive campaign. (For that, we can already just play IWDEE.) 

Alas, I’ve glanced at the TotLM-in-BG2EE code, and I can’t make heads or tails of it. 

As for this project, it kind of seems like it got lost in the attempt to convert to a 3E ruleset for IWD2 inclusion. And even there, we also have the separate “IWD2EE” project, so this again seems redundant...

 

On 3/5/2021 at 9:48 PM, Lightbringer said:

@subtledoctor I second, third, and fourth this. It does seem like the project got lost in feature creep. I just want to go explore the North -- I don't need feats, skill checks, or any of the other stuff. Just let me tromp around Dragon's Eye and the Hand of the Seldarine.

With the current state of things this is something I'm now considering for IWD:EE portion of the mod for 2 reasons:

- I'm still not ready to give a release date for the whole mod and yet IWD:EE content is sitting here for a long time now. With some external testing effort and help, preparing a mod out of it seems doable in reasonable time frame.

- patch 2.6 due to migration from 32bit to 64bit executable broke compatibility with EEex to the point that according to @Bubb new version is at least months away (my reading: could be years). So it's either keeping the mod at patch 2.5 (at the expense of BG and IWD1 content and engine improvements), or separating them ,since EEex is crucial part of my IWD2 conversion.

On 4/20/2021 at 9:46 AM, Endarire said:

From what I heard, @tipun was working on converting the IWD games to EET.  There was already a set of mods for non-EE BG2 that added IWD content (The Never-Ending Journey).   @K4thos was doing a different version that required EEex.

I've just checked it and... it's true @tipun has a working betas of both IWD1 and IWD2 content for EET. That's super impressive. While I have not been able to test it yet, from the impressions on Roxanne's forum it sounds legit: http://baldursextendedworld.com/Vanilla_Forums/discussion/comment/12359#Comment_12359

At this turn of events I'm not even sure if it makes sense to continue IWD-in-EET as envisioned or maybe it would be better to collaborate with tipun, share assets, dialogues etc.

The advantage of EET style IWD1 conversion is possibility of automatically bringing over mods installed directly on IWD:EE previous to installing IWD-in-EET (same way as mods can be installed on BG:EE before EET), but realistically there are not that many mods worth porting over this way, so if tipun's implementation is in better shape maybe his mod should be used by players interested in experiencing this story instead of me offering pretty much the same thing? Especially if he would be interested in collaborating with @AWizardDidIt (whose writing effort is core of IWD1 in BG experience, imo - otherwise one could still play clean IWD:EE)

When it comes to IWD2 content I'm pretty sure that our approaches differ enough that there could be a place for both mods - one requiring EEex, being closer to IWD2, offering lots of 3E mechanics. And another as a content adaptation to ad&d rules, using clean BG2:EE engine. So yeah, I'm not ready to give up on this one But I think this version existence pulls away some pressure from me considering there is viable alternative available already.

@tipun, feel free to open a topic about your mods on this subforum or discuss them here, if you would like to share some details about thier content or your future plans with English community.

 

On 6/3/2021 at 9:31 AM, Cahir said:

Did anyone try to contact K4thos, if he plans to continue developing EET or not? I was rather sure he is just waiting for patch 2.6 to happen, but now I'm more and more convinced he is not interested in IE modding anymore. The fix for 2.6.6 is still lingering in the forums and this is rather serious issue to fix directly in the main build 

I'm updating EET for latest patch as we speak. Missed the patch release, sorry.

Edited June 21, 2021 by K4thos

[Jarno Mikkola]

You could you know, release the v2.5 version of the IWDEEinBG2EE or whatever you have, and have who knows who to take on the task to finnish it, you would get the credits of what you have done, and note that it's not finnished yet. See, an aplha is not an alpha if no one can have it. As in, the problem with your absense is that no one has access to the data you have access to. So no one can fix the problems you have faced and so forth even no matter how good or bad they are. And they can't use your files, say like tipun.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Jarno Mikkola

[K4thos]

6 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

You could you know, release the v2.5 version of the IWDEEinBG2EE or whatever you have, and have who knows who to take on the task to finnish it, you would get the credits of what you have done, and note that it's not finnished yet. See, an aplha is not an alpha if no one can have it. As in, the problem with your absense is that no one has access to the data you have access to. So no one can fix the problems you have faced and so forth even no matter how good or bad they are. And they can't use your files, say like tipun.

fair. I'm planning to release IWD:EE portion of the mod on Github soon (on the fly conversion code). Should have done it years ago considering how things went. And I'm perfectly ok with anyone working on it.

The question now is if it makes sense for me to update this codebase to IWD:EE patch 2.6, open a public beta test and actively maintain it, considering alternative in @tipun's work is already available, being tested and actively maintained for quite some time. It would be 2 mods doing pretty much the same thing, competing for the same audience, so not necessarily a time well spent (I could invest it on remaining work needed for IWD2 side of things instead), especially if tipun would be interested in integrating content prepared for IWD-in-EET by various contributors in his mod (at least @AWizardDidIt writing, if he is ok with it).

Personally at the moment I'm leaning more to taking this opportunity to scale down IWD-in-EET mod content significantly, but the other option is also open. Let's wait for some feedback from community and see what are tipun's plans for his IWD mods in the first place (should have contact him via PM first, now that I'm thinking about it)

On 4/25/2021 at 1:11 AM, subtledoctor said:

(...)

Frankly I’m a little annoyed this subforum even exists. Maybe someone would have put effort into IWD-related mod(s) if “IWD-in-EET” was not an announced project. As things stand it’s been discussed for years, with nothing to show for it. 

this take is also fair. With how things went development wise, having whole dedicated subforum for it seems excessive. Archiving it and moving further discussion to single topic within EET section may be a good idea going forward.

Edited June 20, 2021 by K4thos

[Endarire]

@K4thos
Thankee for replying and quoting me!  Alleluia!

I fully agree that resource pooling regarding this mod seems wise.  I'm all for skipping the 3e mechanics if it means we get the IWD1 & 2 adventures in EET.  There are plenty of talented modders that would likely want to work on this prestigious project were it opened to more people.  @argent77, @jastey, @Austin and others may want to join.

[Ser Elryk]

34 minutes ago, Endarire said:

@K4thos
Thankee for replying and quoting me!  Alleluia!

I fully agree that resource pooling regarding this mod seems wise.  I'm all for skipping the 3e mechanics if it means we get the IWD1 & 2 adventures in EET.  There are plenty of talented modders that would likely want to work on this prestigious project were it opened to more people.  @argent77, @jastey, @Austin and others may want to join.

Just speaking as a potential player, I for one am far more interested in having the locations, quests, stories, dialogue, characters interactions, etc. than I care about what the combat is like lol. As long as it's just consistent across the whole experience, then I really don't care at all if it's 3E or not. *Especially* if it means delaying or preventing the other content from coming. That's just how I feel about it though.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Ser Elryk

[Cahir]

First of all, it's great to see you're back, K4thos! Man, I've been waiting for you for ages

1 hour ago, K4thos said:

Personally at the moment I'm leaning more to taking this opportunity to scale down IWD-in-EET mod content significantly, but the other option is also open. Let's wait for some feedback from community and see what are tipun's plans for his IWD mods in the first place (should have contact him via PM first, now that I'm thinking about it)

Second, with the all respect for tipun's work, I do believe that your version will be better integrated with the whole EET (given that you're the author of it), which is my (and many others) current IE gaming platform. Besides, you have put so much work to get this done already, it would be shame to see it wasted. Also, in case you will release it, please do update it to patch 2.6. Honestly, I see no point for not updating the game from 2.5 to 2.6, so it would defeat the purpose if one can play it being on patch 2.5 and could not play it being on patch 2.6. Especially now, after we finished translating SoD, and Polish translation is already included in 2.6, Polish players could experience the whole saga plus IWDEE in one single adventure in Polish.

As for the IWD2, I always treated is as a bonus (contrary to IWD1 content), so I would not mind more delay if it means well-polished experience later. But I do want it to be consistent (mechanically wise) with other games, so 3E mechanics would need to go in this case. And here I see definitely room for IWD2-in-EET and IWD2EE project (developed by semiticgoddes, Olvyn Churu and Bubb). On will be integrated with EET, 2E style adventure, second will be greatly enhanced original experience, for all who prefers 3E over 2E.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Cahir

[Jarno Mikkola]

3 hours ago, K4thos said:

The question now is if it makes sense for me to update this codebase to IWD:EE patch 2.6, open a public beta test and actively maintain it, considering alternative in @tipun's work is already available, being tested and actively maintained for quite some time.

Hmm, I have no idea on your personal time availability, but still... if you look back in time, there are many Total Conversion projects that learned things from other Total Conversion projects.

Say for excample, the BGT-Weidu, it would look nothing like it does without it's direct competitor called BGTutu. ... the relavence in this is that your EET would exist at all without this rivalry, as the EE games wouldn't have been ever released. Nor would any of the functions you likely use in, would exist in WeiDU.

[Nugrud]

There were far more active modders back then.

[Endarire]

@K4thos
With tipun's IWD in EET and this IWD2 Enhanced Edition mod, we seem close to having everything working properly together.  This just requires the proper work to combine stuff and ensure compatibility.

There's also Holic's DnD 3.5 Rules in BG:EE.  It doesn't do a total system change, but approximates certain things to feel more like 3E.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Endarire

[tipun]

Нi, @k4trhos. I just have some plans for going through the IWD. but about how to do it, I'm ready to talk. But only to small changes.

Edited June 21, 2021 by tipun

[oraclex]

oh wow K4thos back. ngl, didnt expect that.

Open sourcing the project would be an awesome idea! joining forces with tipun also sounds like a win - win situation.

 

[Jarno Mikkola]

On 6/20/2021 at 10:53 PM, Endarire said:

@K4thos
With tipun's IWD in EET and this IWD2 Enhanced Edition mod, we seem close to having everything working properly together.  This just requires the proper work to combine stuff and ensure compatibility.

But that's not the idea that K4thos has, but a mod that does all this together in one mod, all coded by K4thos's own code. Well, as a leader.

So it's complete different, similar like BGTutu and BGT were.

[Lightbringer]

I'm with Ser Elryk and a few others. I'm much more interested in locations, quests, etc, than the rulesets. As I said before, I really just want to go stomp around in the Vale of Shadows, Dragon's Eye, and the Shattered Hand with my Bhaalspawn.

Also....
WELCOME BACK K4THOS!!! We missed you, bud.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Ouh, and so K4thos doesn't miss is, the Icewind Dale's Heart of Winter's patch add on, called Trials of the Luremaster is already made into it's own independent mod. So that won't need to be includced in IWDinEET either.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Jarno Mikkola

[AWizardDidIt]

Welcome back @K4thos

Figured you got burned out. It's so easy to happen in modding. I'm working on a big BG1 quest mod and 3/4 of the way through I'm feeling the struggle to get back to it.

When the IWD portion gets to the point where it's playable and needs testing, let me know. I might want to revisit some of my writing for that (it's been ages since I wrote those interjections...) while I also test. I'm also much more experienced in modding so I might be inspired to do some more in depth things like character specific quests in IWD. No promises, but maybe!

Edited June 24, 2021 by AWizardDidIt