SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[Bartimaeus]

12 minutes ago, NdranC said:

Is it just tedious work or technically complicated?

The former at least, but the second to a degree as well. Additionally, I believe Globes' and Deflections' graphics are hardcoded to their effects in at least non-EE games, which makes them...problematic to change for those games. It's possibly more modular in EE games.

Edited July 17, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

Is it just tedious work or technically complicated?

For the sake of knowing how to do it, I took a crack at it. It took an hour, and the result is borderline unusable. Good job, me. Graphical stuff sucks - it's difficult to see how something will turn out until you actually see it in-game, but the process of getting it in-game is the most labor-intensive part, so making small tweaks is a huge amount of work (I'd say it was 15 minutes actually doing the graphical work, 45 minutes putting it all back together, so I'm not terribly interested in trying to fix it, haha).

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/i9g5x069bhcqwel/DAiKegSfM8.mp4

Edited July 17, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[NdranC]

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

For the sake of knowing how to do it, I took a crack at it. It took an hour, and the result is borderline unusable. Good job, me. Graphical stuff sucks - it's difficult to see how something will turn out until you actually see it in-game, but the process of getting it in-game is the most labor-intensive part, so making small tweaks is a huge amount of work (I'd say it was 15 minutes actually doing the graphical work, 45 minutes putting it all back together, so I'm not terribly interested in trying to fix it, haha).

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/i9g5x069bhcqwel/DAiKegSfM8.mp4

I agree, it was too bright. If you are ok with it I wouldn't mind trying my hand at it, but I would require maybe some instruction on what I would need to do. I only have experience with near infinity and photoshop but I suspect you need an outside program to extract the animations into frame by frame pictures?

Obviously no pressure to use them if you end up not liking any of the end results, but for the sake of argument, what do you think the color coding should be? Off the top of my head the only spell effects that would require this treatment are "Minor/Normal Globe of Invulnerability" and then "Minor/Normal/Greater Spell Deflection". Not sure if high level 9 spells have similar effects since I haven't gotten to that part of the game yet. The reason why I picked green of the top of my head was because there is an open space for green compared to other effects, Protection from Missiles is Pink/Purple, Spell Deflection is Bright Blue and Globe is Pale Blue.

My first though would be to leave spell deflection natural blue to be the "mid tier" color or default "normal" one. The Minor version could be the Green one and the Greater version could be Orange/Red/Gold? Maybe deep Purple depending on the hue compared to Protection from Missiles. What do you think?

[ptifab]

14 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

For the sake of knowing how to do it, I took a crack at it. It took an hour, and the result is borderline unusable. Good job, me. Graphical stuff sucks - it's difficult to see how something will turn out until you actually see it in-game, but the process of getting it in-game is the most labor-intensive part, so making small tweaks is a huge amount of work (I'd say it was 15 minutes actually doing the graphical work, 45 minutes putting it all back together, so I'm not terribly interested in trying to fix it, haha).

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/i9g5x069bhcqwel/DAiKegSfM8.mp4

Actually, if you have photoshop you have a time saver called auomatization. It simply record actions for 1 file and repeat it on every files. I used it to edit the colors of the ioun stones effects. You can save a tremendous amount of time depending on the number of files to edit. Check it out, a 5mn less tryout on a greenish color for the minor globe overlay

MINORGLB.BAM

[Bartimaeus]

15 hours ago, ptifab said:

Actually, if you have photoshop you have a time saver called auomatization. It simply record actions for 1 file and repeat it on every files. I used it to edit the colors of the ioun stones effects. You can save a tremendous amount of time depending on the number of files to edit. Check it out, a 5mn less tryout on a greenish color for the minor globe overlay

MINORGLB.BAM 206.86 kB · 0 downloads

I do use AHK to automate some stuff...buuut I never thought of using something that records input and makes it repeatable on the fly. (e): And I see what you mean by Photoshop's Automation. Neat. What tool do you use to change from .bmps to a .bam so quickly?

Edited July 19, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[ptifab]

20 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I do use AHK to automate some stuff...buuut I never thought of using something that records input and makes it repeatable on the fly. (e): And I see what you mean by Photoshop's Automation. Neat. What tool do you use to change from .bmps to a .bam so quickly?

well, i use the enhanced editions, so i don't know for other versions of the tools and engine but, on my side, i just export all the pictures in near infinity as pngs, manually edit them with 'toshop and then import them back via the same BAM editor in NI

Hope i'm clear enough...

Edited July 19, 2020 by ptifab

[NdranC]

I had an opportunity to test Banishment again, I was ambushed by some orcs/ogre mages and one of them summoned 2 wyverns and the other summoned 3 spiders (1 sword spider and 2... I can't remember their name but it's the bright green ones). I casted banishment and only the sword spider died. All of the spiders and wyvern made saves I believe. Again because the way the combat log works it's hard to tell if that what they were saving against but I closely payed attention to both summon groups and only the sword spider died.

Question: is there any way to make the log report which spell/combat protection got dispelled by Secret Word? Really annoying when it comes to ones with no graphical auras like non-detection.

Edited July 19, 2020 by NdranC

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, NdranC said:

I had an opportunity to test Banishment again, I was ambushed by some orcs/ogre mages and one of them summoned 2 wyverns and the other summoned 3 spiders (1 sword spider and 2... I can't remember their name but it's the bright green ones). I casted banishment and only the sword spider died. All of the spiders and wyvern made saves I believe. Again because the way the combat log works it's hard to tell if that what they were saving against but I closely payed attention to both summon groups and only the sword spider died.

Question: is there any way to make the log report which spell/combat protection got dispelled by Secret Word? Really annoying when it comes to ones with no graphical auras like non-detection.

The saving throw text is a bug, but not in the way you might expect, that I recently fixed - essentially, you could cast Banishment on any type of creature, summonable or not, and they would roll a saving throw die. You can test this on any group of random enemies and see that a couple of them will probably display "saved vs. spell" message. Of course, if they're not a summonable, then even if they fail the saving throw, nothing would actually happen - this is what's happening here, those creatures are not marked as summonables. Why that would be...I'm not entirely certain. Possibly an SCS interaction, but if you could provide your weidu.log, that'll make looking into it easier. I'll get back to you on the graphical editing stuff.

@ptifab Okay, thanks, will look into it - I've always used DLTCEP for importing/exporting, but I will admit that is quite difficult, clunky, and outright mystical to use, so I'm hopeful NI is a bit better in that regard.

[ptifab]

27 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Okay, thanks, will look into it - I've always used DLTCEP for importing/exporting, but I will admit that is quite difficult, clunky, and outright mystical to use, so I'm hopeful NI is a bit better in that regard.

Again, i'm working only on EE, so i don't know if .BAM files are different in other versions. But with NI, you have the possibility to extract all frames as .PNGs, so it's a lot less of a hassle from DLTECP yes.

[Bartimaeus]

7 hours ago, ptifab said:

Again, i'm working only on EE, so i don't know if .BAM files are different in other versions. But with NI, you have the possibility to extract all frames as .PNGs, so it's a lot less of a hassle from DLTECP yes.

Okay, I'm poking around in Near Infinity, I found the resource (MINORGLB.bam), and I want to export it in .pngs. I see an export option, but the only two options are for as the "original" bam or as a "decompressed" bam, both of which are still overall .bams. ...Maybe I need to update Near Infinity? (e): Yep, that was it. Okay, so figured that out...and poking around some more, it looks like there's a much more convenient-than-DLTCEP option of adding images to a .bam creator, neat.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

14 hours ago, NdranC said:

I had an opportunity to test Banishment again, I was ambushed by some orcs/ogre mages and one of them summoned 2 wyverns and the other summoned 3 spiders (1 sword spider and 2... I can't remember their name but it's the bright green ones). I casted banishment and only the sword spider died. All of the spiders and wyvern made saves I believe. Again because the way the combat log works it's hard to tell if that what they were saving against but I closely payed attention to both summon groups and only the sword spider died.

Question: is there any way to make the log report which spell/combat protection got dispelled by Secret Word? Really annoying when it comes to ones with no graphical auras like non-detection.

Anti-magics like Secret Word: No, there isn't. I wish there was, that'd be great, but as far as I know, when a sectype is dispelled (e.g. a spell protection like Globe of Invulnerability), it's always hardcoded to display the same dispel message every time, regardless of what the spell is or what it was dispelled by.

Graphics: Okay, so it's a bit complicated, but here we go. For Globe of Invulnerability (I do not believe the Spell Deflections can be modified, so I would not suggest doing so at this time - with some hackery, it might be possible, but I wouldn't recommend it due to the game-wide problems it'd create):

Original tutorial that you may skip in favor of the new tutorial below it because I discovered Near Infinity has its own tinting tools but which may nevertheless be useful if you ever actually need to fully export a .bam:
 

Spoiler

1. Near Infinity. You can probably figure out how to get Near Infinity working on your own.

2. On the left side, there is a file browser which lists stuff like "2DA", "ARE', "BAM" - these are file types. The graphic is called "minorglb.bam" under the "BAM"s section, so look for it under that section (I suggest opening the section, then clicking on file within it, then typing "minor" to shortcut to it). There wasn't a good way to figure out what the graphic is called since the graphic is hardcoded, and just happened to find it by searching for "MINOR" and seeing it.

3. After selecting the MINORGLB.BAM, you should see the globe graphic pop up on the right side at this point after a moment. Click export on the bottom right side, select "all frames as graphics", extract it to a folder of your selection that doesn't contain any other files.

4. It'll export each frame as its own .png files, which are basic lossless, single-layer, transparency-supporting image files that are ubiquitous for image editors and browsers and such.

5. Editing them is their own set of steps, but I can't cover it to any degree without first knowing what you're using, and I'm not sure how adept you are with editing images to begin with.

6. For re-importing them, you should keep your current Near Infinity window open, which should still have the minorglb.bam file selected, and then hit "Edit BAM" on the bottom right of the Near Infinity window.

7. Then, open a second Near Infinity instance (from the executable .jar file). Near Infinity can only handle editing one .bam at a time, so that's why we need two instances open, and the original minorglb.bam file contains critical information we'll have to keep up in order to reassemble the animation).

8. On the second Near Infinity instance which does not currently have anything open, go into "Tools" at the top of the window, then "Convert", then click "BAM Converter".

9. Now you should have two of these conversion windows up, one for each instance - one which is showing the minorglb.bam, one which is currently empty.

10. On the one that is empty, click "Add" while still on the "Frames" tab and then select "Add Folder", and select the folder which contains the edited .pngs for your new animation. It should add all of them and in the correct order, mercifully.

11. Should look like this. In order to reassemble the animation, you must copy the "Center X" and "Center Y" information (top right) from each individual frame from the original animation over to each individual frame on the edited image. If this sounds stupid and tedious, that's because it is. Each frame can have different information, so you have to do it right for every single one or risk your animation looking all wacky and off-centered when you see it in-game. Additionally, you'll want to select the "compress frame" (not the compress BAM - I'm not sure what that does exactly, someone else can chime in if they know) checkmark for each individual frame as well (although this is not critical, and I'm sure some people don't bother since it's extra work for just compression). Leave it at "legacy (v1)' for the type.

12. After you finish that, you'll want to go to the cycles tab at the top. You'll want the information to be exactly the same on your new .bam as it is on the original.

On the original animation, it says "0 - [6, 7, 8 ...]" in the top left. A cycle is basically...just the arrangement of frames in how the game wants to use them - for the original bam, the game only used this animation in one way, so we only have to arrange the frames in one way, too. The second set of numbers, "[6, 7, 8, ...]" is how they were originally arranged - frames 6, 7, 8 were first, and the rest followed. So you would just select frame "06" at the bottom left, hit the arrow pointing right to bring it over, then do the same for 07, then 08, then the rest. Since the original animation is 06-17, you can just select all of 06-17 at the same time and hit the right arrow once.

13. Then you can hit "save output file" at the bottom right. Save it somewhere, it's now a complete graphic. If you get this far, we can get to actually getting it in-game.

 

New tutorial (if you need pictures/more info, let me know - I'm not sure how good you are at figuring out things on your own/how much you need explained):

1. Near Infinity. You can probably figure out how to get Near Infinity working on your own.

2. On the left side, there is a file browser which lists stuff like "2DA", "ARE', "BAM" - these are file types. The graphic is called "minorglb.bam" under the "BAM"s section, so look for it under that section (I suggest opening the section, then clicking on a file within it, then typing "minor" to shortcut to it). There wasn't a good way to figure out what the graphic is called since the graphic is hardcoded, and I just happened to find it by searching for "MINOR" and seeing it.

3. After selecting the MINORGLB.BAM, you should see the globe graphic pop up on the right side at this point after a moment. Click "Edit BAM" in the bottom right.

4. In the new window, there's a post-processing tab in the top right, select that.

5. Under filters, select "Color: Hue/Saturation/Lightness" and then click "Add".

6. Play around with the sliders until you find something that you like. Try some of the other filters like saturation, brightness, contrast, etc. if it doesn't look quite right/too bright/too dark/etc.

7. Hit "save output file" in the bottom right once you think you've got how you want it to look.

8. Save it somewhere nice.

If you get this far, I can then explain how to get it in-game.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[NdranC]

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Anti-magics like Secret Word: No, there isn't. I wish there was, that'd be great, but as far as I know, when a sectype is dispelled (e.g. a spell protection like Globe of Invulnerability), it's always hardcoded to display the same dispel message every time, regardless of what the spell is or what it was dispelled by.

Graphics: Okay, so it's a bit complicated, but here we go. For Globe of Invulnerability (I do not believe the Spell Deflections can be modified, so I would not suggest doing so at this time - with some hackery, it might be possible, but I wouldn't recommend it due to the game-wide problems it'd create):

Original tutorial that you may skip in favor of the new tutorial below it because I discovered Near Infinity has its own tinting tools but which may nevertheless be useful if you ever actually need to fully export a .bam:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

1. Near Infinity. You can probably figure out how to get Near Infinity working on your own.

2. On the left side, there is a file browser which lists stuff like "2DA", "ARE', "BAM" - these are file types. The graphic is called "minorglb.bam" under the "BAM"s section, so look for it under that section (I suggest opening the section, then clicking on file within it, then typing "minor" to shortcut to it). There wasn't a good way to figure out what the graphic is called since the graphic is hardcoded, and just happened to find it by searching for "MINOR" and seeing it.

3. After selecting the MINORGLB.BAM, you should see the globe graphic pop up on the right side at this point after a moment. Click export on the bottom right side, select "all frames as graphics", extract it to a folder of your selection that doesn't contain any other files.

4. It'll export each frame as its own .png files, which are basic lossless, single-layer, transparency-supporting image files that are ubiquitous for image editors and browsers and such.

5. Editing them is their own set of steps, but I can't cover it to any degree without first knowing what you're using, and I'm not sure how adept you are with editing images to begin with.

6. For re-importing them, you should keep your current Near Infinity window open, which should still have the minorglb.bam file selected, and then hit "Edit BAM" on the bottom right of the Near Infinity window.

7. Then, open a second Near Infinity instance (from the executable .jar file). Near Infinity can only handle editing one .bam at a time, so that's why we need two instances open, and the original minorglb.bam file contains critical information we'll have to keep up in order to reassemble the animation).

8. On the second Near Infinity instance which does not currently have anything open, go into "Tools" at the top of the window, then "Convert", then click "BAM Converter".

9. Now you should have two of these conversion windows up, one for each instance - one which is showing the minorglb.bam, one which is currently empty.

10. On the one that is empty, click "Add" while still on the "Frames" tab and then select "Add Folder", and select the folder which contains the edited .pngs for your new animation. It should add all of them and in the correct order, mercifully.

11. Should look like this. In order to reassemble the animation, you must copy the "Center X" and "Center Y" information (top right) from each individual frame from the original animation over to each individual frame on the edited image. If this sounds stupid and tedious, that's because it is. Each frame can have different information, so you have to do it right for every single one or risk your animation looking all wacky and off-centered when you see it in-game. Additionally, you'll want to select the "compress frame" (not the compress BAM - I'm not sure what that does exactly, someone else can chime in if they know) checkmark for each individual frame as well (although this is not critical, and I'm sure some people don't bother since it's extra work for just compression). Leave it at "legacy (v1)' for the type.

12. After you finish that, you'll want to go to the cycles tab at the top. You'll want the information to be exactly the same on your new .bam as it is on the original.

On the original animation, it says "0 - [6, 7, 8 ...]" in the top left. A cycle is basically...just the arrangement of frames in how the game wants to use them - for the original bam, the game only used this animation in one way, so we only have to arrange the frames in one way, too. The second set of numbers, "[6, 7, 8, ...]" is how they were originally arranged - frames 6, 7, 8 were first, and the rest followed. So you would just select frame "06" at the bottom left, hit the arrow pointing right to bring it over, then do the same for 07, then 08, then the rest. Since the original animation is 06-17, you can just select all of 06-17 at the same time and hit the right arrow once.

13. Then you can hit "save output file" at the bottom right. Save it somewhere, it's now a complete graphic. If you get this far, we can get to actually getting it in-game.

 

New tutorial (if you need pictures/more info, let me know - I'm not sure how good you are at figuring out things on your own/how much you need explained):

1. Near Infinity. You can probably figure out how to get Near Infinity working on your own.

2. On the left side, there is a file browser which lists stuff like "2DA", "ARE', "BAM" - these are file types. The graphic is called "minorglb.bam" under the "BAM"s section, so look for it under that section (I suggest opening the section, then clicking on a file within it, then typing "minor" to shortcut to it). There wasn't a good way to figure out what the graphic is called since the graphic is hardcoded, and I just happened to find it by searching for "MINOR" and seeing it.

3. After selecting the MINORGLB.BAM, you should see the globe graphic pop up on the right side at this point after a moment. Click "Edit BAM" in the bottom right.

4. In the new window, there's a post-processing tab in the top right, select that.

5. Under filters, select "Color: Hue/Saturation/Lightness" and then click "Add".

6. Play around with the sliders until you find something that you like. Try some of the other filters like saturation, brightness, contrast, etc. if it doesn't look quite right/too bright/too dark/etc.

7. Hit "save output file" in the bottom right once you think you've got how you want it to look.

8. Save it somewhere nice.

If you get this far, I can then explain how to get it in-game.

GRAPHICS

Thanks for the tutorial, I actually use Near Infinity often to make my own edits to rebalance class skills or classes in general. I was trying yesterday to figure out what was the property in spell deflection that would create the animation around the player and I couldn't find it. My next though was going to look for it in the bam folder manually but I stopped before I got that far. Pretty nice I don't even have to use Photoshop and I can just edit it in NI.

What makes spell deflection that special compared to globe? Because out of the two that one was probably the most useful one to know which spell to use to disable the mage.

BANISHMENT

You just want the default weidu.log with all the mods installed? Sure. It's  EET so I'll give you both. I wish I had more experience with the spell more than "it feels like it doesn't work based on my very flawed memory". Maybe I can run around in town and piss off some mage and hope they have summons to reliably test this.

HOLD AND CONFUSION

Did you ever figure out what happened to the overhead animations? I would love to optionally enable them with NI to test it out on my current playthrough.

WeiDU.log WeiDU-BGEE.log

[argent77]

15 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

11. Should look like this. In order to reassemble the animation, you must copy the "Center X" and "Center Y" information (top right) from each individual frame from the original animation over to each individual frame on the edited image. If this sounds stupid and tedious, that's because it is. Each frame can have different information, so you have to do it right for every single one or risk your animation looking all wacky and off-centered when you see it in-game. Additionally, you'll want to select the "compress frame" (not the compress BAM - I'm not sure what that does exactly, someone else can chime in if they know) checkmark for each individual frame as well (although this is not critical, and I'm sure some people don't bother since it's extra work for just compression). Leave it at "legacy (v1)' for the type.

You can save a lot of time by using the "BAM Session" feature. Simply open the original BAM in the BAM Converter, select BAM Session > Export session and uncheck the "Frame source files" option when asked.
When creating a new BAM with the the modified list of frame images, select BAM Session > Import session and select the previously saved session file. It will apply original center coordinates and cycle lists to your current BAM.

Btw, both options "compress frame" and "compress BAM" are perfectly safe for original BG2 and all EE games. They can help to reduce file size with "Compress BAM" (usually) being a bit more effective. To set "compress frame" for all frames at once, simply select all frames in the list and enable the option.

[Bartimaeus]

25 minutes ago, argent77 said:

You can save a lot of time by using the "BAM Session" feature. Simply open the original BAM in the BAM Converter, select BAM Session > Export session and uncheck the "Frame source files" option when asked.
When creating a new BAM with the the modified list of frame images, select BAM Session > Import session and select the previously saved session file. It will apply original center coordinates and cycle lists to your current BAM.

Btw, both options "compress frame" and "compress BAM" are perfectly safe for original BG2 and all EE games. They can help to reduce file size with "Compress BAM" (usually) being a bit more effective. To set "compress frame" for all frames at once, simply select all frames in the list and enable the option.

All very excellent information, thanks! Very limited experience with Near Infinity's .bam editor, so I'm probably not the ideal person to be writing tutorials for it, . Been stuck in the dinosaur days with DLTCEP's bam editor, which is much, much less convenient on a number of fronts.

@NdranC The difference between Globe and Spell Deflection is that the globe effect [opcode 155] was modified for the EE games to allow the graphical effect to be specified. I'm also not sure what, if anything, this effect otherwise does, because the actual invulnerability to spell levels effect is in the specified opcode 102 effects. Might be a scripting thing - but either way, you have easy options to introduce a different graphical effect. The spell deflection graphical effect, on the other hand, does not have its own effect - it is hardcoded to the spell deflection opcode itself, which is opcode 201, and as far as I can see, does not allow a specification for a custom graphic. There may still be a way to do it - there is an "animation removal" opcode (305) that may be of use (I've never used it myself, but I've heard other people mention it), and you could also null out the original hardcoded animation entirely and then simply play your own additional animation on top. The danger with the latter approach is that it would remove the animation game-wide, so any spell or ability that you don't specifically patch to then play the correct animation will simply be invisible entirely, which would obviously be a terrible situation for you.

@Hold graphical effect: I already re-enabled this graphical effect for hold effects in the latest repository. I didn't think it was necessary for fear (and confusion already has its own overhead graphical effect).

If you want to install them without having to redo your entire install, you can copy the related .effs and .spls from the latest repository and just fix the strings (name and description) for the base .spl in Near Infinity. Hold Person (SPPR208), Hold Person or Animal (SPPR305), Hold Person (SPWI306), Hold Monster (SPWI507), Halt Undead (SPCL742), Halt Undead (SPWI324) and their subeffects and subspells are what you'd be looking for.

[Guest guest]

Would it be possible to add an .ini option where you can multiply the duration of the spells?