jastey's dumb questions to patching the worldmap

[jastey]

I give in: When looking at the files in NI (or anywhere if appropriate). Where do I see the entrance names of the relevant area I can link to in the worldmap?

[K4thos]

It's part of the ARE format. The easiest way is to use NI Area Viewer and display all entrances:

[jastey]

Wonderful! Thank you! I feel a bit daft but that was to be expected.

One more question. In the links.tbl I provide for the worldmap mod, there are colums titeld with

DEF_ENTRY  ENC1     ENC2     ENC3     ENC4     ENC5     ENC_PROB

Could somone explain in short what exactly thses colums meand and what I should put in here? I have an idea: it's for the random encounter areas, the numbers 1-5 is the times the player uses this exit, and ENC_PROB is the probability with which the enounter can happen? So putting "N" in these colums does not mean north but "none"?

[K4thos]

DEF_ENTRY: It's the default entry location (ignored if ENTRY_NAME entrance exists, I think).
1 = Northern edge
2 = Eastern edge
4 = Southern edge
8 = Western edge

ENC1-5: ARE file name where optional random encounter takes place (chosen randomly from the available areas). "N" here means "none".

ENC_PROB: % chance for random encounter

Edited December 6, 2019 by K4thos

[jastey]

Thank you very much! That makes it a lot clearer.

If one of the default entry locations is chosen (ENTRY_NAME set to N): Is it just the middle of the whole edge where the group will arrive or is it more complicated than that?

[K4thos]

based on my test with vanilla BG1 link between west edge of Durlag's Tower area and Gullykin (ENTRY_NAME set to N, DEF_ENTRY set to 1) the party ends up in the middle of the northern part of the Gullykin, right here:

Not sure what would happen if that part of the map would not be traversable, but in such case you can just use entrance name (btw. BG2 doesn't have a single link that would depend on DEF_ENTRY and in BG1 it's also not that common)

Edited December 7, 2019 by K4thos

[jastey]

Thank you for detailed answer with testing! Much appreciated.