Portrait Icons, EE versus Classic

[Caedwyr]

Is it possible to add new portrait icons to the classic version of BG2 or is that only possible in the Enhanced Editions?

[DavidW]

It's possible (iirc we did it for IWD-in-BG2) but it's not fun. You need to add them as new cycles to states.bam, and then add a line to speldesc.2da. 

[CamDawg]

Yeah, Fixpack had to futz around with it, too.

I know Lava has a macro from (I can't remember who) that adds BAMs to the mapicons.bam at install time so that his new world map areas can have unique art. So it's possible to insert new BAM frames on the fly, but certainly not as easy as EEs.

[Caedwyr]

So it sounds like I want to have the new icon in .bam format either way, and then need to use some weidu code to insert it into states.bam and speldesc.2da.  I will check out Lava's mods for the code.

 

I had thought this is how it would work for the EE games as well, though I was planning on using CamDawg's macro from the useful macro thread to add the new icons.

[Sam.]

IIRC isn't the total number of icons (technically the total number of sequences/cycles) limited to 255 in the classic games?  It would appear this number has already been reached in STATES.bam, although many of them are essentially blank (a small number of white pixels).

[Gwendolyne]

1 hour ago, Sam. said:

IIRC isn't the total number of icons (technically the total number of sequences/cycles) limited to 255 in the classic games?  It would appear this number has already been reached in STATES.bam, although many of them are essentially blank (a small number of white pixels).

Yes. 255 is the limit.

[lynx]

Here's a comparison if you intend to mod more than one game. It was created by edheldil, but at that time ees didn't exist yet:

Also, don't forget the states2.bam. IIRC one is for the portraits, one for GUIREC.