Mods that change Scar and/or Duke Eltan in C5-C6 BG:EE?

[The_Baffled_King]

What mods are there which are (a) popular; and/or (b) good; and/or (c) new, and which make significant changes to Scar and/or Duke Eltan?

I'm concerned only with changes that effect the content in BG:EE Chapters 5-6, or which set variables during these Chapters that effect the content in Chapter 7 or SoD.

I don't class as significant any change that does nothing more than add an NPC interjection, provided that the loss of that interjection means the loss of flavour only.

So I'm not worried about changes to DELTAN2.CRE, or DELTAN2.DLG, as I'm doing nothing with them.

Edited June 9, 2021 by The_Baffled_King

[Endarire]

@The_Baffled_King
@Lauriel has Framed and @jastey has Transitions.  There may be more.

[jastey]

Transitions is from Lauriel. I have Endless BG1, which adds content for after Sarevok is dead.

@The_Baffled_King bg1re and bg1ub both insert Duke Eltan into the Harbor master building. bg1re transferres him then into the palace once Sarevok is dead (I think it was after his death, not before) and adds dialogue and reply options, and also the "Scar's Return" bonus quest. It would be cool if your od wouldn't break this.

[Lauriel]

I'm also in the beginning process of writing a romance with Eltan that can be used for solo players (or regular of course).

[The_Baffled_King]

Thanks for flagging the above-mentioned mods. I double-checked a few of these things a couple of days ago, and hopefully my memory hasn't failed in the meantime.

As I said, I'm not doing anything with DELTAN2.CRE or DELTAN2.DLG, and I should clarify that I'm also doing nothing to the scripts or actions that spawn Eltan in Chapter 7. So he will behave as he normally behaves, and any self-contained changes made by mods will function as they normally would.

By self-contained, I mean changes that don't depend on variables set in Chapters 5-6. Note that this includes variables used by the vanilla game, some of which I'm not using. I'm not 100% sure when or if I should set these variables - as I go along, at the transition into Chapter 7, or not at all?

@Lauriel

Do you do anything with DELTAN.CRE or DELTAN.DLG in Transitions? And how about your planned Eltan romance - does that effect Chapter 7 Eltan only?

As for Framed, I'm perfectly happy to see if some kind of cross-mod compatibility fix is possible, but that would be a waste of time until I've finished most of what I want to do.

[Lauriel]

1 minute ago, The_Baffled_King said:

Do you do anything with DELTAN.CRE or DELTAN.DLG in Transitions?

Yes, he's removed from the harbor master building and put into the Ducal Palace where he offers a house to the PC to act as a residence if they saved his life.  He also has interjections when Belt offers the clean-up quests.

 

4 minutes ago, The_Baffled_King said:

As for Framed, I'm perfectly happy to see if some kind of cross-mod compatibility fix is possible

Framed isn't very complicated.  It generalizes some dialogues about where the Iron Throne merchants were killed then just allows entry to Candlekeep with a specific item during chapter 5 only. The reason for the chapter specific requirement is that there are very high powered items in the catacombs. There is also the revelation about the PC via Gorion's scroll that is meant to be exposed later in the story. But having it come out at the beginning of chapter 5 vs the end doesn't affect the story that much. It certainly makes the conversation with Elminster when arriving in the city of Baldur's Gate a bit more understandable. Then chapter 6 is just the investigation into the iron throne building with a few minor adjustments.

[Lauriel]

20 minutes ago, The_Baffled_King said:

And how about your planned Eltan romance - does that effect Chapter 7 Eltan only?

It certainly will.  That's where the romance starts.  But it's Chapter 7 after Sarevok is killed.  For both the romance and Transitions.

[The_Baffled_King]

@jastey

As far as I'm aware, it's DELTAN2.DLG that is modified by Endless BG1, BG1UB, and BG1RE. So, as far as Duke Eltan is concerned, it seems that we're all good there?

Also, am I right in thinking that you maintain a version of NTotSC? If so, am I right in thinking that Eltan's contribution is to hand out the Northern Citadel quest, update the journal, set a variable, and reveal an area on the map? And, once he's done so, he plays no further part in the mod?

I don't have BG1RE, so I read the readme and downloaded the mod (I can't say I've ever wanted to cuddle Scar, but I definitely like the idea of bringing him back). The good news is that I don't do anything with Scar that is conceptually incompatible with the Scar bonus quest, or indeed with romancing Scar.

Sadly, that's as far as the good news goes, because I don't even plan to use SCAR.DLG. I might be wrong, but in principle it seemed a bad idea to use Scar as a vehicle for advancing the Chapters in a different order, and not protect Scar from changes made by other mods.

Regardless, Scar's existing dialog is completely incompatible with what I'm doing. I'm writing a new dialog from scratch (albeit one incorporating most of his existing text)! Scar reacts very differently to the PC depending on when they meet, and he doesn't even offer the quests in the same order. Also, the PC can't have replies along the lines of "let's drop this side-quest, I want to talk about the Iron Throne", as they might have no idea what the Iron Throne is at that point! And there are many other compatibility issues.

So I don't really know what more to say, unfortunately. I wasn't aware of your content in BG1RE before now but, even if I was, Scar (and Eltan) are crucial components in the main plot, so it's not as though I can just pick different NPCs to use

Edited June 14, 2021 by The_Baffled_King

[The_Baffled_King]

1 hour ago, Lauriel said:

Yes, he's removed from the harbor master building and put into the Ducal Palace where he offers a house to the PC to act as a residence if they saved his life.  He also has interjections when Belt offers the clean-up quests.

Sorry to have to ask again, but there are two .CRE files and two .DLG files for Duke Eltan. DELTAN.CRE, which uses DELTAN.DLG, is spawned in Chapter 5 by SCARCUT.BCS when the player agrees to meet Eltan. DELTAN2.CRE, which uses DELTAN2.DLG, is spawned in Chapter 7 - first by AR0608.BCS, and then by the Harbormaster's dialog. It does sound like you're just modifying DELTAN2, but it seems best to be sure!

1 hour ago, Lauriel said:

Framed isn't very complicated.

I haven't played it (my BG time is going on what I'm making), but I have it installed and I've had a look in its files. For what its worth, I think that your switcheroo works quite nicely. All I was thinking was that it might be possible to install the 'Candlekeep as side-quest' aspect on top of what I'm making, if that was something you wanted to look at.

But I should clarify that when I talked about that being 'a waste of time' at the moment, I did mean your time! After all, every mod is just vapourware until its made.

Edited June 14, 2021 by The_Baffled_King

[Lauriel]

2 minutes ago, The_Baffled_King said:

Sorry to have to ask again, but there are two .CRE files and two .DLG files for Duke Eltan. DELTAN.CRE, which uses DELTAN.DLG, is spawned in Chapter 5 by SCARCUT.BCS when the player agrees to meet Eltan. DELTAN2.CRE, which uses DELTAN2.DLG, is spawned in Chapter 7 - first by AR0608.BCS, and then by the Harbormaster's dialog. It does sound like you're just modifying DELTAN2, but it seems best to be sure!

DELTAN

3 minutes ago, The_Baffled_King said:

I haven't played it (my BG time is going on what I'm making), but I have it installed and I've had a look in its files. For what its worth, I think that your switcheroo works quite nicely. All I was thinking was that it might be possible to install the 'Candlekeep as side-quest' aspect on top of what I'm making, if that was something you ever wanted to look at.

I don't know if it'll work with what you're doing or not.  We'll see.

[Lauriel]

5 minutes ago, The_Baffled_King said:

DELTAN2.CRE, which uses DELTAN2.DLG, is spawned in Chapter 7 - first by AR0608.BCS, and then by the Harbormaster's dialog.

Deltan2 is the sick one

[jastey]

33 minutes ago, The_Baffled_King said:

I'm writing a new dialog from scratch

If that's the way you want to go then there is not much we can do. There are ways to use as much as possible from the existing dialogues and just add different paths via INTERJECT+COPY_TRANS/I_C_T etcpp. Somtimes it's not possible, but a mod that goes that way is bound to be incompatible with many others.

In the end, all that bg1re does is giving a few possibilities to chat with Scar and at some point go with him to his qarters. So basically, the actual content of Scar's dialogue is of no interest to the bg1re component as it is not a dialogue about the current events. It's just woven into the existing dialogue in a way that asking one of bg1re's reply options will circle back to the original dialogue. It's nothing that couldn' be made compatible with a different Scar dialogue as long as Scar still *has* certain dialogue lines where the PC can "chat" with him.

[Endarire]

What about using Scar's normal dialog files but adding the other dialog paths to account for sequence breaking?

What about making a separate Scar unit for sequence breakers while hiding the original until the original's triggering conditions are met?  If so, skip the needless dialog from the original.

Edited June 15, 2021 by Endarire

[The_Baffled_King]

On 6/14/2021 at 9:01 PM, jastey said:

It's just woven into the existing dialogue in a way that asking one of bg1re's reply options will circle back to the original dialogue. It's nothing that couldn' be made compatible with a different Scar dialogue as long as Scar still *has* certain dialogue lines where the PC can "chat" with him.

If that's how the BG1RE dialog is written, would the below suggestion be a simple fix?

(1) I stick a top-level state in BK_SCAR.DLG matching your state that kicks off the BG1RE dialog ("At last, some time!"). This state would switch BK_SCAR.CRE's dialog to SCAR.DLG. By itself, my mod would never set the variable that allows this state to be chosen.

(2) Write a tiny mod that installs after both my thingy and BG1RE which:

(a) Sets a variable used in the state trigger for the extra state in BK_SCAR.DLG, allowing it to be chosen; and

(b) Mods the end points of the BG1RE dialog tree so that, instead of circling back to vanilla SCAR.DLG, it resets BK_SCAR.CRE's dialog to BK_SCAR.DLG.

No point in wasting your time on the details yet, but I'm totally willing to look at stuff like that when I'm a little further along.

 

Edited June 16, 2021 by The_Baffled_King

[The_Baffled_King]

On 6/14/2021 at 11:22 PM, Endarire said:

What about using Scar's normal dialog files but adding the other dialog paths to account for sequence breaking?

What about making a separate Scar unit for sequence breakers while hiding the original until the original's triggering conditions are met?  If so, skip the needless dialog from the original.

Part of the reason to say "no thanks" is that pretty much the entirety of Scar's dialog is very likely to be out of sequence. It begins with a reference to the Nashkel mines, and then it's peppered with references to the PC's previous involvement with the Iron Throne.

Another reason is the consideration I mentioned in my last post in my thread (the one about "suspicious letters").

Another reason is that I'm adding a bit extra to both the Sewer Ogre and Seven Suns quests.

Another reason is that I'm swapping the Sewer Ogre and Seven Suns quest offers around (for a variety of reasons).

Another reason is that I wanted to write a more 'intelligent' Scar. One that is able to tolerate such craziness as quests being done out of order (*GASP!*), and one that doesn't disappear once the PC meets Duke Eltan.

There just isn't much there to keep, save for the text itself, which I'm incorporating fairly faithfully.