Mods for BG EE 1.3

[Karlstegger]

Hi all...

 

I'm playing ver. 1.3 (as I don't like 2.X) and I'm looking for some mods for both BG1 and 2. However, I believe many mods are made/updated for 2.X and I can't get them all to run properly. Anyone aware of where to find versions of mods for ver. 1.3? Or even better, anyone who will help upload some?

 

To narrow it down a bit,  I'm mostly looking for NPC mods, banter mods and story mods but I'm open to all suggestions to spice it up a bit, as BG is almost the only game I'm playing these days. I'm not looking for any mods that changes spells/items or introduce anything from IWD as I like to keep the two games separated.

 

I'm particularly looking for usable versions of the following mods - but as mentioned I'm taking suggestions as well:

 

-Assassinations

-Kivan and Deheriana for BG2

-Amber

-Anything Yoshimo related

-Auren Aseph

-Calin

-Zakrion

-Sarah

-Alternatives

-Solaufein

-Glam's NPC pack

-Sirene

-Dace

-Adrian

-Valen

-Faren

 

I already have the following mods working fine:

SCS, Ascension, BG1 NPC Project, Ajantis BG2 (thanks Jastey), Coran BG2, Angelo BG2, Back to Brynnlaw, Branwen BG2, Yeslick BG2, Wings, Expanded Thief Stronghold, Sellswords, Tyris Flare, Sellswords, Tiax BG2, Xan BG2, aTweaks, CD Tweaks, More styles for Mages.

 

Any help is highly appreciated.

 

 

 

[CamDawg]

While it's not always obvious, the G3 download center (if we've done it right) keeps older versions of mods. If you go to the Kivan and Deheriana download page and click the dropdown on 'changelog', you can go as far back as v13. Unfortunately I have no idea which one of those will work on 1.3.

For mods on Github, you can generally find a few versions on their release tab, e.g. Sarah has versions going back to v4 (again, no idea which will work on 1.3, if any). G3 generally links Github on project pages and readmes, but I can't say for others.

Edited August 29, 2021 by CamDawg
missing link

[subtledoctor]

If any mods you want are on Github, you can look at the Releases page and find a release from ~late 2015. (Because I think the 2.0 patch came out in 2016... right?)

[Karlstegger]

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. I'll take a look at Github and experiment with some different versions of the mods (after finishing my current game) in order to find some for my preferred version of the EE. Still, if anyone has something to add, please feel free to do so.

[suy]

I can't contribute much with solutions besides what has been said (OK, one little thing: if a mod is on Github, you could search in the history to see if it had commits before the 2.0 release, and see if those after affected compatibility, but it's a lot of manual work so probably not worth it for more than one mod, probably not even that, specially without some weidu knowledge).

But if you don't mind a question: May I ask what's the issue with 2.x that 1.3 doesn't have? I think we've chatted on Mivsan_NT's discord, so you know about him and his playthrough. He mentioned that the 2.0 release changed things that he did not like without specifying much. The only thing that I've noticed better on his installation is the UI, which is moddable anyway to great extents (Lefreut's UI keeps a more 1.3 style, with the list of status effects having a lot of space to grow, as it should, and with tons of other improvements...). I wasn't around before 2.0, so I don't know what else was changed.

Cheers.

[Graion Dilach]

@suy There are a fair amount of people not liking the new UI system due to it omitting many of the nuances of the old and the classic UI (lacking the polish). Also, the Catmull-Rom upscaling algorithm which claimed the best results got axed due to a renderer change. These are the most biggest reasons, usually.

[Karlstegger]

Hi suy, long time no see  Yes I remember you from Mivsan's Discord, I'm not there anymore though. And sorry for the late reply, I've been out of town for a few days. My gripe with 2.0 was mainly what Graion Dilach described above. The UI felt so different from the originals to the point where it really annoyed me when playing the game. On top of that 2.0 came with plenty of bugs (I'm not aware if they've been corrected since but I've no intentions of finding out until the day I can't play 1.3 or the originals anymore) like weird dialogue boxes, weird looking sprites, clunky mage books and plenty of other things.

 

I've seen Lefreuts UI mod mentioned before but havent tested it out. I'm actually pretty satisfied with EE 1.3 as it is - although I wish I didn't have to deal with the Beamdog NPC cutscenes

As for the mods for 1.3 I'll start looking into it right now. 

[suy]

Thank you both for the replies. I've been semi-offline for a while as well. I wasn't aware of this changes in the scaling (as I mentioned, I did not try the EE in the pre 2.0 times), and I'm terrible noticing any differences in images as my sight is pretty terrible it seems. I hope the UI mods satisfy you enough if you have to "go forward" to a new EE release. To me some of the additions in the new versions are worth it, both of the engine and of the mods themselves.