Item duplication in BG/BG2

[The_Baffled_King]

On 4/18/2022 at 4:37 AM, DavidW said:

BG2 items readily handled

Boots of Speed, 'The Paws of the Cheetah' (boot01). Classic BG1 loot item. In SoA, carried by Renal and by pbhunt05', one of the bard-quest hunters. Several locations in ToB.

Proposal: I think the reasonable interpretation is that this is supposed to be generic throughout.

Before now, I hadn't read through the posts about BG2, so I hadn't seen the suggestions in line with the above for items existing in BG2 only as duplicated uniques. Bear in mind for the following that I only have access to the EEs, and I'm not familiar with BG2 in the way I am with BG1, which may lead to me missing something obvious. That said:

While I wholeheartedly support your arguments that dev intent was not to have duplicates of unique items, I don't think it's reasonable to assume dev intent for all copies of The Paws of the Cheetah to be generic. I think it's more reasonable to assume intent for one copy of The Paws of the Cheetah, and all other boots of speed as generics.

What confuses me is that your approach seems a little inconsistent: I understand how Dagger +2 (dagg15) is pretty strong evidence that there were not meant to be multiple copies of The Heart of the Golem +2 (dagg03) in BG2, but I don't understand how anything about Dagger +2 or the processes you describe suggests that there should be any copies of The Heart of the Golem in BG2 at all. I nevertheless agree that there should be a single copy of Heart of the Golem in BG2, because there is dev intent elsewhere for placement of single copies of oBG1 uniques in oBG2, and that is consistent with the plot of BG2 and the evident value the devs placed on unique descriptions (inferred from the time investment in them).

In other words, I don't understand why some cases of duplication (such as The Heart of the Golem) are resolved by retaining a single copy of the unique BG1 item, while others (such as The Paws of the Cheetah) are resolved by retaining no copies of the unique BG1 item.

If the issue is that it's difficult to infer dev intent for which copy of boots of speed should remain as The Paws of the Cheetah, then: (1) I'm still not sure how determining which The Heart of Golem to retain is any different; (2) I argue below that it doesn't matter too much by this stage; and (3) there is a systematic process that would make sense in-universe.

As far as (2) is concerned, I think that dev intent is critically important at the first stage of the analysis, for determining whether there's something that could receive a fix. However, once it's determined that a fix is appropriate then, provided that we aren't being silly, and provided that we propose a fix that is clearly consistent with dev intent elsewhere, I don't think specific evidence of dev intent for the specific change is required at all. Are there 6 Paws of the Cheetah? If so, even rolling a 6-sided dice to determine which copy of The Paws of the Cheetah remains would, for me, be more consistent with dev intent than removing all of them for generics.

As far as (3) is concerned, given that Charname et al acquire many items during BG1, and they are then abducted by Irenicus' forces, how about the following chain of priority for retaining uniques: (a) on the person of, or in the domain of, Irenicus and Bodhi's associates in Athkatla; (b) in stores in Athkatla; (c) on the person of, or in the domain of, creatures that can conceivably purchase items from stores in Athkatla; and (d) rinse and repeat, going progressively farther geographically from Athkatla. Something like that.

However, for this and any other fix, I support all arguments for taking a simpler path that are factoring in the conservation of modders' time - particularly for modular fixes.

Edited May 5, 2022 by The_Baffled_King

[DavidW]

23 minutes ago, The_Baffled_King said:

there is dev intent elsewhere for placement of single copies of oBG1 uniques in oBG2

Can you say more about this?

(I think you're right that I'm being slightly inconsistent.)

[The_Baffled_King]

5 minutes ago, DavidW said:

Can you say more about this?

(I think you're right that I'm being slightly inconsistent.)

Sure, no probs. There was nothing sophisticated about the bit you've quoted, mind, so maybe my abrupt phrasing gave the impression there was more to it that there is.

I only meant that: (a) BG2 as a whole shows that non-duplication was still a consideration; and (b) some non-generic oBG1 uniques do exist as uniques in oBG2. So they didn't rip it all up and start again in terms of a design standard for uniques in oBG2, and they did bring in oBG1 uniques as uniques in oBG2 (I don't know enough about BG2 to know how many).

Also, while continuity between oBG1 and oBG2 is not very flexible, it is obviously central to BG2's plot, and there is evidence that continuity in terms of items was not something that the devs considered beneath their attention - so, there are items such as Helm of Balduran that can be imported, and will appear as a non-duplicated unique item regardless. And so the placement of non-generic oBG1 uniques as uniques in oBG2 doesn't wholly disregard the in-universe logic that Charname's party had stuff on their person that ended up in Athkatla.

Then, if I understand it correctly, Beamdog reinforce the standard described above with the genie in Irenicus' place, Malaaq. His dialogue already refers to having "something of yours" and, in the EEs, that something of yours is an oBG1 unique item - and, if I understand the earlier posts properly, there is scripting to ensure that the oBG1 unique item doesn't appear elsewhere if given. Or perhaps that scripting happens only if the oBG1 weapon gets imported?

Sorry for the turnaround time on the reply - I haven't ever actually played BG2 (although I know what happens in broad outline), so commenting on it is really not my forte.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, The_Baffled_King said:

I think it's more reasonable to assume intent for one copy of The Paws of the Cheetah, and all other boots of speed as generics.

If so, even rolling a 6-sided dice to determine which copy of The Paws of the Cheetah remains would, for me, be more consistent with dev intent than removing all of them for generics

I have to say - and pardon the brusqueness of it - this seems kind of crazy to me. There is a very basic rule that these games generally follow: generic items have generic abilities and generic descriptions, and sometimes appear multiple times. By contrast, unique named items tend to have both descriptions and abilities that set them apart, and make them exciting for players to find. Varscona is better than a long sword +2, it does elemental damage. Ditto The Burning Earth and Ashideena. Longtooth has special characteristics. Et cetera.

There seem to be two categories of exceptions to that broad rule. The first is items that have generic abilities but are uniquely powerful. The Whistling Sword gets a name for being (IIRC) the only short sword +2 in all of BG1. Likewise Rashad's Talon.* In BG2 examples include the Staff of Rhynn and Cutthroat, or the Guard's Ring/Warder's Signet. I would say these are not in fact generic, rather they are unique for being extra powerful.

The other category of exceptions is where the devs just threw in extra copies of things, seemingly for convenience. This often happened not in the games as originally designed, but when game expansions were bolted on. So another Rashad's Talon/Scimitar +2 got  added with TotSC; several additional Boots of Speed were added in ToB (along with the Grandmaster's Armor), presumably because at that point it was clear that players liked their whole party to move fast in the late game. (Yes there were multiple copies in SoA but to find them you basically had to 1) do the bard stronghold quest and 2) join Bodhi's side, and at that point it honestly just seems like an easter egg.

All of which is to say that the idea of having four generic "Boots of Speed" in the game and then have the players find something with a special name that is specially described as a unique thing, only to find out it is mechanically an exact copy of some generic thing they already own, just seems wrong. It seems to violate that most basic rule that things with unique names should be special, and better than equivalent things without unique names. We can argue til the cows come home about whether that is okay, or even preferable, but to call a violation of that rule "dev intent" seems crazy. Dev intent changed over time, due to constraints and maybe just whim. But the original basic game design is pretty clear. So my suggestion would be one of two things: items that appear multiple times should simply be generic; or they keep their unique names and simply allow that more than one copy of a "unique" item was created (like the Ring of Princes). Giving one copy of an item a name and description that explicitly describes it as unique, and then contradicting that by giving the player non-unique versions of the same thing, seems like the worst option.

Not to mention, it could have detrimental effects for mods. Some mod might want to change the way Boots of Speed function, and if the FixPack adds a new .ITM file for some of them, that mod will be broken. Sure it can be fixed, if somebody happens to be maintaining it, but that's an open question and anyway the benefit gleaned for creating that extra work seems to be quite small, arbitrary, and purely aesthetic.

* That said, I think weapons may be an exception. I think it is reasonable in this fictional world that some mid-level mage might design a short sword +2 and give it a unique name and design for being just so powerful, while elsewhere someone outfitting an army to take on a god might mass-produce swords of the same quality. And further, I'm not aware of any mods that would be negatively affected by this.  So on reflection, I think DavidW's proposed treatment of e.g. Heart of the Golem vs. that of Paws of the Cheetah seems like a reasonable distinction.

[Graion Dilach]

@subtledoctor The generic items proposed in this thread already exist in SoD and would be copied over from them, so mods which affect both games in one run/include EET compatibility should have been aware of these proposed generics already.

See https://github.com/Gibberlings3/EE_Fixpack/blob/master/eefixpack/data/item_duplication/generic_items.txt

Edited May 5, 2022 by Graion Dilach

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Graion Dilach said:

The generic items proposed in this thread already exist in SoD and would be copied over from them, so mods which affect both games in one run/include EET compatibility should have been aware of these proposed generics already.

I'm thinking off the top of my head of Item Revisions: it changes Boots of Speed to an integer movement speed bonus instead of +100%, and changes the description. It is pretty clearly meant to be an overarching change to how all Boots of Speed work. (It matches the way Spell Revisions change the haste spell, betraying the aim of "____ Revisions" mods to generally alter the way Hasted characters move in the game.) If some of the game's Boots of Speed get a new RES, those will be unaffected by IR and keep the base behavior and description. And IR is not maintained right now. There may be other mods affected as well... Item Upgrade for sure.

By contrast, if one copy of Rashad's Talon is replaced with a generic scimitar +2, this will work fine with IR - it gives Rashad's Talon a cleaving ability - pretty clearly intending to give a unique ability to a particular item.

Honestly, glancing at that list, it is only the Boots of Speed that seem contentious. (Well, maybe the Ring of Fire Resistance as well.) In oBG2 these two items had generic names, but unique descriptions, but there were (quite intentionally) multiple copies in the game. I don't know why. Davidw suggested that the devs were rushed and only glanced at the names when duplicating the files; this is totally plausible and a good guess, but still pure supposition. It seems equally plausible that the additional copies were basically an easter egg. (Easter eggs are a thing in games!) Or that the 2nd copy in SoA was an easter egg, and the multiple extra copies in ToB were basically fan service. I can't say exactly what the dev intent was, but I can say fairly certainly that I see no dev intent to have unique items exist side-by-side with totally generic but functionally identical items. (Not before SoD in 2016, and no offense but SoD doesn't really concern me when talking about fixes for BG and BG2.) IMHO this seems like a good idea for a mod. Heck, I made a mod very much like this.

The only clear evidence that we have is that multiple copies of this "unique" item have existed in the game forever, and it has never bothered anyone, and many many mods have operated on the assumption of the presence of those item files. Since we have a handy generic description  in the SoD item, it would not bother me to slap that onto every instance of BOOT01.itm to make the lore text match the facts on the ground; if that does bother people like @The_Baffled_King, I sympathize with his perfectly reasonable position, and in that case it seems reasonable to simply leave the item untouched and we can live with the ambiguity. (We've already lived with it for 20 years!) But changing item resrefs seems like the most destructive possible approach, to fix something about which there isn't even consensus.

Edited May 5, 2022 by subtledoctor

[DavidW]

Just minimally on this (not ignoring the rest of the post, but I've got a limited time window right now):

34 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Not before SoD in 2016, and no offense but SoD doesn't really concern me when talking about fixes for BG and BG2

Since this is an EE fixpack, and since the developer team who built SoD are the same team who built *and are currently maintaining* BGEE and BG2EE, I think SoD is pretty good evidence for developer intent in BGEE and BG2EE.

[Greenhorn]

15 minutes ago, DavidW said:

Just minimally on this (not ignoring the rest of the post, but I've got a limited time window right now):

Since this is an EE fixpack, and since the developer team who built SoD are the same team who built *and are currently maintaining* BGEE and BG2EE, I think SoD is pretty good evidence for developer intent in BGEE and BG2EE.

But they also got licence for remake of Baldur's Gate series under clause that they are not allowed to change content of the original games. Sure, they made some additions to original parts but SoD is the only content which they can call their own ( in addition to some gladiatorial fun) and very likely reason why they didn't forced their concept of generic magical items from SoD on the rest of the game. Do you have a right to make that change? Decide for yourself.  

[DavidW]

3 minutes ago, Greenhorn said:

But they also got licence for remake of Baldur's Gate series under clause that they are not allowed to change content of the original games. Sure, they made some additions to original parts but SoD is the only content which they can call their own ( in addition to some gladiatorial fun) and very likely reason why they didn't forced their concept of generic magical items from SoD on the rest of the game. Do you have a right to make that change? Decide for yourself.  

Beamdog's license clearly does not prevent them from fixing bugs, and we are discussing bugs here. 

 

[DavidW]

This discussion is getting quite confused so I'd like to separate it out.

In this thread we can discuss whether items should be deduplicated at all.

In this thread we can discuss design issues of doing so.