What is the Gibberlings3 community's stance on making or adapting mods for tipun's Icewind Dale in EET?

[subtledoctor]

8 hours ago, DavidW said:

A matter of taste. I think (1) is a great option.

I agree in principle that IWD is a great game and I enjoyed playing IWDEE v2.4 perhaps even more than BG/BG2. But Beamdog, incomprehensibly, removed the ability to mod the mobile version when they pushed to 2.5 patch. (And you cannot revert to older versions.) And stated they could not fix it until the full 2.6 patch is released, even though the issue is not in the actual game code but in the app’s OS hooks. And now the 2.6 patch is indefinitely delayed, and in fact Beamdog has said the modding fix will not even be in the 2.6 patch, because they forgot to fix it and the patch code is now “frozen” even though, again, the issue is not in the actual game code. I find it mind-boggling that they are selling and profiting from a game that was given to them by modders - you - and have actively removed the ability to mod it. 

So while I love that game and it looks like Lava is doing amazing work, I am also very interested in seeing it available as its own campaign inside an app that I can mod. 

(Note, that side-steps lore conflicts as well - e.g. there would significant conflicts if you played Black Pits 2 inside BG2, but they can happily live together as distinct campaigns in the same app. In fact, honestly, I’d be quite happy for Beamdog to take that SoD innovation to its ultimate end and simply sell an “Infinity Engine” app in which the IWD, BG, BP etc. campaigns could be in-app purchases.)

[DavidW]

OK, that's a different matter.

I don't know anything about how these games are implemented on iOS, but on Windows it is (probably) pretty trivial to run IWDEE on BG2EE's game engine: indeed, I think the engines are identical and you just set engine.lua to tell the engine which game it's running. So you might find you can run IWDEE on BG2EE on the OS just by cleaning out all the game-content files, copying in the IWD files, and changing engine.lua. (But as I say, I know nothing about how iOS does this.)

[bob_veng]

The reason why  I was interested in K4thos' IWD-in-EET is because i had a feeling that it would improve IWD, not so much BG (it wouldn't hurt it either; I think ToTLM-in-BG2EE mostly demonstrates this), because you could play it with the well-developed and familiar BG NPCs; dialogues were written for them too. Basically, it would address what IWD lacks the most—real party members. (I am aware of mods that add NPCS to IWD)

about four bad options, subtledoctor mentions: K4thos seemed to have opted for #5 -- removing references from books, dialogues, item descriptions (there aren't that many) that strongly suggest a timeline discrepancy. basically a "white lie"-style general redaction of the lore.

Edited July 17, 2022 by bob_veng

[Endarire]

Off-hand, I'm unsure of how IWD 1 & 2's lore interacts with the BG campaign, I don't recall much IWD-related plot beyond "go here and find/fight something."  I'm OK with just ignoring/forgiving lore inconsistencies.  (I also never read much of D&D's literature outside of rulebooks, meaning I can't fairly comment on how Salvatore's Drizzt interacted with the IWD game series, for example.)

As for the doubly-named fiend, simulacrum exists in D&D.  Maybe there's another fiend with his name.  (Even in Bible times, 'Mary' and 'Joseph' weren't unique names:  Just look at Mary, the mother of Jesus and Mary of Bethany as well as Joseph the stepfather of Jesus and Joseph of Aramathea who gave his tomb to Jesus for His burial.)

Beyond this, IWD 1 & 2 just didn't seem to interact much with the rest of Faerun.  They had no BG city nor Athkatla where citizens from across the Sword Coast or greater Faerun gathered, and it's understandable when the Icewind Dale region is basically fantasy Alaska or Iceland.

I also mentioned tipun's versions of IWD1 & 2 in EET because it's more content available in the same game and this way more people can appreciate them, and, if they also want, mod for them.  For people of this board, it should be fairly obvious that IWD1 & 2 didn't have BG1 & 2 style companions and were intentionally focused on combat much moreso than RP or story.  Here's a chance for Minsc, Edwin, Garrick, Haer'Dalis, and so on to react to the frozen north in your mod if you choose.

One of my lamentations of many years ago was that the BG1 game was too small:  It had a good start of an open world but too little of it.  BG2 increased the level cap, but by default, it wasn't connected with BG1 nor SoD.  These were distinct campaigns/modules/games with an intentionally connecting story but which needed mods to make them into a single, bigger world.  I'm glad EET was released as a platform for modding since it meant the world felt more like a world to me instead of disjointed sections.

Thankee!

[subtledoctor]

9 hours ago, DavidW said:

you just set engine.lua to tell the engine which game it's running. So you might find you can run IWDEE on BG2EE on the OS just by cleaning out all the game-content files, copying in the IWD files, and changing engine.lua.

Nah, you can’t mess with chitin.key or any of the biffed data. You can use /override and /worldmap and /lang, so you could import the data as a Weidu mod - like I say, the same way EET imports the BP1 campaign but does not tie it into the game. I cannot create such a mod from scratch, it’s way beyond me, but if I had an example to learn from… hmm, maybe I’ll take a look at tipun’s code. (Not to use and distribute just for myself - before Endarire asks…)

1 hour ago, Endarire said:

don't recall much IWD-related plot beyond "go here and find/fight something."

Dude IWD has a better plot than BG1 and BG2 put together. It is super compelling, with good twists, and feeds you a bunch of interesting and related background lore. (And even lets you interact with someone involved in that background hundreds of years prior - probably the only game I know to make interesting use of D&D demihuman longevity.) 

I get how people complain that IWD is too linear compared to BG1/2, but if you think it has no plot then you just didn’t give it your attention. 

[CamDawg]

My previous post may not have been made in seriousness, so I'll try to actually contribute something this time around.

David, Graion, and SD have already covered anything I might have said about trying to integrate the story into the BG timeline: I'm unconvinced there's a way to do it that doesn't compromise IWD's story and lore, though I'll do my best to keep an open mind. If it's not going to be integrated into the main story and instead offered as a separate campaign Black Pits-style, then the relevant question shifts to why you'd spend that much work to achieve, at best, parity with IWDEE.

As for actual mod support: yes, of course. Tweaks already supports everything so by adding support for one more platform I can finally get rid of those last non-gray hairs on my head. However, until the project gets further along (and has more non-Russian documentation) there's not too much to be done. As a practical suggestion, I'd strongly suggest building CPM-style libraries so that mods can easily support IWDEE/IWD1-in-EET the same way we do BGEE/EET/BGT/Tutu for BG content.

And since no one has mentioned the biggest issue yet: as there is no game named Icewind Dale 1 (IWD1), the name should properly be IWD-in-EET. I was too late to correct mods like BG1 NPC Project, and I don't want to miss the boat here.

[Graion Dilach]

5 hours ago, CamDawg said:

And since no one has mentioned the biggest issue yet: as there is no game named Icewind Dale 1 (IWD1), the name should properly be IWD-in-EET. I was too late to correct mods like BG1 NPC Project, and I don't want to miss the boat here.

I actually prefer the IWD1-in-EET for this one. tipun's project has a completely different mindset than k4thos's, and it is better to keep them separated this way (see UB vs IWDUB vs BG1UB).

[Guest jastey_away]

Considering how many new players don't get the significance of "UB" = BG2 mod and BG1 mod = "bg1ub" (same for "RE")  I'm very happy "BG1NPC Project" has the 1 in there. Legacy naming makes only sense to a certain point.

[Bartimaeus]

Because I am the dumb, I still sometimes accidentally extract/run "UB" when I intend to run BG1UB. Additional clarity isn't a bad thing, .

[CamDawg]

2 hours ago, Guest jastey_away said:

Considering how many new players don't get the significance of "UB" = BG2 mod and BG1 mod = "bg1ub" (same for "RE")  I'm very happy "BG1NPC Project" has the 1 in there. Legacy naming makes only sense to a certain point.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Because I am the dumb, I still sometimes accidentally extract/run "UB" when I intend to run BG1UB. Additional clarity isn't a bad thing, .

In both of these cases, "BG UB" and "BG RE" would serve the same purpose, and be technically correct (the best kind of correct).

[argent77]

On 7/17/2022 at 2:39 PM, subtledoctor said:

I agree in principle that IWD is a great game and I enjoyed playing IWDEE v2.4 perhaps even more than BG/BG2. But Beamdog, incomprehensibly, removed the ability to mod the mobile version when they pushed to 2.5 patch. (And you cannot revert to older versions.) And stated they could not fix it until the full 2.6 patch is released, even though the issue is not in the actual game code but in the app’s OS hooks. And now the 2.6 patch is indefinitely delayed, and in fact Beamdog has said the modding fix will not even be in the 2.6 patch, because they forgot to fix it and the patch code is now “frozen” even though, again, the issue is not in the actual game code. I find it mind-boggling that they are selling and profiting from a game that was given to them by modders - you - and have actively removed the ability to mod it. 

Do the mobile ports of the games support DLCs? In that case the DLC Builder might be a potential option.

[subtledoctor]

12 minutes ago, argent77 said:

Do the mobile ports of the games support DLCs? In that case the DLC Builder might be a potential option.

Fascinating. Of course:

Quote

BG2:EE at patch version 2.5.16.6 is currently broken and doesn't load DLC content.

And of course BG2EE is stuck at patch 2.5.16 on iOS.      Can't make this stuff up.

Still, BGEE is on the 2.5.17 patch; maybe it sounds like you could chuck the whole IWD campaign as a DLC into the BGEE v2.5.17 app?  Hmm. Except, to get files into the app on iOS you need to give them specific file extensions, like ".iwdoverride" or ".iwddata" so that iOS can route it into the app's sandbox. (This is literally the only part that is broken - the part where Beamdog tells iOS which file extensions to handle in this way - but Beamdog won't fix it.) And it seems that DLC Builder needs the archives to have certain file extensions, which are different. So maybe it can't be done.

But maybe a modded IWDEE game could be set up as a DLC archive, and put into IWDEE's documents folder? I think, maybe, the documents folder is accessible. I haven't considered trying to install mods this way. It's worth a look! (Then I could use all of Lava's new mods for IWDEE!)

Anyway, sorry, I appreciate the brainstorming from DavidW and Argent77, but I also feel bad because this is off-topic.

Edited July 18, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Graion Dilach]

If you have access to the "documents" folder, then you can also just copy your Mac override folder to home:\override (as explained on https://gibberlings3.github.io/iesdp/appendices/override.htm). It's ugly, because WeiDU is completely unaware of it, but it shouldn't even need DLC Builder then.

I only used that folder for portrait overrides and skellytz's IA BG1 animation restorations myself though.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Graion Dilach

[subtledoctor]

4 minutes ago, Graion Dilach said:

If you have access to the "documents" folder, then you can also just copy your Mac override folder to home:\override (as explained on https://gibberlings3.github.io/iesdp/appendices/override.htm).

Can't update dialog.tlk that way - which is the real issue here. I think IWDEE 2.5 on iOS has some file-extension hooks active. Like, you can zip override files and give the archive the ".iwdportraits" extension and it will put the files into the /portraits subfolder, and conveniently, the /portraits folder acts identically to /override. But, that doesn't give you any access to /lang, which is quite important.

[Graion Dilach]

On my Windows, I was able to override dialog.tlk with recreating the lang\en_US structure in the documents folder. So if you can access that one, it's might be possible to pull it off.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Graion Dilach