Let's put the Black Pits 1 into BGEE!

[subtledoctor]

30 minutes ago, Gwaihir said:

Would it be ok to install this after kits and tweaks? (I'm at that point of an EET install, normally I would put this pretty early among the quests group).

You can, and it's probably fine. But this mod directly overwrites several .BCS and .DLG files relating to the Black Pits. (The area scripts for the BP arenas, and the dialogues for the BP merchants.) If other mods you already installed have mad changes to those .BCS and .DLG files, this mod will undo those changes.

Like I say, it's probably fine, because I'm not aware of any mods that specifically do things to the Black Pits files. In my last install a couple months ago, I installed this very late and it was totally fine.  But I can't be sure of that for other players' installs, so my recommendation is to install it super early.

It probably can't hurt - worst comes to worst, just skip the content when you play. If anything, might be better to install this last, for easy uninstallation if something does go wrong.

Edited January 13, 2023 by subtledoctor

[Gwaihir]

I should be fine then. I'll give it a try.

[Graion Dilach]

Seems that if a character is sleeping during Baeloth's arrival to transition the party back from the arena, the game's stuck in cutscene mode.

Dang, no, it's still the death effect going haywire.

Edited January 15, 2023 by Graion Dilach

[subtledoctor]

On 1/15/2023 at 8:37 AM, Graion Dilach said:

Seems that if a character is sleeping during Baeloth's arrival to transition the party back from the arena, the game's stuck in cutscene mode.

Dang, no, it's still the death effect going haywire.

Is this a bug report? I'm confused.

Did someone die in a fight? What happened?

[Graion Dilach]

Yeah, sorry, I was tired.

So, people didn't die here, but ended up in a permanent sleeping state or something with 2 HP, which stuck the game in cutscene mode after Baeloth teleported the party out. Couldn't figured it out what was causing it - I traced it back to the ring, but my debug fu stopped there -, so I ended up storymode through the whole act. I also got two crashes during the startup of the Parker spider spawn battle (both were during my attempts of summoning as if the magic triggered something), one scripting error during the ending which fixed itself via replaying the last encounter (the mad conspirator never arrived after everyone else and I couldn't initiate the dialog with Najim, who just decided to teleport out from the arena, leaving my party with the duergars) and a few string issues which might be EET's fault (all the stores ended up with garbled TLK entries and after the final encounter, Viconia's BG2 introduction text with people attempting to burn her at the stake popped up).

It was also kinda abrupt that when Baeloth brought the party in, the party ended up fighting a wave of duergars before actually explaining what is going on.

Ultimately I don't think I would go through this again anyway, although that isn't due to any of the bugs above. The section thematically feels too different to my taste with it's custom rules of no loot being dropped from the encounters and that the available artifacts in the vendors offers the possibility to duplicate them within the act itself (due to the stores getting switched during the tier transition, I managed to bring back two additional Elves' Banes from Garaq), but these would need a more through approach than what your project aimed for.

Edited January 17, 2023 by Graion Dilach

[subtledoctor]

41 minutes ago, Graion Dilach said:

Yeah, sorry, I was tired.

So, people didn't die here, but ended up in a permanent sleeping state or something with 2 HP, which stuck the game in cutscene mode after Baeloth teleported the party out. Couldn't figured it out what was causing it - I traced it back to the ring, but my debug fu stopped there

Damn, I specifically tested this. At 2hp the party member should:

• go to sleep
• become unselectable
• have protection from EA/all
• get a custom spellstate.

Then the backstage area script should detect that spellstate, and conditionally apply a spell that removes those conditions and heals them. This should not affect any cut-scene. It worked when I tested it - though, not in every fight? Maybe the scripted return from the arena to the backstage area is different after different fights? Or maybe it depends on who is asleep? Maybe the return to backstage sometimes has dialogue with Player1, so Player1 cannot be asleep?

41 minutes ago, Graion Dilach said:

one scripting error during the ending which fixed itself via replaying the last encounter (the mad conspirator never arrived after everyone else and I couldn't initiate the dialog with Najim, who just decided to teleport out from the arena, leaving my party with the duergars) and a few string issues which might be EET's fault (all the stores ended up with garbled TLK entries and after the final encounter, Viconia's BG2 introduction text with people attempting to burn her at the stake popped up).

Weird, I didn't see any of that in my EET game. The .tlk entries in the vendors' .DLG files are identical to the normal BP .tlk entries +200,000, which should be where those entries are in an EET game...

41 minutes ago, Graion Dilach said:

The section thematically feels too different to my taste with it's custom rules of no loot being dropped from the encounters

Huh, I agree it's a bit thematically weird, though for me it was much more about the way it just keeps refreshing your fatigue and spells after every fight, which means you just go in an nova constantly and there is zero resource management. It's a bit jarring after e.g. doing the entire cloakwood mines without resting.

41 minutes ago, Graion Dilach said:

and that the available artifacts in the vendors offers the possibility to duplicate them within the act itself (due to the stores getting switched during the tier transition, I managed to bring back two additional Elves' Banes from Garaq), but these would need a more through approach than what your project aimed for.

In this context there is really no reason to have different tiers of stuff in the stores. The more I think about it, the more I feel like the top-tier store should be available immediately. Even if you play a normal BP game, this won't really be problematic, because at lower tiers you wouldn't be able to afford powerful stuff. And having one store with fewer items means you deplete whatever you actually do use.

Edited January 17, 2023 by subtledoctor

[Graion Dilach]

17 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

though for me it was much more about the way it just keeps refreshing your fatigue and spells after every fight, which means you just go in an nova constantly and there is zero resource management.

Yeah, but the only thing where this is relevant is that if you run without summoning limits, you can "prepare" the arena via rematching an easy foe in it and using the opportunity to spam and position longer summons like Animate Dead to the arena for your bigger match.

Otherwise you're free to sleep in the floors of the shop, because besides shopping and asking out the beholder's opinion, there's nothing else to do between matches and there's no time pressure on this either. I'm not sure what could fix this aspect though.

Edited January 17, 2023 by Graion Dilach

[Graion Dilach]

On 9/15/2022 at 5:08 PM, subtledoctor said:

That is very interesting. Not exactly the same basic idea - I just wanted to put the BP and BG campaigns together, as they are already coexist in the app. AWizardDidIt was inspired by the content in the BP campaign to make something different and entirely new. Which is a wonderful idea, and much better than just "put BP in BG." But also, pretty clearly, a classic case of biting off more than he could chew. I had the benefit of reading these forums for 15 years before ever trying to make something, so I've seen aaaall the cautionary tales. AWizardDidIt, apparently, did not.

So at any rate my far inferior idea has the singular benefit of being much simpler, and so went from "poking around" to playable in a matter of days. If Black Hearts ever gets off the ground that will be great too - and there's no reason they can't coexist. Players can even install both if they don't mind seeing the same areas in different contexts. As far as joining forces, I doubt I could contribute much to Black Hearts, it seems way more advanced and involved than what I generally make.

Just a FYI update on this front - Black Hearts is out and it duplicates the assets it uses. The mods are thereby technically compatible.

[Endarire]

Doc, may modders do cross mod for your BP in EET?

Thankee!

[StummvonBordwehr]

@Graion Dilach

thank you for the update about Black Hearts. When you say technically... Would installing both mods incur bugs or other things? Or is it just story wise it gets a bit weird?

[Graion Dilach]

On 1/21/2023 at 10:27 AM, StummvonBordwehr said:

@Graion Dilach

thank you for the update about Black Hearts. When you say technically... Would installing both mods incur bugs or other things? Or is it just story wise it gets a bit weird?

Sorry, I missed this one, but honestly, I can't answer if it goes weird storywise. I've abandoned the aforementioned run where I had both BP-in-BG and Black Hearts installed before finishing the mines (I tend to spread out Ch2 a LOT) and BH doesn't really start before you clear the mines. I did check the files in both mods though, so they shouldn't affect each other much.

[StummvonBordwehr]

On 1/23/2023 at 6:15 PM, Graion Dilach said:

Sorry, I missed this one, but honestly, I can't answer if it goes weird storywise. I've abandoned the aforementioned run where I had both BP-in-BG and Black Hearts installed before finishing the mines (I tend to spread out Ch2 a LOT) and BH doesn't really start before you clear the mines. I did check the files in both mods though, so they shouldn't affect each other much.

Not to worry Graion, I know you ser busy. Thank you for the feedback. I think I will give both a try in the same game - at some point..

[Gwaihir]

@subtledoctor

Hi, so I tried to start the black pits in my current EET run and immediately got stuck. Using version 0.9.1, the game hangs in OH9360.ARE right after the first Baeloth speech (What's next? Ah, this group...) when he tells Najim to 'take care of them'. If this is when the party items are taken, it might be an issue from this mod.  Anyway, Najim plays the teleport visual effect, then the entire scene hangs there, with all the sprites animations playing and music in the background, but without UI or any type of command, so that I'm forced to kill the app from the task manager.

As said before, this mod has been installed quite late. It's possible something went wrong at install time, though I got no clue where to start looking.

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by Gwaihir

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Gwaihir said:

tried to start the black pits in my current EET run and immediately got stuck. Using version 0.9.1, the game hangs in OH9360.ARE right after the first Baeloth speech (What's next? Ah, this group...) when he tells Najim to 'take care of them'. If this is when the party items are taken, it might be an issue from this mod.  Anyway, Najim plays the teleport visual effect, then the entire scene hangs there, with all the sprites animations playing and music in the background, but without UI or any type of command, so that I'm forced to kill the app from the task manager.

Could be the same issue that I ran into. Check bpnajim.cre in Near Infinity and make sure he has s valid script name. (Which I think should be “bpnajim” just like his filename.)

Install order wouldn’t matter if that’s the problem, because bpnajim.cre is already in the vanilla game files and is not altered by BP-in-BG. (Though I suppose I could add a fix for this, as a prophylactic measure…)

Edited February 18, 2023 by subtledoctor

[Gwaihir]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Could be the same issue that I ran into.

Huh, yes it was. The CRE script was exactly  named 'cre_strref'. Renaming it BPNAJIM fixed it. Thank you!