Mod idea - Bestiary

[Pecca]

Hi, I have had this idea for a while about making bestiary for EE games. It's rather simple lua code, residing in message box, checking for "creature: Death" string, then checking against a "bestiary" lua table and then making a journal user note with a unique prefix. In journal, another category would be created, filtering journal notes by that prefix, and upon expanding, displaying information from lua table.
Additionaly, entries can be edited by subsequent "creature: Death" strings of the same creature, thus counting number of kills and displaying additional information after some threshold.
I have a working sample code and I plan to make a limited version of this in my upcoming UI mod, since I don't have time and resources to make a full version. But I wonder if enough volunteers liked this idea, we could make a full version containing all noteworthy creatures of BG and IWD games, with descriptions, some gradually uncovering combat information and some pictures.

[Endarire]

I enjoy the idea of this.  DavidW and Argent77 have done UI work.  Yunie released the BG2 Radar Overlay.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Endarire

[Pecca]

Well, the UI part is pretty much done. What is needed is content work: creating descriptions, extracting combat information from game files and perhaps drawing pictures.

[Cahir]

17 minutes ago, Pecca said:

What is needed is content work: creating descriptions

Well, that part might be problematic. A while ago, Cam was looking for someone who could help writing descriptions for the proper implementation of a Tracking ability, but there was zero response. But I'd really love to see this coming, god knows, this game lacks of good bestiary.

My personal dream would be to linked it also with Lore value. The higher the lore, the more complete bestiary description. But this is just a musing from my side.

[Pecca]

Yeah, I have no expectations really, but it never hurts to ask.

The version in my own UI mod will be limited to scope of Ranger's favourite enemies or similar like that.

[Endarire]

Since so many creatures are taken from the 2e books, what about using those descriptions?  This is one site which will likely help.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Endarire

[Pecca]

I thought about that before, but I'm not sure about licence terms.

[Endarire]

BeamDog gave modders permission to freely intermingle resources from their games.  For example, if you want to port a creature from NWNEE into BG2EE, you can.

Also note that d20SRD is a 3.5 resource, but legally open.

Finally for now as a matter of practicality, if you aren't trying to sell the mod for money, and you aren't ripping off D&D 5e material, BeamDog and WotC are very likely not to care nor object regarding what's inside.

[Acifer]

I too would love to see a bestiary ingame! Also, it would be a great opportunity for modders to add their own stuff.

I don't think it would be a copyright issue, since all the material has been publicly available on the internet for a long time.

A good site that lists the original descriptions from the AD&D 2nd Edition sourcebooks:

http://www.mojobob.com/roleplay/monstrousmanual/

[bob_veng]

Shortening and paraphrasing is needed anyways because descriptions in the books are long and may not match all that well with how creatures are implemented.

[Endarire]

There's also the Pathfinder SRD - with Pathfinder being a generally open source derivative of D&D 3.5 with more stuff.

[Pecca]

A little preview to put a shape to the idea...

 

[Acifer]

Looks fantastic! This will be a great addition to the game. 

The only thing that might cause problems is the use of graphics by the original artists (in this case the Hobgoblin image by Tony DiTerlizzi). The b/w colour tone of the image looks great though, and it would be a shame to have to drop the image due to copyright issues. 

[Pecca]

Well I took the image from the monster manual linked above, which was suggested to be okay. But as I said I wasn't sure. So is it okay to use images from those sources or only texts? Isn't it the same?

[Acifer]

I'm not a legal expert, so I can only add my two cents here. I've been active in all things D&D for a very long time, and I've never, ever encountered any problems with using text from the AD&D sourcebooks (in a reasonable manner, of course). Entire communities (the Forgotten Realms Wiki, the Candlekeep Forum) use this source material to fuel their site. 
What I have encountered several times, however, are copyright issues when using or altering graphics from these sourcebooks.
Sorry for the misunderstanding with the link above, I thought it was only about the texts, not the graphics. 

Perhaps WotC's fan content policy could shed more light on this:

https://company.wizards.com/en/legal/fancontentpolicy