Neverwinter Night for Baldur's Gate mod

[paladin84]

I am not sure it is the right forum, so move the post where it should be, please.

I would like to present a new mod "Neverwinter Night for Baldur's Gate" (with the permission of its author, of cause): https://github.com/abalabokhin/NWNForBG/releases/tag/0.97

Alternative link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ts7Uu0nXNwQJmzS22V1KV691Ws7mzQMu/view

The mod adds the whole NWN plot with some minor modifications and can be installed on oBG2/BGT/BG2EE/EET. It is a huge mod with hundreds of new areas, 6 (obvious) joinable NPCs, lots of dialogs and... Lady Aribeth.

All the useful information (how to install, etc) should be in the mod's README file (at github), but I still would like to say "Thank you" to the author of this content: AGKanevchev. He spent more than 5 years creating huge assembly with NWN plot based on some Russian BGT assembly. I felt that I should do my best to extract all this unique content from his assembly into a mod. I have never made BG mods before, so it took me 4 month and I am still not sure, that I am doing everything 100% properly in weidu.

However, now I consider the mod to be ready with some minor issues, though.

Current issues:

1. Original assembly was in Russian, and some Russian NWN localization was used for NWN content. I wrote a script to automatically find the match of English lines (using English and Russian NWN texts), but the lines, which script was not able to find the match for, are machine translated from Russian. Such line are marked with "NP:" prefix, and it is about 5K of them. I also cannot guarantee that matching lines don't have mistakes (original NWN texts were changed for the assembly). I fixed English setup.tra file, but I don't have resources right now to fix all the dialogs. I am also not a native speaker, so, if some of you can help with checking English tra files, it would be awesome. 
Overall, all the English dialogs should be "understandable" but might not be "pretty".

2. There are some known bugs in the mod, that I don't know how to fix at this moment, but they are not critical and the mod is fully playable (these minor bugs are described in README).

Copyright Concerns:

1. Dialogs, Characters and the whole plot were taken from NWN game.
2. Some area maps were taken from other games eg Pillars of Eternity.
3. The original assembly was based on BGT, with many mods installed, so portraits for some NPCs might not be original, some items (to fill the stores) might also not be original. I don't know at this moment, which mods' content were used in the original assembly, so if there are any copyright concerns, please, let me know, and we will find the appropriate solution (I can exclude your work from the mod or add you to "Thanks and Acknowledgements" or something else).

I hope you will enjoy the mod. All the questions, bug reports and the ideas how to improve the mod are welcomed here or on the github.

Edited March 31 by paladin84

[Bardez]

Neat! I'm curious to see (eventually) how this looks and feels once I'm done modding.

[Daulmakan]

1 hour ago, paladin84 said:

I am not sure it is the right forum, so move the post where it should be, please.

I would like to present a new mod "Neverwinter Night for Baldur's Gate" (with the permission of its author, of cause): https://github.com/abalabokhin/NWNForBG/releases/tag/0.92.

Your link gives out an error because of the dot at the end. Might want to remove it just in case someone doesn't figure it out.

[InKal]

hmmm...combined with paladins of faerun this could be glorious. 

 

but is it EEET compatibe?

[Graion Dilach]

It shouldn't, this sounds like a total conversion in the style of Classic Adventures. I'm not even sure why BGT was the starting point, although I presume the point was moreso taht it was a megamod installation with BGT included.

[megrimlock]

It was a total conversion but paladin84 has reverse engineered it as a BG2EE mod. I had an earlier version up and running on EET. Beautiful looking mod. I will try to help with tidying up the English lines, had started that already but it's laborious.

[paladin84]

5 hours ago, Daulmakan said:

Your link gives out an error because of the dot at the end. Might want to remove it just in case someone doesn't figure it out.

Thank you, fixed.

5 hours ago, InKal said:

but is it EEET compatibe?

It is EET compatible if you meant it.

5 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

It shouldn't, this sounds like a total conversion in the style of Classic Adventures. I'm not even sure why BGT was the starting point, although I presume the point was moreso taht it was a megamod installation with BGT included.

It is not a total conversion and never was (at least how I understand "total conversion", you still playing BG2, when a man from Neverwinter find you in Athkatla). Main hero should have enough experience to start NWN - all the enemies and items are designed, assuming the main hero has at least 1.5M XP. It would probably be more logical to have this content as a total conversion and start with level 1 (as was with original NWN), but it is how AGKanevchev made it originally and I am not going to change it.

As far as I understood the process of making this content initially was:

1. Have some BGT as starting point

2. Add maps, items, creatures, compile some dialogs with weidu, compile some scripts...

3. Repeat 2. many times.

4. ????

5. Profit!!!

And then my work was to understand which resources should belong to the mod and which are not, extract them, create weidu installer, rename all the resources in the mod to have prefix, fix bugs...

52 minutes ago, megrimlock said:

I will try to help with tidying up the English lines, had started that already but it's laborious.

Any help with this is very welcome. Feel free to share what you already have, I will update tra files with your version.

[megrimlock]

Yeah I guess paladin84 is right about the term total conversion. AGKanevchev never released this as a mod, he released a bundle of the original game with his NWN content inextricably incorporated into it. I tried that and it was daunting to navigate in Russian! Very grateful to paladin84 for stripping it out and converting to weidu and to EE as I was excited at the prospect of having this in an EET mega installation.

Will have a look where I got to with the tidyup. Haven't fed my altered files back into the mod yet at my end so not sure whether I've inadvertently introduced syntax errors. And a little wary in the parts where AGK has changed the original dialogue trees - without which it would probably have been much easier just to port across the dialog file from the original NWN...

[paladin84]

I feel that he didn't change the original NWN texts mach, but because he had to write down all the dialogs manually, some original NWN lines might have been splitted or combined. I believe, using the original NWN text (I keep it in the repo as well: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abalabokhin/NWNForBG/main/NWNForBG/reference/bash_scripts/entries_en.txt.tra , "best match line" from tra file (I left it as a comment) and machine translation, all NWN texts can be recovered quite accurately. Eg, in file NWAARIN1.tra (Aarin Gend from chapter 2), first three lines have "NP:" marker:

@0 = ~NP: Excuse me, but where is <CHARNAME>? I'll only talk to him.~ /*My name is <CHARNAME>. I am searching for the Words of Power.*/
@1 = ~NP: Excuse me, but where is <CHARNAME>? I'll only talk to her.~ /*My name is <CHARNAME>. I work for Aarin Gend.*/
@2 = ~NP: Hey, buddy. I understand you helped rid Neverwinter of the Howling Death. Allow me to congratulate you on the successful completion of that task. You have demonstrated a rare amount of courage and resourcefulness. Both of which you will need to accomplish your task.~ [NWAAR227] /*Hail, friend. You were instrumental in ridding Neverwinter of the Wailing Death, I understand. Allow me to congratulate you on a job well done.*/

@0 and @1 are obviously new lines, so just the machine translation should be checked. What is in comments (/*...*/) should be removed and NP: marker should be removed.
@2 has a good suggestion in a comment, so it is probably existing line (at least partially), or even created from two original lines. It can be found in the NWN texts (@39291 = ~Hail, friend. You were instrumental in ridding Neverwinter of the Wailing Death, I understand. Allow me to congratulate you on a job well done.~) and next to it, the second part of the line can be found (@39292 = ~You have shown yourself to be possessed of remarkable courage and resourcefulness. That is fortuitous, for both these qualities will be needed if you are to complete your mission.~). Thus, @2 should be fixed to be:
@2 = ~Hail, friend. You were instrumental in ridding Neverwinter of the Wailing Death, I understand. Allow me to congratulate you on a job well done. You have shown yourself to be possessed of remarkable courage and resourcefulness. That is fortuitous, for both these qualities will be needed if you are to complete your mission.~ [NWAAR227]

Sorry if it is a too long (or too detailed) explanation, but it is not an usual translation process, it is rather a search process and I made tra files to have enough information (hopefully), so it can be fixed using just two files (english tra file and original NWN texts) by somebody who doesn't know Russian. If some lines are too complex to fix, they can be left "as is", I will probably fix everything eventually.

Edited October 19, 2023 by paladin84

[Roberciiik]

So what should a translator do for a new language? What is the approach? Is there any mapping between stringrefs from NWN base game and mod?

[paladin84]

26 minutes ago, Roberciiik said:

So what should a translator do for a new language? What is the approach? Is there any mapping between stringrefs from NWN base game and mod?

It is complex . I do have mapping if it is one line to one line mapping (https://github.com/abalabokhin/NWNForBG/blob/main/NWNForBG/reference/bash_scripts/map_file.txt , sorry all the filenames are before adding prefixes, I can fix it if you want to start), but I don't have the mapping if it combined, splitted or changed line. I would finish English translation first and then use it as a base for other translations. I might even should be able to improve my scripts to "understand" combined lines.

I can also create other language files to be partially translated based on this mapping (how it is with English now) and it is another reason why I would finish with English first - it is better to have mixed good English with other language than machine translated English mixed with other language.

However, if you want start translating on other language right now, start with setup file. It is already fixed, have all the proper names from NWN and many unique (or taken from other mods) items that need translation. I can create tra file with original NWN texts for any language, NWN was translate to.

Edited October 19, 2023 by paladin84

[Roberciiik]

I don't have resources to start translating it to my native language now. It is a question kinda "what if". And good that you have some partial mapping. I think it is good idea to generate other languages with partial translation from the base game in the later stage.

PS. Is abalabokhin your GitHub profile?

[paladin84]

4 minutes ago, Roberciiik said:

PS. Is abalabokhin your GitHub profile?

Yes, it is mine.

[megrimlock]

6 hours ago, paladin84 said:

 

@0 = ~NP: Excuse me, but where is <CHARNAME>? I'll only talk to him.~ /*My name is <CHARNAME>. I am searching for the Words of Power.*/
@1 = ~NP: Excuse me, but where is <CHARNAME>? I'll only talk to her.~ /*My name is <CHARNAME>. I work for Aarin Gend.*/
@2 = ~NP: Hey, buddy. I understand you helped rid Neverwinter of the Howling Death. Allow me to congratulate you on the successful completion of that task. You have demonstrated a rare amount of courage and resourcefulness. Both of which you will need to accomplish your task.~ [NWAAR227] /*Hail, friend. You were instrumental in ridding Neverwinter of the Wailing Death, I understand. Allow me to congratulate you on a job well done.*/

@0 and @1 are obviously new lines, so just the machine translation should be checked. What is in comments (/*...*/) should be removed and NP: marker should be removed.
@2 has a good suggestion in a comment, so it is probably existing line (at least partially), or even created from two original lines.

Yes I have followed all of that fine, your files are very readable even to an uninitiated like me! I understand that the suggestions are coming from NWN originals and at times I was cross checking with the dialog file I ripped from my copy of NWN Diamond (as I understand he used that version).

The issue is when - and it crops up quite a bit in the limited files I have been through - the suggestion in comments bears no relation whatsoever to the machine generated line, suggesting AGK has altered the dialog tree somewhow. In those instances I have been trusting that his line is generally correct, ignored the suggestion and simply tweaked the wording where the machine translation is jarringly off.

Edited October 19, 2023 by megrimlock

[paladin84]

20 minutes ago, megrimlock said:

The issue is when - and it crops up quite a bit in the limited files I have been through - the suggestion in comments bears no relation whatsoever to the machine generated line, suggesting AGK has altered the dialog tree somewhow. In those instances I have been trusting that his line is generally correct, ignored the suggestion and simply tweaked the wording where the machine translation is jarringly off.

Yes, I guess it is the right approach. Sometimes automatic search can produce bad results, eg if the lines was splitted or combined, it can suggest very different line (especially for short lines). So if you want, you can search in the original NWN lines (yes, it is Diamond Edition) for lines around this one if automatic search works well for this other lines (usually all the dialogs for one charcter are located at the same place in NWN tra file) and you might be able to find the line... But it is too time comsuming, so just correcting machine translation if automatic match fails seems like a good approach.