Is this the place to share my IWD:EE mod which is not Weidu-friendly?

[pete_smith1229]

I spent over 2 years of my free time developing this mod and I absolutely loved every second of it (including the parts where I pulled my hair out when things went wrong!). However, 99% of this mod was created using NI, the remaining 1% was using Weidu scripts to inject various new spell ids, portrait icons, projectiles etc. First I will ask my question(s) and then I'll describe the main components of the mod.

1. At the moment, to install the mod requires the user to manually copy/paste the modded files to a fresh IWD:EE installation (I could create a simple installer which copies the files to the relevant folders such as override). This means that it the mod would need to be installed first before any other mods (and I'm not sure if it's compatible with any as the dialog.tlk file was also modded via NI).

Considering this is not a Weidu-friendly mod, can it find a home in G3 or should I keep it on GitHub?

Or is there a "simplish" process where the mod can be converted to being Weidu-friendly?

2. For the mod itself, I thought to share some of the things I've added since it took me this long to pretty much finish. My childhood was in the late eighties and nineties and I grew up with some incredible games from Sega, Nintendo, MS-DOS, not to mention some cartoons and other media. As such, I took great inspiration from these, so great that I practically ripped the assets and incorporated them into this mod (the rights of which are all owned by their respective creators). These include names, animations, icons, heck even some voices and music from Secret of Evermore/Mana, Illusion of Gaia, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Guild Wars, Devil May Cry, Lord of the Rings...and a few others.

Anyway, here are some of the main aspects of the mod:

- A whole range of new items

- A weaponsmith to teach you new proficiency

- New Alchemy system where finding and combining rare ingredients will award you with new spells

- New weapon abilities which can only be activated when wielding the weapon itself

- New Bounty system where bringing the carcasses of certain enemies will give you rewards, in addition to being able to purchase a home where you can store your items inside safely and rest whenever you wish

- New Set Bonus system where equipping certain Armor Sets will grant you multiple benefits (and a penalty)

- Find all 50 mysterious Red Jewels to discover a Dark Secret

 

The mod is about 95% complete but I would like to know where it can be published once I think it is ready enough to be released.

 

[Jarno Mikkola]

1 hour ago, pete_smith1229 said:

Considering this is not a Weidu-friendly mod, can it find a home in G3 or should I keep it on GitHub?

You should keep it at github, and ytou could upload it to other places as well..
And the only thing you really need to do to make it a weidu "friendly mod" is, program a setup-yourmod.tp2 file that a setup-yourmod.exe that is just renamed weidu.exe -file, and have the files you want to overwrite in the Yourmod -folder.

And then have this type code in the .tp2 file:
 

BACKUP ~Yourmod/backup~
AUTHOR ~pete_smith1229~

VERSION ~v1~

//README ~Yourmod/README.%LANGUAGE%.txt~ this is unnessasary... but it's good to have it here if you need it at some point, should you understand then lines // comments it out

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

BEGIN ~Yourmod component name~

COPY ~Yourmod/tocodyfiles~ ~override~
COPY ~Yourmod/dialog.tlk~ ~lang\en_US~

//End of file

Then it's technically weidu friendly, as you just force overwrite the files in the game with yours. That's a perfectly valid choise. Also, it will encourage people to actually do what they ought to and install your mod FIRST.

Now, the dialog.tlk thing is a little contrivertial I'll say... but there's ways to get around it after you upload the files ... as we can use tools* to make the item etc descriptions from your moded .tlk into being better via weidu, but we need the files.
But I would suggest that you upload the files first before we recruit someone to make it more weidu magic mod, aka one that does the dialog.tlk during install... I also assume you are an English IWDEE user..

*tools such as near infinity, winmerge and then some basic weidu knowledge on how to dial with editing stings in files, but that won't be your problem, at least for now.

Edited October 10 by Jarno Mikkola

[zenblack]

I really hope you learn some Weidu, looking at what you had seems like a ton of work and effort but your method is too destructive and makes things not compatible. The only sad thing is learning Weidu is essential in this system as people who mod just like playing a bunch together. I think you are doing a damn good job and I'd love to play it, but I personally can't just play 1 mod in a playthrough, even of IWD.

[jastey]

You're welcome to have a support thread at G3 like this one.

Being officially hosted at G3 is a different topic. You could apply, but I'd make a wild guess that a mod designed like this one (place changed files into the override instead of patching during install) will not match the criteria we are looking for in a mod.

[Jarno Mikkola]

4 hours ago, zenblack said:

I really hope you learn some Weidu,

Which we can very much show how to learn, via examples... but before any of that, I would want to have the original content of the mod shared somehow... as that allows ease of learning on their part, and ease of show on from our part.

30 minutes ago, jastey said:

You're welcome to have a support thread at G3 like this one.

Being officially hosted at G3 is a different topic. You could apply, but I'd make a wild guess that a mod designed like this one (place changed files into the override instead of patching during install) will not match the criteria we are looking for in a mod.

Just think of it this way, we can show how to make a mod after we extract(using Near Infinity) the modified dialog.tlk as a .txt file, we also have the unmodified dialog.tlk extracted as a .txt... and all you got to do is to compare the files with WinMerge, it's a visual comparison tool one can see very easily what has been changed between the two files, then you take the new items spells and what have you and you place the strings you extract from the mergeature ...
As you can quite well see, when you have similar file, but not the same, you can visualize it very easuily and take your picks what to copy where...

Edited October 11 by Jarno Mikkola

[jmerry]

At the most basic level, WeiDU has the ability to move files around. So, "copy these files into the override" can be done as a WeiDU command. And even a fully WeiDU-ized version of your mod would still do some of that; it looks like you've got new graphics for some of your new items, and the assets for those would just be copied over since WeiDU doesn't include tools for editing image files.

But straight-up copying an altered dialog.tlk? Yeah, that one really needs a design-level improvement. Dealing with text and dialogue in a reasonably compatible way is literally what WeiDU was built for. It's right there in the acronym.

[Jarno Mikkola]

16 minutes ago, jmerry said:

since WeiDU doesn't include tools for editing image files.

This is not true. The only reason one usually doesn't is that the image is too large, aka it's either a worldmap or a area maps, which are larger than the maximum 32 MB limit the COPY command has.. but if the image is smaller, you can edit it via bytevise comparison even if you really want to do that.

 

16 minutes ago, jmerry said:

But straight-up copying an altered dialog.tlk? Yeah, that one really needs a design-level improvement. Dealing with text and dialogue in a reasonably compatible way is literally what WeiDU was built for. It's right there in the acronym.

But we can very easily extract the changed strings from the altered dialog.tlk.. look at the above post of mine.

All of which is very basic and easy to do after you get your head out of your butthole.

 

Edited October 11 by Jarno Mikkola

[jastey]

3 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

But we can very easily extract the changed strings from the altered dialog.tlk.

That might be "easily" done, but that's not nearly half the work to turn a "place into override" mod into a proper weidu mod (proper in the sense of patching, not overwriting, what weidu was made for.). It's a matter of writing the tp2 so the correct lines get assigned to the appropriate files, doing the same with area changes, extracting the actual changes from the game files to single them out for a proper weidu install. it's real work and it will take a good while.

[Jarno Mikkola]

31 minutes ago, jastey said:

it's real work and it will take a good while.

Yes, but think of it this way, if you are this hesitant to even give it a try... think what they(the original poster) think. Meaning that we'll in most possibilities boot them out by scaring them off... while they were willing to share... how likely is it that they, now will ?

31 minutes ago, jastey said:

(proper in the sense of patching, not overwriting, what weidu was made for.).

When was this a thing ? Weidu was made for adding strings to the existing dialog.tlk... which is ironically what my proposition as a first step process is to do ... after which you can swing and throw your patch this or patch that for the sake of compatibility yes... but that was never the first priority. It was the easy ability to modify the game.

You want proof of this, well... let's go to the weidu.org page and download the Weimer-Spell50-v6.exe and see what stands in the .tp2 file ?

BACKUP ~spell50/backup~
AUTHOR ~weimer@cs.berkeley.edu~

BEGIN ~Extend Many Spells to 50th Level~

COPY    ~spell50/spl~   ~override~

// GB meteor swarm, ice storm, fire storm fixes
COPY_EXISTING ~METSWARM.PRO~ ~override/metswarm.pro~
              ~ICESTORM.PRO~ ~override/icestorm.pro~
  WRITE_BYTE 0x216 4

Yeah... that's patching... no overrides. Ouh... but it is.

Edited October 11 by Jarno Mikkola

[jastey]

10 hours ago, pete_smith1229 said:

I practically ripped the assets and incorporated them into this mod (the rights of which are all owned by their respective creators). These include names, animations, icons, heck even some voices and music from Secret of Evermore/Mana, Illusion of Gaia, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Guild Wars, Devil May Cry, Lord of the Rings...and a few others.

To my post above: this disqualifies to be hosted at G3.

I'll respect your amount of work, but I'm not sure this is a mod that should be uploaded publicly, considering the use of copyrighted material.

[jmerry]

1 hour ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

This is not true. The only reason one usually doesn't [edit images in WeiDU] is that the image is too large, aka it's either a worldmap or a area maps, which are larger than the maximum 32 MB limit the COPY command has.. but if the image is smaller, you can edit it via bytevise comparison even if you really want to do that.

No, the main reason you don't edit images in WeiDU is that "bytewise comparison" is a terrible way to work with images. Tools that can actually show you what you're working with are the way to go. Obviously.

[jastey]

4 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Yeah... that's patching... no overrides. Ouh... but it is.

Right, because in the 20+ years in between, neither weidu nor the community standards with respect to compatibility of mods evolved in any way. Good you pointed that out.

[paladin84]

Congrats with the release! It would be great if you publish your mod at github, make a release (when it is ready), etc.

It is definitely possible to convert your mod in proper weidu mod, I did something like this couple of times. It a lot of work, but it is doable. I think the first step would be to understand which resources (files you copy) are the new ones (they are easier to handle) and which ones are modifications of existing ones. After you know the numbers, it will be easier to estimate amount of work.

[Jarno Mikkola]

5 hours ago, jastey said:

Right, because in the 20+ years in between, neither weidu nor the community standards with respect to compatibility of mods evolved in any way. Good you pointed that out.

But you are arguing against the work of the original coder of the tool itself. About whjy the tool was created.
Now yes, you can be high and mighty about the new approach... but can't you be just a little more humble about the approach and teach people after you have their work in front of you, and then teach them what they could actually do, rather than being ... "the games moding has become patch only and we do not approve any other approach". And we require everyone to do it our way or the high way.
Goodbye new potential mod. Cause the ass we use as our head, was too tight.

The real reason I say this is that without the tool, none of your mod would work either.
It's like you, yes you jastey, have forgotten all the advances we have made during our stay here at g3. It's like you don't understand that the EET was a overwrite mod too.. and it's predecessor was not even a weidu mod at all.

8 hours ago, jmerry said:

No, the main reason you don't edit images in WeiDU is that "bytewise comparison" is a terrible way to work with images. Tools that can actually show you what you're working with are the way to go. Obviously.

Is that so ? OK, so: How do you add an exit zone to a map that doesn't have it ? But it needs to have, cause you then link that zone to a different, your own map ... when that map is in the vanilla game, but you want to patch the file, rather than overwrite it so it doesn't remove all the previous patches. News flash, you do it via weidu patch function called:

ADD_AREA_REGION_TRIGGER .. there's even a tool that gives you export of what you have done during your "painting", as a bytewise comparison. And it's explained in the area making tutorial.

Edited October 11 by Jarno Mikkola

[megrimlock]

4 hours ago, paladin84 said:

It is definitely possible to convert your mod in proper weidu mod, I did something like this couple of times.

OP, whilst the older members of the forum debate the history and philosophy of IE modding, please do pay heed to pally84. I cheered on from the sidelines as he heroically reverse-engineered the NWN-in-BG mod from what was effectively a total conversion to an EE-friendly, weidu-friendly, compatible mod for us all to play. It seems comparable to where you are just now with your own mod, and undoubtedly people will be far more likely to play with your mod if it plays nicely with others. Some of the stuff in here looks really neat and it would be a shame if it gathered dust as a curio piece.

Edited October 11 by megrimlock