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Okay, I do have an update.

 

The whole Easthaven part seems to work with a few minor problems. I figured out how to get the starting are changed (pretty easy, it's just in STARTARE.2DA and maybe STARTPOS.2DA). So I played through almost all of Easthaven from the opening dialog with Hrothgar and a new party.

 

But unfortunately there's still a ton to do. I haven't had any spell casters yet and those are going to be a problem.

 

Still, things are looking promising.

 

Excellent news. So does this mean that Easthaven's awesome music score is implemented too?

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Yes, the music is there.

 

Unfortunately, Easthaven isn't a very rigorous test. There are a lot of game features that don't get used until later areas (I'm pretty sure my wizard conversion will be pretty unsatisfactory).

 

However, things are looking pretty good so far. Next I'm going to put in the *.CHU conversions so that the chapter information is there (and maybe the map conversion too).

 

-Fred

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I just happened to find this site because I was searching for BG mods, and I must say that I am very intrigued by this project. It seems like a pretty daunting task to pull off, but the rewards will be well worth it to the people that still think, like I do, that the Infinity Engine is the supreme ruler of RPG engines. It looks like you still have a lot of work to do, and I don't know what use I can be, but if you need anything to make the project go more smoothly I am willing to try and help. My email is Holkeyesf at yahoo dot com. Take care, and good fortune in your modding trials.

 

~Holk

 

[EDIT] Holk, I changed your e-mail address hoping that I could spare you from unwanted spam by some web worm thingy. -Fred

Edited by FredSRichardson
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Just another status/update

 

I've been playing through the first few areas, and so far there aren't any game crashes, but there are definite game-balance problems. The default weimorph IWD2 CRE conversion routines create really tough monsters by almost any standard. I've gotten around this in a few places by substituting in an existing IWD2 CRE that's a close match to the original, but this doesn't always works. I couldn't find any orcs that were weak enough for the first area outside Easthaven.

 

So this is probably the next thing to work through: creature balancing. I haven't quite figured out the best way to tackle this, but I'm going to see if I can at least balance the creatures up to Kuldehar before I make the first Beta release.

 

The next biggest topic is Mage A/I. The IWD1 A/I scripts won't make a lot of sense for IWD2 because of the 3E class changes. It would at least be more satisfying to take a look at some of these and try to improve them.

 

-Fred

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As far as creature spawning goes, a last resort could possibly be making custom creatures for the areas that are difficult to balance. This would be pretty time consuming, however. With the stat variables and item drops, this option would be far from ideal.

 

With the mage A/I, I don't really know what you could do besides tweaking the scripting to make it resemble the 3rd ed. rules, but I'm sure you already know that.

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Yes, I think you right on with that. Making custom CRE's isn't very appealing. I have a few alternatives I've been experimenting with. One looks like this in the rules file:

 

~ORCWAXE.CRE~			   < ~20ORCWAR.CRE~ 
							ADD_AND_EQUIP_TARGET (~001D6S.ITM~, ~WEAPON1~, 0, 0, 0, 0);
							SET_ATTR (12, 9, 8, 10, 12, 9);
							SET_HP (6, 6)  >


~ORCWBOW.CRE~			   < ~20ORCACH.CRE~ 
							ADD_AND_EQUIP_TARGET (~001D6S.ITM~, ~WEAPON2~, 0, 0, 0, 0);
							SET_ATTR (12, 9, 8, 10, 11, 8);
							SET_HP (6, 6)  >

These two rules read something like this (starting with the first one):

In place of CRE "ORCWAXE" from IWD1 (one of the Orcs in the cave outside Easthaven), use CRE "20ORCWAR" in IWD2, but add and equip a new weapon (1D6 slashing instead of 1D8 slashing), change the stats (these are reduced down from the existing ones) and lower the HP to 6 (from 8).

 

These Orc's were still a bit too tough for a level 1 party, so I was thinking of a different approach: taking some of the Goblins from IWD2 and changing their animation and coloring. This will make very wimpy Orc's, but then the IWD1 Orc's are very wimpy.

 

While I was comparing CRE resources, I did notice a few other "Unknown" fields that might make a difference (and I also noticed that the number of attacks per round was too high).

 

Anyway, these are just some details. I'll try to provide you beta testers with a bit of documentation so you can try to play with these things as you tool round with the mod. :p

 

-Fred

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Okay, this seems to work pretty well. The Orcs are about right for a level 1 party:

 

~ORCWAXE.CRE~			   < ~10GOBC.CRE~ 
							SET_ANIMATION(59416);
							SET_COLOR(30,37,103,12,23,28,0);
							SET_NAME(~Orc~,~Orc~)
						>
~ORCWAXE.variable_of_cre~   [ ~Ghast~ ]
~ORCWBOW.CRE~			   < ~10GOBARC.CRE~ 
							SET_ANIMATION(59426);
							SET_COLOR(30,37,69,12,23,28,0);
							SET_NAME(~Orc~,~Orc~)
						>
~ORCWBOW.variable_of_cre~   [ ~Ghast~ ]

~ORCSHAM.CRE~			   < ~12GOBSH1.CRE~
							SET_ANIMATION(59481);
							SET_COLOR(30,37,73,12,23,28,0);
							SET_NAME(~Orc Shaman~,~Orc Shaman~)
						>
~ORCSHAM.variable_of_cre~   [ ~Ghast~ ]

~ORCEWBOW.CRE~			   < ~12GOBAR.CRE~ 
							SET_ANIMATION(59426);
							SET_COLOR(30,37,69,12,23,28,0);
							SET_NAME(~Orc~,~Orc~)
						>
~ORCEWBOW.variable_of_cre~  [ ~Ghast~ ]

~ORCEWAXE.CRE~			   < ~12GOB.CRE~ 
							SET_ANIMATION(59426);
							SET_COLOR(30,37,69,12,23,28,0);
							SET_NAME(~Orc~,~Orc~)
						>
~ORCEWAXE.variable_of_cre~  [ ~Ghast~ ]

 

This is just using the Goblin's from early on in IWD1 (mostly from the cave).

 

-Fred

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Since goblins and orcs aren't dynamically colored, you can probably do away with SET_COLOR?

I noticed that the colors are different in the CRE's (that is for the Goblins and Orcs in IWD2), but I'm not sure what impact this field has. Actually, only one of the color entries changes (the 3rd one). I'll do a test and see if this has any effect on the display.

 

-Fred

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It's jolly good to see you back to work, and he-he, I think that similar patch can be written for IWD2 itself making monsters less tough, lol! I know I would dl it in a heart-beat!

:p Yes, I don't think that'd be any problem at all.

 

The IWD2 game does have some balance issues, and this mod will have even more balance issues.

 

I'd like to see if I can resolve the pickpocketing thing. It should be worth while to dump some points into that skill. I noticed that in IWD2, pickpocketing would become impossible when the CR of the creature got too high. You could really see this in HoF mode. I remember doing a test by setting my Char's PP up to the max (I think it was 127, I tried a bunch of different values), and PP still failed...

 

-Fred

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I noticed that the colors are different in the CRE's (that is for the Goblins and Orcs in IWD2), but I'm not sure what impact this field has. Actually, only one of the color entries changes (the 3rd one). I'll do a test and see if this has any effect on the display.
Unless they completely overhauled the palette system, you shouldn't see any difference. Only palettable animations (all the PC animations and any carried over from BG) are affected by these values (these will be the animations with wacky neon colors). The IWD and new-style BG2 animations (and probably all new ID2 animations) aren't affected by normal color effects (and they don't use standard weapon components, so even their weapons can't be colored in the normal fashion).

 

I think the major color is used to determine the console feedback color for the character, but I don't know if they do this in ID2 (and I don't think it's important enough to spend time recreating the palettes regardless).

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I think the major color is used to determine the console feedback color for the character, but I don't know if they do this in ID2 (and I don't think it's important enough to spend time recreating the palettes regardless).

Ah, okay, if it's just the console color, then I could change the command to "SET_CONSOLE_COLOR" and give it one parameter. This would certainly simplify things a bit.

 

I'm wondering if I'll run into problems with the Shadow Orcs. They look different in IWD1, and I'm not sure if they use a different or non-existant animation in IWD2.

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