Essential Fixes vs. Optional?

[Blucher]

One thing that always bothered me with Baldurdash was that it included a quite a few trivial/unimportant changes. For instance I never cared if the North Forest skeleton warrior had the "correct" avatar, if the Ring of Gaxx displayed immunity icons, or if Wizard Slayers could use Regis' amulet, or whatever.

 

It seems like that kind of stuff should be in a different category than broken dialogues, quests, and scripts, and the like.

 

How are you guys approaching this with the BG2 Fixpack?

[CamDawg]

The goal is simply to fix anything that's broken, big or small. The nice thing about the little bits like portrait icons and usabilities is that they're usually easy to fix. Figuring out whether something is actually broken and, if so, the best way to fix it is surprisingly difficult. Broken quests usually get higher priority because they're very noticable to players and get reported more promptly. Plus, for some reason players seem more concerned with us fixing the wonky quest timer in Ust Natha that gets them exposed rather than some esoteric spell power issue. Go figure.

 

Fixing the scripts and dialogues was one of the first projects we tackled, and I think we've done a pretty bang-up job so far. Patched ToB has something like 810 bcs/dlg errors and 2527 warnings; post-Fixpack, we're down to no errors and 1807 dialogue warnings, all but 2 or 3 related to leftover BG resources. (Originally, we killed off the leftover BG resources to clear out the remaining warnings, but CtB still uses them so we're leaving them alone starting in beta 2.)

 

Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but I hope that answers your question.

[Blucher]

Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but I hope that answers your question.

 

It's cool. Do you have a complete list of everything fixed, like K. Dorner used to have?

[CamDawg]

Documentation remains the bane of our existance. There's a weak attempt at documentation on the wiki, but it's far, far from complete. All of the work (and arguments ) are basically here in the forums, so the best I can offer is the search feature. Given the choice of fixing bugs for four hours, or writing about fixing bugs for four hours, the former typically wins.