DavidW

Ascension needs to go before SCS (it won’t let you install it after). Both Item Randomizer and SCS like being installed late, since they respond to the resources they find. Putting Item Randomizer after SCS will probably cause (minor) issues - some enemies will lack proficiencies in their weapons. I’m not aware of problems the other way around but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

No, that is not what that sentence means. It just means what it says.

In case this is any use to anyone, here's an immutable wrapper for HANDLE_AUDIO: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////// immutable version of HANDLE_AUDIO //////////// //////////// Assumes "ext_music_loc" and "ext_audio_loc" have been set appropriately //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// DEFINE_ACTION_FUNCTION handle_audio_immutably INT_VAR music=0 STR_VAR oggdec_path="%MOD_FOLDER%/audio" sox_path="%MOD_FOLDER%/audio" audio_path="%MOD_FOLDER%/audio" BEGIN OUTER_SET new_files=0 ACTION_IF music BEGIN ACTION_IF !VARIABLE_IS_SET ext_music_loc BEGIN OUTER_SPRINT ext_music_loc "weidu_external/music/%MOD_FOLDER%" END OUTER_SPRINT new_audio_path "%ext_music_loc%" END ELSE BEGIN ACTION_IF !VARIABLE_IS_SET ext_audio_loc BEGIN OUTER_SPRINT ext_audio_loc "weidu_external/audio/%MOD_FOLDER%" END OUTER_SPRINT new_audio_path "%ext_audio_loc%" END MKDIR "%new_audio_path%" // copy everything over ACTION_BASH_FOR "%audio_path%" ".*\.ogg" BEGIN ACTION_IF !FILE_EXISTS "%new_audio_path%/%BASH_FOR_FILE%" BEGIN OUTER_SET new_files=1 COPY_LARGE "%audio_path%/%BASH_FOR_FILE%" "%new_audio_path%" END END ACTION_IF new_files BEGIN PRINT "handling audio" LAF HANDLE_AUDIO INT_VAR music STR_VAR audio_path="%new_audio_path%" oggdec_path sox_path END END END To use: just call handle_audio_immutably, with the same arguments as HANDLE_AUDIO. (Not extensively tested yet!)

I'm not sure I see the issue. Why would you think unchecking the box would disable SCS? That's not mentioned in the readme. SCS ignores that box, in any case.

That probably isn’t doable (at least, I don’t know how to do it). Zoom is disabled in cutscenes for a reason: funny things are often happening offscreen!

Originally I thought it mattered a lot, and was going to code something to fix it. Then I realized that if you’re playing on full screen mode, the zoom is already sensible. It’s only if you’re playing with a small window that it’s egregious. So I’m no longer inclined to bother. (Do you have views as to what should be done?)

OK, will look when I get the chance.

I have basically no idea how Legacy of Bhaal difficulty plays out in practice. I think I agree with Slick85: if you want the maximal challenge: play on Insane, uncheck 'no difficulty based damage increases', and also use the 'fine-tune difficulty' to set the difficulties of the mage and priest HLA components up to 'legacy of bhaal' level (7). I don't actually recommend playing at that difficulty - it's way harder than I like my own games to be - but it's probably the most challenging SCS setting.

IWDEE came out of (CamDawg's and my) IWD-in-BG2 project (which moved IWD over to the original ToB engine) - IWD-in-EET came later. There actually is a version of IWD-in-BG2 that moved vanilla IWD over to the BG2EE engine, but it was never released publicly - I wrote it and gave it to Beamdog, and they used it as the starting point for IWDEE.

Thanks, missed that. That SCS component converts all summoning icons to green, in accordance with IWD conventions - it looked weird when the IWD-introduced spells were all in green but spells like Summon Planetar were red. So would it make more sense to convert the SR-added summoning spell icons to green too? I don't know what they look like or if that would cause problems. (The actual recoloring gets done at install time - I don't ship handmade green icons.)

This is just a belated comment on some of the discussion here. I saw some talk of whether some of this is confusing for beginners. My advice to beginners is pretty simple: ignore all of this. If you're basically using WEIDU to install a bunch of files you built in an editor, and maybe to compile a few scripts and dialog files, you don't need to worry about any of it. And some pretty sophisticated mods - like Demivrgvs's earlier versions of SR and IR - worked that way - the sophisticated design was in the files, not the WEIDU code. There is nothing wrong with using WEIDU that way. On the other hand, it barely scratches the surface of what WEIDU is capable of. Under TheBigg and Wisp it has evolved into an incredibly powerful tool. This post - like all my tutorial-type posts, come to think of it - is absolutely aimed at the non-beginner, someone who's getting to grips with WEIDU's real capabilities and is already thoroughly at home with the basics.

Thanks! Actually, investigating more, it was looking bad for me mostly because I was playing in a non-maximized window (which is obviously good for modding, but not a usual play environment). If the window is maximized, or in full-screen mode, the zoom is pretty reasonable. As for using zoom settings in cutscenes: as Bubb suggested to me, it turns out that you can do ZoomLock(FALSE) at the start, and then use StoreZoomLevel, SetZoomViewport etc.

As far as I can tell, it's still the case (not on PST:EE, but on the other games) that whenever the engine goes into Cutscene mode, you scroll right out. Is that right, or is there a setting to disable it that I've missed?

Not sure, I'll check it out. (I'm starting to think this component is more trouble than it's worth, cool though it is!) Thanks for the report.

I don't find the poisoning sequence implausible, either way around. (i) High-level adventurers are a pain to keep imprisoned, and even more of a pain to transport. It makes sense to let the party make it to Spellhold under their own steam and capture them as late as possible. (ii) The ship is a pretty good environment to organize a poisoning. (It's not the only such environment - but then, the plot wouldn't actually go differently if you were poisoned on the mainland, given that the effect of the poison is just to render the party vulnerable to a spell Jon casts, not to knock them out directly.) As for the risk to Jon, he knows (at least something) about your destiny and is confident you'll make it. (No-one told him about tactical mods or no-reload playthroughs.) But in any case, he's got Imoen! He can hold out for the big prize, knowing he's got an insurance policy. (To anyone who thinks that Jon would give Imoen to Bodhi even if he failed to capture <CHARNAME>: would you like to buy Boareskyr Bridge for the low price of 50,000 gp?)

OK, got it. That looks like an edge case I'm not allowing for: a character who's dual-classed, has the dual-class removed, then dual-classes anyway. Will check it out.

Humm. Are you playing with AI on? If not, try turning it on and seeing if the problem goes away. If it does, turn it off again and see if it's still gone away.

That's Wheels of Prophecy, not Ascension. I would use the cheat console to spawn Balthazar: do 'CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("balth")'. Hopefully he will reappear and the plot can continue.

(Not that I ever have myself, come to think of it.)

I doubt it. If two mods both set up special powers for the Shade Lord, they're going to be incompatible. Not all compatibility problems should be resolved. 'Improved Shade Lord' is a discrete component of SCS - if people want the Shade Lord to get the Shadow Magic powers, all they need to do is not install SCS Improved Shade Lord.

This is a long way outside the scope of my minimal little restoration mod, I'm afraid! (And as I say, for my own use i'm happy with the SCS cash-increase component as the resolution to the chapter 2 problem.) But if you want to try working it out, you're welcome to borrow the code in this mod - as I say, on a technical level it's not that complicated to modify the mod to achieve what you want, it's just a matter or working out a backstory and dialog that you're happy with. (Or, alternatively, if you want to write up the dialog and the like, I might be willing to implement and host it.) (As for where Bodhi and Irenicus got the Lanthorn: Bodhi stole it from the elven temple in AR2500, using the drow attack as cover - Elhan tells you. I don't think it's a good idea to use the Lanthorn as your ch.3 Maguffin - you'd have to mess with the dialog with Elhan to allow for the player knowing what it is already... I mean, that could be cool, but it's getting a bit out of control and a fair way from the original game's story.)

Mine is described as above. It's hardly 'mine' at all - it's restored content, with a few dialog lines to replace lines that were lost irretrievably from the original. Roxanne's (on the basis of a quick look through the files, I haven't played it) has Elhan discover, after the Lanthorn is returned, that some lenses were lost when elves chased Bodhi through the Forest of Tethir and the Small Teeth Pass. You have to go and get them; there are a couple of new encounters in those areas. This is almost entirely of Roxanne's creation: it uses a couple of unused item files from the original game, but I think that's it.

GAM contains no area data: it stores party members, globals, and a bit more non-area-specific data. Area data lives in SAV, but that only stores the ARE files, hence only the references to the TIS and WED files, not those files themselves. (In accordance with the principle that it would be silly to put anything immutable into the savegame.)

Did you put the tis file that resulted in override too?

I think the devs regarded the need to collect gold as the reason to do quests in chapter 2; this was supposed to do the same for chapter 6 (the other period where you have free access to the map). And of course my own solution to the problem of why you don't just rush to Spellhold is SCS's increase-the-fee component. As for moving this to chapter 3: technically it's not too difficult, especially if it's intended as an alternative to the chapter 6 lens quest rather than a supplement. You would need to replace the existing description for c6lens with appropriate text. You'd need to move the existing randomizer script from ar2401 to some other appropriate area. And you'd need to write a few lines of dialog to stich the quest into the new questgiver's dialog. (The existing sage lines would work fine, especially if the magical telescope-or-whatever is elven.) The coding of the .d files would be a little delicate because I generate some of it at install time, but nothing unmanageable. Conceptually, I'm less convinced. Spellhold is on the same island as Brynnlaw; Brynnlaw is reachable by mundane vessels; it is at least moderately well known by commoners at Brynnlaw that Spellhold is there. I don't find it plausible that an organization as well-connected as the Shadow Thieves wouldn't know where it was already. And that's if you join up with Aran. If you join with Bodhi, she knows where Spellhold is anyway, and by that stage she's probably keen to get you there.