Leeux

Hey DavidW! Welcome back, and glad to you see you're OK! Congrats on the new baby! That's awesome

But, isn't that a bit heavy handed? As long as mods use it for what it's meant (i.e. absolute conflicts like, editing some NPC dialogue in ways that can't be reconciled, f.e.) there should be no problem, but I can envision situations where a mod can forbid to install, I don't know, let's say, some Tweaks Anthology components because they just break the "balance" they intend to be. I.e. it'd be a bit open to over-use, IMO. On topic for the thread: @ AL|EN, that's looking awesome! Could it be extended so that the rules have messages attached, that can be used as to why that rules is in place? I.e. a reason why a mod has to install after or before such a mod... It's just something cosmetic ofc. but IMO gives more context to the player that could be using the tool to understand the thinking behind the enforcement of the rules. Of course, they should be optional and not required... but in cases where the reason is known, it'd be great to have information associated with the rules. It'd also help to keep the rules from getting outdated... i.e. if someone says, mod X needs to install after mod Y because "tweaks stores and mod Y adds a new store to the game", for example. Maybe at some point mod Y changes and it has no store anymore, and thus a player getting that message could then prompt the author of mods X or Y, or whomever is in charge of maintaining the rules repository, to tweak the rule.

Every time this thread lights up, it makes me happy As was said, hope you're doing well, and the mod too! No pressure though, of course! We're here just to keep the place warm

I'm not sure if it has changed over the versions since I last found this, but IIRC at some point in the past the SCS Fireshield Red protection from Insect plague type of spells worked only for enemies and not for the player (and it was intended to be that way, also IIRC.) As I said, last time I heard of that was more than a couple of years ago (and I was still playing on patch 1.3 of EEs at that time too, so probably the SCS I had installed was even older) and hadn't had the chance to verify it for my own again since then. I add this just in case you're aren't sure about it... if you all know for sure that SCS protection now works for everyone, just ignore this post

I used to play the game in the early '90 (I had it on floppy disks at that time, like 10 of them!) and I don't even know which version it was! In that version I could pretty much go against as many opponents I wanted and could beat them in Hard or Insane (I don't recall now...) but the new version that you get from GOG it has been patched up to the last patch and that means it has been rebalanced a lot, so many of the old tricks I remember don't work anymore... and many units I used to rely on were nerfed and bonuses changed. So, yeah... I never got into it seriously again... it'd probably require some time of getting used to and figure it out the new tricks... and I'm too old (and I have too few spare time) for that now!

I love Master of Magic! I used to play it a lot when I was younger It's kind of a more advanced CIV (for the time we're talking about... ~1991) it was certainly more advanced than CIV1, and had the cool feature of having turn based mini-combat scenarios to solve map encounters, before any other games that I know of incorporated that. It's still available at GOG and it runs well, and it even has a kind of modding community with rebalancing mods, and bugfixes and such! Never played with those mods installed myself... as of yet, at least! But I have it on GOG and still launch it from time to time when I'm in the mood of getting my ass kicked by the AI Great memories!

Oh indeed... that would be good too! Don't misunderstand me, I mean... I think an absolute sorted list of mods can and actually do work (for example, BOSS for Oblivion which has exactly that kind of scheme going on,) the thing is I think it would maybe be harder to maintain in the long run (IMO,) and maybe even harder for modders to decide 'where should I put my mod?' when keeping in mind that the list will get bigger and bigger as more mods are added!

Instead of an absolute order wouldn't it be better to list mods and their relations to other mods? I mean, it's hard to make a completely and fully fool proof ordered list of mods that works for everyone (IMO, at least) but it may be simpler and easier to state: MOD 'x' must install after 'y' due to 'reasons', or that MOD 'a' COMPONENT 'n' needs to be before MOD 'b' etc. In one case (absolute order), whenever you add a mod to the list you have to keep in mind the relation of such mod with ALL the mods already present in the list, in the second case you only need to know relations of the mod you're adding to the mods that affect it or are affected by it. Once you have a set of those rules, producing an ordered list given a set of mods to install is just a matter of running a topological sort while keeping the relations in mind. Any mods not related to others would only be restricted to the category in which they lie. In practice, all of this would mean that instead of having a single file with all the mods listed, you'd need a file per mod with the rules for that mod... and some external tool would then read each mod's file and compute/evaluate the rules for some arbitrary set of mods present in an given installation. It could be something as simple as: MOD 'tpname' AFTER 'target tpname' [#component [#component] ...] And: MOD 'tpname' BEFORE 'target tpname' [#component [#component] ...] You could add extra rules, like CONFLICT, or MESSAGE to add outputs, etc. Assuming ofc. that each mod's tpname doesn't change often and that if it changes it's a different mod with a related but distinct set of rules. BTW: Sorry if this is too simplistic or if I'm being ignorant of some subtle problems that WEIDU mods have that I'm not aware of. In that case, just ignore this

Ah nice to know! Thank you @subtledoctor! I'll keep that in mind and try it next time I come back to BG... I'm patiently waiting on IWD on EET support to restart my modded playthrough

Yeah, agreed! And me too! I have this on my queue of mods to try when I come back to re-play the game... having vacations in a week, so I might get the itch to start a new playthrough

This is just an opinion, of course and as such it has no weight at all... but, I personally wouldn't need to have the story integrated into the Bhaal spawn saga at all myself... it'd be enough for me to be able to play the PST story inside BG2:EE engine as a separate campaign! Also, I'd personally love to have PST areas available as resource for mods to use, perhaps integrated into the world map (or not... depending on the area's nature, I guess...) It'd cool to have PST story available as a Campaign in the campaign menu that you can play outside of your normal Bhaal Saga games, when you do as such then you're given the normal TNO character as a start, but you could be open to edit/change character, in a similar way to what IWD does (i.e. offer default party, being able to remove characters and add different ones...) I'm not creative enough to even think of a way to link Bhaal saga timeline to TNO's timeline without contrivances myself if I was able to do so, but also, I haven't finished PST in totality myself yet, so I don't want to get into spoilers and at the same time, I don't have much idea of how the story goes over there (Don't ask! I tried to play the game again as soon as I bought the PST:EE version, but for some reason it started crashing on area transitions and I wasn't in the mood to troubleshoot it at that time ) But I trust people here, and I'm sure if a way is implemented, it'll be a satisfactory one!

This looks awesome! Looking forward to being able to play it when it releases! Amazing work

Hey Lefreut, So glad LeUI and you have found a new home! Love your mod! It's a must in any of my installs!

How many Druids were there in the encounter? Looking at the scripts, they all have to be dead and they're 5 different ones, in total. Maybe one of them is still alive and out of sight somewhere?

Nice! Awesome, thank you! It's strange that this is not used more often then I used to think that maybe it was impossible to mod these rumors, and that's why. Nice to know they can be modded!

Could this rumor system be used to trigger hint Journal entries for mods? Or event add quest journal entries? I remember a long time ago (around 2012) when I was trying to play Secret of Bonehill and never found out where the main quest for that mod started. I was expected to visit the Temple of Lathander in Beregost after Chapter 3, I think... it would have helped if there was some rumor going around about a priest staying there that needed help I'd imagine the same happens for other mods that add quests too... I normally don't like to peek too much at the readmes regarding info on how to start the quests, whom to talk, etc. as I'd prefer to be surprised by it going blind... but that's just me ofc.

Pretty sure the full Peldvale encounter is moved to the area exactly south of Beregost, the one linked in Jarno's post above, it's around the top left corner of that area. I found them there on my last playthough with this mod installed. After you recruit her and remove her from your party, then she goes to wait inside the cave Jarno mentions.

My personal pet-peeves with the EEs were always the mechanical changes for the sake of "exploit" removal or for the sake of "PnP rule lawyering." (in quotes to denote non-sensical notions... i.e. presence of exploits in a non-competitive single player game...) I don't have issues with real bug fixes, though... as long as they don't remove options from the game. I also have to mention, because it's important in this discussion to know from where I'm coming from: I'm not a DnD P&P fan, never was and never will, and I don't care for changes that only change things to "conform" with PnP rules... I prefer the computer games to be kept separated from the P&P rules when there's a justification for doing so. I've come to terms over the years with all that, but I still reach the state sometimes of wanting to install my GOG copies of the classic versions and play those. Sadly, the enhancements *are* real, the new engines are *really* better and the new QoL stuff is hard to give up, can't deny that... so it's harder and harder to go back to the originals... and besides, I'm a strong fan of EET and can't use that on anything other than the 2.x+ versions, sadly. As some examples of things I personally hated to see changed (I can't remember all of the top of my head now but I'm sure there are many more...) are: Sunfire bypassing magic resistance ("fixed" in EEs), the summon limit in BG1, the forced mandatory cooldown on exiting stealth after successful backstab, Spell Shield blocking anti-magic rays from Beholders, the removal of the possibility of using several projected images under chain contingency, the cap on the scaling of the Skull traps, etc. I personally never used some of these while playing the game in "serious" mode, but the fact that you could do it gave the game some emergent properties and enabled the use of creative solutions to encounters... and more importantly it was fun to do and discover that you could do it... and the more you remove the less interesting the game becomes (to me at least.) Some examples that I'd have hated to see done and would have been a deal breaker to me if they'd have been enforced: blocking quickslot items from projected images/simulacrums, and the full ranger/cleric nerf (this one is undoable using the baldur.lua config.) IMHO, the best option would have been: stick to be completely faithful to the original games, and then add/provide an optional bundle for game mechanical changes for the people that wants them. And besides all that... the new UI system is really really really clunky and slow... you can feel it if you were used to quickly menuing and transferring items around and putting items in containers... there's a big delay (still in the milliseconds range, but noticeable if you're used to the old UI) now when you start to drag stuff from inventory and also when dropping it. And the stuff you pick up stick on the mouse in weird positions which makes putting stuff in containers, for example, less precise and annoying. It has been getting better, it was much worse immediately after the 2.0 patch, for example. But oh well... it is what it is... as long as I can still do some crazy stuff in the games (which I often do just for fun...) I will still like them... I mean, EET as a platform is too much to give up... and even more so in the future when IWD-in-EET and IWD2-in-EET are finally included! I don't honestly mind the EE NPCs myself, I've learnt to ignore them when I'm not on the mood to deal with them, and in the end, they're just like any other mod added NPCs that I've had to deal with over the years! (Though, I do wish Neera was a bit out of the way so I don't have to go roundabout first time reaching Beregost in BG1! ) One thing though, IMHO I do think they would be so much palatable to people if they had a silent option (or, even, a less talky option...) not due to the fact that the voice acting is bad (it isn't... ok fine, maybe for some...) but just because they stand out so so much compared with the rest, at least in BG1. Sound balance and general sound equalization for their voices feel off compared with the other NPCs.

I played BGT a couple of times and I don't recall that ever happening to me Thing is, it was always installed it with the old BWS. Could it be possible that somehow the BWS/BWP included something that fixed that? (it included several fixes and patches IIRC.) Though, to be honest, it's all a bit hazy at this point, last time I played classic BG with BGT installed was quite a long time ago, probably more than 4 years... sadly I don't have it installed anymore, so I can't quickly test to be sure.

I was thinking, perhaps... but not sure if what I'm going to say it's totally bonkers... maybe, so don't roast me in that case, please When you land on the lone Ogre Mage encounter you only see an empty area with no enemies, so if you don't know what's going on your natural reaction would be, probably "Hmm.. something bugged" and you move on leaving the area immediately... but the Ogre Mage stays alive... if later, the game reuses that same random encounter area, would it be possible for the new encounter to overlap with the Ogre Mage? In this case the two Ogrillons, plus the previously spawned Ogre Mage?

TBH, the encounter at the tent it's a bit ridiculous for the level you can first find it, I think that mage is ~L6 conjurer... But even if it's L6, yet his save vs. spell it's 3, so it's pretty much impossible to affect him with effects from wands or spells, and instantly casts Mirror Images, so it's also pretty much impossible to interrupt him reliably. It's sadly one of the few encounters that the only recourse is to delay them until you have better protections for your characters, specially if you just arrived at Nashkel and you're still just L2 to L3 as you normally are at that point in the game. On the other hand, that random encounter with the Ogrillons + Ogre mage... I don't really remember it, myself... there's an encounter with 2 Ogrillons and there's a separate encounter with a single lone Ogre Mage (from what I remember, at least... unless it's something changed by some of the components I haven't installed?)

I'm not so sure about the same protagonist to experience all the sagas, but for sure having access to all existing areas in a single installation would allow for other mods to take advantage of that and maybe make use of the areas in the future. Nameless One is too iconic for me to be able accept that my charname in Bhaal saga can overlap with him

One idea I thought of for keeping IWD1 separated would be to treat it like a "dream", maybe? I.e. something like, if you rest in a certain place (I don't know where, something specific or relevant to the IWD1 quest/story line, maybe?) you experience this as a sort of an alternate reality/timeline from your current one, and when you end that you come back right to where you were at the start in the normal timeline. The transition could even give you the option of taking your companions with you or not. The good side of this is that it implies that time doesn't necessarily passes on your current timeline while you're "out" thus you could come back and reset the current date to what it was before you went out (+8hs), if it's something feasible to do, of course. The con with this is that you can't easily justify bringing back items with this approach, but you could potentially justify bringing back levels and knowledge (learnt spells...) But, having said that, since as you said IWD1 happens in the past, it's entirely possible to give the player a choice of leaving items in some sort of "hidden" container in one the "overlapping" areas, and then go there in the current timeline after you finished your IWD1 adventure, and find that items you left in the "past" are actually there now. But the important thing is, this could be just an additional way of transferring, maybe, over the normal ones, to be used by people that doesn't want to bring back items (or even XP, given the possibility of an option of turning that off too, all under player choice.)

I'm personally torn on the level scaling thing, myself. I tend to agree that some of it is good (specially when it's done correctly) but on the other hand, you get things like Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights where trying to play a high level character to make the game easy, actually makes the game much harder... which I hate. In my mind, if the scaling is done well, I'm of the type that prefers scaling to mean more mobs over super-buffed mobs, and vice-versa let difficulty slide control the buffing of each actual mob or not. But, as said by @subtledoctor above, there's cases where it makes no sense (narrative-wise) to have many-many more enemies than designed, so, it's a double edged sword. It has to be approached on an encounter by encounter basis, which is a lot of work. I don't know what your chosen solution might be, but if it's feasible I'd suggest a double-tiered approach, where there are level bands inside whom high level only means more enemies until you reach the next tier... i.e. for example, taking levels as offsets from the actual designed area base-level, L+1 to +2, as designed, L+3 to +5 some spawns randomly spawn 1 to 3 more enemies, L+6 to +8 all spawns spawn double enemies plus some spawn beefy-ed up versions with low chance but those spawns are back to normal numbers, L+9 to +10 more beefy spawns start appearing, but standard mobs always spawn at max number, and so on... then it comes a point where all base mobs are replaced by buffed ones and the next tier of them is introduced as buffed versions... perhaps is not perfect and it might be better to just provide several buffed up version of opponents, but if you do so, there will be slices of levels that might be harder than designed. You also have two paths when buffing up mobs in a spawn, one is introduce a copy of the same exact type of mob but with increased stats, and the other is just replace it with a more challenging enemy from the same thematic list (if it's available in the game ofc.) so there are plenty of options to tweak! In any case, whatever path you chose, it'll surely be a balancing nightmare, I tell you!

Thank you K4thos for your work on this! The fact that the project is getting close enough to be able to be played is awesome! \o/ Just wanted to add a minor commentary w.r.t. the motivation to go on the quest to IWD1 for the player character... remember to add some kind of hook for a good aligned character (even if it's a charade in the end!) since the promise of power/items/favor from a demonic being/etc doesn't seem to be too much of a hook for a PC that would tend to distrust such things (i.e. any of the good alignments would IMO look at something coming from a demon or radiating demonic power with apprehension.) or at least give dialogue options that allows to role-play such apprehension and distrusts. Perhaps it'd be enough to mention that such and such is need of help, or that a grave evil is moving and it needs to be stopped, or something along the lines. W.r.t. the game mechanics... will this be closer to the type of game play found in the BG series vs. IWD? I mean, mostly referring to the spell system and the related mechanics and differences coming from a different DnD edition. I'm asking because I'm one of those that don't like the actual IWD gameplay too much... tried to play it personally, but I've hit a wall several times around chapter 3, and I find it tedious and boring to play, to the point I couldn't muster enough willpower to continue grinding ahead. So I'm kinda excited at the prospect of being able to play it as if it were a BG2 mod, with BG's rules and spells, and maybe a higher level party too I haven't played IWD2 yet, not even saw gameplay of it either (even I own it in GOG, but haven't had the chance sadly) but I'd guess same style applies to it as the main IWD1 campaign, so possibly the same point applies there too. Also, what will happen when you install SCS over an EET+IWD1+IWD2 installation?! Will mages and priests and mobs in those games also get upgraded with the SCS base AI? Thanks again!