maurvir

That's the thing. If I create the second WED file and alter the ARE file using NI, but used the original TIS for both, I don't get a CTD. As you said, it just doesn't look like it's night. The CTDs start when I try to use a modified image that has been converted to a TIS. That was why I was briefly excited - was able to walk around "at night" with fog, but with the day map art. As soon as I switched it to the new TIS, the game crashed.

It seems it doesn't like something about my converted TIS files, but I don't know what.

The original PNG from NI is a 24-bit color image, though it's clear the original art isn't 24-bit. I downsampled to 256 colors using an adaptive scheme, but I still got a CTD on the resultant TIS file.

It did, at least, fix the horizontal lines, though. Progress!

As an aside, when I converted the PNG using legacy, I got a mess of horizontal lines everywhere. I converted using the PVRZ-based, which cleaned up the lines, but left a whole bunch of extra files. I wasn't sure if they were required or not, so I dumped them into the override folder along with the new TIS file.

Also, nope - I tried the wilderness lake, BG4200, and it CTDs a few seconds after entering the map as well. Interestingly, it did NOT do this the first time I went there, but when I had failed to update the TIS file. (I had accidentally forgotten to update the night WED file). When I went back and updated it with the correct TIS file, I started crashing.

After a bit of debugging, it seems that it is the TIS files themselves. I converted the day file and now I get a CTD if I go to the area day or night.

Ok, this is getting closer, but still not quite there. The doors are missing, and more distressingly, once a door comes into view (or rather the black block where it should be), I get a CTD. However, the fog is the right color!

Which means I can probably now do forest areas that don't have movable doors, but not towns for now.

I do appreciate the help, and if I can get this squared away, I will definitely try to create an "enhanced forests" mod when I'm done.

Unfortunately, simply adding a TIS file with the N at the end and setting the flag did not work. It still causes a CTD. I tried both versions in NI - legacy and PVRZ-based.

Apparently I need to create a "night WED", but I'm not sure how to do that in Near Infinity. The tutorial I found uses DLTCEP, but that is for new areas. I'm trying to retrofit existing areas.

26 minutes ago, DavidW said:

Just creating a 'night' copy is fairly trivial, iirc. Copy the tileset and add an 'N' suffix; copy the light map and change 'LM' to 'LN', and set the extended night flag. There might be one or two more steps (I haven't done it for a while) but that's basically all you need.

To get different lighting effects, you need to alter the lightmap, the bitmap that determines lighting. To actually get beams of visible light from the windows, and the like, you need to alter the artwork. 

The idea here is that I am generally happy with the "night" the game creates by altering the lighting, so I was going to just take the night version from NI and convert it to a night tile set at first, just to get past the initial "bug". Then, as needed, alter the art in Photoshop to create lighting effects. I'm just trying to get the workflow established before moving on.

This is my first real attempt at modding, and I'm having to learn as I go. Next step is to figure out how to go between PNG and TIS...

This is related to my ongoing quest to get fog in the original parts of the game, but I figure it might be worth a shot.

Is it possible to convert the existing artwork into the "new" artwork required for extended night in the EE's? That is, could I take the current landscape art, convert it to the new day format, then have NI show the "night time" variant and convert that to the new night format. This would, in theory, allow existing forest areas to use the extended night flag, allowing proper fog display.

Such a mini-mod would make it trivially easy to enable fog, but I'm not sure how to do the conversions, nor do I see anywhere in NI to set the day/night tile sets.

For a more advanced version of this, how would you go about altering the lighting? (say for mushrooms or windows on cabins, etc.)

Thanks!

This is more of a "bug fix" than a "tweak, but it would resolve a potential hole.

It is actually possible to still possess the soul taker dagger if the party arrives in Ulgoth's Beard, but manages to drop the dagger before the encounter with the cultists. My party almost always travels with invisibility once one of the mages gets invisibility 10', so on the last run, they were able to put the dagger in a container before confronting the cultists. This means that the party still has Soul Taker in their possession, even though it was supposed to have been stolen by the cultists.

The tweak would be a check that the item is still in the party inventory in order to "trigger" the cultists talking to the party and then going hostile. Having them show up is fine, as they have no doubt heard that the dagger was recovered, but they have no reason to suspect your party until you show up with it. For most people, this isn't an issue, as the trigger for them to show up at all is having it in your possession when you arrive in the town, but this could help folks like me who travel more conservatively.

So far, the only issue has been the warning at startup. The game runs fine, because I never actually altered the game or save folders. I just renamed both, created a new game folder, and let EET create a new save folder.

Setting the EET Installation State variable to 2 has fixed the issue, though, so thanks! I didn't realize that EET embedded itself so far into the game.

I decided to rename my current modded game folders (both the game directory itself as well as the save directory in my user profile) and create a new modded game to test some things without a bunch of mods possibly messing things up. It has only Sirene for BG1 (since it was installed directly to the BG1 game folder) and EET.

That went fine, but now I am getting a warning in my regular game that I need to run EET_end, even though I already have for this modded game. All I did was delete the new game and restore the old one.

I really don't want to re-run EET_end and SCS, as I fear it would blow up my game, so I may just live with the warning. The game seems to run fine if I just hit ESC. However, it would be nice to clear this warning. Any ideas on how - other than the obvious.

After a bit of playing, I discovered that the red shift bug appears to be linked to the Extended Night flag. If the flag is set, you get normal looking fog. If it isn't, you get red-shifted fog. However, the game apparently really doesn't like it if you set the flag arbitrarily, and I'm not sure why. I set the flag for Beregost, and as soon as the sun went down, the game crashed.

I have also noticed that all of the new areas have two tilesets - one for day, one for night. My guess is that setting this flag makes the engine think there should be a second night time tile set, and when it can't find it, it crashes. Which means this may be an intractable problem.

I'm pretty sure that the red is because the game thinks "night time" is "twilight"

I had to add a bit more to make a functioning TP2 file, but it *seems* to have worked. I also added a BEGIN line after the PATCH_IF line.

BACKUP ~weather/backup~ // location to store files for
AUTHOR ~Maur'vir~
VERSION ~v0~

ALWAYS
  ACTION_IF GAME_IS ~bgee bg2ee iwdee pstee eet~ BEGIN // only for EEs
    COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~^.+\.are$~ ~override~
      READ_SHORT 0x48 flags
      READ_SHORT 0x4a prob_rain
      READ_SHORT 0x4e prob_fog
      PATCH_IF ((prob_rain != 0) AND     // if area can have rain and
                (prob_fog   = 0) AND     // doesn't already have fog set and
                ((flags & BIT2) = BIT2)) // weather flag is set
          BEGIN
              WRITE_SHORT 0x4e (prob_rain / 2) // set fog probability to 1/2 the rain probability
          END
      BUT_ONLY
  END
END

However, looking at the ARE file for, say, Beregost shows that the fog probability is still set to 0. Not sure what went wrong, as the rain probability is 30.

That is, indeed, unnatural. I wonder why the SoD areas appear fine, even though they have day/night cycles?

If I could get it to work well, though, I would really like to have fog elsewhere in the game, so I've created an otherwise "blank" EET build to play in.

Yup, that's the fog effect I was referring to. It obviously works in BG2EE, since EET is hosted by it, and my goal is to recreate those effects outside of the SoD areas. Looking in these files, it appears that fogarea.2da defines the fog itself, but I'm guessing you would still need to set a flag for the area to enable the fog. Interestingly, you seem to have control over the fog alpha, inner and outer color, and dispersal rate. That's quite a few tunable parameters! With these parameters, you could really create some sweet effects, like green fog for swamps, blueish fog for mountains, etc.

Thanks!

As an aside, if you do horse around in these files, I'm assuming you would need to do it with a new game?

Even though I never play evil characters, neutral at best, I would love the option to play as a double-agent. That sounds like it would be a fun way to shift things around.

As an aside, this is the kind of coding task I could probably tackle if someone could point me in the right direction. I just don't know how to set/alter the weather in a region, or how to do it programmatically with WEIDU. With the proper template, I would be up for working out the details/probabilities and doing the rest.

Since the EE's came out, I have always regretted that. you only get to see the new weather effects for a brief time on the way to Dragonspear castle, and then it's back to just rain and sun. How hard would it be to modify all of the outdoor regions in the game to have biome specific weather that includes the new fog weather from SoD in an EET build? Clearly, since it's running within BG2EE, it should be technically possible.

What I would like is for areas like the forests near the Cloudpeak Mountains, Nashkel and surrounding areas, etc. have fog as well as snow and rain. The forests between Nashkel and Beregost along the coast should have more fog than rain, and more rain than sun, etc. Similarly, the De'Arnise keep, the forest areas near Tethyr, and Suldanessar should have occasional fog.

If it's as simple as setting flags, I could probably just do it to my local copy, but I worry that this might break something else. However, I really would like to see some unified weather effects across the Sword Coast and Amn.

Also, do the EE's disable occasional weather damage? It seems I haven't ever seen one of my party members get hit by lightning since playing them. If possible, it would be nice to reenable that for a bit of flavor - and as an excuse to rest during storms.

In my current EET build, the upper Chionthar river area BG0400 (the farm with the zombies) was disabled (greyed out) after starting the SoD part of the game and never reenabled, even after starting the SoA content. I'm not entirely clear why it was disabled anyway, as it is far from the city of Baldur's Gate. Is this a bug, or intended?

This wasn't much of a problem in the current play through, as the party had already dealt with it, but my next run will include NToSC, and it involves a return to that area.

I posted this on the Beamdog forums as well, but I have been thinking about this idea more and more. The ultimate issue is the artwork, which I feel is beyond my abilities. The rest I could probably pick up from tutorials. However, to the idea...

The one aspect of BG1 I really missed in BG2 was the lack of a sense of exploration and the wilderness areas. Sure, you only traversed them once usually, but it made the world feel larger and the time between locations more sensible. Not having them in SoA somehow makes Faerun feel smaller as a result. Thus the idea of bringing back a small number of wilderness areas that would be required to pass through to unlock the more eastern villages or locations.

Much like the BG1 versions, these would likely have mostly randomly spawned creatures, maybe a cave or inn, etc. No real "quests", few NPCs, etc. It really would involve mostly walking along the road through the wilderness as a way to make it feel more like a journey. More so than instant fast-travel, anyway. Ideally, there would be a whole sequence of them, but I imagine that would be a tough sell to create that much artwork, but it would be nice if there were a few "intersections" in the forest. Areas remain "inaccessible" until you exit either north, south, or east. If possible, like BG1, which direction you exit would determine which areas are unlocked. So, for example, Delon might tell you about the Umar Hills, but it would be "unreachable" until you went through these new wilderness areas. Similarly for Nalia and the De'Arnise keep.

Essentially take the original BG2 concept of keeping everything outside of Athkatla "inaccessible" until you exit the city gates a bit further, and replicate it in four new wilderness areas. Based on the maps of the area, each would have a theme consistent with the land between the various points.

1) A new grassy valley with rolling hills and gentle grass-lined streams between the city and De'Arnise keep. In the core mod, less cross-mod compatibility, east would unlock area #2 and De'Arnise keep if the quest is active. Going south would unlock area #4. I believe one of Dorn's areas is also near there, though I never play with him, so I'm not sure which direction would be appropriate for it.

In my head, I imagine a more lush, grassy version of Peldvale, but with a meandering stream more like that of the Fire Leaf Forest. Essentially a lot of deep grasses and hills, but with a shallow, occasionally walkable, stream and pools with fish. This would be an official road, so a legit bridge across the stream, though perhaps with a bandit asking for a toll? In fact, since this is primarily about traveling, perhaps some randomly spawned robbers (ala bandits) along the road? Low-level parties could skip them by crossing the stream elsewhere (at a shallow spot). I could also see a landscape a bit more like Dead Man's Pass in SoD, so perhaps some random beetles, etc., to make bypassing the bridge more challenging. Lastly, since this will be the path for a lot of chapter 2 quests, maybe a hidden trinket in a tree or along the road.

Other things that would be nice here would be neutral/blue rabbits, deer, and other grassland creatures. To spice it up, random predators, such as (regular) wolves or wild dogs, would wander around and occasionally attack the rabbits or deer.

2) A new lakeside area (north side of the lake) between De-Arnise Keep and Trademeet. Going east unlocks Umar Hills and Windspear Hills, while going south unlocks Trademeet. West would open up the De'Arnise keep (again, if the quest is active). If the Rasaad quest is active, going north would unlock the first forest area of his quest - with the ruined amphitheater.

The map as seen in the original BG2 SoA artwork shows Trademeet sitting on the banks of a lake. The north-eastern side of the lake appears to rise up a bit, so perhaps a lake like the one in the Cloakwood forest (the spider area) would work? Something related to the water - maybe a wizard with water elementals or nereids? As a throwback to BG1, this might be a great place for a spider cave like the one in SoD south of the dragon lair. Leaving the marked road should lead into areas with web traps and level appropriate spiders, with the reward of finding the spider cave. (Yes, this would be an homage to the Cloakwood, but set near Trademeet.

Basically a mashup of the spider section of the Cloakwood and the spider cave in the Forest of Wyrms. No Centeol, though. Just spiders. Lots of them, and nasty ones. I'm not sure if it's allowable, but actually just using the cavern from SoD would be awesome, as that is a very nice spider cavern layout.

2A) Change Trademeet so that leaving to the south or east should open up forest #3 and north or west should open area #2.

3) A new forest between Trademeet and the Druid Grove, where East or South opens up the grove. South (only) might open up the chapter 6 areas in the Tethyrian forest.

As an intersection of Trademeet, the Druid Grove, and possibly the Tethyrian forest, it feels like this forest should start to feel deep and dark, like the Tethyrian forest, but also more swampy, like the Druid Grove. Ideally it would be almost as dark in the daylight as it is at night, lit mostly by glowing mushrooms and fireflies. The road would more or less be constrained to walking through the swamp, with dark pools on all sides. Perhaps throw in some water lilies, bullrushes and cattails for contrast.

Random spawn could be either forest spirits or dire wolves, and perhaps a nice wolf den as a side-challenge. Level appropriate, but a nasty surprise like the temple of Lathander in Beregost. Optionally, as a nice little extra, once the party is heading to the Druid Grove, perhaps they could run across a few of said druids in this forest? (they would only show up if that quest is active) These would be immediately hostile and start summoning creatures that block the road. Also, since it would remain inaccessible until you exit the area to the east, it would mean a revisit at some point.

A wolf den could involve the standard "cave" that is reused all over the place in BG2 - the two room cavern with a shallow pool. Only with wolves, some vampiric, as a forewarning for what you will later find in those forests. Reusing a standard cavern kind of stinks, but it reduces the effort greatly. The cavern used in the Aumanator temple area would also be a good one for reuse (I think that one is also used for the pirate cave in the dock's area)

3a) Modify the forest areas in chapter 6 to open up area's #3 or #4 appropriately. Specifically the one to the west should open up #4 on the western edge, while the one to the east should open up #3 when leaving from the north or east. (The idea here is that these existing forests could be looped in to provide a southern path around the lake)

4) A new small sea-side inn on the path between area #1 and Watcher's Keep - since that is one long haul. Leaving from the east could open up #3, and possibly the chapter 6 wilderness areas, while leaving to the south would open up Watcher's Keep. If Neera's quest is active, this could also unlock her wilderness location. Since this is primarily an Inn, I could see this one not being a full-size map - and instead being just enough of a map for the beach, the road, and the inn. However, it would be nice if the inn let you sleep there. Nothing fancy, and as the only area with a speaking NPC, perhaps the inn-owner could be a retired merchant (as opposed to the usual retired adventurer). However, this NPC would be the standard bartender model that can offer rest, drinks, and maybe a shop with basic supplies.

I imagine it would be a simple affair, perhaps like the one in Nashkel or Umar Hills. Nothing fancy, just the goods.

4A) Modify Watcher's Keep so that it can also unlock the Neera quest areas if active.
4B) Modify Neera's quest areas so that they can do the inverse, and unlock Watcher's Keep.

This is a mod I have been thinking about for years, but I lack the artistic ability to pull off the new landscapes. I might be able to work out the coding part on my own, but for something like this to exist, I would need someone that knows how to make the artwork.