Lurker

Which also applies to the probability of a half-hearted update breaking more than it solves, does it not?

True, but it's up to each individual to find the right balance in combining mods. A dwarven paladin (cdtweaks) or kit combined with S&A components gets +1 APR while wielding a two-hander, +bonus damage for high strength (always), +bonus damage for high charisma (innate ability), +2 magical damage that bypasses many defenses (HLA), has shorty saves for high CON, paladin bonus saves and more bonus saves from the proficiency that you need for part of the APR increase anyway. Plus ways to get another 20% physical DR, combined. I was grinning like a madman when my charname melee'd a demilich in 1 round.

I've updated my initial comment and the attached files. Also, here is a patch available to make the component to restore the reputation increase sound effect from "The Artisan's House Rule Tweaks" again installable on EET. Since I edited this an previously, it might have gone mostly unnoticed, especially regarding this: Pinging @The Artisan.

I've tried to improve the quality of my initial comment by restructuring and also updated the known issue section.

Health status. "Uninjured" / health status is normally only shown for hostile or charmed creatures, but not party members or other NPCs. So Aaron is like a neutral combatant.

Perhaps. However, it's entirely possible that mod A adds strings and then mod B alters them. If you start over with this tlk, in such a case mod A would add the (unaltered) strings again (since they no longer match existing strings) and mod B would alter them, again. An easy example of this is various Tweaks components alter item descriptions--Rebalanced Proficiencies alters descriptions (including those from mods) to match the changes it makes to items. So, I did another reinstall, with the dialog.tlk from v1 copied over to v2 before starting the installation. Looks like a 100% success so far, no need to update anything in my saves. dialog.tlk grew ~ 150 KB, but since I also added a larger quest mod and some smaller stuff compared to v1, that's expected. Thanks again @CamDawg, without your input, I wouldn't have tried this.

I don't know why I didn't notice this sooner, but the "Aaron Brunnstein" that stands near the Sawmill in the south of Nashkel is shown as "Uninjured". His selection circle has the usual color for neutral NPCs.

Recently I'm doing lots of reinstalls for testing purposes. And since I'm again waiting for one to finish, I'd like to report for once that MIH_EQ is unfortunately the biggest time hog present in my setup, by far. The setup-mih_eq.debug also is the largest, with 30 MB. (description of environment) If it helps: WeiDU Timings DEFINE_DIMORPHIC_FUNCTION 0.000 [...] BUT_ONLY 0.860 saving files 1.125 loading files 4.188 COPY 21.712 READ_* 56.539 eval_pe 75.363 process_patch2 157.724 function overhead 1107.957 TOTAL 1427.874 For comparison, here's some data for SCS, 2nd biggest time hog (I don't use the improved AI, if that matters): WeiDU Timings load TLK 0.000 [...] stuff not covered elsewhere 2.586 COPY 7.793 eval_pe 36.285 READ_* 37.641 process_patch2 87.943 function overhead 498.311 TOTAL 680.482 MIH_IP comes 3rd: WeiDU Timings ADD_PROJECTILE 0.000 [...] loading files 0.577 COPY 3.533 READ_* 5.448 eval_pe 15.803 process_patch2 34.375 function overhead 361.803 TOTAL 423.550

Might be a stupid assumption, but it's hard to tell without a screenshot - could it be a kind of barkskin? Yeah, I also would like to better understand how useful the stuff under Tools -> Check in NI is, and if this information can be helpful to provide (better) bug reports?

Take a look at this topic and especially this comment. The final battle was working, every thing else, not so much. It's almost the complete opposite of what I describe here (ff). Also, I did send you a PM yesterday, regarding something completely different.

Wow @CamDawg, thank you for taking the time to do this write-up. Stuff like that should really be collected in a read-only section in the forum, like perhaps Modding Q&A. These are valuable resources. Which doesn't mean that a string cannot have duplicates in dialog.tlk that were/are already present, only that WeiDU won't add new duplicates, correct? Example "Keelor", which I guess originates from BG1(*), at position 15625 and 15670, and gets again imported from BG1 during installation of EET to positions 215625 and 215670? This example raises the following questions: related to WeiDU: Does WeiDU always use the first match when checking for existing strings in dialog.tlk as reference? Meaning if I want to add "Keelor", WeiDU references to 15625? Or are there boundaries depending on context, like EET never uses strings below a certain position? No, because WeiDU doesn't know what EET is. related to dialog.tlk and EET: (*)There are also strings in close proximity that deal with BG2 content, and since I installed EET on top of BG2, the strings at the lowest positions are from BG2, yes? Meaning that there are leftovers from BG1 in a dialog.tlk that was repurposed for BG2 from the original game devs? There are matches for "Keelor" at (215088, 215089, 215737, 215738, 215739) with no corresponding matches at (position - 200K), in the range that I'd expect to be EET's importing area. Are these present in the dialog.tlk of BG1, but not in the one from BG2, because the slots have been repurposed for BG2? (Not a question, just trying to be thorough:) Starting at 30958, there are references to "Keelor the Dwarf"; these are from NTotSC in my installation Which is another reason why I don't rely on uninstalling - only in special cases and when close to the "onion's skin". Scripted reinstalls ftw. Err... Does that mean I could have just copied over my dialog.tlk from my previous installation (v1) to my template for v2, and then just applied the slightly altered payload file? (Need to check this out.) I would never do that, of course. Clowns are scary. Semi-clever. I didn't expect it to be perfect, but to ease the work of fixing references with NI. While powerful, the user interface of NI is rough. I ran my old saves repeatedly against the new install, and in a mix of random and educated guesses, made notes about string mismatches, which I then compared with two different running instances of NI, each using the corresponding game. I was lucky (mostly related to mod install order) and discovered that I mostly could get away with fixed number for adjusting most strings. While this was akin to work, having to redo the same game over again would certainly feel so; perhaps I need to switch games when starting over feels more like work than fun. Will see if the effort was mostly a waste of time, if I discover more serious issues when actually trying to continue this playthrough. Perhaps it pays off that I usually try to stick with a quest or complete an area, and hate branching off. The only issue I see with BST so far, for example, is the easily fixable entry on the worldmap, and since I haven't been to the actual area (only for testing the padded setup), the save game is still "untainted". DSotSC, NTotSC and Blackhearts could become problematic. I could also provide a detailed diff between both WeiDU.log of v1 and v2, if someone is willing to help identifying the remaining discrepancies, if only to help me reducing that still present itching in my brain...

Paladins have a minimum of 17 CHA in the base game. Don't want Ajantis to crash the game. EDIT: This was meant to be a small correction on the one hand, and a small joke about Paladins, being considered "party crashers" by some people, on the other hand. Guess the second part is a failure, if it needs this explanation.

Well, it's not perfect, but compared to before, there are only very few things that need manual fixing with NI. Major improvement, and I learned... err... something. The "padding" can be done directly in the wmodinstall payload (additional lines just for better context; relevant are the for loops): modinstall c#endlessbg1 "0 1 2 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 13 16" 0 #modinstall transitions "0 10 20 30 200 40 50 60 70 71 72 73 80 140" 0 #^^^^^^^^^^ mod breaks ToB in EET; author retired; mod is unsupported modinstall c#endlessbg1 "3 4 14 15" 0 #^^^^^^^^^ components that would normally break transitions modinstall c#sodtweaks "3 4 5 11 20 21" 0 modinstall c#sodboabri "0 1 2 3" 0 modinstall alternatives "0" 0 modinstall imoen_forever "0 1 2 3 9 10 11 12 13 14 20 25" 0 #^^^^^^^^^ readme describes obsolete but not new components; that is very un-jastey-like for CNT in `seq 1 394`; do weidu --strapp PADDING_FOR__transitions__AFTER__imoen_forever__$CNT; done modinstall jaheirarecast "1 2" 0 modinstall banterpack "0 2" 0 #modinstall themed_tweaks "60 70 80 90 100 140 180" 0 #^^^^^^^^^^ author retired; mod is unsupported; better safe than sorry for CNT in `seq 1 262`; do weidu --strapp PADDING_FOR__themed_tweaks__AFTER__banterpack__$CNT; done modinstall bgqe "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16" 0 modinstall sarevefffix "0" 0 modinstall tidings "0" 1 #modinstall longerroad "0 1" 0 #^^^^^^^^^^ possibly completely breaks ToB endgame battle; backtick text encoding problem; Irenicus' Project Image lacks spells? for CNT in `seq 1 1804`; do weidu --strapp PADDING_FOR__longerroad__BEFORE__totemiccernd__$CNT; done modinstall totemiccernd "0" 0 I also moved down Dark Tidings a little bit, to more closely replace Longer Road's slot. Individually calling weidu --strap over 2000 times isn't very efficient due to cumulative overhead, and takes some time. But it's the simplest solution I was able to come up with.

Hmm, I don't get it. I remove a mod from my install, that let's say had 500 entries in dialog.tlk so I reinstall, and in place of the removed mod, I add 500 dummy entries to dialog.tlk I've a chunk of mods installed after this, and they install their strings in the same order as in the previous installation this includes heavy stuff like DSotSC and NTotSC almost... a single string (@90600) from DSotSC messes up a journal entry then there comes Balduran's Sea Tower, that just doesn't care to place it's string where they should be, mixing things up with a deviation of around +-14 right after that comes Shadows over Soubar, that again fits right in later comes blackhearts_eet, with some strings all over the place I obviously haven't checked all string references manually, so I might miss something here. Are new strings always appended to dialog.tlk, or are there exceptions? Can there be "holes" in dialog.tlk, or things like "I want position 215000, and if that's already in use, I take the next free spot"? (Why?)

My current game was on pause, because I wanted to do a ToB run, because I was curious about Longer Road and also wanted to check/prevent that my full run would end in a messy nightmare comparable to the one before that, due to Transitions. The run went fine, but the final battle was completely broken, so I decided that I want to ditch anything from Lauriel. I'm in Chapter 5. Too much time invested to abandon the game, but enough content untouched, so that the save should be salvageable. Since I removed more content than I added, I'm experimenting with "padding" dialog.tlk at convenient breakpoints in a reinstall.

I'm stubbornly refusing to give up on my current game. Experiments with weidu --strapp look promising so far, but some mods make my head scratch, in that their strings in dialog.tlk aren't deterministically placed, as far as I currently understand it. The mods that are causing me a bit of grief are bst (some variance) and blackhearts_eet (huge variance). If I repeated the same installation process with the same number and order of mods, shouldn't the result be... identical? Is this a quirk of WeiDU?

- disclaimers begin here - Thoughts regarding release philosophy, as usually intended as constructive suggestions with only the best of intentions. Also, I'm neither a native English speaker nor am I 100% acquainted with GitHub terminology, and have only very limited experience with using version control software or how to properly manage software development and release cycles, so please consider this if I may slip by improper use of terminology or language. Also, I'm reasonably(?) aware of the issues that are implied by mixing up the following terms (<-- fucking need for disclaimers these days ) : game modding - hobby - spare time - scratching own itches(*) - quality assurance/maintenance - additional effort/time constraints - players - wishful thinking.(**) In the end, if someone is passionate enough to spent so much of their time over a so long amount of, well, err, time, improving one's methods can be unpleasant at first, but beneficial in the long run. Perhaps it even helps to save time. - disclaimers end here - My personal premise: I prefer using "official" releases (in GitHub terms), because they imply a certain amount of quality (which might be my own personal problem for believing so), and I usually don't setup a game intended for beta testing, but for "consuming". Bugs reported against a release sometimes get fixed very quickly, but then stay "hidden" in master. Which can be fine, because let's face it, constantly reinstalling and breaking game saves isn't fun in the long run, but could also end up in reporting bugs that are already fixed, but elsewhere. Users currently committed to a new setup could profit from fixes much sooner. But master also usually(?) gets new, and therefore untested features, and with some mods, using master is more or less actively discouraged, while others might only live in master and never push out a release at all. So, while expecting a community wide established best practice from hobbyists isn't very reasonable, I really believe in an absolute minimum of of responsibility, that everyone should have when providing more or less anything publically, regardless of commercially/"professionally" (<-- often not the best examples to follow, really) or hobbyist. I'd say in this case, it would be a tiny, but explicit disclaimer (again, sorry) in how the project is organized and what to expect from it. Random list of things, like: use only master use only tagged releases where and how to provide feedback a notice like "take it or leave it, but don't bother me, and don't complain if it breaks your car" yes, I really think even this is perfectly valid, as long as it's clearly communicated calling out for testing a specific branch, with explicit mentioning of either please test in a dedicated installation please test compatibility with mod xyz leaving out fluffy text like "This is properly coded, so will work together with everything else thanks to WeiDU magic." slightly exaggerated statement above, but I more than once was led to believe that, really, then reality hit like a truck Having different branches might also be helpful, if one is good with merging patches and the likes. For (larger) projects that release only infrequently, and especially those that have fixing issues as part of their primary scope, providing smaller, "stable" bugfix-only releases would be a great deal. Mixing up quality improvements and new features in master can end up in a lot of mental pressure, I believe. And if one really is interested in user adoption, this should really help, if only by reducing the number of cases like "Eh, I tried this once, caused problems, will never touch again.". Also, I guess a thing that often happens in software development, especially the more creative minded people to me often are like "I want to do cool and new stuff, my old stuff is now boring to me." Okay, but again, please communicate that attitude. For some users, it would be a great loss to not experience what comes out of such creative minds. But people that perhaps think a bit more like myself, while willingly committing to help improving quality of freely provided and therefore used pieces of software, might have "that one, personally customized, feature complete and never again changing anymore" setup in mind, achievable ideally before hell froze over. This can be translated to: "I don't care about your cool new feature, I want things just to work." Or: "I'm not interested in testing new stuff, because I'm committed to get my setup stable." Or: "I'm finally accustomed to the shortcomings of my setup and know to work around them. Don't want to introduce new breakages." So, what I wrote above to catch the "slow releasers", the same really applies to the people with a lot of "steam", that are pushing out new releases very quickly. Please don't wonder why other people won't jump train and always try to catch up with you; some of us just don't have that energy. Eh, I guess this rant with the usual mix of mixed intentions shall be enough for now. Thanks for reading. (*) I do this myself, and don't even provide a GitHub repo, so feel free to think about me as a hypocrite, if that helps (**) perhaps I should put this disclaimers somewhere and link to it by default where applicable... (***) how realistic is it these days to hope for people reading longer texts? (****) constructive feedback about how to better "abuse" this forum as a blog or issue tracker is welcome

What if I just tried to reinstall again and pad dialog.tlk with 656 dummy entries at the right stage...?

I couldn't give it a rest and tried to figure out how to at least trigger the epilogue sequence by more or less blindly poking DLGs for Actions that I tried to run via Eval(). In the end it was simply enough to have FINMEL01 idling on the map summon FINSOL01 and talk to it Bam, problem "solved". I even got the "good" ending for Irenicus, on the first (AND LAST) try with Longer Road. Since I now know about the "Tree" view for DLG in Near Infinity, I also could figure out the other endings. I also noticed that Sarevok was actually shown as CG in Near Infinity, but still CE in game. He had a permanent effect that forced his alignment to CE. After deleting this effect, I got his good epilogue. This game is weird.

Is there an easy way to fix StringRefs in saved games with Near Infinity, or another tool? The changes between my installations boil down to a static offset of -656 that needs to be applied to mismatching strings in my ongoing game, at least as far as I currently understand this. EDIT: When I compare the WeiDU.logs of my old setup against the current one, all StringRefs up until the first change should match, I think. So anything after this would need to be adjusted, if already present in the saved game. Am I screwed...? EDIT: This boils down to Worldmap data in BALDUR.SAV (can fix manually, but is tedious) individual characters in BALDUR.gam (can fix manually, but is VERY tedious) names of non-joinable NPCs - where are they stored? names of Shopkeepers and Shops - where are they stored? what am I missing?

And this is how this topic happened: Seriously, is there any mod for ToB that that doesn't break ToB(+Ascension(+EET))? Asking for a friend...

In my current setup, other mods seem to have a weird interaction with this particular item from Forgotten Armament, which leads to a ridiculous amount of effects (see here). Now imagine how well that translates to AutoDescription... Good to know, thanks for sharing, so I shall not blindly rely on AutoDescription.

Reminds me of this (paragraph in the middle), where I got different options from Cespenar for seemingly indentical (in game) green dragon scales (which had different item codes). EDIT: @CamDawg This might have been a misunderstanding. I noticed your announcement, and added this here afterwards. Thanks for the more detailed explanation.

I have reported something here, that could help to improve crossmod compatibility between Dark Side of the Sword Coast (DSotSC) v4.2 vs cdtweaks component 2431.

I can try to explain it when I'm back at my other machine. If you know how to apply a text patch, I can also see if I can provide you one here temporarily. I don't know how well regarded this actually is around here. EDIT: I did this by locally modifying the HouseTweaks.TP2. Version of "The Artisan's House Rule Tweaks" installed here: v2.3 Version of "The Artisan's House Rule Tweaks" with working component 19 installable on EET: v2.1a (although if installed it claims to be v1.91) Although I sometimes write about "patching" something, this is usually just for brevity. Since I mostly change minor stuff, I regularly just manually edit the corresponding file, and keep the original with an ".org" suffix. This makes identifying "hacked" mods easy for me at later stages. But since explaining this step-by-step would be tedious, here's a patch that can be applied to v2.3, with v2.1a as the source: --- HouseTweaks.TP2.org 2023-08-14 21:18:30.000000000 +0200 +++ HouseTweaks.TP2.target 2023-09-20 16:48:25.000000000 +0200 @@ -110,9 +110,23 @@ INCLUDE ~%MOD_FOLDER%/lib/trolls.tpa~ BEGIN ~House Tweaks: Restore Reputation Increase Sound Effect for BG2~ -REQUIRE_PREDICATE (GAME_IS ~bg2ee~) ~This component must be installed on BG2:EE.~ +REQUIRE_PREDICATE (GAME_IS ~bg2ee eet~) ~This component must be installed on BG2:EE.~ COPY ~%MOD_FOLDER%/Reputation/REPUP.WAV~ ~OVERRIDE~ -STRING_SET 19686 ~The Party's Reputation Has Increased~ [REPUP] + +OUTER_SET rep_up_snd = RESOLVE_STR_REF (~The Party's Reputation Has Increased~ [REPUP]) + +COPY_EXISTING ~enginest.2da~ ~override~ + COUNT_2DA_ROWS 2 rows + FOR (row = 0 ; row < rows ; ++row) BEGIN + READ_2DA_ENTRY row 0 2 entry + PATCH_IF ("%entry%" STRING_COMPARE_CASE "STRREF_FEEDBACK_GAINEDREPUTATION" = 0) BEGIN + FOR (col = 1; col < 2 ; ++col) BEGIN + SET_2DA_ENTRY row col 2 rep_up_snd + END + END + END + PRETTY_PRINT_2DA + BUT_ONLY BEGIN ~House Tweaks: Race Text Patch~ INCLUDE ~%MOD_FOLDER%/lib/racetext.tpa~ @@ -390,4 +404,4 @@ Requires: 14 Strength -Weight: 12~ \ No newline at end of file +Weight: 12~ restore_HouseTweaks_comp19_from_v21a_to_v23.patch (attachment may be removed in the future to reclaim space for my attachment quota) The patch can, for example, be applied with the following command, which makes a backup of the original file with the suffix ".orig". patch -b HouseTweaks.TP2 restore_HouseTweaks_comp19_from_v21a_to_v23.patch Also, if providing this here causes complaints either by the original author or the G3 staff, I'll remove the public patch, naturally.