Mike1072

If you installed the games to their default location, Program Files (x86)\Black Isle\, you should uninstall them and reinstall them in a directory outside of Program Files. Newer versions of Windows interfere with files stored in the Program Files directories.

RIP.

Yeah, we're aware of this. One possibility would be for BGT to include a check to skip those items if IR was installed beforehand. Likewise, we could include the breakable weapon patch from BGT to account for people installing IR after BGT. We haven't brought this up with Ascension64 because we haven't worked out the details. Keep in mind that the main thing that requires people to install IR before BGT is the BWP and its megamods. We could assume and recommend that most users install IR after BGT and any modifications required to suit the opposite install order could be handled in the Big World Fixpack.

No! There's no possibility! Actually, it's pretty safe to assume the majority of popular mods will eventually be made compatible.

Component 0 is the main component and we'll try to have it install BG1 and BG2 items as appropriate to the platform. It's not really clear how you would separate them in BGT, considering it uses the same resources in both halves of the game. However, we can make it possible for you to mod the installer to make component 0 exclude items specific to BG1 or to BG2 if you so desire.

For BGT, I'm not sure that anyone would want revised items in one half of the game and not the other*, so we'll do our best to keep it in one component. The component can figure out what platform is being used and determine what resources need to be installed. *If anyone did want this behaviour, we could make it easy to mod the installer to achieve it without forcing everyone else to say yes/no to 2 components.

No.

Most mods that add items and spells don't add random ones. From what I've seen, the vast majority of mods that add new resources attempt to keep them in line with the stuff in the original game. It's just that over time, the community has become better at determining what is appropriate, and we are now critically examining how the original game was balanced. Well-supported mods are usually very responsive to player feedback. When playing mods, I report things that concern me, like bugs, typos, compatibility issues, balance issues, and conceptual issues. A lot of the time the mod author will take note and determine whether there is something to change that would improve their mod.

Yeah, it did. Somehow the forum database switched encodings a while back, so old posts are stored in the UTF-8 format and new posts are stored in the ISO-8859-1 format. All pages are displayed in the ISO-8859-1 format, so international characters in new posts look okay, while those in old posts do not. We didn't catch this problem right off the bat, so it might never be fixed, but there is a way to view these old posts the way they are supposed to look. Your browser should have a way to display a page using a different encoding. In Firefox and IE this can be found in the View -> (Character) Encoding menu. Selecting UTF-8 will allow old posts to be displayed properly (but international characters in new posts will not look right). The change is temporary and won't persist if you navigate to another page.

Right you are. Since player scripts don't function when party AI is turned off and we've established variables aren't needed when using a summoned creature, what's left to decide?

I think a creature's local variables can only be retrieved when running that creature's scripts or dialogues. You can set local variables on other creatures via ActionOverride or spell. Why don't you have each spell summon a different creature? One would have a script to change the summoner to a sorcerer, and the other would have a script to change the summoner to a thief.

Yeah, you'd stick this in the .tp2 of your own minimod. Technically, the code leaves the existing strings in dialog.tlk as they are (it's possible something like Gladiator could be used elsewhere in the game, so you wouldn't want to make it lowercase everywhere), but it adds new strings and updates the kits to use the new ones. This method is portable and can easily be changed or uninstalled as well.

The file that contains all this information is kitlist.2da. To familiarise yourself with some of the commands you might want to use, here's an example of how you could make sure all kit names in the LOWER column are in lowercase: COPY_EXISTING ~kitlist.2da~ ~override~ COUNT_2DA_COLS num_cols READ_2DA_ENTRIES_NOW ~r2en_kitlist~ num_cols FOR (i = 0; i < r2en_kitlist; i += 1) BEGIN // for each row READ_2DA_ENTRY_FORMER ~r2en_kitlist~ i 2 lower_strref // read from LOWER column PATCH_IF (IS_AN_INT lower_strref) BEGIN GET_STRREF lower_strref lower // get string associated with this strref TO_LOWER lower // make string lowercase INNER_PATCH ~0~ BEGIN // add our new string to dialog.tlk if it's not there already and retrieve its strref REPLACE ~0~ ~%lower%~ READ_2DA_ENTRY 0 0 1 lower_strref END SET_2DA_ENTRY_LATER ~s2el_kitlist~ i 2 lower_strref // write new strref to file END END SET_2DA_ENTRIES_NOW ~s2el_kitlist~ num_cols // finalise all of our S2EL // make the file look nice PRETTY_PRINT_2DA REPLACE_TEXTUALLY ~2DA +~ ~2DA ~ BUT_ONLY To correct the kit descriptions, you may wish to read from the ROWNAME column to determine the kit, then write a completely new description on top of the old HELP entry. It'd probably be safest to do this using the INNER_PATCH/REPLACE + S2EL method as above. If you can determine which mods contain inaccuracies or inconsistencies, reporting these at the mods' forums would be appreciated by the community. Edit: I should point out one case where a non-lowercase string is deliberately used in the LOWER column. The Holy Strategist of the Red Knight kit in DR uses a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters because otherwise it is too long to fit on the kit selection screen in character generation. (Using all uppercase or all lowercase causes the game to use all large letters.) I haven't heard of any other kits that have the same problem, but it is possible.

But frankly I wouldn't plan on coding that myself (if for no reason than it would complicate matters unnecessarily) but if one of you wants to do it and test it, be my guest. You could do this if they were in one component: Ask for customisation options (launch ~fj_install_component_variables~) Modify BG1 creatures if they exist If BGT, ask about modifying BG2 version differently If yes, ask for customisation options again [*]Modify BG2 creatures I think that would work, but I haven't tested it.

Are you referring to the pdialog.2da check? Take a look at the modified Gavin L1NPC code I PMed you a while back - it is certainly possible to condense these into one component. I'm not the maintainer of this mod, but my opinion is that all NPCs should be treated equally unless there's a valid RP reason (e.g. Khalid comes back to life in BG2, with his consciousness transferred into the body of a gnome). If support was to be added for allowing different choices for a character's BG1 and BG2 incarnations in a BGT game, I'd prefer that it be optional, so BG1 and BG2 incarnations would be modified simultaneously unless the user said otherwise. This could be done using additional components and GROUPs or by altering the existing components.

I'd really recommend against having two separate components for Gavin. The only additional feature it provides is the ability to give Gavin a different class/kit in BG2 from what he had when you travelled with him in BG1, breaking continuity. The L1NPC components dealing with vanilla NPCs don't allow this. The downside to having this feature is that everyone who wants matching Gavins will have to go through the entire L1NPC install process for him twice and make sure to choose the same settings.

After BEGIN goes the name of the component. This can be a string like ~Solaufein~, or a .tra reference like @123 that can be translated into other languages.

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Of course, that's completely unnecessary.

Since Rangers don't normally gain the ability to cast 4th-level spells, what you probably want to do is make your own custom version of Call Woodland Beings that is changed into an innate (or a lower level priest spell). You can do this quite easily with code at install-time. First off, using // to comment out these lines makes it hard to uncomment them, because they are interspersed with actual comments. Using /* */ to surround the entire ADD_KIT block might be preferable (or even just prefixing the already-commented lines with // as well, so the whole thing can be mass-uncommented quickly). Other than that, the only thing to talk about is the format of the kit names, and it's a very minor problem: Lower and mixed here refer to letter case, so the first should ideally be ~needle of mielikki~. The lower case name is used in character generation, and if yours is in mixed-case, it will stand out against the other kits.

The .exe patches used in SR and other mods modify only specific portions of the .exe file, not the whole thing, so they should stack fine.

It'd probably be best to upload it to the net somewhere and post a link here.

That's BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES working as expected.You mean the BUT_ONLY , as it doesn't matter which you use. They are the same except that one is human readable, so I chose to explain with that one. Next time please put a "Do" in front of the sentence and end it with a question mark, unless you're trying to irritate the person you're correcting. Yes. The regexp copy does two things: it verifies that the existing areas have all needed files, plus it generates a list of these valid files. It isn't possible to rename files in a regexp copy, so you need a list of the files so you can copy and rename them individually.

That's BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES working as expected. I believe the "INSTALLED WITH WARNINGS" is because we compile some scripts that reference creatures that we don't copy over until later (so currently it's also to be expected).

This would be because items aren't done... or started... or what have you. The iron crisis should be a thing of the past.