jastey

Unfortunately, with Domi and berelinde gone I fear there is noone left who knows their way around in NWN2 modding. I at least don't and can't help here. EDIT: Are there any NWN2 modding places left where people would know a little better how to debug a mod (or the game), maybe?

@Austin I updated this for BG1NPCs in SoA&ToB.

I updated all repos I have cloned currently.

Thanks for this update! ..Now it's our turn to update the repos..

@Lurker thank you very much for the detailed report and suggestions! I'll revise this when I'll work on the mod next time. To be fair, it's not an uncommon theme in the game. Bjornin knows when you killed the half-ogres without telling him, for example. (It also simplifies quest paths by a magnitude if not all options have to be considered in the dialogues. You ran into enough problems already regarding complex dialogues as it is..)

Hahaha! - Fits nicely, though. *Bites into her desk trying to debug a 5 second-long cutscene*

I was tongue-in-cheek. I mean, you are correct in so far as quest paths that do not occur to the modder will not be as fleshed out or even tested as the other ones. Can be evil paths, can be different order how to do things. I am proud about the evil solutions of the bgqe quests, thank you for the feedback. The time it takes to do bug reports is highly appreciated. For some players, I would hope they'd not underestimate the time and effort it takes to create the new content the mods provide, though. And there is no QA section I can run the mods by - there will always be bugs in them no matter how much I playtest. It's utterly frustrating. If you would give me more details to what Aaron's last lines were and what journal entries you are still stuck with I'd be grateful and it would increase probability I'll fix this for the next release. I'll add this to my notes anyway.

Glad this is solved! As far as I know, SoD Banter mod is from AstroBryGuy and only for BG:SoD, not EET. For EET you'd need to use Roxanne's version, whatever it is called, that, last time I checked, did not transfer all NPCs' banters to dialogue style but only the continuous ones, and also added a tweak to the abduction scene (). If anyone reading this wants to use the SoD Banter mod, currently it is advised to download the master branch or the mod will not add a banter file for Imoen (last release uses wrong scriptname for Imoen in bdbanter.2da).

@Lurker Thanks for the report. I am highly surprised anything kicks in with Brage dead, but - well, what noob did code that quest to make such a great oversight?! What I can tell you is that proving his innocence in retrospect was not a planned quest path. I see that it would make sense, especially if you have both letter and sword, but I'm dreading implementing this on top of the normal quest path. - Will look into it.

I tried to see in the files how the quest should resolve in this case but Ascalon's quets are not easy to follow by reading the script because he uses a different method to trigger events than I would. I'd need more detailed infos: What exactly did you tell Aaron and what did he answer? What you reported sounds more like a bug / oversight, of course the quest should resolve in this case. Killing the ghost is there as an option and is already considered, at least for some quest paths. With that and the fact that I spent weeks+ to design evil paths for all bgqe quests (where it makes sense because they are good in nature) I think it's uncalled for you address the general lamentation about not-so-fleshed-out evil quest paths at me, though. *pout*

@Lurker If I understand correctly, you killed Brage at the first meeting, brought his dead body to the town, and the mod's quest to prove his innocence kicked in?

Well, Holger claims that he's delivering to the tent. oioioi I need to think about how we get out of this without making it too complicated. I'll come back to this, the BST smuggler plotline is not a high priority of mine currently.

I'd like to add crossmod with BST's smugglers. They are located - wait, in Nashkel. So maybe crossmod could be some extra snarky lines when Holger (from BST) mentions Black Lotus smuggle. I'd be happy if we'd talk about it at some point. (Doesn't need to be right now.)

I don't mean to sound like I'm defending myself, I just wanted to point this out because my posts might not make this clear: - I wasn't arguing against weaving your NPC into the game story / locations / events. I only wanted to point out that it increases work load. I think the result can be very intriguing - if done right. And then there is other mods also tinkering with the original content you have to take into account* and you start hating yourself. (I heard that from, er, a friend.) - I also wasn't arguing against having your NPC an "unusual" race or other features. I wanted to point out that I expect a more thorough design concept than "looks cool". @Lava your NPCs for example have a well designed back story. I think Ajantis tells it in his BG1 BIO. - You don't take him along very often, do you? (There is several NPCs I never had in party myself, btw.) Also, if you have Keldorn or Anomen in party when entering the Windspear Hills the first time, they will comment on Ajantis. (Anomen's remark was cut by Lord Windspeer appearing, but I think the fixpack fixed this, and I think I meddled with the timers in my Ajantis BGII mod, too, so it would show.) *This might be an own hint, actually. There is a fine line between "make use of existing game characters for your mod (as quest givers etc.) to make your mod more seemless" and "use your very own custom characters, areas, monsters to be sure no other mod changes them", because the former also comes with the risk of "f*** - mod x, y, and z make changes to this character / are using this house interior / dungeon, now I have to make this compatible". Using only custom quest givers makes the game more crowded (in a negative sense), but it *is* safer. As for dungeon or house interiors - I wrote a compatibility change to one of Ascalon's Questpack components because Artisan's mod (one of it) also uses the same house, and I just added a compatibility patch to Brandock because apparently even area locations to add a new cave are prone to be used by several mods.

I'd rather not add a fixed indices to this- the idea of the function is to not fixing the names? Plus, you can have the same error with any other mod that adds areas names Bxy000.are. I'd rather specific BGGO needs to be installed before any other mods adding areas to BG:EE.

One word of advice coming from experience about waving your NPC's story into game related events / stories. It can become a real PITA to add your NPC into exisitng game content. It's much easier to have them float along side it. What I mean: -Brage is a game character and has lived in Nashkel as the commander. He comes from Amn. I added interjections in Nashkel to every man and his dog, and I fear I'll have to add some sort of connections in Athkatla, too. -Brandock is mage from Amn. He trained with the Coweld Wizards. For BGII, that means I have to tie him in for the meetings with the Cowled Wizards there; the Sphere quest / mage stronghold, and whatnot, Phew. -Ajantis was Keldorn's squire. So I had to consider that when writing the BGII mod: he knows the order and they know him, he has a backstory with Keldorn that should show in their interactions, etc. It makes an NPC (more) interesting, but it also makes it more complicated to insert them seemlessly. EDIT: also from a technical POV. If you are unexperienced with dialogue writing and scripting, you need to watch out to make sure you are adding your content to existing dlgs in the most compatible way.

ok, I agree to that. But you'd expect them to struggle, to have a back story how they got there - or are they there in 4th generation and assuming they have a back story is racist? I'd conclude that I chose a bad example. Maybe if I put it like this: I expect the back story of the NPC to play a role. Give your NPC STR 13 and I expect this to show, and not getting a "NPCname picks the PC up and carries her to the bedroll" for my 18 STR 16 CON fighter NPC wearing plate mail. Give your NPC big horns - fine, but do not pretend that they are a normal human for the rest of the mod. I expect reactions from some game characters and at least one dialogue where they struggle with putting on a helmet. If it makes sense.

The error message means that it tries to patch the listed dlg but can't find it. Which is weird, because I4E should have created it, based on EET's bdbanter.2da. In my unmodded EET install, bdbanter.2da lists for Safana the banter dlg "BDSAFANB" which is what I4E tries to patch the banter to. So, it seems that a mod installed prior to I4E changed the bdbanter.2da to contain a different banter dlg for Safana. (Because on my EET, I don't get an install error for it.) 1. what does your bdbanter.2da look like when you try to install I4E? 2. which mods changed it until then?

I have one more: communicate to the player how their fare with the NPC. What i mean is, I've seen romance concepts where one reply option which was not obvious would kill the romance, which the NPC would not address. Leaving players wonder 3+ hours later into the game what happened.

moggadeed already raised very valid points. Only thing coming to my mind is that I expect the NPC to have a believable back story. What I mean with that: if you want your NPC to be a tiefling with a tail and horns that nearly make their head trip, then please do not make them random country girl/boy living with their tiefling parents having a bakery. - Not that a tiefling family couldn't live in a normal town and have a bakery. But - why would you chose this race and appearance for the NPC then? - If it makes sense. On the same time, spare too exotic / special backgrounds. When the modding scene was younger, there were so many NPC concepts that were so overdone and MarySueish - with glowing eyes, half-elf half-tiefling half-dragon, being orphaned as a kid because their village was destroyed by [insert monsters here], then raised somewhere by [insert exotic creature race here]... Domi wrote a very good "Don'ts in NPC Design" post ages ago, but I'm afraid it probably won't come up in search any more (if it's still present the forum software probably archived it). What I personally do not like is personal items, like special armor only usable by this NPC, worst unremovable. Even if the personal gear is removable, it still feels forced. One item - ok, but only if there is a really, really good story behind it. As a creator one might think that special personal items make the NPC more interesting, for me it's the contrary, actually. I want to be able to equip them with good items of my own choosing, without being hindered by unremovable items or items with their name tag on them. I personally like to talk with the NPCs. Having dialogues that are intriguing, tell me things about them. (Not too philosophical, though, those bore me easily). A friendship path (if no romance is available) is a must . I love Finch to pieces but I won't take her along again after I realized there is zero interaction with the PC. For me, I like it if NPCs have a moment of failure. Let them fall on their nose, being stubborn in an argument with another NPC, "lose" a banter with another NPC. It makes them lovable. My personal taste: some drama is good. Inserting drama for drama's sake is to be avoided. This is a fantasy world with magic and resurrection. You don't have to add a lover that is slowly dying and is permadead 10 minutes before your NPCs comes with the cure. This is not the kind of story I want to see in a fantasy game. If designing the dialogues, try to give reply options for different RP and alignment / character choices. Do not tell the Player how their PC is feeling. Never do that. Give the player the reply choices to decide what their PC is feeling and how they are reacting. Do not let your NPC be offended* just because the PC (Player) clicked one wrong reply option. Sometimes, it's just that the player didn't get where the reply option goes to. Plus, people reacting like that are too narrow minded to have them in a fantasy game. And of course I'll advertise my SoD NPC Modding Tutorials here, including a mod package that can be taken as a template (only for SoD content, needs slight adjustment for a BG1+SoD NPC). Making an NPC mod is much, much more work than it seems - but it is also great fun to write a character to your liking. A general rule of advice: for quest and dialogue design, make sure you fall back to certain points where *all* paths will lead to. Giving choices how to solve a quest is great - but at some point you need to make sure you know where the player is, or writing all possible paths will be endless work - and debugging will become a nightmare. *offended is ok, of course, but not stomping off in anger / kill the romance etc.

hehe

Thank you so much, @moggadeet. This sounds perfect. EDIT: and quite polite. I think it gives a fair warning, without explicitly specifying that it also installs undocumented tweaks, and the install order it proposes was never discussed with other modders and is unfortunate at places. I guess it would be good to have an eye on that site, in case it gets edited back. I'll try to, at least.

The player reported that restoring the backup of bd2000.bcs from Multiplayer Tweaks fixed the crash. MPT was installed after SCS. I didn't look into this further.

@moggadeet would you post your weidu.log so we can see how you installed BST vs. BGGO? @Weigo my first guess is that BGGO should be installed before BST so BST doesn't "grab" the B1000 numbers for its own area in EET. At least that would be my brief understanding of what happened. The "do not overwrite PVRZ naming scheme" function is the a7_pvrz_tis.tpa in BST's lib folder. EDIT: If it makes any sense for adding night areas, BGGO should use the function too, probably.

@guardian.gorion there is a small description on the GitHub page: