Sam.

It doesn't. You could try searching for TakePartyItem, tho.

For whatever reason I was under the impression that the first X dialog.tlk entries between BGEE/SoD and BG2EE were "theoretically" supposed to be the same (in other words the BG2EE dialog.txt started with the BGEE dialog.txt, and then added its new entries from there). A quick test of using WeiDU to traify the DLG files and diffing the two shows this is absolutely not the case. Is my original assumption completely wrong, or is my method flawed?

@Jazira Personally I like the idea of BGEE/SoD vs BG2EE overlapping texts being unified, but I also don't consider myself an authority on what the "correct" wording is. I could probably provide technical details like a list of which StrRefs are binarily different, but I'm not sure where that gets us. If there are as many differences as you suggest there are (and I don't doubt there are), I struggle to envision a method of presenting the differences between A and B in such a way as to be easily digested by the masses so as to form a consensus. Moreover, in many cases I doubt the "best" wording is either A or B, but some combination of the two. Sure if "technical" descriptions differ but the underlying ITM files are the same there may be one correct answer, but this surely won't be the case for many of the discrepancies. I'm willing to help, but will need suggestions on how to do so.

You are amazing, thank you!

Since http://baldursgatemods.com is currently (perhaps indefinitely) down, do any fellow pack-rats have a copy of BAMWorkshop v0.0.0.2a? For reference, it was downloadable here. Some time before that, the download link was http://www.teambg.org/forum/index.php?action=downloads;sa=downfile&id=37. I could swear I had a copy backed up somewhere on an external HD, but I can't find it. @CoM_Solaufein if you're still around I bet you have it somewhere. Thanks, Sam.

W_PackMule

I don't suppose there is a way to test for such cases programmatically? I ran through a quick mental exercise and figured it would be more or less straightforward to cross-reference ARE based CREs against the search map, but things quickly became non-trivial if you include other blocking regions, script and DLG based summons, etc. Maybe there is a way to leverage already existing architecture (such as NI's ARE Viewer) to minimize the additional effort required for such an endeavor?

Not having read through the debug log, it sounds to me like an antivirus program may be interfering with NI's ability to access/edit files in your Documents folder, including the savegames.

This should already be addressed and fixed by [Bug] Multi-part creature animations show visible lines Let me know if I've missed any.

Can the spawns be enabled in such a way that they are tied to the game difficulty, thus getting the best of both worlds? Gameplay at normal difficulty modes remains as intended / verified by QA, but the underlying error gets corrected and is exposed to maybe Insane and HoF difficulty modes.

+1

This should be a thing, and my vote is "Noober's Friends". Moreover, is there a way for a forum member to wholly and completely block another user's content from being seen? I have found the "ignore user" option in the forum software to be largely inadequate. Perhaps through a browser extension such as uBlock Origin or the like?

Just saying...

Do you mind providing a link to that discussion? I'm interested in the reasoning behind that decision.

All yes plus oBG2, with the caveat that I make no promises on time-frame.

Transparent pixels in an PNG still have a color. They would either be transparent green, or default to transparent black. I use ImageMagick which for most resizing operators use anti-aliasing. My solution is to make the background transparent black, resize it, and then threshold the transparency: any pixel with transparency below a specified threshold become the background (green) color, and any pixel with transparency above the threshold becomes fully opaque. The best threshold varies from file to file, and the results aren't perfect. IFF the AI scaler supports transparency, you might could do something similar. There are other techniques you could employ, but they become increasingly complex. Also keep in mind that part of the magic of how the IA scaler produces such good results is by injecting more colors than were in the original image. For a BAM, you'll have to axe them back down to a total of just 256. Please do. I'm very interested in the result.

Unless you can disable anti-aliasing, the colors of the icon will blend with the background color (green) to detrimental effect, i.e. your new icon will have a halo of non-transparent green pixels around it.

Handling anti-aliasing with the background color may be non-trivial. How does the AI scaler handle transparency?

Thanks! I hadn't considered 1pp being an intermediate source between the originals and the corrupted EEs, but I should have. I'll factor this into my process. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best place for it. I'll keep it it mind. I've finished processing the BAMs from oBG1 (TotSC). Attached is a thrown together test mod that lets you compare the various options. The first component has three options: 1) the EEs use the large icon with no shadow for the "small icon", 2) the EEs use the original small icon for the "small icon", 3) the EEs use the original small icon resized at 200% for the "small icon". Of these, I personally prefer #2. If anyone wants to see #3 at some other scaling factor (like 150%), that can be easily done. The second component creates items using the aforementioned icons, and adds them to a custom bag of holding. CLUA in the item "psitmbag" to easily test them in-game. Whatever the community consensus is based on these is how I'll proceed going forward. The shadow offsets I have used for these BAMs are the most frequently used offsets and size I computed for the oBG1 item icons. I can provide more details upon request. TestNewItemIcons.rar Edit: If you find anything I've ducked up, please let me know!

I'm not against many of these, but a common counterargument I've seen come up over the years is that the party's reputation shouldn't be penalized because a Neutral's AI script had them randomly walk into an area of effect spell like Cloudkill. Thematically, that would be on them, not you.

In the CHR->CRE file itself, starting from offset 0x006e.

I'm uncertain in what context you mean this, but at face value I find it to be troubling. There are items and spells in the game that specifically state that they protect from psionic attacks, the gaze of umber hulks, the gaze of basilisks, etc. Just because an effect comes from a creature itself and not a cast spell or divine prayer doesn't necessarily mean it should pierce through all magical protections. Having protection from level drain (whether from an item, spell, innate ability, etc.) should protect you from having your levels drained, regardless of whether the attack came in the form of a creature's bite, an enemy spell, or an enchanted mechanism like a trap or the Machine of Lum the Mad. If you have magical immunity to hold and paralysis, you shouldn't be affected by that ability of carrion crawlers just because the effect came from a creature and not a spell. Further, at a minimum I would argue that creatures with innate magic resistance (think Viconia for being Drow) should have an innate resistance to magical effects, not just magical spells. I can see where people may argue magic resistance artificially boosted by an arcane spell would be more suited to resisting arcane magic, but I don't necessarily agree and I don't think that would be reasonably possible in the engine anyway.

If you wanted to take a crack at the classic chapter and dream screens or the classic movies (I could export the frames for you), I'd be very interested in the results.

With the TIS V1 format, you'd only be keeping about 1 of of every 16 colors, unless the engine can actually use tiles less than 64x64 px (which the file format does support). If it can't, the results wouldn't be this good.

I'm aware of this, but for most item types, people expect to only see the large icon because the slots themselves have been made larger in the EEs, and the small icons took distinctively tiny by comparison. The current state of item icons is wildly inconsistent. Apart from spell scrolls and generic scrolls, I count only about 42 item icons (used or unused) in BG2EE which actually make use of a small icon in Sequence_0000_Frame_0001. If you exclude the amulets which are pretty much the same size in the large and small icons, you're left with only 11. These plus the large icons the engine shrinks to make smaller because they're padded in transparent pixels tend to stand out.