argent77

There is also a beta version of the Improved Archer Kit available which is compatible with EET. I have to postpone a stable release until WeiDU v240 has been published, however.

The following mods have already been made EET compatible:

• Golem Construction for Spellcasters (since v2.0)
• Lighting Pack: Shader Scripts for the Enhanced Edition (since v2.3)
• Recolored toolbar buttons for BG:EE & BG2:EE (since v4.1)

I found two more issues:

1. I've noticed some delay of the script execution in the SoA starting cutscene. It starts when the golem reports intruders. Everything afterwards is more or less out of sync. Has anyone noticed this too?

2. If you start a SoA game then Imoen doesn't interject when you talk to the golem in the room with our initial equipment. This is because Imoen's script name is "Imoen2" while the golem checks for "Imoen" instead.

 

2. There is a graphics bug in the opening map of SoD:

Are you sure that you didn't remove fpYUV.GLSL file from your override? That's the file responsible for this effect. Please compare content of this file with the one in EET/base/glsl/ directory.

 

You're right. I forgot to disable my user override folder for that test.

Congrats from me as well.

I've just installed RC1 and made a quick test run. The game starts fine. I can select and start each campaign. However, I've already noticed two issues.

1. The GUI is a bit mixed up. It appears to use elements from SoD with the BG2 GUI:


2. There is a graphics bug in the opening map of SoD:


The debug files (in case you need them):
SETUP-EET.zip

SETUP-EET_END.zip

 

Maybe it's just me, but after the installation process and the final biffing, I'm routinely cleaning the override folder from any "garbage" files.

 

With EET (not at this time- but once it has grown significantly in contents) is there already an idea about general biffing to be applied or is this a thing of the past for the new machine?

 

I don't know if there is still a performance penalty in the Enhanced Editions with great numbers of files in the override folder. However, it's always a good idea to biff the override folder at the end of the installation, except maybe for a couple of mods that are supposed to be re-installed periodically. It may not only increase game performance, a clean installation folder is also easier to manage (and don't forget that the filesystem overhead of thousands or hundreds of thousands of files wastes a lot of disk space).

I wonder why it should be so difficult to post the content of two log files instead of a single one for bug tracking? Whenever I see the request to "post the WeiDU.log" when someone has a problem then I can imagine that it's equally straightforward to "post the WeiDU.log and WeiDU-BGEE.log".

Putting the BG:EE WeiDU.log into the override folder is probably a bad idea though. Maybe it's just me, but after the installation process and the final biffing, I'm routinely cleaning the override folder from any "garbage" files.

Since you're already using TileConv, you can reduce archive size a bit further by compressing MOS files into the MBC format. It reduces the 40 MB MOS files down to 12.5 MB MBC files. It's not much, but every little bit counts.

Thanks. It looks like this feature works the same way in the Enhanced Editions.

I've seen many instances of opcode 58 (Dispel Effect) with additional information stored into the high order word of Parameter 2. All the regular dispel magic spells are affected (SPPR303, SPWI302, SPWI326) as well as some of the internally used spells. So far I've only seen the value 2 used in the high order word. Does it have a special meaning?

Why not let the player choose? You could add a conversation branch where Gavin doesn't know how long Charname can live and provide a (small) number of possible replies.

Probably none that you can choose during character creation. But you can easily change your race to something like Tiefling or Duergar either manually or by a mod.

2: The Wind Speed variable was unused on the code side, so a single byte there was re-purposed to control the alpha on the stencil water so we can have more or less transparency there.

Seems to work. Don't use smaller numbers, however, to avoid graphical echoes during time stop.

Latest BG2:EE patch (v1.3.2064) has added effect opcode 360 (Reputation Breaking Point) to a number of CRE files. Can someone tell me more about its parameters?

After applying alpha blending it looks rather good and can even be used for all kinds of different backgrounds.

I still like to know if there is some kind of indicator that can be used to determine whether to apply alpha or not. For now I'm simply scanning the BAM palette in NearInfinity for non-zero alpha components to determine the right blending mode, but I'd rather use a safer method if possible.

I haven't noticed it in the original games and judging by a quick test in vBG2, alpha-blended palettes don't seem to be supported. IESDP also states that alpha components aren't used.

Edit: SPWI106C.BAM (Blindness) is a good candidate for testing. Just copy it over from BG2:EE to vBG2 and you'll see a big difference when you open the spellbook after scribing the spell.

I've noticed just recently that many BAM files in the Enhanced Editions look differently in game compared to how DLTCEP or NearInfinity is displaying them. Apparently the game sometimes uses the alpha components of the palette, mostly used in *C.BAM files for spell icons. A quick comparison didn't show any hints how the game determines whether to use alpha or not.

Is there a reliable way to detect whether alpha components of the palette are used by the game?

Opcode 360 is used to prevent a creature from leaving the party due to reputation; I'll see if I can scare up the details somewhere.

While you're at it, can you also try to dig up information about opcode 322 (Evade AoE)?

From what I've seen of effect opcode 327 (Icewind Visual Spell Hit), param2 (type) uses a hardcoded id for the lighting effect. I'm only judging from the single instance found in the game (SPPR326B.SPL) however, which uses type=88 (Mold touch). Any confirmation?

Effect opcode 336 (Seven eyes overlay) uses param1=7 (sequence) in SPWI725.SPL. How does it relate to "The last letter of the VVC"? Does it specify the letter position in the resource name? How is param2 (type) used?

I've also seen descriptions of an effect opcode 360 (Reputation breaking point) somewhere. Is it actually implemented? If yes, what are the parameters?

There is also the merchant in distress, Karthis al-Hezzar, in the North Forest.

That's right. A couple of PVRZ files, mostly referenced by BAM v2 files, are using DXT5 compression. BG:EE (since v1.2) also supports DXT5-compressed PVRZ files.

As a side note, DXT3 is not (yet?) supported by BG(2)EE, even though the compression format is very similar to DXT5. The game will crash if you try to use it.

Talk override files are used for storing user-specific text (e.g. journal entries, map markers) and can be usually found only in SAV files. BG2EE uses a slightly different variant of the TOH file format. It combines both TOH and TOT files that are present in SAV files of old IE games into a single TOH file.

Main header:

Offset    Size    Description
0x0000    4       Signature ('TLK ')
0x0004    4       unknown (always 0x02)
0x0008    4       unknown
0x000C    4       Number of strref entries
0x0010    4       Start offset of strref entries

Strref entry:

Offset    Size    Description
0x0000    4       The STRREF to override or new unique STRREF (if >= 3,000,000)
0x0004    4       Start offset of the override string (relative to the start of the Strref entries section!)

Override string:

A simple null-terminated string of arbitrary size.

The header structure is the same as in the original TIS format. The field 'Length of tile section' at offset 0x0C can be used to determine whether a tile is compressed in-place (value=5120/0x1400) or refers to external PVRZ resources (value=12/0x0C).

Tile data block:

Offset    Size    Description
0x0000    4       PVRZ page (Special: A value of -1/0xFFFFFFFF indicates to fill the whole tile with black pixels)
0x0004    4       PVRZ x coordinate
0x0008    4       PVRZ y coordinate

The filenames of the referenced PVRZ resources are made up from the first character of the TIS filename, the four digits of the area code, the optional 'N' from night tilesets and a zero-padded two digits page number, referenced in the tile data block.