Bartimaeus

Fixed, yes...but added to the GitHub repository, no. Thanks for reminding me: it doesn't help that I'm back to manually managing my repositories, as the tool I'd previously used (SmartGit) to keep track of any changes I make went to a very lovely subscription service model that is not really worth the money given that I'm just managing a few mods...

No to both, I'm afraid. I still think strange/murky potions should have a possibility of doing what they're supposed to at the very least, just to make them...I don't know, a little more interesting mechanically, but it would still probably ultimately be just flavor. I don't think players are exactly hurting for potions most of the time, are they? So why use ones you know could screw you over? But it's still a fun idea, something to make them more than pointless. With regards to Rifthammer, there's probably someone who would make a good candidate right at the end of BG1...Tamoko is proficient with and uses a flail (plus she already has Plate of the Dark), so not her, but I just haven't run through BG1 for good ideas since the last time we discussed it and no-one else has brought up any possibilities. If you see a named character that you'd think would make a good candidate, my suggestion would be to tell me and then just manually spawn the hammer yourself as if I officially put it there, .

If you mean that you took a look at the original SPCL742E.spl in your override and compared it to the one I gave you and saw that I simply changed the 177 (Use Eff File) opcode from the wrong Hold Monster .eff to the correct Halt Undead .eff while understanding why/how, then yes, it really can be that straightforward and you can certainly make such changes yourself, . I'd heartily recommend that anyone and everyone be able to do so, but you must find and familiarize yourself with the tools to do so as well as have the time/initiative for it, and it's not something that everyone is interested in when they just want to play their game.

Whoops, I'm running afoul of the "Spell Deflection blocks AoE spells" sub-component here, which externalizes all the effects of AoE spells, such as our Halt Undead, to sub-spell files to make the component work. Rather than change your SPCL742.spl, put this SPCL742E.spl into your override folder instead and give it a try: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/scl/fi/oqbdn4tuqurfbsd63jxjn/spcl742e.spl?rlkey=dalbktiel4mfvqvmvwhfi5pq1&dl=0

...I am guessing the Priest of Lathander variant is not one used very often by people, because it's been broken for four years now with nary a complaint from anyone. Its effect actually points instead to Hold Monster instead of Halt Undead, which is a much better spell but obviously completely useless against undead, and you'd have no way of knowing that's what it's actually doing. Whoops. If you give me your SPCL742.spl from your "game directory\override" folder, I can fix it for your current game. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

What about the latest repository version?

Thanks: I want something a little more fine-tuned, but the idea definitely has merit. Ideally, I would like to have a secondary and re-installable component that allows the player to switch the values of items between BG1 and BG2, so that if one is playing BGT/EET, they could patch all their .itms as they progress from BG1 to BG2 on the fly. The technical implementation here would actually be very helpful for accomplishing this, as you could slightly modify it to print out the values of your items - once before all the .itms are overwritten, and once after - and compare and contrast those lists to see the discrepancies and figure out what needs to be BG1-ized, and then you could make two different pre-generated .2das, one for BG1 and one for BG2, and allow the player to patch their .itms according to the values of either lists. At the moment, that idea is a little pie-in-the-sky given that I can't even find the time to finish the masterwork component, but...maybe eventually.

My order is correct: if I had to guess, The Big World Project could possibly be in a bind there, wherein what it's saying is most likely tailored for the official version of IR, not IRR, and it can't move around where to install 1pp depending on which you're installing when both IR and IRR share the same install name and components. That's not really BWP's fault if that's the case. The way IRR is setup these days (and has been for several years now) is that its base .itm files have been all stripped of any EE/1pp content and reverted back to their default oBG2 appearances, but during installation, a series of checks are made to detect what 1pp/EE content your game currently has installed. If you're playing on an EE game, all checks will pass and all graphical customizations will then be patched into those .itm files; if you're playing on a 1pp game, then only whatever graphical customizations that you chose to install will pass and thus only that content will be patched in; if you're playing on a non-1pp, non-EE, vanilla oBG2 game, then all of its IRR's .itms will stay pretty much their vanilla oBG2 appearances. I pray that nobody is playing with IRR that way, but the capacity to do so is there. Long story short, the main component of IRR should only be installed after everything you want from 1pp is already installed (with the exception of the Avatar Switching component, which should only be installed after all item-adding/altering mods have been installed) so that those checks will pass and IRR can fully and correctly patch its .itms. If you install IRR's main component before 1pp, then IRR will not ever have the opportunity to patch its .itms, and instead everything is left up to 1pp, which was not ever intended to be installed on top of IR and will lead to a number of incongruities. Probably not anything game-breaking, but some items will definitely not look as they should. How much that'll bother the player will depend on the player in question - anyone who is bothered should use my suggested install order, as that's really the only fix for it. It took a rather ludicrous amount of work to make everything work this way, and it was literally what I was told I'd need to do by Gwendolyn, the maintainer of 1pp, so I don't think there's much I can do about other people's install guides or automated installers being suboptimal, except to suggest that they should be amended where possible.

Excuse me for just one moment, I haven't the foggiest idea what War Cry even does in the first place, so I have to go look it up right now. Fighter HLAs don't really fall under the purview of Spell Revisions in the first place...but since Kreso made a component to slightly improve them years ago, I suppose it wouldn't be the end of the world to add one more. Thanks for bringing it up and the idea, I'll probably steal your design or use something like it.

Well, this explains why Prism was randomly dead in my previous playthrough while I was using 3E-style Constitution.

Yeah, black as the high contrast accessibility option just makes sense.

Oh man, you're right. Guessing option 0 (aka full vanilla petrification) isn't one most people use...2 is what I use myself. Thanks!

This has now been implemented in IRR. The following potions may have their effects dispelled when using the dispellable_potions settings.ini switch: ~potn02~ // Potion of Fire Resistance ~potn03~ // Potion of Hill Giant Strength ~potn04~ // Potion of Frost Giant Strength ~potn05~ // Potion of Fire Giant Strength ~potn06~ // Potion of Cloud Giant Strength ~potn07~ // Potion of Storm Giant Strength ~potn09~ // Potion of Heroism ~potn10~ // Potion of Invisibility ~potn11~ // Potion of Invulnerability ~potn12~ // Potion of Stone Giant Strength ~potn13~ // Oil of Fiery Burning ~potn14~ // Potion of Speed ~potn15~ // Red Potion ~potn16~ // Violet Potion ~potn18~ // Potion of Absorption ~potn19~ // Potion of Agility ~potn21~ // Potion of Clarity ~potn22~ // Potion of Cold Resistance ~potn23~ // Strange Potion of Speed ~potn24~ // Potion of Defense ~potn25~ // Strange Potion of Healing ~potn28~ // Potion of Fortitude ~potn29~ // Potion of Vocalize ~potn30~ // Potion of Sight ~potn31~ // Potion of Insulation ~potn32~ // Strange Potion of Antidote ~potn33~ // Potion of Energy Protection ~potn34~ // Potion of Magic Blocking ~potn35~ // Potion of Resilience ~potn36~ // Potion of Master Thievery ~potn38~ // Potion of Mirrored Eyes ~potn39~ // Potion of Perception ~potn40~ // Strange Potion of Invulnerability ~potn41~ // Potion of Power ~potn42~ // Potion of Regeneration ~potn44~ // Potion of Rage ~potn45~ // Potion of Freedom ~potn46~ // Potion of Stone Form However, I have not yet implemented a text patch that strips their descriptions of the text that states they cannot be dispelled.

When I used to admin a forum for an old game years ago, we would give exactly one warning to people who edit-deleted their posts after receiving an answer for whatever question they had, and if they ever did it again, we'd permanently take away their ability to edit their posts: destroying information that could be useful to other people is a rather heinous violation of community spirit and spits in the face of those lending their time and expertise to help you.

Yes and yes. SR does not touch potion effects, this is the doing of IR/R, but yes, potion effects are undispellable in IR as well. Vanilla's are dispellable. Confirmed and fixed, looks like that change happened a few months ago when fixing up the spell to protect against TotSC's Death Gaze. Thanks!

The effects of potions are not dispellable, except where directly counterable by e.g. Breach vs. Potion of Stone Form or True Seeing vs. Potion of Invisibility. It would be pretty trivial to make them dispellable if desired, though.

I have no experience with figuring anything out from BG's .dmp files. The way I would handle something like this it is to create a backup of my AR5201, then edit it with either DLTCEP or Near Infinity and start deleting things from it until it no longer causes a crash...probably starting with removing all creatures and seeing if that does the trick. If it does, then you can restore a copy of your original AR5201 and start to narrow it down until you figure out what the problem creature is and examine the .cre file to try to figure out why it might be causing a crash.

Actually, I thought of a few different ways to illustrate the point, and that was probably the less vile example I could think of. Whether it's for that or something else entirely, finding your own likeness to be used for objectionable purposes is, at the end of the day and no matter your reasons behind it, objectionable, whereas I'm not really finding any particular reason to care or get involved if someone is just doing an impression. Not my likeness, not my problem - so long as it doesn't involve or hurt anyone who shouldn't be, I'll spend nary a thought on the matter. But when you're someone where your face and voice are both already out there, and there's apparently this carte blanche attitude about the use of this kind of technology, well...suffice to say, I wouldn't really want to see what results from it, especially if I were one of the affected people.

It was easier for me to take a stronger (although still not necessarily absolute) stance against it when I started thinking about how I personally could become uncomfortable with my voice being used against my will. I'd really just kind of prefer that other people, willingly and with cognizance to the fullest extent possible, do their own voice performances when it comes to even completely fictional characters going on and on about how hot and bothered they get whenever their eyes meet with the irresistibly attractive dog that they're currently pet-sitting...rather than using manipulated recordings of my voice to accomplish it. And if I feel uncomfortable with even the idea of something like that, I can't imagine how people who have been in the public eye for ages, with many years' worth of video/pictures and voice recordings easily found, would feel about it...especially when you throw in a rabid/unhealthy fan following. I say again: yuck!

I'm sure if we all just get talked at LIKE THIS enough, we'll eventually COME AROUND.

I think there are ethical concerns when we're talking about using someone's exact likeness. When someone draws a picture of someone, nobody gets confused about whether the drawing is actually the person or not, and the drawing can be attributed to the artist; when someone does an audio cut-up where they'll take and re-arrange words that someone says to make something new (typically to the effect of something silly), it's usually pretty obvious because of how unnatural it'll sound/look, even when it's a matter of just cutting out a single word (and also, in the vast majority of cases where this is done, at least some other people will be familiar with the original and know that it was edited and be able to relay that to others who aren't); when someone does a voice impersonation of someone else...well, it's just literally not that person's voice - even if it's really close, there are people who will be able to discern that one person's vocal chords and the unique timbre associated with them (and never mind all their exact little speaking mannerisms, be it word/phrase choice, accents, inflections and cadences, or even just the exact length that they hold or roll their tongue to pronounce certain sounds) simply isn't exactly the same as another person's. And fundamentally, if you can produce it with your own mouth, it can be attributed to you and not anyone else. The difference with this AI crap is that it's not anyone's new unique work because these are just programs that are using the exact likeness of someone else or their work as input in order to output in minutes/hours new content that could pass as being them/theirs, and that likeness can be made to dance to whatever tune the puppeteer likes - without another human being having ever contributed anything new to make it, without being able to attribute the work to anyone else but the person who was used as input. Well, with the exception of generated art taking from so many different sources that it can't be clearly attributed to any one artist, but all those hack "AI artists" effectively stealing work from others and presenting it as their own is a whole other stupid can of worms we don't need to get into. I won't deny that it would be great fun if I could import a recording of someone's voice into a program like Audacity and be able to mess around with some dials and buttons in order to transform that little bit of voice recording to say anything I like, but no matter how I edit or transform it, that voice recording is still of that person's voice and no-one else's. And that's not even to mention the issue of whether of whether the AI makes convincing transformations of someone else's work, which I think is entirely besides the point but certainly adds to the squickiness. I'm not going to go out of my way to get too bent out of shape about it when it comes to examples where its use is obvious and not really harmful/exploitative (for example, if someone takes David Warner's recordings of Jon Irenicus from BG2 to make new and free content involving him that's more or less in line with the character he portrayed - if no money is made off of it, if it's clear it's just a character portrayal set in the appropriate circumstances, if everyone who plays that content is dutifully informed of the use of AI before downloading it), but I won't lie in that there are some very obvious avenues for gross abuse with this technology that give me pause as to whether it should be available to anyone for any purpose. Even within just the sphere of Baldur's Gate...wasn't there an Imoen romance mod around at some point? You could easily use an AI to take recordings of Melissa Disney's portrayal of Imoen to make some VERY sketchy mod content around that idea, with Melissa having no ability to protect her likeness in being used for that purpose. If it were someone else impersonating her, then fine - that person would've agreed to have done it (whether for compensation or because they just wanted to do it because they liked the idea or thought it would be fun or...it doesn't really matter), it would be their voice and not Melissa's, and the work could be fairly attributed to them. But when it's an AI, well, it would literally be Melissa's voice, it can really only be attributed to her, even with the qualifier that it was AI-generated. Yuck! And this technology is still in its infancy, relatively speaking...even if you think it's not always convincing now (and I would say that it certainly can be when skilfully used and in the appropriate circumstances), who can say what the future holds?

I edited in a little more for that paragraph to give more context for that statement: for me, it can be both a blessing and a curse, especially as characters I'm fond of lose their voices. A number of my favorite characters from longer-running games and animated series lost much of their charm for me when they decided to replace the original voice actors/actresses...I just went through this with literally Mario and Luigi of all things with the latest Super Mario game, Super Mario Wonder, when I watched the trailer and I was like "...was Charles Martinet sick while he was recording for this game, what's up with their voices?". Nope, after voicing them for literally 30 years straight, Nintendo finally replaced him. Now I fear the day they replace Princess Daisy...the lady that has played her for the last 20 years straight up made that character for me with the absolute loony-bin way she performs the voice, and I don't think any replacement is going to be able to equal her...but I just know it's going to happen eventually. There are certain lines from characters I'm particular to that ring out in my head randomly, even years or decades since last hearing them. So I guess you could say that voices are pretty important to me, .

I was with you until this (note: also not endorsing a specific position here either). I'm only picking a bone here because of you saying "obviously trying to sound like Richardson": I don't think Kevin Michael Richardson and John H. Mayer...really sound even remotely alike, not in how their base voices sound or the particular voices/style that they chose (or were directed) to use for the roles - and never mind the writing of the narration as well, which is also quite different. It'd be hard for me to believe that John H. Mayer would even be asked to try to imitate Kevin Michael Richardson, as I always assumed the rather drastic departure in narration was intended to represent a change of setting as well as the tonal shift between games. It would be especially odd given that Kevin Michael Richardson literally recorded lines for Shadows of Amn, so if they wanted him or somebody that sounded like him to narrate, well...they already had him in the recording studio. Richardson's narration has a generally neutral delivery and feels rather calming (perhaps even encouraging?) in comparison to Mayer's more old-timey fantastical flair for the dramatic, not to mention all the intrigue/danger/suspense that he suggests awaits the player as you're about to visit the new locations hinted at in his narration. However, it should be noted that I am extremely sensitive to voice changes (to the point where it's immediately obvious and bothersome to me pretty much any time a character changes voice, and I almost always recognize when someone with a distinctive voice like Kevin Michael Richardson appears in something, even for a moment...the amount of things I've seen with him where I immediately went "oh hello Sarevok" after hearing just one sentence from him is way too high), so maybe my take is in the minority.

IR (not IRR) does change Carsomyr to be +4 and the upgraded version to be +5. No +6 items exist in IR, AFAIK. That was kind of the impetus for making the component in the first place - for SoA to have another +5 weapon, as I believe Staff of the Magi is IR's only other +5 SoA weapon. IRR does add one more, but it's a very late one in the form of Blackrazor - somewhat because of IR nerfing the vanilla insanity of this weapon, somewhat because of the fact that the player is "supposed" to throw it away if they're a good/neutral character, and somewhat for lore reasons. Blackrazor was originally a legendary First Edition weapon that the player was never really supposed to be able to obtain, and to see it be demoted to complete irrelevancy and a very easy choice to just throw away when it's only +3 is a rather sad fate. Also, several people had asked for it to be +5, and I was eventually swayed once I really started to think about it. I'll work on making that Carsomyr component have two subcomponents, one for 10% (my own preference) and one for 20% (which works both as IR's original value for the unupgraded version as well as IRR's value for the upgraded version, so I'm O.K. with it).

I don't know, what's Carsomyr's upgraded stats in your game before installing it? The component does exactly what it says it does: If your upgraded Carsomyr already gave only 10% magic resistance, then yes. If it doesn't, then no. I'm pretty sure Carsomyr +4 in IR starts out with 20%, which is double what it starts out with in IRR (i.e. 10%), and then I think it moves to either 25% or 30% for the upgraded version (whereas IRR's Carsomyr +5 moves to 20%). I'm not a fan of the ludicrous glut of MR for Carsomyr given how strong it is outside of that as it is (ignoring that it's 50% in vanilla...), so that's the compromise for making it +5 throughout SoA. It would be easy to make a version that's 20% instead if somebody wanted that.