Jump to content

Roxanne

Modders
  • Posts

    2,030
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About Roxanne

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Female
  • Location
    Auckland, NZ
  • Mods Worked On
    Sandrah Saga
    Chloe NPC (EET/BG2EE version)
    Longer Road EE
    Deepgnomes on the Sword Coast
    SoD Banter Restoration
    Corwin NPC, Shine On Caelar, Tamoko
    Amber EE
    Mage Stronghold EET
    Expanded Thief Stronghold EET
    EET Game Setup Tool

Contact Methods

  • Website URL
    https://baldursextendedworld.com/

Recent Profile Visitors

12,444 profile views

Roxanne's Achievements

  1. Textpack is here http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/979-big-world-textpack-english/ Nothing has been moved. BWS-EE does not use this textpack at all because it contains fixes for old mods that are not relevant for EE anymore. The tool uses an own dummy textpack just in case future issues may arise and it may be needed one day. Easier to have this than to re-code some functions to re-install it. The current official textpack - at least the english version - may cause damage to mods meanwhile updated for EE's. One advantage of the EE Tool is that it gets independent of resources maintained by others, e.g. Fixpack or Textpack. You cannot change these resources because they are used by other tools like original BWS or BWP but you cannot use them because they are not properly maintained either. A dilemma that exists since a very long time and one of the hindrances I tried to remove. The dependency issues were some of the critical points discussed with Alien and others while building the concept for a new approach. PS - any problems with official textpack for other tools need to be solved at the source. If you take a look at the BWS code for BG2EE and EET you will see a large section at the top of InstallOrder.ini that deals with NOT using stuff that comes from the different outdated fix-packs.
  2. There seems again to be some misunderstanding. BWS is the community tool you talk about, and nothing has changed there except for Alien's recent renovation and moving it to github in hope to find new maintainers for it this way. BWS-EE has been thoughtfully separated from it in order to allow more freedom and a possible development that cannot be done on the main branch. A number of functions and concepts have already been changed compared to BWS. You can translate EE either as "Enhanced Edition" or "Evolutionary Experimentation" (as in evolutionary prototyping, where you develop something, then present it to the user, then try to refine it based on feedback, etc.). BWS was one step away from the grave until you took initiative. BWS-EE may or may not be another survival option. Since it his experimental, it may a well fail, no guarantee. This is why I followed Alien (Alienquake)'s advice the take it on a different fork and also to try and avoid any confusion between BWS and the (possible) alternative. It is clearly wrong to accuse me of taking anything away from the community. I left BWS in the last working and functioning state it had - any subsequent changes were done by Alien and you. I started my experiments and new ideas about how the tool may work for EE/EET clearly separated from the main branch. There is no rippling back or influence from the new back to the old. BWS is safe from any negative effects in case I produce those. Anything should be done to avoid any confusion for users about the two different approaches to a tool even if they come from a common source. We have avoided anything that would re-route BWS users to the BWS-EE, not even a link or similar was provided. There is no intention to compete or replace or whatever. All of my posts tried to make clear that it is the attempt to make primarily EET installs easier for the users. The community BWS is here http://www.shsforums.net/topic/56670-big-world-setup-an-attempt-to-update-the-program/ just in case anyone doubts that.
  3. If the wrong Imoen appears that might be a glitch from the savegame. I have seen it once or twice. It should not happen with Sandrah. I propose, if you play "legally", make a dedicated save before you go into the SoD transition. If y wrong Imoen should appear, it can be repaired from there.
  4. There is no special treatment for this. Everything follows the EET concept of continuous NPCs. This means whatever choice you made in BG1, including Sandrah mod option or not, will be sustained in SoA. The Candlekeep dialogue is just a choice for the initial setting, nothing more. The remainder follows all the game rules. If you made her a mage by that choice, she should remain that unless you dual-classed her at some time or did other changes. Note that the non-joinable SoD Imoen is an own creature and not following the continuity - again, that is inherited game behaviour neither touched by EET mod or Sandrah mod.
  5. I understand that you simply use the functions under *options* in the selection tree menu, the ones called "save selection" and "reload selection"? The data is stored in a file *user.ini* which you find in the BWS-EE/App/Config/ folder. For your purpose I suggest not to use this, because it is overwritten each time you start a new session like you describe. It may be better to use another option from the same pull-down menu called *Export selection to file* which opens a file manager menu that allows you to name that version how you like it and store it for your further use. You can make snapshots of your selections this way and reload a former one if you were unhappy with what you did. You can create a number of ini files this way for later reuse. Using this method, you are already halfway to creating a Collection. Once you finished your experiments and solved all issues it may have, the final result will be your first Collection. You can always reload it or even share with others. The default user.ini that you currently use is not what I would recommend because it is too easily overwritten by events you may not have intended and then all you work will be lost. Better to use the kind of snapshot ini-files I have described. You can just give them a date or version number for easy recognition.
  6. It did. Thank you. But I don't see any (N)ew mark on the bgqe components. Instead, bgqe as a whole is marked green, and if I click on the overall box without letting the component tree show and don't pay attention, I don't even realize not all components are ticked. It's the same with the other green marked mods. If the component tree is not opened, components are left out but the player thinks he selected all of them because the mod is green. Maybe making the mod's name green if there are non-autoselected components is disadvantageous. Also, who defines which components are "safe to install"? E.g. for NTotSC, why is the last component, the NPC Will O'Hara, not included? It's a safe NPC, no conflicts as far as I know. Or for RE "Bjornin's Desire": inserts a custom NPC and plays in a custom area, so why is it not green? Whereas: Sandrah Saga is more or less a crossmod mod. It has so much dependencies and conflicts the warning window has to be scrolled down two times. Making this green, i.e. "safe to install" is an interesting choice and doesn't match anything else you wrote about the used color code. In short: I think the choices of color code are biased, and since it does influence players' choices, this is disadvantageous for the proclaimed tool's impartiality. Some things I noticed: -For Lure of Sirine's Call, the optional second component (the changed tis) should work as of v15 and doesn't need to be flagged red any more -both components "Svlast the Fallen Paladin" from bg1ub and "Svlast's Torment" from NTotSC are flagged green although they are clearly in conflict EDIT: And since you integrated Ajantis BGII beta v15.5, it is EET compatible. Thank you - this is very useful feedback. Even if it may mean that the one-click idea is not so good because the green colour code leads to misinterpretation. Maybe I can find a way to make all colours neutral, but it may mean to change some code deeper inside, Until now I tried to stay on the less complex levels. The problem is that the one-clicks do not work consistently across mods. The Sylast example shows that, because if you select both mods you WILL get the conflict in the next step, same with Sandrah, the missing dependencies WILL show in the next step. You are right to say that there is not a good definition what *safe* means. It was intended as a help to avoid all the conflict resolution steps. It may just not be intuitive enough and still require too much background information in the user, The basic idea behind it all was to make some use of existing functionality, without keeping the rigid former concept of the R,S,T,E categories. T and E only appear as colours and as such may still be useful. R and S - even if not used as such anymore - should have the same colour, i.e. appear equal (provided the code allows for that). Alternative 1) would be to remove the one-click and just do free choice. If more compilations may be added, those will take most possible issues into account...the more we would have of those, the less guidance the tool needs to provide. Of course, this would be impartial as could be unless we also question the conflict aid (which you can click away easily by using expert click behaviour). Alternative 2) apply the one-click with more restraint. Do not use it in content/quest/NPC mods at all - just use it for the big tweak mods to give a default setting for the less obvious components. My argument would be that with content mods it is easy to decide what you want or not want, and in addition you can make many decisions in the game itself by group management or accepting a quest or not...This is far more difficult for tweaks that have effect throughout the game. Users ask for some guidance here frequently. Alternative3) What you currently see is not the end of the line yet, it is a proposal to start from. It is not perfect even if I (personally) think that it is already better than what was in old BWS but not working well for EE. Other things: I fixed the Sirenecall issue, it was correct in one place but needed a change in a second file too. I added AjantisBG2 to EET, I was not aware that your beta tests for him were already done. EDIT I found a bit of code that could be safely modified to make all mods now appear equal (except tactical and expert). I also refined the description in the first posts, It is not yet perfect but hopefully appears less suggestive.
  7. The fixpack issue has been fixed in BWS and BWS-EE, there was a short-term mix up because both use different fixpacks (EE just needs like 10 percent of them but also the EET patches for some mods). With respect to mod selection etc...there seem to be some misunderstanding - maybe the tutorial posts at the topic beginning are not clear enough? In this post I tried to clarify it further http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=29337&page=2&do=findComment&comment=260068. So, BWS-EE does not use ANY pre-selections and does not classify mods as recommended etc. It marks some pure tactical mods in the selection menu with orange colour for easier identification, that is all. Instead BWS-EE offers you either Free Choice OR Compilations (see above explanations). The only *pre-selected* mods are those fixed for the game you want to install, e.g. some fix/text patches or the EET-Core and EET_end if you want to do an EET installation. Everything else is free choice and un-biased. This is the result of many discussions we had here on the forum, where the old concept of pre-selection and recommandations (by whom? based on which criteria?) were found to be not applicable for the dynamic environment of EE/EET. @ jastey The R,S,T,E flags and 0000 vs 1111 markings in the install files serve a COMPLETELY different purpose now compared to old BWS. The tool needs them so I tried to give them a more meaningful purpose without breaking the code. They now serve a *One-click* function for the mod selection screen. This means that for mods with many components you can select all *safe* components of the mod by just clicking on the mod name. So forget all you know about old BWS in this context. This is best explained by the examples you gave: - SandrahNPC has 16 components which are all needed if you want to install the mod. Selecting the mod adds all of them to the installation - AjantisBG2 has a main component, a couple of configuration choices and 2 optional components - One click here activates just the main component because the others still depend on player's decision. Also, the crossmod banter component depends on the *partner mods* to be selected as well and this step can only be validated after the choices are made but not before. - BGQE has the *one-click* currently defined for the original components, the new ones added just two days ago require individual selection from the player. They are marked as (N)ew in the menu. This was done to bring the new stuff to the player's attention and for a more conscious selection, i.e. you should be aware that you added something new even if you played the mod before. - In the far more complex case of SCS, there is a *one-click* function that activates a minimum set of components suited for the average player and known to work conflict free in a game with all other mods. It avoids tactical components and overlaps. In all three examples, the mods are not pre-selected in any way. Using *one-click* for a mod should lead to a selection that requires minimum further actions like solving conflicts or creating dependencies. Another change made is that in conflict presentation there is not any more an indication about a *preferred*. i.e. biased solution. Neither *my mods* nor any other mods will appear as preferred over others when using BWS-EE. Such preferences should be reserved for the *Compilations* where an author makes personal choices and shares them with players that identify with his/her taste and want to share the experience. Hopefully this clarifies some misunderstandings.
  8. Your *changing flags" did include the flag 15 called PVRZ reference? It is the only other thing except width/height I can see. But I never saw a Bam v2 in an area file and never tried one myself.
  9. Is this to say that the backup and restore functions provided by the tool do not work for you? I have tested them excessively during the last weeks because I initially had planned to get rid of them. But as they worked perfectly for me, I decided to retain them. PS - To be clear, I tested them for BGEE and BG2EE individually, not for EET. After EET you need to restore both games one by one - did you do that?
  10. In the case of vanilla = unmodded this should exclude unused content from being vanilla. We know of the cases where dialogue lines etc were written and left in the game package but are not used in the game. Some restoration mods make some of this accessible, but I would still call such *added* contents as being modded. The originally intended use of those resources is not known, so it is a modder's interpretation of how to make this stuff appear in game. Just to mention the Pique/Imoen case or the whole NTotSC Northern Citadel quest that is based on unused dialogues and actors found in the game's vaults.
  11. Thanks for the info. Just wanted to be sure if I put the file there it wouldn't get overwritten. There are mods that get overwritten in that directory whenever you restart the downloads but this one is not among them. Some mods hosted on github need to be re-loaded (e.g. EET mod itself) since the old BWS mechanisms have no way to verify the version or date of such mods. They are not pre-packed (zipped) but taken from a database on demand which was not known yet when the software once was written.
  12. CoM is Chosen of Mystra, another modding forum. If you put the manually downloaded mod into your designated download directory, the tool will check for its presence and not download it again. I have already updated the reference. I would suggest not to do a manual install of that mod because it requires a patch to be applied on top.
  13. What are the locations of your game directories and backups? Did you make sure those are not protected partitions or steamapps folders or the like? If it happens in both tools during installation this is to be expected, because all tools as well as manual installs use WEIDU, i.e. regardless of what method you use, if Weidu runs into an error, it will fail. For further information you would need to post the setup-XXXXX.debug file of the failed mod (XXXX being the mod name) as an attachment. For Dark Horizons try this link https://www.dropbox.com/s/28i6ycnp9jmhk8t/DarkHorizonsBGee213.zip?dl=1 the official and the backup seem to have trouble quite often these days. Check if some of the other mods that fail are also CoM mods.
  14. That's how I used it so far, too. This is interesting, because (rough summary) now we have quite different views Non-EE = classic (aka original) Vanilla = not modded vs Non-EE = vanilla = classic As far as I can tell, everybody who made a statement so far knows the classic AND the EE games. How would someone who is new to the game and started in the EE-world right away perceive that? How are people to know what you are referring to with *vanilla* when they do not have the classic game as a reference? Will even the dinosaurs (no offense, I am one myself) know this still - e.g. I lost my original games and only have an old BGT installation by now, with hardly a way to distinguish vanilla and modded contents there.
  15. On these forum pages you often see the term "vanilla game" used. I have the feeling that rarely two people use the term with the same intention. Wikipedia does not make me any wiser here: Taking the example of BG1. Which one is the *vanilla* game - The original first CD release of the classic game still WITHOUT TotSC and any patch? - The classic game with TotSC included but without using mods? - Any version of BG1 that has not been modded? Even worse - many newer or younger players do not even know any of these games, and for them it may mean - BGEE without SoD and without any mods added? With new NPCs included. - BGEE/SoD but without any mods? OR The original content of the game regardless of the platform (classic or EE) in any form that has not been modded? How do you use the term?
×
×
  • Create New...