Roxanne

If there would be such a "pause" between BG1 and SoD, it should be after defeating Korlasz - before the PC is woken up by Imoen in the Duchal Palace. That would make most sense, imho.

Of course, there you already have the SoD setting, with Imoen being mage apprentice etc.

You would need to transfer the complete transition between bd0120 and bd0103 to somewhere else - including party management, inventory moving, chapter transition, several cutscenes, revision of various NPC leaving after Korlasz dialogues and more. You would need to prevent a number of NPCs leaving you at this point. You need to introduce an exit from the tomb back to (possibly) the Undercity somewhere outside the Bhaal temple(?).

While all the above may be feasible even if much work, the thing again would be compatibility. How would you treat all the mod NPCs that may be in your party when you defeated Sarevok and followed you against Korlasz?

It will be an ambitious project, but will it really be an improvement?

Is it for EET or for BGEE+SoD? Or both?

I think what he's saying is, it would be nice if it could do something like BGT, where the Sarevok fight doesn't kick you into a cut-scene, but lets you leave the undercity and wander around the sword coast until you're ready to make a transition.

 

EET, if I'm not mistaken, boots you immediately into the start of SoD... it's only that various areas are open. So there's nothing stopping you from doing TotSC content after Sarevok; but it's still a bit weird. Am I mistaken?

 

I don't think EET needs to really do anything here. It should be easy enough for someone to make a mod for EET that delays the transition to SoD.

 

Heck, fact is, while SoD is meant to fill the gap between BG1 and BG2, there's still a gsp between BG1 and SoD. SoD hand-waves a bunch of adventures tracking down and fighting Sarevok's lieutenants. It would be cool if someone made a mod to fill this gap...

Laugh as you may...

I had this transition-within-the-transition for the early version of EET. However, after some playing the game as a continuous story, I decided to move all this stuff to the earlier parts of SoD, partly to the Korlasz dungeon and partly to the first camp areas after you leave Baldur's Gate. It made a far better flow of the story than to leave the Sarevok plot and later return to it again while you spend a long time doing something else.

So I speak from the experience of actually having done the thing and having experimented with some alternatives. But, yes, this is a very subjective decision.

What is still left from my various attempts, is a party dialogue of some NPCs after Sarevok is dead and a chance to pick up some items from the final battle, so that there is not the immediate cutscene when Sarevok falls. I put this in my Sandrah mod, but it could be made a separate component by some other mod. I am pretty sure that K4thos would not want the EET itself divert from the original BG1 to SoD transition.

One final argument against an additional interim between BG1 and SoD is compatibility. If such an interim would be introduced by some mod, the continuity for all the mods that take the story flow into account would be disrupted and you would have two variations instead. (BGT was different here, as it was the only transition between the parts).

But that is just my opinion for whatever it is worth.

I suggest it is best to play this with EET (not BGEE+SoD) to see how it will NOT fit as it was done in BGT. In BGT the interim, Global("EndofBG1","Global",1) which changed to 2 when BG2 started was the time between Sarevok's end and waking up in Irenicus Dungeon. In EET this interim is called SoD.

There is a logical *break* within SoD where you could go about and do other things, like TotSC, but it is not directly after Sarevok's end. That would break story and immersion. Just let it evolve and you will see the point where it makes sense to do some more adventuring during SoD. There is plenty of opportunity.

This all looks like an amazing project. I'm slightly overwhelmed. Just a small curious question: In BGT, I very much appreciated the opportunity to do TotSC adventures after Sarevok's fall, before initiating the transition to BGII. After all, this is how the expansion was originally intended to be played. It fits better balance- and storywise, too. May I suggest to you good folks to keep this option open, rather than moving on straight to this new expansion, or is there some reason against it I am unable to see?

Did you play SoD already? After Sarevok's death, you clear the Undercity from his remaining followers and then start the actual SoD adventure. This is the sequence of events with the new episode inserted. Only after SoD you transit to BG2.

Anyway, in EET you can postpone the TotSC content until after Sarevok at your convenience. One of the features of EET is the continuous worldmap that allows you to return to any former area you have explored during later parts of the game.

Your wish is thus already reality with EET

The new tool is up for testing.

Thank you to the original author and all those who contributed to BWS over the years.

Special thanks for Alien aka AlienQuake for his encouragement and his contributions to enhanced code.

Important notices:

- This tool does not replace the original BWS.

- Here is just a simpler alternative to support EE-game installs.

- Due to its leaner approach and reduced functionality it should be easier to be kept up-to-date and working.

- Usability will depend on contribution of tested *Compilations*

- The tool tries to stay as close as feasible to BWS look and feel to make it easier for users knowing BWS to give it a try.

- the current Compilations are placeholders to show how it works. By no means do I intend to impose my personal choices on anyone.

Compilations

The tool itself per default provides the user with a free choice of mod selection with assistance in conflict and dependency detection and resolution. This requires some work and decision making to create your own game-of-choice.

Some players would rather rely on game selections that have been successfully used by others before and will provide some enjoyable gaming without fear of running into unexpected problems. However, player's tastes and preferences are quite diverse and not *one recommendation* fits for all.

The idea hence is to provide user tested compilations which you can load and use (you can fine-tune them as well if you dare.)
To load a compilation, open the options tab on the mod selection screen, activate "Import selection from file" and navigate to BWS-EE/Compilations. Select and load the ini file corresponding to the selection you like.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Here are the currently available Compilations and what you may expect from them:
(See *How to* below the list to learn how you can help to fill this section with more choices.)
We add a date (Updated tag) to a compilation, as mods contained in a selection may have been updated since it was submitted or last verified.

BGEE

Learning to Crawl (by Roxanne)

Added 2018-04-15 Last updated 2018-04-15

Romantic Sword Coast (by Struwwelpeter)

Added 2018-05-21 Last updated 2018-05-21

BG2EE

Bigger Amn (by Roxanne)

Added 2018-04-15 Last updated 2018-04-15

EET

Explore the EET World (by Roxanne)

Added 2018-04-14 Last updated 2018-04-14

IWDEE

IWD-Starter (by Roxanne)

Added 2018-04-14 Last updated 2018-04-14

PSTEE

PST_Basic (by Ravenscar)

Added 2018-05-22 Last updated 2018-05-22

How do I provide my own compilation for the tool?

Once you have created your mod selection and resolved or accepted conflicts etc, make an "Export selection to file". Give the resulting ini file a meaningful personal name and submit it together with a brief description about what the user may expect from your choice. You can also post your weidu.log, but not for EET-games (because of the two logs for the two parts, here only ini file will work).
Compilations should be tested by at least one play through the respective game. They will be credited to your name, so you have to be a registered user here (or at Spellhold forum) and people may contact you in case of issues.

Hmm, I fear this is still a bit over my head. Gonna need to take some time to digest and understand that. Reminds me of when I first started looking at Weidu code, a lot of it seemed like hieroglyphs, and me without my Rosetta Stone. Unfortunately time is not something I have much of, so this project might be a bit of a slow one.

I'm trying to think about this in the abstract, if nothing else then to have some good conversation and see what people think of these decisions. And talking about it, at least, is something I can do now.

 

- The Baeloth thing seems easiest to deal with: if the party enters the Pits, set a variable, and if that variable is set, then patch the area script to make him disappear as a joinable NPC. I assume you did something like that.

 

 

The global is set by the cutscene that makes you leave the pits again. It is the global used by the other cutscene that makes Baeloth appears in BG1 so that one never fires. Also, if you already met Baeloth and send him to wait at an inn or such, he self destroys by a block added to his script.

 

 

- The question of XP seems fairly easy... assuming the entrance/Hobart is added to a late-game area, like Baldur's Gate or Ulgoth's beard, so that the party is a decent level when they go to the Pits, then we can simply eliminate all of the quest XP rewards after each fight. The monster XP for ~15 fights, split 6 ways for mid-level characters, should not make much of a difference in your level afterward when you face Sarevok/SoD/SoA. Probably. I haven't done the math, but I'll do a back-of-the-envelope calculation at some point.

 

The enemies you kill in BP do not give XP, that is the good thing. You would get XP after each tier battle by Baeloth. I modified the dialogues that do this by giving you some money for the stores instead.

 

 

- Equipment is a far more troubling issue. I don't think it's possible to strip everything from the party and deposit into a chest somewhere for retrieval later, so I see two options:

 

The two big scripts that you need to tweak for a BP-from-game mod anyway are the entry/exit ones. I have done it in a way that cuts out all the magic fiddling around that BP originally does like stripping the party and also giving them some irremovable rings etc. This is all gone, party stays as they are. Given party level, monsters can be added or removed/replaced by minor ones in individual challenges.

I have done it quite minimalistic, due to my fading interest at that point, but it would be no big deal to add a bit of sophistication at any time. Once you have the basic skeleton of scripts, it is no deal to add a few blocks that do that.

 

Hello everyone. I've got an itch to try something I haven't done before. Specifically, I want to look into making the Black Pits "adventure" accessible from BG1. After all, if you have BGEE installed, then the BP game files are right there, waiting to be used. All that is needed to add this fun combat adventure to the main game is to simply transport the party to the BP area, and go!

 

Okay, well, that's not all that is needed. There are several issues to deal with. And unfortunately they are all issues with which I have little or no experience. But, all the problems seem surmountable, so I would like to start a discussion and go step by step toward surmounting them.

 

Prospectively, here are the things I contemplate that need doing:

 

1) Get the party to the Black Pits

 

2) Deal with the issue of equipment

 

3) Deal with the issue of XP awards

 

4) Get the party back to the Sword Coast

 

* I reserve the right to revise and expand this list as it becomes necessary.

Try not to kill me...

You can look at how it is done in the SandrahNPC mod. You can probably take most of those files and adjust them to the starting area of your choice. Then remove references to Sandrah in dialogues or scripts (maybe give that part to the protagonist instead).

It should give you an overview.

Content- wise :

- you get your BG1 party into the pits with whatever items/gold etc they have

- you do the challenges but get no extra xp just little gold so you can buy things in the pits (this was done with EET in mind and to prevent entering BG2 at too high level, but easy to add xp if you want, that is done by adjusted Baeloth dialogues).

- you need to do the full campaign and defeat Baeloth to get out again

- some of the final higher level fights are adjusted to your party level as you may be still too low to do the full fight

- to go there, Baeloth cannot be in your party, he will not appear during BG1 if you did the pits, but SoD is unchanged.

Those are the files you may want to inspect

Maybe someone more familiar with Shadows over Soubar could take a look at this. It looks like the mod overwrites some entries in the file rather than appending to it. But I may be wrong here.

I any case,, the lua now has only SoS areas listed but neither vanilla ones nor other mod added areas.

Oh. Super cool!

If you plan to share your compilations with others for use in BWS, I would recommend to rather use ini then weidu.log. Or to be precise, do the conversion of your weidu.log to a mycompilation.ini and then share the second one.

Reason is that BWS treats a weidu import as raw data (equal to a manual selection) and passes it through the conflict/dependencies processing again. So users may solve issues other way than you have foreseen and thus change your intent. The ini contains the additional information about this already (i.e. it is ready-to-use status) and a user can just import and install it directly as it is.

So wait, if I post a weidu.log file, someone could drop it into BWS and it would generate an install that follows my .log?

Yes.

Provided that all mods and components are still available. However, BWS will mark to the user those differences (e.g. mod component has changed). It should not be a problem even with an updated mod if component numbers (designated) are stable.

BWS will also mark mods that have been updated, i.e. version number in BWS is different from your (probably older) log.

Mind that a user can still change things after the log import, the import ini or log file is just the starting point (works like any of the oldBWS default selections).

It would be cool if there was a tool to parse weidu.log files to generate selection.ini files...

That tool is called BWS...

Well I checked the weidu.log just the same and it shows installed mods that I specifically unchecked (the installation is still running though)

Just one question - when you started BWS, do you remember which setting was selected on the mod selection screen (minimum, recommended, tactical, maximized...)?

NPCs folders? I guess I'll just wait until all the installation is finished (it's running now for over 4 hours) and see, thanks for your replies.

Just a hint - even if those mods are really installed, it does not impact your game as you can just ignore them if you meet any of those in the game.

And weidu.log is of no use while the installation is still running... so do not mind just now.

As far as I can see none of the mods I mentioned above is in the list but they are installed none the less

 

Edit: correction, I don't really know if they are installed in the game , what I meant was that a folder was created for each of them in the BG2 game folder so I'm assuming they are installed in the game as well, else, why create a folder?

To see if the mods are really installed, open the weidu.log in the BG2EE folder. It will tell you.

According to the user selection, those mods should not have been installed. But according to your file, you used GogGames directories for the game install and an admin folder for the BWS - I do not know you PC's settings but those could be UAC protected parts on your drives and information may not have been written into files correctly.

Roxanne, lets say for example GolemConstruction for spellcasters (or something similar) I'm 100% sure I unchecked it but it was still installed and many more like AnimalCompanions (100% sure I unchecked it) and others.

Go to your BWS folder and look for BigWorldSetup/Config/user.ini

Post the file as an attachment. Or check it yourself by opening it with any text editor. Look for [save]. Every component listed below the keyword and until you reach [DeSave] was selected for install.

It is possible that you unchecked a mod and then went to solving conflicts/dependencies .- there you may possibly have chosen a

solution that re-introduced a mod or component.

Roxanne a question for you if you'll be so kind, why is BWS installing modes that I specifically unchecked so they will not be installed? just as an example, NPCs I never wanted like Coran or Branwen but also content modes that I unchecked?

Are you sure you unchecked them? There is more than one Coran mod and more than one Branwen mod.

For others I cannot answer unless you say which ones you mean.

I like that idea! Basically anybody can provide their own BWS-EET Template based on their own player experience and there is many modders and players that have already thoroughly tested this game! Is this correct if I'm understanding correctly? Actually I think I tried to throw that idea around back on SHS Forums, but I think no one really took me seriously on that idea few years ago. Not only will this save headaches of player disappointment by finding out their selection of mods broke their game at some point, but also relieve the stress of accidentally selecting bad mods.

 

If I'm not mistaken you experimented with a lot mods didn't you? I'm kind of curious to know what BWS selection you made since you managed to avoid most bugs.

 

The idea would indeed be to accompany EE-BWS with a repository (just a folder in the download) in which player's tested compilations can be stored and used by others. There should be a brief description of what game it is for and what are the player's preferences and then you just load it .

Example:

You can just export your own selection and then provide it for others to use.

Same way you can import other people's selections. Once imported, you can still do your own modifications on that selection if you dare.

As for pre-selections, there will be none, except those fixed for a given game (e.g. selecting EET will always fix EET-main and EET_end and some fixpack and weidu downloads required to run it).

PS

Here is one I currently use, but it may not be bug free since I use my games always to find and fix bugs in newer mods.

EET-Selection.ini

I admit I feel pretty useless as I know next to nothing when it comes to programming, but I always appreciated this community for trying to build something that will last for years to come. Also wanted to thank the modder recently for addressing the changes in the Recommended Setting, I was confused at first why mostly everything was unchecked, but as long it doesn't affect the modding itself then all is fine really.

As long as the BWS still aims to support classic and EE games, we have the problem that some things valid for the old game will appear in EE/EET as well even if they are no longer really applicable. The recommended/tactical etc settings are one thing, compilations and conflicts are another example. Changes here will ripple back into *classic* game support or vice versa.

Since there is no programmer involved anymore with BWS, we reached some dead end here. The only real solution (you can see hints to this in some recent posts in this topic from last week) is the fork the EE-BWS away from the *classic* BWS.

This would allow to streamline e.g. EET-BWS support and make it more flexible and transparent while maintaining good support for the average user.

One example would be a pre-selection for something like SCS. You decide to include SCS into your mod selection and then the tool gives you a basic choice of components that has been tested for an EET setup. You will be save to use this but free to add like more tactical challenges etc to it.

Current BWS solution is surely a half baked attempt to serve as many requests as possible at the price of doing nothing to full satisfaction. Concentrating on fewer essential things but doing those right would be an option.

Whether such a streamlined *EE-BWS.* will see the light of day is another question, currently the feasibility is evaluated.

"Time for more experiments".

 

 

 

according to the recommended install list.

If that means BWS recommended list, then it should use v105.

 

I was referring to the list here, http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=26945 , it does say v105 but there is no download link and on the modder's own page the link to the download leads to nothing, finding the correct file to download was harder then it should have been.

 

This is in fact a very old list (2014) and BGEE and BG2EE are very dynamic games yet. Many mods are updated meanwhile. BWS currently has a good up-to-date link list, even if you do not want to use the tool for your installs, you can download it and use its references to find mods. It took me less than 30 seconds to find a live link there.

 

according to the recommended install list.

If that means BWS recommended list, then it should use v105.

Do you happen to know the progression of the FATIGUE stat in the game? After how many seconds does it get increased by 1?

If I could spare the fatigue spell and use the stat directly it would be cool. But I guess it's more complicated than that or maybe related to gametime timer and /or dependent in the char's CON or something.

The impact of CON on the fatigue and regeneration is found in hpconbon.2da. If I interpret it right, fighters get some advantage but only at higher levels.

A question on the side

PartyRested() only gives true after RestParty()

How would that impact all the roundabout 500 cases (in modded EET) that look for PartyRested(). Or is that just an occasional rest event that differs from the normal ones and thus may just delay some other event by one rest?