Angel

I decided to give Breagar ToB a try while I'm testing the Wheels of Prophecy update.  So far I rather like him and he has potential to become one of my staple NPC mods, but I did notice a few issues:

- The quest journal entries do not use the EE quest journal system and end up in the general journal.  Forgot ADD_JOURNAL?
- After completing the first ToB quest for Breagar, I received two copies of the upgraded axe.

If I find more I'll let you know.

23 hours ago, Endarire said:

Is your Wheels of Prophecy version 2.6 and EET compatible?

I'm currently testing it on 2.6.  So far I haven't found any issues.  EET is as yet untested, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work as I didn't change any mod content, only the installer.

4 hours ago, DavidW said:

I don't at all object. Feel free!

Thanks.  After the hubbub around Roxanne, I'm really wary of meddling with other people's mods.

1 hour ago, jastey said:

thank you for taking this on.

You're welcome.  I'm pretty much helping myself here as much as anyone; Wheels is a staple mod that I really don't want to be without.

I have a version now that installs cleanly with no warnings or errors on both old BG2 and BG2EE, and I'm currently doing a short ToB-only run to see if everything works as expected.

If anyone else wants to take a peek at what I have so far, here is my fork:
https://github.com/AngelGryph/WheelsOfProphecy

On 4/18/2021 at 2:58 PM, argent77 said:

WeiDU v247 has several compatibility issues. Afaik, only a small number of mods is affected by it. However, replacing all WeiDU installers by earlier versions doesn't work either because some mods make use of features introduced by the latest WeiDU version.

On 12/3/2020 at 7:10 PM, DavidW said:

I never make release-date promises, sorry. Don't hold your breath, though. It requires substantial effort and has got buried under other things.

After discussion with @CamDawg on the G3 Discord, I have agreed to at least try to cobble up a maintenance release for Wheels to fix the WeiDU 247 issue while @DavidW is busy.  Since I have had to do this for my own mods that also use SFO, I at least have some experience here.

I'm not sure how successful I will be, but so far I have at least I have been able to get it to install without warnings or errors on BG2EE by transplanting the latest versions of SFO and SSL from Stratagems and making a few choice edits here and there.  Bear with me here, I have never worked on Wheels before.

Making this announcement could according to Cam "summon David in a cloud of sulfur before you even hit submit", judging by his experiences with the v31 maintenance release of Stratagems.  So David, if you read this and feel I shouldn't be meddling here, I am really very sorry.  Just let me know and will back off immediately.

The things I do for my love of the Forgotten Realms and this 20-year old game.  Onward! ...to futility...

On 5/31/2021 at 12:12 PM, Nathan82 said:

MH#BTAX2.ITM - description ends at item Weight
MH#BRAC5.ITM - description ends at item Weight
MH#COMP4.ITM - description ends at item Weight
MH#CLCK2.ITM - description ends at item Weight and no icon set

Alright, thanks.  I'll fix the missing icon.  I'll see what I can do about the descriptions, but as said it's not very high prio to me.

On 5/30/2021 at 9:19 PM, jastey said:

That is from UB. I filed an Issue here. EDIT: sorry, that was for BGT, though. In my EET the 103012 + 103013 give the correct descriptions for BLUN11.itm.

Yes, I received the report.  Looks like there is a difference in strings in BG2 and BG2EE here.  Silly me for assuming they would have kept them the same.  Oh well, will fix in the next version.

On 5/29/2021 at 2:13 AM, Nathan82 said:

I think theres a couple of minor issues with the sword Terminus Est. When you right click on the item to read the description its not displaying all of it, like who can and can't use it. The poison icon doesnt get displayed on the character portraits even though the effect works. And i think the poison effect is slightly different than the description, it seems to do 1 point of damage over 10 rounds rather than 2 points over 5. Im using version 5 of item pack.

The description of the sword (and every other item in the pack for that matter) is written for EE, which doesn't need usability info.  The installer is supposed to dynamically add this on non-EE games, but it might not be working right for this item.  I'll look into it, but since the old games are not my main target it's not going to be high priority.

The poison damage is 1 damage every 3 seconds for 30 seconds.  Since a round is 6 seconds in the engine, that translates to 2 damage per round for 5 rounds.  Nothing wrong there as far as I can see.  The 'poisoned' icon was indeed not set though (I assumed the poison effect already did this), so I added it.

13 hours ago, Guest Mantis said:

Ramazith’s tower lvl2

Mutamin’s garden

Catacomb lvl1

The Thieves Maze

Assuming you're using the alpha, I'm not surprised there are still bugs lingering there.  The BG1 part is almost completely untested at the moment.  Sorry, I'm doing what I can but this a rather complex mod and I'm still new to tactical modding to begin with.

I'm currently on a bit of a hiatus as I needed some time away from it all, but I plan to return to modding soon.  I have updates for the item- and spell packs almost ready, and taking a look at E&Q is definitely next on the list.

7 minutes ago, rick2021 said:

hey, thank you for this mod. i wonder what the difference between the item pack and tweak pack (which has no setup.exe) is. is the second one still relevant?

That one still isn't complete.  The issue is that item- and spell packs have to be installed relatively early so that tactical mods can respond to their presence, but some tweaks (especially those that alter a lot of items/spells in one big sweep and may affect mod-added items/spells) only work well when they are installed late.

So the item pack and spell pack have the new items and spells, and a couple of tweaks that only affect certain very specific items and spells in the vanilla game.  The tweak pack will have those tweaks that affect stuff added by other mods.

1 hour ago, LichDiet said:

I'll just say that she is a a great ambassador for the hobby, and honestly, she does not bad mouth or bring anything up about the disagreements she had with SHS/G3 on her site.  It is a crying shame that she feels kicked out of the G3 forums, because she actually cares about the game.

Stealing other people's mods or the resources to them, flooding several message boards with tons of alts, yes a great ambassador and we should all strive to be like her. </s>

She hasn't been kicked out, she made herself unwelcome through her own behavior.  That's all there is to it.

3 hours ago, argent77 said:

That error appears to be triggered only if you use WeiDU v247 to install the mod. Try installing the mod with WeiDU v246 (the version included in the mod archive).

Yes, version 247 of WeiDU causes problems with older versions of SFO, the function library developed by David (and used by, I think, only David and me).  SCS has been updated, but Wheels hasn't been yet.

17 hours ago, Guest Bigby's Bitchslap said:

Hi @Angel

I'm using the most recent (Jan. 21) master download of Encounters and Quests installed on EET with DLCmerger and noticed some weird things with the revised magical beasts component.

Ankhegs still spit acid from a distance (quite rapidly actually, I think 2 or 3 APR) and are now surrounded by a perpetual poison cloud similar which is extremely deadly. Ankhegs are now worth 7,000 XP!?

Confirmed, ankhegs accidentally receive the greater basilisk patches.  Fixed locally, will be in next commit.

17 hours ago, Guest Bigby's Bitchslap said:

I have not noticed any unusual behavior or bugs with basilisks themselves, including the newly placed dracolisks (which is from a separate component of course), though I would recommend making the dracolisks immune to ground-based effects (entangle, grease, web, etc.) since they are capable of flight.

Yeah, the dracolisks are a work in progress, as is that whole area.  Giving them dragon-like immunities makes sense though.

17 hours ago, Guest Bigby's Bitchslap said:

It would be cool to edit the model and add some wings. 

I really wish I could do that, but unfortunately I don't have the skills to create or edit creature animations.  Otherwise I'd have fulfilled my long-time wish of adding unicorns and griffins. ^^

17 hours ago, Guest Bigby's Bitchslap said:

Winter wolves' new breath weapon does not do any damage.

Mm, can't quite trace this one as it worked last time I tried it and I didn't make any major changes here in quite some time.  But I'll look into it.

17 hours ago, Guest Bigby's Bitchslap said:

 - As a side note, I enjoy the revised spiders component, it makes the spider wood, cloakwood falls and candlekeep catacombs absolutely brutal. -

I haven't tested that component myself yet so I wasn't sure how much of an impact it would have.  Incidentally, the game already gave spiders three extra hit dice, all I did was also give them the corresponding THAC0 and saves, and an improved AC.

They are one and the same.  The latest version of SCS no longer has this component.

15 hours ago, hippofant said:

Finding that the Medallion of the Arctic is a little buggy. Even though it only casts MH#AMUL9.SPL every 6 seconds, I'm finding that the effects are stacking up on my characters, giving them much better AC/saves than they should have.

Mm, never seen it myself, but I guess I never triggered the conditions that make it happen.  I probably forgot the #321 opcode effect that removes the old instance before applying the new one.  (This opcode is EE only.)  I'll look into it.

18 hours ago, Guest Ragnar said:

Okay. some more questions:

1) Where have you placed the encounter with the cloakwood assassins? I couldn't find them.

18 hours ago, Guest Ragnar said:

2) To trigger "the surgeon's plight", what are you supposed to do? I talked with the surgeon, went to cloakwood, retrieved the corpse, talked with the brother, but the quest ended as usual.

22 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Sorry, I meant it’s worth taking a look at Galactygon’s linked thread. Just for nitty-gritty issues like, is it “WIZARD_EVARD_BLACK_TENTACLES,” or “WIZARD_EVARDS_BLACK_TENTACLES?” If two mods use slightly different names, it can be problematic, in that players would get duplicative spells. That thread shows what consensus has been achieved so far; and if you are adding more spells that might conceivably be added by other mods (core rulebook stuff) you can post it there so others can match what you did.

Ah, okay.  Although I don't have mod compatibility high on my agenda (I write my mods mainly for myself), I suppose it cannot hurt to at least take a look.  I have not yet done any actual AI scripting with my spells yet (meaning enemies can not use them), it's probably best to get ids names right before I go there.

And yes, with only a small handful of exceptions (Ramazith's Slime Summons being the most obvious one), all spells I've added are from either the 2e PHB or official FR material.

6 minutes ago, Guest Ragnar said:

It's the item pack that I'm most interested about. And the potions of healing. Thought v4 could have brought some good news, hence why I asked  

I'm happy there is interest in my mods, but I really can't promise when the next versions will be released.  For the Item Pack and Spell Pack I'm making major revisions to both the mod structure (mostly finished) and the items/spells themselves.  The Encounters mod is mostly ready except for some ToB content I'm working on, but large parts of it haven't been tested yet (especially the BG1 parts).  The components you want to install have been tested though, they are actually my oldest.

5 hours ago, Guest Ragnar said:

Planning to install the following components in my game:

Made in heaven encounter The Surgeon's Plight +  The Cloakwood Assassins + Minor quest tweaks
Made in heaven item pack + Add potion of extra healing

Should I go for v3, v4, or wait for an-out-of-beta release, given that you are ongoing major revision? I wrote which components I'm mostly interested into so you can suggest me to go for it or wait. .

Those components are stable and apart from the item pack have been unchanged for some time.  They should work fine in the current releases.  Generally the only changes I make to the item pack are adding more items and revising ones that didn't work out too well.

19 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Btw that's a good thread for anyone who is adding spells to peruse - @Angel you might want to take a look, if you were not already aware of it.

Although it is certainly interesting and I am keeping a curious eye on the developments, my interest in it is only marginal for several reasons: 1) Even with several spell-providing mods installed, I don't come anywhere near the 50 spells per level limit (barely halfway there), 2) I do not use Eex, and cannot use it even if I wanted to unless Linux support was added while I wasn't looking, and 3) Not using spell.ids means huge changes in AI scripting that will not be done overnight.

It would likely also break backwards compatibility with BGT, but to be honest I have already been sorely tempted to drop non-EE support at this point as it is almost as much a pain as adding vanilla BG1 support, so that wouldn't be a huge loss to me. ^^

Anyway, even if a new function became available, it would have to be integrated in SFO for my mods to use it, or I would have to do massive rewriting, neither of which I look forward to.

22 hours ago, Endarire said:

What's the estimated time for the next releases of your mods, including black tentacles?

Sorry, I do not give ETAs.  This is a hobby, not work, and modding is already frustrating enough without adding the stress of deadlines.  It will be done when it's done.  All I can say is that I'm in the middle of some fairly big revisions now.

16 hours ago, Guest Ragnar said:

By the way, Taerom forges you only one armor, but you can keep selling the ankheg shells to him for only 500 gp. No matter how many.

Mm, pretty sure that was not how it worked originally, but maybe that changed.  Oh well.  I guess I could alter Fenten's deal to be more on par with Taerom's.  I'll think on it.

21 minutes ago, Guest Ragnar said:

1) Gerde and the Ankhegs: Gerde and the ankhegs she wants killed won't spawn until you have talked to Fenten in Baldur's Gate.

I don't understand the correlation between the two things above. No reference of any kind to this in the original game, and not only that, why would the player sell the ankhegs to someone paying half of taerom?

I don't enjoy this component. Would you mind splitting it?

Fenten does mention Gerde in-game.  This was mostly to make this feel more like an actual little quest instead of just a random something.  I may expand on it later, maybe.  The whole thing is about ten lines long, a very minor edit.  All the normal ankhegs still spawn so it doesn't change anything else, it's just this one single encounter.

Also in the original game, Taerom will buy an ankheg shell only once. Yes, I know that there are mods that change this, Tweaks included, but I don't normally use them. 

21 minutes ago, Guest Ragnar said:

2) Any plan to add all the scales to all the dragons in your item pack? Adalon would be one of these.

All of them might be a bit too much, but I have plans for Irenicus' black dragon in Suldanessenar and the green dragon in Watcher's Keep, as well as making dragon scale armor a bit more powerful and useful in general.  I haven't exactly worked this out yet though.

Silver dragon scales are already available from Dorn's quest in BG2EE and since I don't enjoy playing evil parties at all and thus never get in a fight with Adalon I'll probably not go there.  The mod is still by me, for me, so I generally don't put in content I will never see for myself in-game.  I might be bribed, er tempted to do so for someone who helps me out in some way or otherwise manages to get on my good side, but this is rare.

21 minutes ago, Guest Ragnar said:

3) How can I disable the cloak of Balduran getting nerfed, if I can? That's an iconic item.

All it really does is lower the grossly overpowered 25% magic resistance to a more reasonable 10% which is still damn powerful especially by BG1 standards where most wizards aren't high enough level to have ready access to Lower Resistance or Pierce Magic.  But if you really want, the exact amount is configurable in the .ini file.

21 minutes ago, Guest Ragnar said:

4) Add Potions of Extra Healing in BG1 - Is there an ini where can I decide which shop has how many potions?

At the moment, no.  The exact amount is somewhat configurable in that you can set the lower and upper limits, but the shops are a fixed list and the amount per shop is randomly chosen at install time.  I might be temped to make this table-driven though.  In fact, that wouldn't be very hard to do.

21 minutes ago, Guest Ragnar said:

Anyway, good mod. Thanks for it.

Thanks.  I make these mainly for myself but it's still good to see other people enjoy them.

Wow, it's been years since I meddled with that one.  Guess the Internet never forgets. ^^

9 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

You'll want to pause that to read it...

Aka, just make a new text file, copy this code into it:

weidu.exe --change-log spwi618.spl
pause

And rename the text file as "change-log.bat" ort what ever, and yes, for that you'll want to have the Windows file extensions shown, or use Notepad's Save As command and make it to overwrite the .txt extension with the .bat... and then you'll just run it as if it were a .exe in the game folder ... with a double click.

And after you have read the made text it makes, push the Enter button to exit it.

I'm not a very big Windows guru, but don't you need to be in the BG installation dir for this?  I usually use a cmd prompt which doesn't close after a single command.

The error means that the spell file spwi618.spl (Spell Deflection) is corrupt and can't be edited properly.  Most likely, one of your other installed mods leaves it in a bad state.  From the command line you can run "weidu.exe --change-log spwi618.spl" to see which mods are affecting this file and could be causing this.

Also as a tip, modding your copy from Steam directly is not a good idea.  Steam forces updates, and such an update will completely wreck your modded game.  It's far better to create a local copy for your modded game.

On 1/4/2021 at 7:45 PM, Jarno Mikkola said:

To me it is, and YEAH. As in, this is a hill to die on. LOWER CASE EVERY LETTER ! Why, cause there are OS'es that are file case sensitive. You really want to fuck that up with a file tool ?!? WTF !

It's not often, but for once Jarno and I agree completely.  MacOS- and Linux users like myself do not like mixed-case filenames at all.  If a mod claims to be MacOS- and Linux compatible, all mod files should be kept in lower case!!