Cahir

Thank you Cam, for releasing this little gem and appreciate for mentioning me in the credits 

Now, copy & pasting our brainstorming from Discord:

I was thinking how to improve The Lore of Learning even more and I have one more idea. One that could slightly differentiate Lore from Identify spell a bit. As usual, I have no clue, how hard this would be to implement. What if, after reaching a certain (high) Lore threshold a character would be able to get an idea that some specific magic item lay rest somwhere in the area. This could be implemented as a short info in the combat log, something like was done for Tracking skill, IIRC. An this could be limited to specific, iconic items, like Carsomyr, Silver Sword or the parts of The Wave or Crom Fayer. The first threshold that gave more general vibe could be around 60-70% and the second, that would give more detailed info (with the exact nature of the item that is hidden in the area) could be get after reaching Lore value of 90+%. 

This would promote even more to have at least one scholarly character in the party.

I realize that this would be of no use for players that knows these games inside out, but this mod was always to add more flavor rather than make the gameplay easier.

For items that are assembled from parts, the second threshold could be lowered by 1-2% for each part already found.

Identify is like reading an object's magical aura, to pull out info about their magical properties and lore behind this object. But you need to touch the object. Lore on the other hand, is aquiring this info by learning about those objects during the course of adventure.

I was thinking to limit it to the most known and iconic items, simply because you could learn about them during your adventure. It's impossible to know about all magical items on the Sword Coast even having 100 Lore.

The second part of this idea is what you have suggested, something like a ranger tracking ability--i.e. if you visit Ulcaster with high enough lore, one of the characters would say a little bit about it. But this would need to be used wisely, to not get too spoilery. 

47 minutes ago, jastey said:

by which you didn't mean @CamDawg but the recent restarter of the discussion...

But of course, the thread what necroed, thus I find the one who necroed it as OP 

Sorry, for chiming in, but I couldn't resist. There is only one quote that fits perfectly that what OP wrote:

Quote

You know nothing, Jon Snow,

So, is it completely new take on IWD-in-EET or Roxanne stole another mod, being impatient of K4thos going MIA? Sorry for being blunt, but reading this topic is like reading a monologue. 

4 hours ago, marcnivar said:

I noticed that you have stated a lot of not needed for BGEE v2.5 for BG1 Unfinished Business, is this because BGEE has restored those content (part of vanilla game now?)

Yes, it's exactly because of that. Patch 2.5 made most of the BG1 Unfinished Business components obsolete. Some are still worth installing, though. But I believe those obsolete components will be skipped during installation if you choose them, so no harm doing that.

50 minutes ago, lefreut said:

I will look at it after the release and then decides if it's worth spending my time on it depending on the amount of work needed.

I see. Out of curiosity, is this a permanent decision, or it can be changed if Beamdog decides to update UI in future patches?

7 minutes ago, lefreut said:

Yes the description/documentation are not very good but it's very time consuming (and also kind of boring) to write good ones. And now that I no longer actively maintain my mods, it most likely will not change.

Box 5 change the texture of the dialog box.

Do you plan to update your mods after patch 2.6 release, if needed? New patches have a bad habit of screwing with existing mods.

@Raduzielwhat is the exact incompatibility between DoF and Spell Revisions? I've been debating for some time whether to choose DoF or F&P, but this one point always turned the tide towards F&P. But of the incompatibility is cosmetic, this could change my perspective.

3 hours ago, Guest Pigmul said:

Cahir, wybacz mi mój polski, bo jest zardzewiały. Istnieją polskie mody, które są prawdziwymi perełkami. Czy zespół kiedykolwiek rozważał przetłumaczenie ich na język angielski, aby społeczność mogła z nimi eksperymentować?

As jastey wrote, please stick to English in this topic.

As for your question. Who knows? It's much harder to translate from Polish to English than the other way around and there are only a handful of us in the Polish community, who are able to do it right. And by "right" I mean to do it in a way that native English speaker won't cringe while reading it. I, for one, don't have any plans to translate a mod from Polish to English in the near future, but who knows, maybe someone from our SoD translation team or from Children of Bhaal community will accept the challenge. IF I would decide to do it, it would be only "Nowe Opowieści z Wybrzeża Mieczy" from nowus777, but I would definitely need a group of people to help me with this monumental task. This mod is massive. Besides, nowus777 is planning a new version on spring, so it's better wait for it before starting.

But let's get back on topic, please. If you have some additional questions on the matter, feel free to PM me here.

@Endarire red means that I remove a mod or a component from my lost for one reason or the other. Green means that I added one.

I will be coming back to the idea of doing this playthrough now that we finally finished translating SoD to Polish and I will revise my list. It will be much leaner, there are two many tweaks and gameplay changes at the moment. I want the experience more closer to vanilla this time.

@Artemius Ithis is a splendid idea, I for one would really appreciate it. I've got two questions, though:

1. There are two parallel versions of Item Revisions: the original one (currently in beta v4) made by Demi snd maintained by @Mike1072and Item Revisions Revised, made by @Bartimaeuswhich is significantly different from the original version. Are you planning to do compatibility patch only for original version or also for IRR? 

2. Both original IR v4 and IRR are using vanilla-style item stats description and Weimar's Item Upgrade uses both vanilla and EE-style of item stats descriptions (depending of the game you sre playing). Are you planning to use only vanilla style descriptions in this compatibility patch or would you be willing to consider also adjust Item Revisions portion to EE-style? I would be TRULY grateful for the latter, although I understand that this may be way outside the scope of this mod. This single issue is the only issue that bothers me while playing IR(R). 

14 minutes ago, Gwendolyne said:

And as far as I know, most Argent77"s mods provide translated README.

Can confirm this, since I have translated most of Argent77's mods to Polish. And I also keep Polish README up to date.

But this is not a rule, though. I'm not so strict when it comes to translate README for other mods. I think I did it only for those made by Argent77

Sooo, when will it be released exactly? 

4 minutes ago, jastey said:

@Cahir I already received those from you, thank you again for your work. But: all items in the Ajantis BG1 Expansion are for BG:TotSC only (romance items, romance gets only added to original BG1 whith which the BG1NPC Project is not compatible). There is no new items for the EE, so EE style desription is not needed. I forgot to inform you about this. Cheers!

Oh, shoot. I completely forgot that I already sent those to you. No worries, then. Just forget about my previous post I'm getting too old for this...

@jasteynot a bug, more of a request. Would you be so kind to add an EE-Style Item descriptions for EE games in the next update? I adjusted the setup file (see attachment), with EE-style descriptions for my own needs, but you can grab just item descriptions alone, if you're interested in this kind of update. Thanks in advance 

SETUP-AJANTISBG1.zip

I also noticed I don't see new posts in "Unread Posts" section anymore, which is super annoying.
 

28 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Hows this so ? Don't you download a .zip archive file. As in, it's not extracted. You programed this into PI !

Now, that's not the same thing as a mod archive file... but the language used should clarify that distinction. AS in, DO NOT USE "already extracted" because they are NOT ! They are in a format useful for PI, but that's it's own thing.

Oh lord, I really tried to understand this. But I failed. This definitely means I'm no power gamer

3 hours ago, Alonso said:

You were caught lying. Oh, well, it happens. Don't take it so bad.

You are very quick to call other posters liars. As I explained at Beamdog's one can be both a power gamer and a casual player. So, no, I was not lying here. Believe it or not, but I didn't even finish BG2EE (w/o mods) to this day, not to mention SoD (so I'm very much casual BG player - my pseudo-modder talk doesn't change anything in this regard). But I always try to role-play my characters, so I'm definitely no power gamer.

Look, PI is really not that difficult to use. The main problem is a lack of proper documentation that would explain the whole set-up process in detail. In my case all I needed is to get a few guidelines here and there from @AL|ENand I was good to go. I was stuck once or twice only because F.A.Q was not specific here and there and sometimes a bit of misleading.

I know you offered to help writing a documentation to@AL|EN. There is probably a reason why this offer remained unanswered, but I don't have a clue what might it be.

50 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Well, still, you did know what a .tpa file is, and with what program to open it to view it, and magically found a place to add text into it. You sure you are typical mod user ? Cause if that's a thing, we don't need any of the mods hosted here in the site. After all, we can all do them with ease.

Now, that's not to say that you are professional coder, thing is, you don't need to, as most of us are not. I am not either, and I have made a few mods, and there's a large un-announced and never to be released mod in the background that no one knows about a lot, but I have made trials for I have the inclination, just like you seem to possess. There's no levels in it.

Jarno, did you ever mod a game (any game) blindly? Without doing a research how to mod or which mods are worth installing? If you do it regularly, it means you have sufficient programming experience to figure out how to mod any game without guidance. I'm not that person. I always do at least couple hours of research to properly prepare myself for installation process. Even installing a simple WeiDU mod can be difficult for someone who did not use a mod in his entire life. 

39 minutes ago, Alonso said:

Yeah, this sudden determination of some modders to hide their skills and knowledge is most amusing

Well, I don't think there is a point discussing it with you further giving your attitude. Don't like the tools that are available to you, don't use it. Simple. 

30 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Erhm, stares at Ulb's signature ... erhm, this must be a wrong place to comment things to this effect. Let alone with the post amount.*

 

I would seem to remember something ... say like  ~does a random search~ asking things like in this post. Is that typical non-coder question asking ?

And again, the post amount.*

*No, the amount is not bad, but by large, it's not typical mod user one either, which would be around 5, at most. You are thinking you are special, you are, but by a lot of the wrong kind.

You know Jarno, that wasn't do hard to edit. I just change couple of values, I actually did not write any code, because I don't know how to do it. 

1 hour ago, Alonso said:

Show me a casual player, just one, who has managed to make PI work and I will retract everything I've said. Otherwise you might want to consider retracting what you have said.

Me, @4udr4nand Ulb (who just ninja'd me). That's three people. Surely there are more who don't post neither here nor at Beamdog's. 

4 hours ago, Alonso said:

The instructions of EET are very misleading. They recommend the player to use either Project Infinity or the EE/EET Mod Install Tool. There are very serious problems with both tools that are not mentioned anywhere in the instructions:

• Project Infinity: In most cases it simply doesn't work. Project Infinity is too difficult to use for the vast majority of gamers. Only super advanced power gamers with some programming knowledge (like myself) can make PI work, and even for them it's very difficult. Other gamers who try to use PI just manage to waste their time and get frustrated.
• EET Mod Install Tool: Apparently this tool does an awful lot of nasty things to the game without even telling the player. I might be wrong here because I haven't dared to try this myself, but lots has been said about this by reputed community members, so I'm quite confident that that information is accurate.

I think it's unfair to recommend gamers to use these tools and let them believe that they will allow them to get a proper EET installation when that's really not the case.

Look, you can install mods manually if you have trouble using mod installer, that's perfectly fine. Both mod installers appeal to different audience. PI is more for users that know exactly which mods they want to install and in which load order should they use to work them together nicely. For those players PI can save an immense amount of time, especially when they want to play around with install order a bit, and need to re-install often. I find using PI a blast even if setting it up took me a bit. One just need to learn how to use it. Once you do it, it's like a breeze.

EET Mod Install tool on the other hand is for users that don't want to spend a time to think about install order and don't have a clear mod list prepared in their minds. They just want to sit, pick up some mods they think are cool and make the tool do all the dirty work for them. And that's a fine approach too. There is just one (in my opinion HUGE problem with EET tool). It uses unauthorized mod versions, modified gameplay and content-wise to work better with The Sandrah Saga, which is the signature mod of EET tool maintainer, Roxanne. Also, some "mod conflicts" claimed by Roxanne are often debatable or even blatantly false, which lead to a significant bug reports passed to original mod authors that are a result of unauthorized changes made by Roxanne rather than originated from original code.

K4thos was not around lately here at G3 and PI was in its early alpha stage back when he wrote his recommendations. It's in much more refined state right now and it's still developed not only to accommodate players needs, but also to make mod integration much easier for mod authors. It won't allow you to download mods directly and won't order mods in the proper way for you, but it will save you a huge amount of time while installing and reinstalling mods using a modlist prepared beforehand.

Saying everywhere that PI is impossibly difficult to use is disrespectful to its author and simply not true. I'd appreciate if you could stop selling this notion. There are people here and at Beamdog's that were successfully using this tool and definitely can help you to set it up.

1 hour ago, Guest Roderigo said:

I hope there isn’t an overemphasis on EET comparability here, as I actually think part of the beauty of this mod was that I could play without being forced to use EET...

And the other part of this beauty would be of I could have seamless experience playing this mod in EET setup (i.e native EET compatibility). Each of us would love to take a piece of this cake

It's Sarevok Tweaks, or something like that. Judging by the prefix, it was done by Crevsdaak. Unfortunately it's not on his Github, so probably it's buried somewhere in forum's Miscelleanous section here or at SHS. I've definitely seen it somewhere.