subtledoctor

For whatever it’s worth, I just fought Aec in my current game. I have Spell Revisions, SCS General AI but not Smarter Fiends, and aTweaks PnP Fiends but not Fiendish Gating… and Aec went down just fin. SR may have affected the combination, though.

Against all logic and caution, I moved the .BIF files that are in the /data folder, out of the /data folder. And now it works fine. Weird. Dunno if the game will start this way, but that's not the point of it anyway...

Anyone know if NI works with Planescape Torment? I have it installed from GOG games, and the file setup looks pretty weird. Lots of .BIF files are no in the /data folder, but out in the main game folder. The upshot is, NI cannot load any of the .WED or .TIS or even .BMP files, which means I cannot view the .ARE files. (I own PSTEE on iOS but I guess I was too late to download the .ipa file so I cannot access the files. And I'm not about to pay full price for another copy of the game that I already own twice, just to inspect the files. )

But it’s not just area graphics that are taken from other games. The entire NWN story, and characters, and .dialogues, are protected IP. IMHO you are either in the “some mods just shouldn’t exist” club, or you are okay with modders doing what they can with what resources they can, as long as no one is harmed by it. In case it is not clear, I think the “your mod shouldn’t exist” mindset is an extremely shitty attitude. Not for nothing, there are lots of tutorials for the kind of modding that I have done (and I’ve written some) but I don’t see a single tutorial on making/using area graphics. Which means a lot of potentially great writers are not equipped to make mods, or are limited to writing NPCs os something. And the flip side of the coin, modders who are equipped to make new areas end up publishing big splashy quest mods even though they… may not be the best writers. Given that area graphics, in particular, are generally considered to be the hardest and most onerous part of making mods, being overly critical of modders who scrounge what they can risks veering into a gross kind of clubby gatekeeping. tl:dr: help, don’t hinder, people making fun new stuff. Neither here nor there, but this conversation has wandered quite far afield, and should probably be split into its own thread, so that this thread can focus on issues pertaining specifically to the NWN mod.

It’s something I am exploring. Since the NWN mod is geared for ~15th level parties, I am going to try to make a script that sends your party from the IWD end boss to the beginning of the NWN mod. If I get that to work, I could also do it for IWD2 as an alternative. (I mean you can kind of do this right now, by exporting your IWD character before the final fight and then importing them as your party when you start an IWD2 game.) But note, you have to choose how IWD2 words, once and for all, when you install this mod. Either it will be suitable for 1st-level characters (in which case it will not be fun for your IWD party), or suitable for 15th-level characters (in which case it will not be fun for a 1st-level party).

First, I am not a copyright lawyer. That said, my understanding if copyright law is that it is not nearly as black-and-white as you are making it out to be. You say the use of technical assets from other games “is copyright infringement, period” but two paragraphs you say it is “a gray area.” So before anything else, it is worth being precise, and non-melodramatic, with terms. If the use of assets is not an actionable violation, then it is not infringement. It may not be cool, or ethical, but that does not necessarily mean it violates a copyright. Where does this project land? I don’t know. But unless you are a copyright lawyer and you do know the answer, don’t use terms that assume the answer. Finally, copyright law differs by jurisdiction. And not for nothing, this project if I’m not mistaken was developed in Russia by regulars on the Arcane Coast forums. It is not hosted by G3, not affiliated with G3, not promoted by G3. (To the extent G3 does host copyright violations, G3 can get its own house in order, at its discretion.) This is a place for discussion, and at least where I am, discussion of copyright violations is protected to a greater degree than copyrights themselves. I would not develop this mod, but in the absence of a clear answer as to whether 1) it is actually infringing, and 2) the rights owners actually care, I will not scruple to avoid using or discussing it. (The PPE mod was different in several respects, I think it involved more egregious violations of artists’ interests.)

That file seems to include every line of text in Heart of Winter. It is an exact copy of the dialog.tra file in tipun's HoW-in-BG mod. So a very easy way to get it in Russian is to grab the Russian version of that file and rename it to how.tra in this mod. Does this mod really need that whole file? No. Best I can tell, I only use it to compile a slightly modified version of Hjollder's DLG file. So I should really delete every line from the .tra file that is not referenced in the various .D files in IWD_EET_integration/data/compile/. Then it would be extremely short and easy to translate. I should get around to doing that some day, it just isn't a big priority, and real life has been pretty busy lately. But there is already a Russian version of the giant file, so for your purposes you can do it quickly and easily. For other languages... not so much EDIT - actually it looks like the Russian version of that file is already there! So you should not have to do anything.

Nobody is making money off this. Beamdog owns the rights to the NWN story/dialogue/characters, and is fine with use if its game resources in mods. If the owners of the rights to area graphics from Pillars of Eternity, Lionheart, or whatever reach out and say stop using those resources, then people should probably stop distributing the mod. But this mod has had fairly splashy press coverage - more than most - and no one has complained. Corporations aren’t exactly shy about sending cease-and-desist letters when they want to. I don’t think it is unreasonable, therefore, to assume that silence denotes assent in this case. IANAL etc.

Possible, if you use the hidden Ammo3 slot. Of course there is only one such slot, so compatibility becomes a concern. But for that very reason, implementations limiting it to a particular kit will stay out of each others’ way. (I use this for my multiclass sorcerers and maybe one or two other kits.)

NTotSC should really be adding its own custom resources with a modding prefix, and its own abilities balanced for its design intent. Not just reusing BG2 resources.

Sorry to belabor this, but which SCS component is the problem? Is it between aTweaks PnP Elementals/PnP Fiends and SCS General AI? Or is it to fo with the more specialized SCS componebts like “Smarter Fiends” etc.? SCS has a lot of components so it is worth being specific.

looks like it.

I hear you @suy. And I’m not sure we really disagree very much. I mostly do tweak modding and I have very much felt the sting of inadequate ALTER_/CLONE_EFFECT functions, and I try to stay away from GET_OFFSET_ARRAY as much as possible because it is annoying. So I do not mean to defend Weidu as a designed solution for this work. The biggest difference between you and me is that I have no programming background, so it doesn’t occur to me to think “X is better than Weidu.” And I fully understand that informs my bias. But I (naively, perhaps) don’t think that means we are “stuck with” Weidu. Seems to me, if there were Infinity Engine libraries in… Python or Ruby or whatever the kids use these days - maybe a modder could perform file manipulations in Python and drop the files in a temp directory. Then wrap that in a Weidu installation script that copies the files from /temp to /override. Now newer mods could be made with better/easier tools, old mods would still work, Weidu itself could be used for DLG patching, and install logs and backups/uninstallation would still work.

This is a problem with a secondary function, not with the language itself. GET_OFFSET_ARRAY was designed for just this kind of example. It seems you are trying to use a hammer to drive in a screw. Considering you admittedly don’t have experience with this, and the language is literally called Weimer’s Dialogue Utility (IIRC) I’m not sure what the source of your skepticism is. The file formats of IE assets are well-mapped; I feel like you could use any language to do basic file patching. But what language is equipped to create dialogue interjections in a quest or NPC mod? Or modify cut-scene scripts?

You could try this, it has user-configurable settings to set up armor exactly how you want.

Yeah dude this is definitely one of the best mods out there for BGEE. And I must say, I SO appreciate that you don't flood the game with OP equipment. My current game is at the end of BG1 right now (about to go finish Black Hearts ) and I have a bunch of wildly strong stuff -- it is actually harming game balance and making it less fun. Some of the more popular modders out there really cannot control themselves when it comes to weapons... but Black Hearts has been great.

Honestly, I question the premise. I don’t know that Weidu really needs a “successor.” Weidu started very simply: allow multiple mods to patch dialog.tlk sequentially. Tack on some basic file-editing operations and you have a mod installer. Any replacement would still need to have sequential .tlk changes and sequential file patches/overwrites, and would need to parse existing .tp2 scripts. So the replacement, under the hood, would need to look a lot like Weidu. And I don’t see a ton of daylight between a nice GUI that looks like Weidu under the hood, and a nice GUI mod manager front-end that actually uses Weidu under the hood. Like PI or Argent77’s Weidu Installer. These tools already exist and have a head start; seems more productive to put effort into perfecting them, rather than creating a ground-up replacement.

I have updated the mod to version 2.8, with two changes: First, a small compatibility fix for the Magic Bolt cantrip. Second and more substantially, I have added an experimental capability to the Revised Invisibility component. Now, when invisible, you will be able to perform a backstab on your next attack without needing to position yourself behind the target - you can "backstab" from in front of your target. It is magical invisibility, after all! (Note, when merely hiding using the nonmagical thief skill, you will still only be able to backstab from behind your target. You need to, in fact, be hidden from their awareness.) Anyone with magical invisibility detection (e.g. op193 from the Detect Invisible and True Seeing spells) will be immune to backstabs. Cheers!

Maybe... "Sohei Warrior?" That was an actual term for Buddhist warrior-monks of the Kamakura era in Japan. Realistically, the vanilla Kensai should have been called "Sohei" and a kit like this should be called "Kensei." (Or, quite possibly, I should have had this kit replace the vanilla Kensai instead of being an alternative to it. Believe me, I wanted to do that. I think this is a better Kensai. But, oh my lord, could you imagine the howling if I took away the unarmored "just-getting-ready-to-dual-to-mage" kit with its cheesy AC and attack bonuses? My ears hurt just thinking about it.) Thank you, I see what this issue is (they changed the way deflection spells work in patch 2.5 or so) and it will be fixed in the next release. Speaking of the Weaponmaster/Samurai/Sohei, maybe instead of the Mage Hunter getting Breaching Touch and Minor Deflection as individual per-day innates, maybe I should set up a suite of anti-mage abilities and let them use a ki point pool as well. I'm sure I can come up with a couple other cool anti-caster abilities that would be useful. Something causing temporary silence or deafness, probably. (Make it a touch-range spell, like you box their ears or attack their throat, or something.) Maybe something to see through invisibility?

Yeah, totally. I think what I am going to do is: I already have a mod that changes the mechanics of invisibility, to make it a bit more straightforward. I will set it such that when hiding a thief or ranger will have to position behind someone to backstab (as usual). But when invisible you can facestab i.e. backstab from any angle. Because invisibility should be better than just hiding!

Yes, use SpellRES() and ForceSpellRES() for nonjoinable creatures. You really only should use ADD_SPELL for spells that you want player-character sorcerers to have access to.

Thanks for the heads-up! I’ll look into these. Thanks. I also don’t love the “Samurai” name, it is too culturally specific to me. OTOH it is clearly the inspiration for this kit, which is meant to show off my ‘ki pool’ function. The “Weaponmaster” name addresses the kit’s focus on a single weapon, but is extremely generic and doesn’t imply anything about ki powers. I am really struggling to come up with a name that is descriptive but not cringy.

Conversations about kitting NPCs seem so weird to me… there is obviously no right answer. Why lock something in ahead of time when SCS/NPC_EE allow you to choose according to your whim in each game? EDIT - since when did Artemius vic my kit name?? Not cool…

Good catch, thanks!

Excellent.