subtledoctor

Okay it seems like the problem may be here:

IF
	HasDLC("SOD")
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		CutSceneId(Player1)
		ApplySpellRES("clearcld",Myself)  // No such index
		SetGlobal("EndOfBG1","GLOBAL",1)
		SetGlobal("SOD_fromimport","GLOBAL",1)
		SetGlobal("PartyCured","GLOBAL",1)
		Wait(1)
		ApplySpellRES("clearcld",Myself)  // No such index
		Wait(4)
		FadeToColor([30.0],0)
		Wait(1)
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player6)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player1)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player6)  // No such index
		AdvanceTime(TEN_DAYS)
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player1)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player6)  // No such index
		SetGlobal("EndOfBG1","GLOBAL",1)
		Wait(3)
		StartMovie("SODCIN01")
		FadeToColor([1.0],0)
		Wait(1)
		MoveToCampaign("C#STSD")
		MultiPlayerSync()
		SetCursorState(TRUE)
		EndCutSceneMode()
END

IF
	!HasDLC("SOD")
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		CutSceneId(Player1)
		ApplySpellRES("clearcld",Myself)  // No such index
		SetGlobal("EndOfBG1","GLOBAL",1)
		SetGlobal("SOD_fromimport","GLOBAL",1)
		SetGlobal("PartyCured","GLOBAL",1)
		Wait(1)
		ApplySpellRES("clearcld",Myself)  // No such index
		Wait(4)
		FadeToColor([30.0],0)
		Wait(1)
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player6)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player1)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player6)  // No such index
		SaveGame(0)
		SetGlobal("EndOfBG1","GLOBAL",1)
		Wait(3)
		MultiPlayerSync()
		SetCursorState(FALSE)
		EndCutSceneMode()
		GoToStartScreen()
END

...seems like maybe HasDLC("SOD") is returning false in my game? Quite weird. Could it be a bug in my hacked-up version of EET? My only hacking was to merge parts EET v12 that work with BG2EE v2.5 with parts of EET v13. Was this a bug in EET v12? Why did this work in my last install? Maybe something to do with Transitions taking over the process?

Hm. Well, I'm going to simply delete the 2nd half of that script, and change the first trigger from HasDLC("SOD") to True(), and see if it starts SoD for me. I don't need that trigger, I know I have SoD in my game.

EDIT - that did the trick. I wonder why that happens. And, where is that script even from? I think it is BDSODTRN.BCS… which sounds like a vanilla BGEE script. Maybe EET or EBG1 needs to handle it differently… or maybe this is just something idiosyncratic about my install. 

13 hours ago, Guest Centurion said:

Also, my mod NPCs continue to say "Hello, there." Endlessly. Removing them causes them to endlessly ask to re-join. It's stuck in a loop.

This is the same thing that happened in my game with phantom Illasera from Black Hearts. I don’t have Transitions installed so the source is different. But it sounds like the same kind of dialogue error.

Uh-oh, bit of a problem. I finished Korlasz’ crypt, then went back to the palace and talked to Belt, told him I needed to rest for a bit. Sirene, Brandock, Neera & Imoen all told me they were going to go off on their own. Okay, here we go, time to start SoD! Right? Right?

Well, not exactly? The screen faded to black but instead of waking up to the attack on Imoen, the game just kicked me out to the main menu. I want to be like, “excuse me? This is EET! I don’t do main menus.” 

Sigh. This transition is so fraught every time I play. What’s going to happen to my companions? What’s going to happen to my equipment? Will anything be lost? Do I need to do anything to prepare?

Last year I installed both Transitions and EndlessBG1. That time it was complicated and nerve-wracking and buggy. I only installed EndlessBG1 by itself this time, hoping it would be simpler and more reliable. But perhaps not…

Oh well. All the more incentive to make my own transition mod. 

EDIT - okay there is an auto-save and a ‘final save’ in my savegames. The sequence seems to be, I tell Belt I want to rest, the screen fades, there is an invisible area transition, then my party members say a line and leave the party, then a script is running which I presume is supposed to trigger waking up to the assassination attempt. But it doesn’t happen and I am kicked out to the menu. 

If I load up the autosave, I am in one of the top-floor palace bedrooms and everyone is still in my party. Whatever script has them leave seems to be interrupted when loaded this way, because everyone just stands there doing nothing. I know there are more than one version of these areas; I don’t know which one this is. Need to dig into the scripts and dialogues to figure out what is breaking. 

Playing the end of Black Hearts, then The Undercity/Sarevok, then Korlasz’ crypt, feels a bit off. Black Hearts does such a great job adding some meat to the end-game right before Sarevok, it makes me want to move Korlasz’ crypt to the same place in the sequence. It’s a bit weird that I give Sarevok’s sword to Belt, and then I am searching for that sword not five minutes later. And the plot point of “clear out the remaining former followers of Sarevok” is weak. And, finally, the way you save the Dukes even though you are a wanted murderer, and Belt immediately forgives you and teleports you to the thieves’ guild, has always felt unsatisfying. And suddenly I see a way to improve the sequence: have Belt say he doesn’t know where Sarevok went, and you’ll need to ask around a bit to find out. And after a rest a messenger can tell you they have located one of his followers, and send you after Korlasz. And only after defeating Korlasz do you get Sarevok’s location, and maybe a magical ward to open the way into the (otherwise inaccessible) maze and Undercity. Would just need a few altered dialogues and global variables. Then back to the palace, and then the “Champion of Baldur’s Gate” sequence, and then the transition to SoD.

I also had thoughts about whether and to what extent the dukes should really trust you, keeping in mind that eventually you will need to leave the city in disgrace. And maybe we should keep it a bit ambiguous, even at this early stage. And then I had a devilish idea to take some threads from The Calling mod, and the Brandock mod, and Durlag’s Tower, and spin them together into a little thing. 

And then I started thinking about what the transition to SoD would look like in this scenario, and in my head I ended up rewriting, like, all of SoD. Because the whole “Caelar starts a war and causes untold death and misery and famine, and risks an invasion from hell, to save her favorite uncle” is in fact pretty damn weak. Maybe better to make the Crusade a bit more directly tied to Sarevok, and make it less Hephernaan’s plot and more Irenicus’ plot. And then that got me thinking about this idea - you could basically slash SoD in half, make it a shorter transition to SoA, and use whatever was cut out of it in a mod to improve ToB - to bring the dumb ToB storyline a bit more in line with the Sarevok story from BG1. Maybe in fact make it one big story instead of two disjointed ones, and bring SoD into it as well.

And now my brain is spinning. 

In short I have two small ideas for mods, and two or three rather huge ideas. The big ones still need fleshing out, and maybe never will be. But maybe the small ones will materialize.

That's not MR, that's 80% plot armor...

4 hours ago, ktchong said:

MR should start at 50 at level 1.  Then, she gets the first +2 at level 2.

Source: https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Drow

That link actually says the drow should have no MR at all if they have been out of the Underdark for more than 8 weeks… (Also a 20% XP penalty and limited to level 12. Just to nitpick a bit.)

Using different poisons that you can unlock in any order is the perfect application for a ‘ki pool’ group of innate abilities.

I spoke too soon! Had a scripting bug in the last interaction with Illasera. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’ll just say that a green circle turned blue, and I did not get a final dialogue for the mod. So that’s a third bug. But to be honest I can’t say for sure it wasn’t due to some mod interaction in my fairly aggressive install. And honestly I was perfectly satisfied with the mod having been finished at that point. So, still A+, best mod in the list. Those three bugs are totally fixable, I could probably even do it myself with a spare hour or two. 

3 hours ago, Delior said:

I share your sentiments. I had to drop SotSC from my game partly due to the abundance of loot it adds to the game

Yeah, well, I didn’t want to use this space to point fingers, but yeah, Lava’s mods are among the worst offenders in this area. They are very creative, but their sense of how to balance loot is quite bad. There is one BG2 mod where after leaving the tutorial dungeon, without a single combat, you can go through a couple dialogues and get a dagger +4. Like, the excitement of finding a good magical dagger is basically removed from 80% of the game. I know it’s not intended this way, but it actually sucks fun out of the game. Like I say, I am at the point of making my own personal mod to tone down Lava’s items. 

But I don’t want to focus too much on Lava. I’m pretty sure some of my other OP loot comes from other mods. I have, like, half a dozen +APR items. I hate it. I firmly believe all +APR items should be purged from the game. Including Belm. 

On 3/15/2024 at 2:12 PM, paladin84 said:

Can you also tell me what is "langchek.tra" file (and shall I translate it or not), please? I haven't found it is using anywhere.

Langchek.tra only needs a single string, @10, which should be the word “Duration” as it appears in spell descriptions in each language. I noticed it has many more strings, but those are not necessary and I think I deleted them in the latest commits. 

Yes but those issues with Transitions are predominantly issues it has with EndlessBG1. Which is fair criticism! (As I said I choose to only use EBG1.) But that is different from saying “it’s buggy and should be avoided.” (By contrast, I think it is totally kosher to talk about Transitions bugs in that mod’s forum where they are relevant and can be addressed by the author.)

31 minutes ago, AL|EN said:

@DavidW 

Please forgive my ignorance, I don't get the 'reversible' part. As far as I know, WeiDU reverses its changes simply by making copies of files in various backup folders. So the uninstallation is only a matter of going back to the previous state of the files. I don't see the magic here which would be a source of legitimate complication. But again, I may just don't see oblivious.

Just that any doofus like me can, with Weidu, get the benefit of that without even trying. Whereas, with another language I would have to intentionally set that up, and 1) hopefully I don’t forget, 2) hopefully it’s not too much extra effort, and 3) hopefully I don’t screw it up.

That’s a lot of hopefully!

Finished Durlag’s - was fine. As I mentioned elsewhere, some mods really add a crap-ton of OP equipment. Between that, and my added caster flexibility of 5E spellcasting and unlimited 1st-level spells, I could do the entire dungeon without resting. Sigh. I wish it was easier to get the experience of modders’ wonderful creativity, while somehow preserving the scarcity of magical artifacts that originally helped make BG1 fun. 

I find it is mostly quest modders who introduce these bad items. Just an example of meddling in areas that are not where their strengths lie. Maybe I’ll make a meta-mod specifically revising the item from certain mods… (Actually, I’ve already started that, it is in my personal end-of-order “finish up the install” mod… I just haven’t published it.)

I also finished Black Hearts, and it is So. Damn. Good. The work on the astral fortress is fantastic, the writing is great, the fights are very good. I love it. I think it has overtaken BST to become my single favorite BG1 mod. Normally I hate the conceit of “you are a bounty hunter/assassin, go fight things for money” but Black Hearts minimizes this to the point that I didn’t mind it. And, shockingly, I quite like the magic items added by the mod. The only issue is all the Thayans who carry droppable Rings of Protection, magical armor, and magical weapons. I would remove the rings, tone down the armor, and just make them higher-level or give them some interesting abilities. 

That, and fix the buggy scene with Nerys and phantom Illasera… aside from those things, I have no notes. It is damn near perfect.

On 3/5/2024 at 9:38 PM, Isewein said:

Is there any technical reason the BG1 and BG2 main components of this mod cannot be separated? It would be great if we could use one or the other only. I'm wondering if it'd be simply a matter of commenting out all the BG1 part in the main component, as a cursory glance at the code makes the two seem technically independent of each other?

My guess, without looking too deeply into the code, is that doing so would take some amount of time and effort, which Lauriel does not have to put into making such improvements.

I think you are a bit unkind to Transitions, because it competes with your mod. Every mod has bugs. Every one. Have you seen the SCS boards? I don’t think a reasonably bug-free version of SCS has existed since v31, or maybe v28. Are you going around telling people not to use SCS? 

I’ve played with EBG1 and Transitions together, and my take is, the combined juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. As in many other instances, you have two mods affecting the same parts of the game; players should probably just choose one or the other. 

For me, I have chosen to install EBG1 and not Transitions. But I won’t trash-talk Transitions. Lauriel has some goods ideas there, it’s a shame they aren’t around that much to continue to fix and perfect the mod.

AL|EN you are being very coy here… the thread is already on the third page. 

I believe it is an average of your classes. So, yes, dual-classed characters get screwed, especially if you do a very early dual. 

(Doesn’t particularly bother me, since dual classing is so brokenly powerful.)

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. )

3 hours ago, Acifer said:

And making NWN available for BG2 is basically a good idea.

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. 

9 hours ago, Sanderson said:

Is there any possibility that the iwd2 portion can be integrated into IWDee. So that you can choose iwd2 converted to 2e as its own campaign or even just go there straight after iwd1, timeline/exp be damned?. 

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.)

3 hours ago, paladin84 said:

Hi, I was planning to translate this mod into Russian, but then I saw how.tra file that looks scary. The file looks like it has the whole iwd1 translation (probably with some modifications). Do you have the list of the string (or a way to find it) that were modified in this file in comparisson to IWD1EE (or IWD1-EET)?

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. 

7 hours ago, polytope said:

My recollection is that equipped/inventory items with negative weight actually work, can't do it smoothly for a kit though, unless you add some sort of undroppable and (relatively) unobtrusive item, in the style of a carried familiar, called something like harness or webbing I guess.

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.)