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Baptor

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Posts posted by Baptor

    "Mod": Remove HLAs from BG2

    in General Mod Discussion

    Posted

    There are lots of cool ways to "fix" HLAs (if you think they have problems which it seems most of us do), this is just one way. I agree that I wish the game maxed at 20th level and was balanced around that idea. That would be ideal.

    If @CamDawg wants to add my little file to the Tweaks Anthology, I would be thrilled to see it there. Having used Tweaks since forever, I'd be honored to make some small contribution to its ever growing list of features.

    "Mod": Remove HLAs from BG2

    in General Mod Discussion

    Posted

    15 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

    You know, I've never really liked HLAs either, especially with the absolute ridiculous glut of different spells and abilities you have by the time you get to ToB (not that I have...uh, you know, finished ToB in practically forever). Maybe disabling them would actually be the best choice in reducing the amount of crap you have to manage. Plus, I think if you play with SCS, you can disable HLAs for all of them as well via the modular difficulty management ability.

     

    I couldn't agree more. It's just too much. Playing IWD at high levels and seeing how freeing it was to play without them was my inspiration to do this.

    8 hours ago, Endarire said:

    May we get this mod posted on GitHub for posterity?

    Thankee!

    First, thank you for your encouragement! Second, I have never used GitHub and am unsure what I should do to put that up there for you all. Is there some specific place we put mods? I am sorry if I sound terribly ignorant I really don't know anything about it.

    "Mod": Remove HLAs from BG2

    in General Mod Discussion

    Posted

    A number of years ago this thread really piqued my interest. I found a solution to @Ballad 's problem* and I wanted to share that in case they (or anyone) wanted it.

    Frankly, I despise HLAs and much prefer IWD's approach of letting you get high level without them. I could explain why I hate them but that's not really the scope of this post.

    I reached out to the ever generous (and genius) @argent77 who graciously pointed me to the lunumab.2da file which controls HLAs and suggested setting the level requirements to 99. It was very simple to edit in Near Infinity. You can go in there and set HLAs to start at any level you like - lower or higher. I set them all to 99 which basically removes them from the game*.

    For those who are interested in removing HLAs but not inclined to use NI, I have included the 2da file. All you have to do is drop it into your override. Enjoy!

    *The caveat here is that it only removes them from the player's side. I do not play with SCS but my understanding is that many enemies use HLAs in that mod so if you put in my fix only your characters will not gain HLAs. The bad guys would still have them. Additionally, characters you have that already have HLAs will keep the ones they already have - they just won't gain more.

    No_HLAs.zip

    Icewind Dale 2 - Mod to remove Stoneskin/Ironskin "steel" color?

    in General Mod Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Baptor

    Hello all,

    I know Bubb created a fantastic mod that removed the "steel" color that Stoneskin/Ironskin forces onto your sprite in the Enhanced Edition games, but did anyone ever make such a mod for Icewind Dale 2? I have been looking but have been unsuccessful, and I was also told that just changing some lines in Near Infinity isn't going to do the trick.

    A Snow Maiden's Reaver Fix

    in General Mod Discussion

    Posted

    Hello community.

    I've been playing IWD and IWD:EE for years and the RNG overlords have only now graced me with one of the coolest weapons ever, the Snow Maiden's Reaver. However soon after, I discovered to my horror that the sword does not apply Strength or Proficiency bonuses. I ran across an old discussion where someone suggested changing part of the weapon's damage to slashing.

    I did that, so now you can have a SMR that actually does decent damage. The damage has been set to 1 slashing and 1d8+2 cold damage. This puts the total damage to 4-11 base damage which is pretty close to the original 4-10 base damage. I probably could've done 1d4 slashing and 1d4+2 cold and it would've been spot on, but I wanted most of the damage to still be cold to match the flavor of the weapon. I hope you enjoy it - just drop it into your Override.

    REAVER.zip

    Pocket Play UI

    in General Mod Discussion

    Posted

    Hey there,
    I'm playing IWD:EE with this mod on Android with no other mods. When I press the levelup button the screen goes black and after I can do nothing else but restart. This issue was brought up on the Beamdog forums but never resolved. Has anyone else had this problem and if so what did you do to resolve it? Thanks!

    Siege of Dragonspear and Custom Party

    in General Mod Discussion

    Posted

    47 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

    How did you make the party ?

    As in, in the old game, you could start with 1 main character and 5 additional custom party members if you just started the game with multiplayer and saved... and then moved the save to the singleplayer game files. I am aware that you can now do this more simply with create party option how ever that goes... in that case they will never leave unless you remove them from party.

    I would be making it using the new "create party" feature you can select from the start of the game. I know at some point you're on your own with no party in the palace so I am wondering what happens to the other NPCs you created. I mean, are they all in your bedroom when you wake up in the middle of the night? That seems kind of strange.

    Adding items from Icewind Dale to Baldur's Gate 2 (Help)

    in Modding Q&A

    Posted

    9 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

    1. .eff file is the "effect" file. As you can use item ability to use an effect, which refers to a .eff file. the .spl file is similarly a spell file, which also can be used to apply a whole spell. They use the opcode 177 to then use the eff files effect. This has their own advantages etc, like the ability to set difficulty to differ from the characters ability casting score etc.

    2. Then you archive the files, and extract them to from that archive into your game folder, run the .exe and vola, your mod is installed. And ready to be redistributed.

    3... if I would find it ... been a long time since I moded this game. EDIT: yeah, here's one item mod, I helped at.

    Also note, that overwriting the ax1h01.itm might have side effects, like changing some orcs to be hillarious, as they just got +4 to thac0 and damage bonus, but ouh well.

    1. Got it!
    2. I guess what is tripping me up is that I am not editing the .exe file aside from renaming it - that's all I have to do to the .exe file?
    3. Thanks!
    4. Oh that was just an example, I wouldn't replace all normal axes with +5 ones! Ha!
    8 hours ago, Dan_P said:

    You didn't mention if you have or not, but if you haven't yet, I'd recommend getting the latest NearInfinity:
    https://github.com/Argent77/NearInfinity/releases

    You can use it to edit or export pretty much any file in the game, but it's just as useful for looking up information on things. With item files, you can look into the specific effects fields on each item. If an item uses an effect (EFF) or spell (SPL) file, it'll be referenced in one of the effects. If you want to know more about effects, take a look at the Opcodes page on IESDP.

    Explaining it all here won't really help. Actually looking at some items in NearInfinity yourself is the quickest way to figure out how they work under the hood, so to speak. If you know the file name of an item, you can click the magnifying glass icon and type it in. You can also search an item name directly if you click the Search -> CRE/ITM/SPL/STO option.

    Whenever I've been working on a mod, I have 3 resources open most of the time: NearInfinity, the WeiDU readme, and IESDP.

     

    For mods examples, I'd recommend looking at the stuff from these modders:
    https://artisans-corner.com/
    https://downloads.weaselmods.net/

    As someone with no coding experience, I found these mods some of the easiest to read and understand what they were actually doing. Two specific mods that I remember looking at when I first started are the item pack component from Bardic Wonders and the FINDIT-IWD mod for IWDEE.

    1. Thanks! I do have it and I've been trying to port items with it but without the weidu it was obviously going very badly!
    2. Thanks for all the resources!

    Adding items from Icewind Dale to Baldur's Gate 2 (Help)

    in Modding Q&A

    Posted

    14 minutes ago, Dan_P said:

    Yeah, that'll work. The tp2 doesn't need to have the setup- part in front. Just the same name as the folder is fine.

    Adding items is pretty simple like that if you're not editing anything, and you're just moving between EEs. Just get them in the override, and add in the text. As already mentioned, if you're replacing items, you just use the same file name as whatever you're replacing. The game references the file name, so the change is made right away, even if installed in the middle of a playthrough.

    Make sure to export any related files as well, such as icon BAMs. Many of the IWD ones aren't in the BGEE games, and vice versa. Some items use EFF or SPL files that don't exist in the BGEE games, so you'll have to bring those over too.

    Also note that BG items have a description image, while IWD items do not. You'll need to add in a description image to the files if you want them to fit in with other items. By default, this field is empty in IWD items. You can make your own images or look through existing ones in NearInfinity.

    I only learned how to do anything with WeiDU a few months ago. What I can say is looking at how other item mods do it is by far the best way to learn, especially different ways to organize things. I didn't find any of the guides useful compared to actual mods.

    Hey thanks for responding! A few followup questions if you don't mind:

    1. What are EFF and SPL files?
    2. So I put the ITM file from IWD:EE, the tp2 file and the txt file into a folder - then where does that go? Not sure of next step.
    3. Do you have an item mod you recommend I try to work from? Not sure where to start there honestly.

    Thanks again for all your help!

    Adding items from Icewind Dale to Baldur's Gate 2 (Help)

    in Modding Q&A

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

    Well, you should first find out the in code names of the items you want to replace, and then name your replacements to be those exact files... so you can then just copy them over with: 

    COPY ~modname/itemname.itm~ ~override~

    After which you can adjust those with NAME1, NAME2, UNIDENTIFIED_DESC, IDENTIFIED_DESC etc etc etc with the weidu commands. Aka: 

    COPY ~modname/itemname.itm~ ~override~
	SAY NAME1 ~axe~

    And now you know the power of weidu... it can rename items description strings with very simple commands. Of course you will also want to know that the mod can consist of at least of 2 files. A renamed weidu.exe file as setup-modname.exe, and a text file called setup-modname.tp2 that the earlier will take commands from.

    Also you will likely want to start the whole text file with: 

    BACKUP ~modname/backup~
AUTHOR ~Baptor~
VERSION ~text ... something~
BEGIN ~component name~

    ... so it's all out of the way.

    Also, here's the weidu readme. Not that you need it too much, nor you'll need to understand any of it.

    These commands go in the "setup-modname.tp2" yeah?

    Does the below look like a correct example of what to put in the file?
      

    BACKUP ~axeofdeath/backup~
AUTHOR ~Baptor~
VERSION ~1.0~
BEGIN ~component name~

COPY ~axeofdeath/AX1H01.itm~ ~override~
  SAY NAME1 ~axe~
  SAY NAME2 ~super axe of death~
  SAY UNIDENTIFIED_DESC ~This is probably just an axe.~
  SAY DESC ~It is actually a magic axe +5~

     

    Adding items from Icewind Dale to Baldur's Gate 2 (Help)

    in Modding Q&A

    Posted

    7 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

    You pick up a mod, open the setup-modname.tp2 file with notepad and look at the code. It's pretty self explanatory on multiple item mods, and here is somewhat tutorial on how to make one.

    Now, of course you'll need to take in the fact that if you export the .itm form a non EE edition of the icewind dale, you'll need to re-add in the non common effect that came from the items special nature, that it's file name prefix came with, as those were tied in to the items in icewind.exe itself. To figure that one out, you'll want to open the .itm file with Near Infinity or DLTCEP.

    I'm importing from Enhanced Edition, so no worries. Thanks for the link to the instructions! If I am successful I'll be sure to share my item mod in case anyone wants some Icewind Dale in their Baldur's Gate!

    Adding items from Icewind Dale to Baldur's Gate 2 (Help)

    in Modding Q&A

    Posted

    Hello,

    One of my personal goals is to find a way to port over some of the cool weapons from Icewind Dale to Baldur's Gate, such as the "phase dagger" and the "long bow: protector +1." Obviously I figured out early on that you can't just drop the item into the override folder and then try to put it into the game. If you try this, it screws everything up. The text on ALL items goes insane and nothing is right.

    However, I know it's possible to add custom items from outside the game because lots of modders have done this. Can anyone explain the process to me so that I can do this as well? Many thanks!

    Removing NPC item restrictions

    in Modding Q&A

    Posted

    Hello,

    Can anyone remind me where to go in Near Infinity to remove the restrictions on an NPC item so that anyone could, for instance, use Xan's Moonblade or Keldorn's Firecam Armor? I remember that it was in a weird place and not on the item itself but I can't find it anymore. Thanks in advance for any help!

    This was a question previously answered on the BD forums which are still currently down.

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