CamDawg

Oh derp, I thought we were looking at imported IWD spells. I see the issue now in regular ole BG2EE.

edit: and agreed about with the changes. I'd like to first try changing them to mode 3/25% since that seems best in line with the intent. If mode 3 damage also doesn't leave combat feedback, then we definitely need to indicate to the player that something's happening. If we go portrait icon I don't think dying is the best option, but on the other hand, nothing existing applies either. Something generic like 'constriction damage' as feedback might work, but as always, I'm open to suggestions.

I think this is an SCS-exclusive change. In IWDEE they attack with shmblr.itm, which is 2d8 crushing. On 5% (6% without EEFP) of hits it forces a save vs. breath; if failed it entangles for two rounds and only does an additional 1d4 crush damage at the end of both rounds.

Yeah, I know I should stop using my redundant [%LNL%%MNL%%WNL%]+ checks, but it's an ingrained habit at this point.

Mur'Neth is an NPC mod for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition or one of the Baldur's Gate conversions, Tutu, BGT, or EET. It adds one new joinable character, Mur'Neth the Ghaunadan.

Version 14 clears up a number of minor bugs.

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v14 changelog

• Fixed broken check for Garrick in one dialogue (thanks TotoR)
• Mur'Neth comes with two rare selection sounds, like a normal Baldur's Gate NPC. Unfortunately these weren't really handled well, and various issues have been addressed:
  • On BGEE, these were slotted wrong and action sounds were played as rare selection sounds. The action and rare selection sounds now play properly.
  • On EET the rare selection sounds were being played as rare action sounds. This is fixed.
  • Tutu and BGT, like EET, played rare selection sounds as rare action sounds. Unlike EET these can only be fixed if Mixed Soundset support from TobEx AfterLife is installed first. If this is detected, the sounds will be adjusted to work properly. If TobEx AfterLife is not unavailable, the Remove Rare Select Sounds component can be used to work around the issue.
• Fixed potential issues with re-installation when done as part of a WeiDU stack operation
• Updated old support links in the installer and readme
• Fixed a bug where the mod could choke on EE games with a modified Seven Eyes table
• Updated Polish translation

This is a bug from Transitions.

Transitions currently blocks the area script of the Ducal Palace area (north Baldur's Gate). I've submitted a pull request with the fix.

This mainly causes problems with other mods that use the area, like this Blurt bug in Seatower.

I don't think IWDEE's Shroud of Flame should affect >= 100% fire resistance creatures:

Quote

This spell causes a creature to burst into flames if it fails a Save vs. Spell. The creature will burn for 2d6 points of fire damage every round, and gouts of flame erupt from the burning target, causing any creatures within 5 ft. to take 1d4 points of fire damage from the flames. Anyone hit by the victim's flames must also make a Save vs. Spell to avoid contracting the shroud themselves. The shroud of flame dissipates if the caster and target are no longer in the same area. This spell is particularly useful in dispersing packs of trolls and frost salamanders.

This may be edging into Rules Lawyer territory--which is why I want to discuss this--but it strikes me that 100% fire immune creatures can't burst into flame, much less setting nearby creatures alight.

Yeah, it's using the old BG2FP model, where we always coupled polymorph immunity with explicit protections from Polymorph Self, Sphere of Chaos (that 10% squirrel!), and wild surge Polymorph. All of these are good suggestions, and I like the idea of the state approach. I'll ping  @Luke , as he may have already implemented some of this in his massive revamp.

Noticed this today as I was compiling Belhifet's stats:

• Belhifet has two weapons (bdbelhi1, bdbelhi2) that he swaps between, depending on difficulty. The one for higher difficulties (>= normal) is equal or superior in every way, except that it only does half of the poison damage per hit (1hp/6 seconds) as the lesser one (1 hp/3 seconds).
• Belhifet has explicit immunities (via bdbelhia.itm) to the Fire Storm, Fireball and Lightning Bolt spells. I'm not sure exactly why these are here (preventing being hurt by allies slinging spells indiscriminately?), but it does leave the weird situation where a normal mage Lightning Bolt won't affect him, but the Lightning Bolt from an Avenger druid or the innate from a Stormlord will. I'm not as concerned with Fire Storm and Fireball as he has 100% fire resistance.

For the former I say we just raise the poison damage on the higher difficulty weapon to match the lesser. For the latter we should probably add immunities to Lightning via Avenger/Stormlord/Wand of Lightning OR clone lightning into Yet Another Copy and have his allies use that instead.

Immunity to polymorph should block the knock-on effects from the Wand of Polymorphing.

43 minutes ago, Lurker said:

Which doesn't mean that a string cannot have duplicates in dialog.tlk that were/are already present, only that WeiDU won't add new duplicates, correct? Example "Keelor", which I guess originates from BG1(*), at position 15625 and 15670, and gets again imported from BG1 during installation of EET to positions 215625 and 215670? This example raises the following questions:

• related to WeiDU:
  • Does WeiDU always use the first match when checking for existing strings in dialog.tlk as reference? Meaning if I want to add "Keelor", WeiDU references to 15625? Or are there boundaries depending on context, like EET never uses strings below a certain position? No, because WeiDU doesn't know what EET is.
• related to dialog.tlk and EET:
  • (*)There are also strings in close proximity that deal with BG2 content, and since I installed EET on top of BG2, the strings at the lowest positions are from BG2, yes? Meaning that there are leftovers from BG1 in a dialog.tlk that was repurposed for BG2 from the original game devs?
  • There are matches for "Keelor" at (215088, 215089, 215737, 215738, 215739) with no corresponding matches at (position - 200K), in the range that I'd expect to be EET's importing area. Are these present in the dialog.tlk of BG1, but not in the one from BG2, because the slots have been repurposed for BG2?
• (Not a question, just trying to be thorough:)
  • Starting at 30958, there are references to "Keelor the Dwarf"; these are from NTotSC in my installation

The default tlk has a ton of redundancies, yes--easiest example is that pretty much every creature has the same tooltip and name, but these are different strings. The Minsc creature files use "Minsc" (9501) as his name and "Minsc" (9482) as his tooltip. 

IIRC WeiDU uses the last match of a string when determining which one to use when a new string is requested, but that's from memory. If it's not the last, it's first. (Helpful, I know.)

The broader questions bout EET string handling I'm not to sure since I don't know the EET internals. There are a myriad of ways you could force WeiDU to add redundant strings, it's just that you'd have to go out of your way to do it. EET intentionally makes the oBG strings be EET+200000 for mod interoperability, regardless of redundancy.

55 minutes ago, Lurker said:

Which is another reason why I don't rely on uninstalling - only in special cases and when close to the "onion's skin". Scripted reinstalls ftw.

To be fair, strings are really the only place that WeiDU behaves a little strange, everything else is rolled back as you expect.

That doesn't mean there can't be wonk depending on how a mod is made. WeiDU allows modders to directly access the shell, which means you could make a bunch of changes without WeiDU 'knowing', meaning WeiDU won't track and roll back such changes. (This was very commonly done when installing audio so that we could run sox/oggdec. This is till done via shell, but handled through a ubiquitous function that lets WeiDU track changes.). There are also options to make some changes that intentionally won't be uninstalled--e.g. I use the copy-no-track to keep some reference material for Tweaks to in a weidu_external folder so that items end up in the same place during a reinstall.

1 hour ago, Lurker said:

Err... Does that mean I could have just copied over my dialog.tlk from my previous installation (v1) to my template for v2, and then just applied the slightly altered payload file?    (Need to check this out.)

Perhaps. However, it's entirely possible that mod A adds strings and then mod B alters them. If you start over with this tlk, in such a case mod A would add the (unaltered) strings again (since they no longer match existing strings) and mod B would alter them, again. An easy example of this is various Tweaks components alter item descriptions--Rebalanced Proficiencies alters descriptions (including those from mods) to match the changes it makes to items.

Right, so the string situation has some subtleties that make this whole thing a windmill tilt. Some of this is information you already know, but I'll make this a bit of a primer for anyone interested in how this actually works.

Game text is stored in the tlk table. It's basically an index that says string #9501 has the contents of "Minsc". Minsc's creature file does not contain the text "Minsc" in the name field, but instead refers the string reference #9501. When the engine needs to show the name for the Minsc creature file, it looks up #9501 on the table and uses the text listed there: "Minsc".

When you install a WeiDU mod, there are all sorts of strings used by the mod--spell names, item descriptions, NPC dialogue, whatever. Many of these are new, but WeiDU also gives the ability to overwrite or modify an existing string. For example if you're changing something to the base long sword description, it's probably better to change the string instead of assigning a new string to the long sword,. This is because the base long sword description is used as the unidentified description for all magical long swords. Things like descriptions for existing kits are usually updated, since it's easier than making a new string and chasing references to it through a bunch of UI and rule tables.

So mods end up using a combination of new strings and updating existing strings. However, if my mod says I need a new string for something, WeiDU only adds the string if it's not already in the tlk table. In other words, if I tell the engine I need a new string of "Imoen" for an Imoen copy I need for a new cutscene, WeiDU doesn't add the string. It points out that we already have a perfectly serviceable, existing string containing "Imoen" and uses that instead. If I request a string that's not on the table then it adds it to the end of the tlk and uses the newly created reference.

Importantly, uninstalling a mod does not behave as you might expect. Strings which were changed during install are changed back to their pre-mod contents, but any new strings that were added are left, intact, in the tlk table. (Example: BG2EE ships with ~102k strings. My BG2EE copy for testing Tweaks currently has no mods installed, but is now up to ~110k tlk strings due to leftovers from mods that had been previously installed.). This is meant to try and preserve the tlk table for mods after it--e.g. imagine installing mods A, B, and then C, and then removing A. The references for B and C would now be completely different and utterly break save games. We try to discourage continuing on old saves after changing mods, but this is still meant as a measure to try and make bugs less likely for players that do it anyway.

All of this behavior leads to some subtle interactions between mods. Let's take an actual, real interaction between two mods you're using: The Calling and Balduran's Seatower, As you've previously noted, both mods add Black Pearls to the game. I'll make up some numbers to keep the math simple:

• Your tlk, fresh from a clean install, has 40000 strings. The Calling installs and requests, let's say, 100 new strings. One of those strings is the name of a new item, "Black Pearl". Let's say the installer assigns it to #40005 in the new block of strings it creates in the range of 40001-40100.
• You then install Balduran's Seatower, which also adds a Black Pearl. BST asks for 200 strings but WeiDU notes that "Black Pearl" is already in the tlk. So it assigns the BST Black Pearl a name string of 40005, and then adds 199 new strings to cover the rest of the requests. So BST now occupies the 40101-40299 range.
• You decide (correctly) that The Calling is run by a clown, and you don't want it any more. You start clean from a new install and its unmolested 40000-string tlk. In order to use your old saves, you decide to be clever and add 100 blank strings to cover The Calling's old string range. This will cause BST to start at 40101, like it did on your old install.
• Except it doesn't work. BST comes along, asking for 200 strings again, and getting the full 200 this time instead of 199, because 'Black Pearl' is not present and can't be recycled. Depending on where specifically "Black Pearl" gets slotted, you now have from 0-199 strings now one off from their previous values.

This is one of the easier ones to catch. When you consider the sheer number of small, semi-unique short lines of dialogue (especially replies)--"right away" or "I don't think so"--that could be lurking in dialogue-heavy mods, it's an intractable problem.

Thanks guys, v4 is out with your updates!

The Calling really started as a collection of random questions from BG--why didn't anyone take over the gnoll stronghold, considering the two bordering nations are on the brink of war? How come the only class-specific quests in the game are with Narlen Darkwalk? Why isn't Melicamp used more? While the original idea was more along the lines of a stronghold mod for BG, it grew into a planned collection of class-specific quests. Many others were also eager to contribute their quest ideas as well.

Version 4 contains a key fix for the borked Polish translation (thanks @Roberciiik) alongside some minor bugfixes and compatibility updates. Thanks also to memory, @paladin84, and @JohnBob for the translation updates.

Version 5 features a full Spanish translation, courtesy of @alaisFcZ!

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v5 changelog

v4 changelog

"I usually try to keep my sadness pent up inside where it can fester quietly as a mental illness."

• Fixes for The Calling component:
  • You could give Keldath a replacement Black Pearl if you got one from him originally. The dialogue was not checking if the party actually had a Pearl, nor was Keldath taking it.
  • If you ask Keldath for one, the Black Pearl will be identified on EE games
  • Balduran's Seatower and this component add Black Pearls to the game. Working with jastey, both mods will now account for the other mod's Black Pearl and appropriate NPCs in both mods will react to both items
• Translation updates:
  • The Polish translation was borked, but Roberciiik sent along a fix
  • Thanks to JohnBob for the updated French translation for the new strings in v4.
  • Thanks to paladin84 for the updated Russian translation for the new strings in v4
  • Thanks to memory for the updated Polish translation for the new strings in v4.

Are you compiling them in the same COMPILE statement?

Thanks @JohnBob!

9 hours ago, Lurker said:

The Calling and BST might have an issue; this is already known; reminder for me for when I get there

It's more that Thalanatyr will ignore BST's black pearls and BST's quest-giver will ignore TC's black pearls. So everything works fine, but there's an awkward intersection of 'I have black pearls, why isn't this guy reacting?' that we're addressing.

18 hours ago, Lurker said:

Dark Side of the Sword Coast (DSotSC) v4.2 vs cdtweaks component 2431(Change Equipment Restrictions for Druid Multi- and Dual-ClassesTighten equipment restrictions for druid multi- and dual-classes):

The cdtweaks component sets the "Unusable by" flag for Druids and Fighter/Druids for DSTDRUID.ITM (Tiara of the Chanah'Rea) and DSCDRUID.ITM (Crown of the Archdruid).

This is fixed.

I'm prepping v4, and part of that is sorting out a minor issue with Balduran's Seatower. Both mods add Black Pearls, but the one from BST is meant to be a unique item for a quest and the ones from TC are meant to be rare but not unique. @jastey is making some changes on BST's end, and I've made some changes to TC as well, and they require some string changes:

• In game.tra the description of Black Pearls in @102 is slightly modified. This may also be in the language-specific ee.tra.
• In game.tra, the (new) name of the Black Pearl from BST is in @127. "Enshelled" may be a bit tricky to translate, but basically means the pearl is still inside the shell.
• In mage.tra, I've added two new lines of dialogue, @1331 and @1332.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Creatures with melee weapons get an additional +4 to-hit and damage when attacking a creature with a ranged weapon equipped. It's not documented anywhere AFAIK.

Well, it's because I never gave Keldath the action to actually take the black pearl from the party. Which is convenient, because I also never have him check if the party has the pearl to begin with.

As for the identification issue, this is an easy fix for the EEs, and a bit of a workaround on the originals. As such I've just addressed it for the EEs as it's a bit of an edge case.

This mod adds many options to those who use thieves and bards in Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition, BG2: Shadows of Amn (with or without the expansion pack Throne of Bhaal), Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, and with the mod conversions Enhanced Edition Trilogy, Baldur's Gate Trilogy, and Baldur's Gate Tutu. Version 15 fixes a few minor bugs from the previous release.

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v17 Changelog

• Big thanks to TotoR, who sent along fixes for the following:
  • Bardic Leathers are magical armor and, as such, should be restricted from being worn with Protection Rings/Amulets/Cloaks
  • Due to a bad copy-paste, the starting equipment for these kits in ToB was default paladin equipment
  • The Soulknife's Mind Blade was doing one more damage than it should
  • The Shadowdancer's Shadow had access to abilities (e.g. backstabbing, other thieving skills) that it shouldn't
• The Polish translation was borked, but Roberciiik sent along a fix
• The AC of the Shadowdancer's Shadow was incorect at higher levels
• The mod could fail to install if re-installed during a WeiDU stack operation, e.g. if it ended being re-installed because the player was removing or re-installing a mod installed prior to it in the mod stack

From Caedwyr:

Something that bothered me from the first time I played Baldur's Gate II was the weakness of many of the creatures. Among these were the elemental princes, the devas and planetars, and the various demons and devils. In Pen and Paper AD&D these are powerful and scary enemies if you get on their wrong sides. In Baldur's Gate II, they were minor obstacles to be plowed over by the Bhaalspawn and his/her party.

What I have done in this mod is to modify the Devas and Planetars that are summoned by the player so they gain most of their Monster Manual abilities and stats. I have taken some small liberties in how I adapted some of these abilities. Since the devas and planetars that are summoned are level 25 creatures and the monster manual lists them as much lower level creatures, I have chosen a class for each of the creatures and increased their statistics according to their class.

Version 10 fixes the borked Polish translation (thanks @Roberciiik) along side some fixes and compatibility updates from @TotoR and other minor fixes.

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v10 changelog

• Big thanks to TotoR, who sent along fixes for the following:
  • The animation component was not properly checking for the main component due to a typo; this meant some changes were not being made
  • Fixed conflicts with the Spell Revisions and Item Revisions mods
  • New icon for Improved Invisibility and Protection From Good 40' (the latter used with permission from Divine Remix)
• The Polish translation was borked, but Roberciiik sent along a fix
• Fixed a bug where the mod could choke on EE games with a modified Seven Eyes table
• "The Winged" from Black Pits II was not being updated with the new planetar animations

Well, that's embarrassing. v6 is up to fix this.

On the upside, it gives me an opportunity to rectify an error with the v5 announcement: the primary reason for v5 was to fix a bug with the Polish translation being borked. Big thanks to@Roberciiik for the fix!

Also updated the spoiler post with the mechanics of the new component.