UMNiK

Just another couple of logs to add to the SoA-to-ToB no Pocket Plane (and no Melissan after Gromnir) ability bug. Notably, it also messes up Ascension banters and companion dismissal dialogue while in the Pocket Plane (they ask to go to their SoA location). Happily, uninstalling Transitions and playing through from SoA end seems to transition properly. WeiDU-BGEE.log WeiDU.log (also has the bug with install orders that included Wheels of Prophecy and Longer road).

Having trouble with Imoen and Sarevok stuttering after a rest. After debugging with the stutter tool, these are the looping blocks: Setting ForceTalk1 to 0 for both of them stops the stuttering, but, I fear, also breaks the banters. A manual Eval("Interact(Player1)") does nothing. Are there some variables I could be missing that make them stutter? Alternatively, could I force the banters some other way? The mod situation is EET plus a bunch of others, here are the logs. WeiDU-BGEE.log WeiDU.log

Looks like I celebrated too early. Another issue with Anomen quest: after following Anomen into the Saerk estate, there are some hostile Guards, then a long dialogue between everyone present unfurls, then Anomen, his dad, and some spawned Hired thugs attack the party. Killing the thugs triggers Yusuf's dialogue that starts "Scoundrels! You may have defeated my men, but Farradh will drink from your skulls!" on an endless loop. Looking at the YUSUF.DLG, Anomen is supposed to interject, but he is still hostile rather than back in the party. Manually ctrl+q Anomen and his dad doesn't fix the situation. Any ideas? Possibly related: there is a fadeout after the initial dialogue, after which a guard yells "who in the blazes are you?", after which Anomen and hid dad turn hostile. The stuff set by that "who in the blazes are you?" line is Global("sguard3yell","GLOBAL",0)` plus a bunch of shouts, then after pressing continue SetGlobal("sguard3yell","GLOBAL",1). EDIT: Possibly solved in quite a brute force way: just ctrl+y the hostile guards before walking too cloze, and the chain of dialogues fires correctly. After Yusuf and the dads are taken away, the "bugged" guards remain and raise the alarm, but that doesn't prevent speaking to Surayah. After the dialogue with Surayah, the butler starts to sell items and offer rest, so I guess all's well that ends well? No idea whether the problematic guards (SGUARD3) are even this mod's fault, but hopefully this report helps!

Ran into and fixed an issue with Anomen's quest. After killing both assassins and collecting the evidence, couldn't turn the quest in to Alwesk - he just stood there and did nothing when clicked on. Manually changed WAMoirQ from 7 to 8, which seems to have solved it.

Sorry for necro, but I was able to resolve the quest and get the reward without resorting to editing, here's the sequence of events, assuming the Crusader Camp is peaceful. Invite Edwin to the party, let him get his reputation-related banter out if he has to. Force talk (F1) him, he tells you about his "woes". Do the Bridgefort stuff normally, let Edwin tell you to get the scroll for the siege rock (not sure if it matters). Talk to Vichand, he'll give you the scroll (and also Neera item if you have her). Solve the siege rock quest, letting Edwin cast the scroll (again, no idea how relevant this is). At night, go to the crusader camp and try to open Vichand's cart, you'll get an Edwin interjection (don't talk to the guard afterwards, every option will end with a needless fight). Rest till day, force attack (F2) and kill Vichand. Rest, Edwin will give you the robe. Possibly you can just force attack Vichond whenever, but this sequence gets you all the peaceful dialogues possible (as far as I know), except for the bugged one.

Sadly, cannot test (save was a while ago), but apologies if I indeed got fooled by the nearest exit behavior (the official docs don't mention where Coran goes, so I figured he Also ran into another Coran bug: during his banter about

In the BG1NPC-added Coran quest: if choosing to decline Amelia, he leaves the party to run into the dungeon, but is then gone from the game. This is possibly related to issues with EET/More Banters that happened with Tweaks Anthology's "Send to Inn" component sending EE companions to wrong places when they were meant to go to an inn (See resolution of that on G3 Discord). WeiDU-BGEE.log WeiDU.log

Like I mentioned, I'm ready and able to review any and all pull requests and accept any collaborators, whether they result from updated links (Currently, they originate from the most up to date full-ish list I am aware of, Cahir's, after getting his confirmation that they were the best ones he could find at the time. Obviously, a crowd-sourced effort has the benefit of multiple people checking them and easily able to write in the current one once they locate it.) or from the mod authors wanting to clarify their mod's placement (as I have to use my best judgement going by the descriptions, I see "this mod does this if that mod is also installed", I slap it into Crossmods in addition to its main category, since it's not an install order at this stage). Similarly, anyone wanting to take this to completion themselves is welcome to use any existing portion (the only differences from Cahir's list at this point are the categories and descriptions). However, I really must remind some people that I have much less direct power over their lives than they seem to imbue me with. Please refer to the hidden contents of this post to avoid extra argument laps, which are really getting repetitive at this point. Either you agree that the easiest way to collect, centralise, and keep updated numerous data points from disparate places in the absence of any monetary incentive is a number of volunteers (coming and going) contributing to a neutral silo, in which case all you need do is edit the README.md and create a pull request (make sure to write in the reason for the edit), or you do not agree and may do literally whatever else. I do not intend to combat apathy, just meet constructive action in kind. Any other concerns would only come after creating a good enough list collaboratively (as any other scenario would be retreading old ground). In future, it might merit adding your mod to it in addition to the mod's hosting location as a matter of course due to being the de facto first stop with an easy way to see what new mods were added when. It might also become a target for "stealing", whatever that might mean in the context of a list of mods for a video game, though I find that somewhat unlikely at this point, as it does require a few extra clicks to steal compared to contributing, so that's a deal breaker right there. At this stage, the only salient question is whether there are enough people who want to contribute to a mod list that does not require them to complete or keep it updated forevermore by themselves. The issues are ready for assignment, collaborators are welcome, I will review any pull requests for some time yet.

@AL|EN As a matter of fact, I have done what I wanted: there are now 0 obstacles to anyone who is interested in a collection of links to mods (rather than hosting the mods themselves) contributing to or remixing Sigil. If the modders themselves don't feel it worth their time to copy-paste a couple links to potentially expose their mod to more people and definitely denote the mod's "legit" location, there is nothing more I can do to convince them than point to examples of other centralised directories. If some mod players would prefer to re-use their own old install logs and start new threads on their favourite forum every few years to try and suss out new mods by word of mouth, there is nothing I could ever do to dissuade them: they are in it for the opportunity to talk with like-minded individuals, not to get the mods and go play them ASAP. It would be quite a turnaround if the few people running multiple forums for decades would suddenly decide to setup a Nexusmods competitor together (arguably, BWS was the closest thing to it, being essentially a beefier analogue of Nexus Mod Manager/Vortex with a pre-installed links list and presets). In my estimation, there is an obvious missing intermediary of the aforementioned links list (with presets trivially added by forking) between the half dozen or so disparate active communities and the single active and legit mod manager. Anyone who feels the same now has the option of easily (as easy as I can make it, at least) helping bring that list about as an alternative to waiting for some immaculate hosting platform. Apparently, not many do.

It works similarly, but without all the git terminology, i.e. you may copy the shared doc to your own drive and do whatever with it and the owner has the edit history with account names he may look over. I must say, it must be hellish trying to mod these games without access to any internet search engine. Anyway, it's a moot point, as GitHub won despite some worries over unruly forks (the only defence against which is, again, having the legit one be the best one). Ah, but how bout all the mods from the dead communities, eh? By definition, no one can link a truly forgotten mod, they will have to be rediscovered! Not encouraging, but whether that's due to forums being populated with experienced mod users or noobs only using the automatic installer/few mods, it's hard to say. Oh well, if anyone wants to post this to SHS/anywhere else anyone might be interested (and able) in collaborating on a potentially always complete and up to date list of mods that does not depend on a single person (for good or ill), they are very welcome to do so (there is not much point in me doing it on a fresh account - the repo speaks for itself - so whatever street cred anyone is willing to lend it would be more than I got). I reckon I'll hold off on any further edits until there is at least one pull request. In case there are none and this dies on the ground, see (at least some of) you in another five years! I'll adjust my expectations to "a BBS" from "finished BWS" for a nicer surprise (though I'm secretly hoping PI will have surpassed both old BWS and current active efforts in ease of use and completeness by then).

I'm afraid the logic is a bit less dazzling than you give me credit for - every contribution automatically creates a pull request, and the contributor has the option to keep their fork of the list they create when editing it even after it is merged. Needless to say, the more actual collaborators are working on any single version of the list, the better it will be, as discussed (in no small part due to checking the biases or errors of any one person). You also still seem to misunderstand the goal of the endeavor - certainly, there are plenty past and future lists in each community, the goal is to create a single always up-to-date and factual one maintained collectively to aid the creation of any other specialised ones by any individual (as I know you read, I only ever referred to Cahir's list as "excellent", and any "buried" lists are by definition not being linked to or used as we speak). How realistic this is is entirely up to the current state and desire of the community - all I can do is lay the groundwork and eliminate any possible obstacles. Thanks, just doing the due diligence to minimise any future edits. "Alweth's Easy Portrait Grabber Tool" had some dead and outdated links, I fixed em if you want to port them back into your list. Welp, done with my two letters. As a reminder, tomorrow is the last day for platform choice. Sent you a collab invite to the current repo, @Jazira. Everyone is welcome to peruse and comment on the added Read Me and template and request invites or start contributing. As a bit of a tip for formatting mods to the template, don't try to brute force your way with regex, probably better off writing a quick scraper/mapper. Or hey, maybe your regex skills are greater than mine. Of course, doing it manually is also a fine choice - there aren't really any time limits on this. Having BWS open alongside didn't provide as much help as I'd hoped, but probably still a good idea. Any advice on pitching this thing to other places is welcome. As a recap, here are some possible approaches tried: compare to other games' modding communities and tools, compare to other crowdsourced documentation efforts, compare to not doing anything while waiting for someone to do everything. I am loathe to use the safety in numbers of a collaborative list as an argument, much less name some people by name for fear of it seeming like blackmail or salting some fresh wounds. Of course, there is no particular reason for me personally to pitch it - this is by anyone, for everyone type of affair, so anyone who thinks they are more in tune with the current discourse are welcome to share it where and how they wish. Still waiting to hear back from @CamDawg how the actual new player response was to his guide - this type of list would most immediately and obviously be useful to someone who doesn't have their previous install logs/bookmarks to fall back on (and doesn't necessarily know what every mod does by its name).

That's rather the point of this list: to finally be done once and for all on every board, with only new additions matching new mods rather than retreading the same ground every few years, all done by different people on different forums for as long as they can handle and no longer, with the lists getting buried or outdated before they may be completed and with no easy way to pick up where the original posters left off. These previous efforts required either technical expertise or a lot of time commitment from a single person (or combinations thereof), while this one doesn't require either - anyone who can install a mod using WeiDU can certainly paste in a markdown link to it into a single place. At least, anyone who wants that mod to be findable by someone else not using the exact same download link in the same place. @Cahir, any clarification on the dropbox/mediafire links? Are these the only ones that exist for some mods, or is it worth looking into where they might have been originally?

Is that a confirmation of collaboration only if the list is on GitHub and you get invited to it (rather than having to host) or no collaboration in whatever case? Since this is a mod list for a video game, whether time is better spent on other things is a fair question to ponder. With the main goal being the ease of addition and maintenance by anyone, I'm not sure getting overly technical from the outset is the right move (also because I have no clue how Jekyll works, and it's looking like I'm hosting). Going by Awesome lists' example, an .md file with simple headers for an automatic TOC seems to be a good starting point. As long as each link is formatted in the same way, there is always an option to turn it into .csv or whatever else at a later point. As for last year of update, it is (hopefully) the most volatile part (even after truncating it to years from Cahir's day-month-year), but also the only quick way to get a vague idea of how compatible the mod is with the current EE patch (not an issue for originals). Seems a shame to not make use of the hopefully constantly updated nature to provide this info at a glance. Oh well, something to keep in mind for later if there are ever more contributors than mods to add. You'll note that the current categories separate "Quests" from "Tweaks". I'm afraid that the relative quality of mods within those categories is out of scope of a factual list. Of course, if any of the mod critics (where might those be found, incidentally?) would wish to re-rank the mods, they are quite welcome to use it as a baseline. Just to reiterate: the only possible point of failure is if every current collaborator of every existing fork of this open-source CC0 list hosted on a cloud platform decides to go on a rampage to wipe it from existence and somehow succeeds against GitHub (likely) and everyone who ever contributed to the list. Anyway, banged up the repo, see my signature. Last call for someone to make a case for a platform other than GitHub, first call for someone to assign themselves some letters (I'll get going on mine in the next few days). OP stays as is for now until final call on platforms (let's make it end of week), but the most current information is in the repo (just a few category name changes, added Tools).

Added, thanks for the clarification. Hence my calling on anyone who is in a position to apply their knowledge about who stole what when and gather all mods that meet their ethical criteria it in a single place. If there are multiple people operating the "legit" fork of the list and rejecting any suspect pull request, it will be bigger, in better shape and thus the default when compared to any other effort by any single bad actor. As long as it's all one-man operations, there really is no easy way to tell besides digging through the histories yourself. In other words, let the lists speak for themselves rather than having to relate numerous tales of woe any time someone asks "Why isn't everyone using the only active BWS fork? I love that program!". Ah, and here is that modder incentive open question again. There is no doubt in my mind that getting PI to automatically parse modder-contributed metadata and dependencies (as alluded to in its OP) for all mods would be the ideal solution here, it's just that it would require total and continuous cooperation from all parties involved. Adding a mod to a list, by contrast, only requires anyone to propose adding it and someone who is already deep into modding anyway to give it a once-over for anything untoward. If the mod author decides the list got it wrong, they are welcome to manually write in their corrections into it or the metadata. If the list gets it right, it's one less field to manually fill in for them. Are there any known mods that listed/changed their category in their metadata from their BWS days? The before/after stuff is out of scope for now, and I assume the download/forum page links are the same as in Cahir's list. Maybe throw a forum board into the mix... There are multiple active to thriving communities, all using their own relatively advanced systems, that's the thing! Continuing your analogy, any and all of them could pull the basic data from this list to create their own specialised versions (voted-on top lists or whatever else) like all the smaller movie sites pull IMDB titles and genres. Not having that shared list, however, means anyone frequenting only one of them is locked into whatever just that community has amassed (through multiple previous efforts). The list has to be simple enough to obliterate any skill floor of contribution (and easily checking that contribution), but not so simple as to be a plain alphabetised list (though even that would be nice to have, once it has everything). Whatever else happens on top of it is of no concern to the list. Surely beauty is in the eye of the mod player (sometimes resulting in a posted install order)? How many of these littler known mods were never listed anywhere beyond their original download page, especially if they were never updated to EE?.. I expect there will be a few surprises if the list ever gets to dead communities. Please rest assured that I have no interest whatsoever in either receiving or giving offence, but rather only in saving myself (and by extension, anyone who also only wants to pick from a neat modlist) from future expansive trawls through multiple forums (arguably, I was already saved from the current one by having Cahir's excellent list pointed out to me, but I think we can do even better). Alas, lacking the herculean time and effort reserves of previous prime movers, my only option is to try to aid in the setting up of a proven alternative way instead: splitting the task among as many people as possible to make it as easy for each one as possible. Consequently, there are really only two categories of posts for me: if it gets me closer to the goal of the shared list - very good; if not - seems like we are after different things, which is fine. This being an open forum, it's to be expected that some folks will have their own ideas. And along those "getting closer to the goal" lines, I really must press for some votes on the platform of choice, as that will dictate the way to format the mod data. Feel free to look over the examples in the OP again, I've also banged up a quick comparison under that action item. Thus far there is one vote for GitHub that I am not sure was also a vote for collaborating on the list itself (any clarification on that, @Graion Dilach?). What's your preference, @Jazira (added your list under localisation, thanks)? Would anyone prefer to be the list owner rather than being invited by me on a fresh account (e.g. if they want to use their main account or main modding account)? Either way is fine by me. If there is a platform I missed you want to advocate for, I'm all ears. The only requirements are: hosted securely in neutral territory; shared editing; easy to add things to; easy to export if need be.

Given that this list does not include individual mod components, just mod names, would you say there is a better category for it than "Tactical"? Of course, it can be added to multiple if need be. Since install order is out of scope for now, would placing them under "Tweaks" be enough? Added a fairly neutral FAQ for the reason of omission of Roxanne's BWS fork. Surely if it's an open question whether any mod versions at all will be reliably added it's a bit premature to worry about a tidal wave of people going to the trouble of first stealing them. Hopefully, having a community-owned and operated list will also incentivise modders themselves to add the exact versions they want to share with the world, avoiding the issue entirely in the future. I'm of two minds about it: either add a "Tools" section and shove all the technical stuff in there (including EEex, EEKeeper, DLCMerger etc.) or omit it and hope people will read the mod readmes, since this is not an install order nor a list for the development of mods. What do you reckon? While I understand that the current situation is heaven for anyone who enjoys interpersonal communication at least as much as playing mods, I am much more interested in the latter. Consider the following points extra to the purpose of this thread and/or already made with no need to repeat them (hidden to keep from temptation of copy-pasting them again).

What I know to be true is that large amounts of data that are not machine-crawl ready are best collated by large numbers of people. What I suspect is true is that the IE modding community is no worse than every other when it comes to actually doing the collating when there is a need for it (still waiting on any new player reports of successfully finding and installing mods they weren't directly linked to). I'm certainly a lot closer to understanding why past efforts have been unsuccessful - for whatever reason, there is both a burning desire for a messiah who will do everything single-handedly (likely due to being spoiled by a few of these actually materialising in the past) and a peculiar kind of blindness to a better way that so obviously exists (even when directly and repeatedly presented with it). Anyway, here's a new topic with the summary of the current state of things as I see them. Anyone who wants to help their own future self rather than keep waiting for help from above is welcome to start the collaboration. Needless to say, if there isn't anyone besides myself wanting to choose their IE mods from a single location by more than the first symbol of mod's name, there won't be any collaborators forthcoming, which is also fine as a proven result (though one that saddens me greatly). If the new list fails at some point in the future, it will at least fail in an optimal way - able to be picked up again at any point by anyone and saving someone a few googles in the worst case.

View and contribute on GitHub Check projects for current status and any issues that are marked as help wanted. Collaborators welcome.

I'll assume opening extra threads is not a priority and continue updating the progress on a sustainable simple shared list here (though I nave no issues copy-pasting my last post and this one into a new combined OP if need be). As a reminder, the reason for starting it here was finding a way to augment the only lacking part of the guide in the OP - where and how to get the mods. While I must admire the tenacity of naysaying even in the face of copious evidence from multiple other communities successfully using this approach (as well as my personal assurance from experience that it really doesn't hurt that much to be an occasional contributor rather than the full-time owner and operator), I have to wonder whether that time could be better spent either helping or living your life. If the community was too dead to handle this, there would not be multiple active forums. If there were no demand for this, there would not be multiple self-starter efforts. If the past approaches of trying to build this around a single central figure were successful, I'd be out of Nashkel by now. To me, the obvious solution is to start small and together using better tools and a bit more cooperation from the outset, taking what can be salvaged from the past without relitigating it or setting up for another failure. The current scope is not to surpass or recreate BWS, it is to do better than an alphabetised list and to avoid anyone ever having to manually crawl every forum for individual mods from scratch again (big ups to the people who did that). The worst possible outcome is always having a slightly outdated starting point (that may be trivially updated by forking or copying even if all the authors drop off), the best is having a central piece of documentation to use in any and all future efforts (that may or may not include install orders). In my estimation, this is well within the time and energy resources on display: after all, it takes a couple minutes to add a mod link and a couple dozen to come up with a new excuse not to create an easy place to add it to. Additions to relevant current or recent efforts are documented EET mod install by 4udr4n and BG2EE documented mod install by subtledoctor . Apparently, there is also a relevant thread by Caedwyr, though I'm not sure where to find it. Question 1 looks to be a no. Question 2 seems to be either confused with asking for an install order or for containing every individual mod from the outset. Here are the salient categories that I'm aware of, combining the OP, PI groups plus what I can recall from BWS. I see no reason not to add the same mod to multiple categories if it fits - after all, these are meant for choosing what to install, not as a drag-and-drop preset for automatic installation. Anything obvious missing? Big Mods - contain multitudes, conflict lots NPCs - anything that adds a new companion or modifies existing ones Quests Kits Items Spells Tactical - SCS and similar, purely combat-focused Bugfixes - specifically emendations rather than changes, though there will obviously be overlap with.. Tweaks - anything that modifies existing content, be it from vanilla or other mods. Possibly including all graphical and sound stuff? Or should those be separate? AI scripts Portraits Sound sets UI - skins and changes for the user interface, possibly need a more descriptive name? Localisation - this may have to be filled in by the people running the national fansites Question 3 some names dropped without links - EndlessBG1/Transitions. To be clear as to the impetus for asking: old mods can be categorised the way they were by BWS if in doubt, new mods are apparently only sorted by their first letter at the moment. Question 4 again some communication issues here, so I'll just assume that it is the best extant list that also incorporates the EET Compatibility list Question 5 I can see the desire for install orders is especially strong here, but we should still be after the regular list first - not much point creating giga-installs using a small subset of mods from one or two places. Assuming eventual current complete list as the starting point, how to make sure all new mods get added to it in addition to their original upload location? Some modders follow their creations around, while some do not. Will anyone object to a link to their mod (with no modification) getting added by a user without their consent? Question 6 one vote for GitHub, a lot of votes for abandoning this modding community business altogether and letting each mod, modder and user fend for themselves in their separate threads on whichever forum they prefer. I reckon wait a few other votes, then I'll make the repo. Is there a need for a technical contributing guide? It's basically click README.md, click edit, write in the modname, link to mod page, write in the mod description, name and create pull request. Is that clear enough or should I add some pictures of the above steps? Still would like to hear back from CamDawg on how his posting to different places went - should his steps be retraced with the link to the repo or is there no point posting to some of them? Would also be nice to get some pre-formatted responses (Question 1 is considered answered) to make them a bit easier to collate. I'll tentatively assign to myself - and A from Cahir's BG1EESoD list to be categorised as the first contents of the repo or sheet. Any takers for other letters to avoid overlap? Along the same lines, any prospective collaborators at this stage, assuming GitHub is settled on? Obviously, if anyone wants to be the owner and invite me, that's also fine (I'll probably create a cutout for this to easily shutter and transfer if needed).

There seem to be two fundamentally incompatible threads here: histories of INDIVIDUAL'S burn outs due to trying to create and maintain a SOLO PROJECT and trying to arrange a way for a COLLABORATIVE EFFORT that doesn't demand more than approving a pull request once a week or so by any of the same MULTIPLE people who are currently running and populating all these multitudes of forums. My commiserations to the former category, past, present, and future, but I must stand by my polite declination to join their ranks. Let's see if I have the current state of the latter right. Last and most ambitious attempt, BWS, covered every Infinity engine game and practically every mod and fell apart due to trying to integrate them all together and keep them integrated. It lives on in a heavily modified state as EE/EET Mod Install Tool, maintained by a controversial person. Question 1: is EETMIT worth looking at for inspiration? Question 2: if not, is the last BWS still good as far as broad categories for included mods are concerned? Current smaller going concerns related to mod centralisation are the EET compatibility list , Cahir's polish lists for BG1EE-SoD and BG2 (also his last EET install) and the occasional post with a PI install order on the forums. Question 3: are there any notable additions to current lists that would make applying BWS categories to them difficult? Question 4: if taking Cahir's request for an English translation as an open invitation, it is worth going top to bottom or just through EET-compatible stuff? Mod communities that are likely to be primary sources, i.e. not translations or rehostings: Gibberlings 3 , Pocket Plane Group , Spellhold Studios, Beamdog Forums, Weasel Mods (obviously, this list is incomplete, feel free to link others). Question 5: how best to go about engaging as many people as possible in shared maintenance (Just start whispering admins to consider slowly linking all mods they host at their convenience? Try to impress the value of an undying first stop that doesn't depend on a single person or site)? The technical side. Since it will be a shared sheet, the options for hosting are: GitHub (see example of Awesome lists), Google Docs (example using Path of Exile skills as the target of documentation), Notion (example of collaboratively documenting an emerging category of application) Question 6: what is the platform preference? Obviously, this will not be a short process, nor one carried entirely on my back (no matter how many times I am asked), but it should be easy enough to get a start by arriving at concrete answers to these questions. Here they are again, with my personal answers. Anyone at all interested in the idea, please provide your own answers and any salient questions you feel I missed. Question 1: is EETMIT worth looking at for inspiration? I have no idea. Here's documentary footage of me wanting to get back into BG modding after a few years' absence. Question 2: if not, is the last BWS still good as far as broad categories for included mods are concerned? They certainly made sense to me at the time. Question 3: are there any notable additions to current lists that would make applying BWS categories to them difficult? All the mainstays seem to have survived, and smaller stuff may be categorised opportunistically as it gets more players. Question 4: if taking Cahir's request for an English translation as an open invitation, it is worth going top to bottom or just through EET-compatible stuff? I'm open to either approach, and am willing to assign a letter or two to myself. Question 5: how best to go about engaging as many people as possible in shared maintenance (Just start whispering admins to consider slowly linking all mods they host at their convenience? Try to impress the value of an undying first stop that doesn't depend on a single person or site)? Best I can tell, it's the same dozen or so power users crawling all over these places - hopefully they will welcome a chance to channel their energies toward a specific goal rather than answering the same noob questions with slightly different backgrounds. Question 6: what is the platform preference? Any of the above options will work for me, I'd say let whoever is willing to devote the most time to this at the moment have the greatest vote weight (being a sheet, it's easy to migrate if need be). Personally, I've invested a few hours into this over the past week and can probably afford a bit fewer every week. As far as I know, ALIEN and K4thos are the most active developers interested in widely sharing the fruits of their labours, and they use GitHub to do it. Obviously, CamDawg has spent who knows how long putting the OP together, so I'd love to know how his experience copy-pasting it around has been - what do the literal new players make of the state of things? Are there any new players on these forums?..

I appreciate that each community has its distinct charms (and languages), but ultimately, don't they all have a shared interest in mods for the same games? Perhaps some concrete suggestions with examples might help here. What I think is an absolute necessity is a simple shared list akin to any Awesome list - meaningful categories (game and within that what the mod does (NPC or script or fix etc.)) that are easy to add to by just editing the .md and creating a pull request. The additions are links to mod pages on the mod author's preferred site (and possibly to mod repo), the pull request authors are modders themselves or anyone they trust to add their mods on their behalf, e.g. community site admins. The mod descriptions should be completely neutral and terse to avoid bloat - this is not an installation order, but a list of what is installable (unlike awesome lists, there is no barrier for entry). Link to the OP should be added at the top. Ideally it will be kept in sync with the EET compatibility list (copying and categorising which might be a good starting point for this master list). If it's not too corny and PST-centric, I propose to call this list "Sigil" to mirror its nature as a central hub and have a snappy name to throw around. What would be nice every once in a while is for some brave soul to post their successful install order of a load of mods, including conflict resolution, like a STEP guide, without the obligation to maintain it (as Cahir did a little while ago). Since these guides will be per game and per user, they may be posted in whatever place the author prefers (though ideally in as many places as possible, like the OP). Perhaps a few recent ones could be linked to in Sigil. If the stars ever align again as they did a few years back when the BWS was popping, Project Infinity could be developed to a semi-automatic state (I do believe there are some simple dependencies being experimented with). It doesn't have to resolve every conflict, since that has proven to be too ambitious, but it would be nice to be able to get individual mods easily installed alongside a set of "safe" defaults like bugfixes for vanilla, graphical stuff etc. I'm afraid I have to go outside of RPGs to my other love, arcade space sims, for an example - Knossos. I see no reason why a modding community comprising multiple active forums couldn't work towards the common goal of making things as easy as possible for newcomers. As a bonus, having a shared neutral ground is both a safety from individual bad actors taking things into their own hands and a screen between the mods themselves and their colourful development histories (I can only imagine how much time it takes to closely follow some of the beefs all across the Internet). Who knows, this, continued efforts of EET and upcoming BG3 may just lead to an infusion of new blood and a mod renaissance (not to say it's not nice to see the same people still around after all these years).

I'm willing to take on faith that the BWS was a state of grace that is now out of reach, as much as it pains me. What I'm wondering is why the next step down from it is "go crawl these multiple forums for every mod ever released". I did come across both Roxanne's effort and your list from a year ago, @Cahir. They both seem like a lot of work done by individuals (perhaps a bit too individualised in Roxanne's case) going it alone with occasional help from the original mod authors. Why not create a shared version that the modders themselves can contribute to in a hassle-free way (i.e. they decide how their mod is described and what version is the correct one) - which game your mod is for, what category it falls under, is it intended for novices or experts (whether due to having a lot of potential conflicts that will need manual resolution or just by its nature), and whether it runs on EET. I'm not asking for a complete no-conflict automatic setup of all them, just a way to see what is even available. I can recall NPCProject and SCS off the top of the dome, but for smaller stuff?.. Especially since there are still separate communities making mods for the same games, having access to all mods in the same place seems like a necessity for anyone wanting to create a giga-install of new content. My hope was that limiting the scope to mods that are EET-compatible would make for a relatively easy starting point, both for this proposed documentation endeavour and for someone completely new to modding wanting to get an improved, but still close to vanilla experience using up-to-date mods. Please understand that as someone recently wanting to start a modding playthrough and trying to get a grip on the current state of the scene, I have become a lot more versed in inter-modder relationships than I ever wanted to be and am a lot farther from character generation than I expected to be. This guide is, as far as I can tell, missing one thing only to be considered the ideal first stop: how to actually find and choose which mods to install and play.

If only this united defensive front could be harnessed in creating centralised documentation (much like the OP!)... What possible bias could I have beyond wanting to make modding easier for myself? Last time I looked, there was a single program (BWS) that included preset automatic options for both versions (originals and EEs), including modding platforms (BGT and nascent EET), and a plethora of mods organised by salient categories. Presently, I get politely (eh, by modding community standards) invited to recreate everything single-handedly with no explanation for where it has all gone in the meantime (as I refuse to believe a petty squabble could undo years of cooperation). Seemingly, EET has blossomed into a viable single default platform (likely sped along by the delisting of originals from stores, even if they are included with EEs), but for some reason the individual mod organisation has regressed to an abominable state. Obviously, there is plenty of energy for developing the mods and picking fights, so what is the holdup? I had assumed the idea was to get people to play the darn things, not just post them and hope they will be found (not to imply I don't appreciate their mere existence, my shadowy agenda of wanting to play mods is a result of loving them). What I am disappointed in is the reversal from eagerly waiting on Beamdog to not being able to match and surpass them when they finally release (as was done previously: it was a long time before EEs could be considered superior to modding the originals). There is no more excuse of waiting on external factors, in fact, the opposite is true: BG3 is likely to create more and more incentive for people to go back to the originals as it grows closer to release. What is the next best action to be taken to avoid asking (as a prelude to insulting) a practical stranger (or, indeed, anyone new to modding) to sort through years of disparate communities in the future? Is it some kinda joining of the ranks around EET and Project Infinity in a separate single documentation GitHub repo while politely asking to manually create pull requests to it alongside posting on other platforms (this, shs, beamdog forums)? More specifically, what needs to happen to get from last BWS' Game.ini groups and up-to-date EET compatibility list to first a list arranged by game, purpose, and scope, then a suggested "safe" install order to get from buying the EEs to enjoying the fruits of last 20 years of modders' labour? I don't mind personally arranging the overlap into a new google doc purely by matching mod names, but I have to believe there is someone better qualified and up-to-date. To reiterate and emphasise, as it doesn't seem to come across - I don't claim to be the second coming of Weimer, ALIEN, or K4thos myself, just a regular mod enjoyer wanting to avail himself of collective knowledge of modders and fellow mod users and possibly contribute what little I possess. At no point did I order anyone to work themselves to the bone at my behest, rather I implore the numerous existing thriving communities to pool their resources in a way that does not require full-time commitment from individuals while allowing their occasional contributions to maintain a usable shared database. You know, the good side of the Internet.

It just seems so strange that these things still live or die on individuals' burn outs, disagreements, and time commitments. Presumably, all of the websites are maintained and paid for by multiple different folks passionate about modding, yet the actual business of getting these mods into the hands of players is too much to collaborate in a sustainable way on?.. And this is after the Baldur's Gate 3 announcement and Beamdog finally pushing 2.6 out the door? The only constant is EET being a shining beacon of inter-mod collaboration and patching in this darkness (at least from a cursory glance at the usual forums, they seem to have the best ratio of actual mod updates/complaints about lack of updates). Anyway, is there any point going to last BWS' Game.ini mod groups for direction or are they hopelessly outdated and the EET compatibility list truly the best source available?

Dang, if an alphabetically sorted list is considered good news nowadays, I really didn't appreciate what we had with BWS (categories of mod type, newbie-friendly presets, dependencies...). Seems like such a shame that after 20 years there are still multiple disparate communities and individual authors floating all over the place rather than a centralised repo or wiki. Forgot to say so in the last post, but kudos for your work putting all this together! Might not be what I was hoping for when jumping back in (last time I checked, the only obstacle was Beamdog taking their time with patches), but it's great to see there are still not only modders, but people who want those mods to be usable by regular folks.

Am I correct in assuming that since the dissolution of BWS, there is no single master compatibility list? How would one go about finding out which mods are compatible with EET and/or 2.6, for example? Check them manually one by one? Apologies if that's a silly question, trying to jump back into modding after a bit of break. The current state of things is... confusing, to put it kindly.