AWizardDidIt

On 3/9/2024 at 7:17 AM, Sergio - ex SHS member said:

 

Don't miss the second part of the review though : 

Yup, I'm planning to try and go through the various postings here and on the Beamdog forums to gather up issues people found and address them in an update.

Thank you for taking the time to do this!

On 9/8/2023 at 8:22 AM, Sergio - ex SHS member said:

Black hearts (finished 26/06/2023) --> according to me, this is currently the best quest mod available for BG1. Install and play it. I even think that it could be a stable additions in my install all the times I will be playing BG.
 

You can find informations about the mod here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/82484/released-black-hearts-bg1/p1

Given that the post above highlights what the mod adds, I will simply write my thoughts.

 - If you told me this mod was a mini-dlc, I would have fallen for it. In my eyes, the mod matches a mini-dlc in quality and it is masterfully executed.

 - Illasera is a captivating character and you enjoy talking with her; so much that I kinda loathed when the mod ended. I wanted more.

- The dialogues added by the mod are meaningful, provide enough choices for any character, and when the party members chime in to banter, their banters are on point. Well done on Imoen, especially.

- The quests given by Illasera are funny and provide RP choices. The RP choices do not punish you for going evil. That’s a fresh breath of air for me, considering that I play only evil <charnames>.

 - The new sceneries are well done. Did you make them @AWizardDidIt?

 - I liked the surprise you left with the

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Yagashura emissary

. The dialogue there was good too.

 - You won’t believe it, but I liked that you respected the player’s agency. I will give you an example. Other mods (such as Assassination) do not respect player agency by forcing the player to read everything the modders themselves have written. In this one, in the end fight, you can simply click the first dialogue option, and the “bad” guy won’t speak or tell your motives. You go straight to business. That’s a bold choice. I enjoyed it a lot.

Some things to report (I played this mod in BG:EE)

1) I had some difficulties in the quest concerning the mirror. I didn’t expect that the “solution” was supposed to be provided with dialogue. I used Tiax and he has nothing to say for what is happening. I know it’s probably hard to write for him. Anyway, either get Branwen or Ajantis to proceed.
Also, a cleric <charname> should be able to do the exorcism himself.

2) It’s not easy to find the “northern gorge”; you’ve decided to make the way out only in the middle of Farmlands, and by doing so, I had some difficulties finding it. I was able to by using CTRL+4 after clicking “explore” in the map.
 

3) I met a bug inside the new sewer area. When you meet the girl mage and his second in command, she flees because she tells you that another area is currently under attack.
The issue is that when you enter the area (see 00:02 in the video I will be publishing a bit below), there is only 1 Cherise and Malachi, but they get duplicated instantly. And after finishing the first talk with Cherise, you get a second talk, that you are supposed to see only when you’ve finished the quest mod (in the Sanctum area).

Video here: https://streamable.com/68l8w6
Savegame here (the archive also contains the video): https://easyupload.io/bp35vb 

4) Second thing to report is inside the Sanctum area: the sanctum portal has an issue with a graphical line (the archive above has everything)

5) Read the following images.

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The statement I’m focusing on is: “leaving one of us dead or stranded behind”.

Are you sure it Is it correct that Illasera uses “one” and not “each”….
“leaving each of us dead or stranded behind…”

 

Also, sanctum text error here:

 

 

Hey I just wanna say I got linked this directly after having sorta thrown myself into self exile from modding and it really made my day.

I really poured my heart into this mod over the course of a few months, but after release I had this sort of extreme imposter syndrome kind of feeling like it was bad, my coding was amateurish, I was overwhelmed by my inability to do certain things, and I got so caught in my own head about not being able to update everything or wanting to go back and trash and redo so much of it that I sort of ran away from modding. 

But yeah, these comments really help. Uh, so if you see this, thank you?

Maybe I'll try and go back and find the bugs people reported and fix it. And probably just add an extra option for the mirror quest, that one's a bit narrow as implemented for the 'good' option. I unfortunately just don't have a ton of time for modding lately. But we'll see.

Welcome back @K4thos

Figured you got burned out. It's so easy to happen in modding. I'm working on a big BG1 quest mod and 3/4 of the way through I'm feeling the struggle to get back to it.

When the IWD portion gets to the point where it's playable and needs testing, let me know. I might want to revisit some of my writing for that (it's been ages since I wrote those interjections...) while I also test. I'm also much more experienced in modding so I might be inspired to do some more in depth things like character specific quests in IWD. No promises, but maybe!

Ah! Thank you again for the clarification (and to you @Grammarsalad!). Still learning some of the ins and outs of weidu modding, but this explains it perfectly. 

First of all, thank you so much for the help. 

Since you're copying an existing area into override though, would that still possibly cause conflict with other mods (say, if they both tried to add a new travel point to that same area)?

I'm currently doing a mod where I'd like to add in some new areas but link them to existing ones in game. I wasn't able to really find too many tutorials or walk-throughs on area editing, so this is all a bit of trial and error on my part, but is the only way to add a new travel point in an existing area to edit the .are file directly and export that into the override folder? I feel like that's just a big no-no and wouldn't play well with other mods at all, but I just can't for the life of me think of another way to do it. 

Thanks!

I didn't see this multiclass combo in the readme anywhere, but it looks like when combined with the Monastic Orders of Faerun, I got the option to create a Monk/Druid. It makes for crazy good shapechanging with some minor issues which I suspect stem from this combo not seeming like it's officially supported by either mod (and those issues seem to be really on the Monastic Orders mod since they involve the 'monk' side of the multi). Just kinda wondering if this was even intended to be permitted. 

17 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Don't get me wrong, I fully approve of that.  It's a question of choosing between several very nice options.

I can't use this anyway, without some serious tinkering.  I'd love to have access to the code, so I could start that tinkering now, and be able to actually play it sometime within my lifetime... but that doesn't seem likely either.

I think we are all feeling that one  

10 hours ago, Lightbringer said:

So long as I get to find XP and treasure in my possession due to that "reliving", that's good with me too. Magic can do funky things. 

I'm easy. I just don't want a bunch of hand wringing to unnecessarily delay the project.

Yes, XP and treasure are definitely meant to be carried back from IWD  

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

My preference would be to scuttle IWD2 and just have IWD1 concurrent with BG.  But alas, that seems like it won't be possible...

Also fair

Although in this case I think the way I wrote the transition for Kathos was a sort of spell to relive the events of IWD rather than literal time travel. I'm not sure if that's still the case since I've not been involved in this project for a while but I thought it was an elegant way to handle it that avoided most of the pitfalls of time travel in fiction.

While IWD is itself removed enough from BG that IWD-in-EET could easily just change a few names and handwave that it's set contemporaneously as BG, IWD2's plot is too interwoven with the events of the first game set several decades later for the mod to do the same with both. My preference has always been to have the plot of IWD1 be a time travel scenario while IWD2 is set during the events of BG. It makes the most sense with the least amount of rewrites needed.

Oh what a great idea! Glad to see some EET specific quest mods in the works.

I check in on this board every few weeks and am also still excited for it to be a reality

Just speaking for myself but when I wrote for this I did it out of a sense of love for the game and not for any expectation of payment. I'm kind of with Kathos on this, it would be weird to accept donations at this point. I cant imagine a few dollars is going to move the project along any faster anyway.

I am also happy to see that this is continued to be worked on

Wow great new look!~

I'm glad to see how things are moving and it's good to see you back K4thos

Shoot me a message once the beta for IWD2 is in any kind of playable state. I might be interested in writing more dialogue interactions for party characters if you still think that would be a good addition.

Edit: after further thought, I think I'll just keep my comments to myself. Best to just acknowledge this and move on.

Ah, I didn't know about the other Sarevok mods. One less thing for you to worry about then.

Tamoko is a character who has a really strong conceit that personally resonates with me but she's so barely sketched beyond it it gives you a lot of freedom. I of course always would encourage you exercise creative freedom to do whatever else you want with her because there's going to be just about nothing in the game to contradict you. The Yoshimo-sister angle could be interesting but it also doesn't really add anything to her character so since it sounds like you consider that non-canon, I think ignoring it is perfectly fine.

However, to make the new mod as compatible as possible with modded EET and since

I plan to give her a tragic end anyway

,

I'm glad for that.

I think it also makes sense to add in a conversation with Sarevok in ToB where you reveal what happened to Tamoko and have that reflect on Sarevok in some way. Maybe a conversation earlier on while he's still Chaotic Evil where he dismisses that connection but if you alignment change him later on he admits guilt and a sense of responsibility over it and possible realization that she was the only person who showed actual true love towards him in his life and that was part of the reason he pushed her away. (just an idea anyway )

Just wanted to post to say I'm continually amazed by the work you put into EET and modding Roxanne. I'll probably be starting a new playthrough in the next month or so. I'll give this a try then.

I've always wanted Tamoko to be expanded upon and her death to be resolved even if you spared her at the end of BG1. Yoshimo was supposed to be a relative of hers iirc? I remember hearing that though it's not made explicit anywhere.

Don't worry about it. K4thos hasn't been around because frankly there's very little to do until 2.5 hits. I'm sure he'll be back then and if not, eh can worry about that then. I still see him time to time on other forums I frequent so he's not disappeared off the face of the planet trust me.

I wouldn't worry about it. IIRC IWD-in-EET is essentially already done, he was just waiting to see if there were any code changes in the 2.5 patch that would break anything before releasing it. Assuming nothing broke, it should be pretty simple to just push it as 1.0 and go and finally K4thos will be free of this huge project he undertook

are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet