AWizardDidIt

If only Beamdog could get their act together and actually push out the much needed 2.0 patch for IWDEE :/

(EDIT: This is the current world map updated with some icons that ulb did for IWD areas) edit by K4: updated the link to image.

Story is the exact same. No changes to original script are made.

We all appreciate your efforts and I think at least most of us understand needing some time off to pursue other things for a bit

I feel you (I wanna play it too!) but unfortunately it's not something that has an estimated release time yet I think that the main EET component needs to be (roughly) finalized before we get any idea about the IWD component.

I believe that's the plan, yep!

Looks like that's a conversation between Skie and Eldoth! Tybald State 5 She's been telling that "brother in the well" tale to damn near every visitor to Lonelywood for the past few months... by the gods, that girl been bringing out the furies in me since she was born., Skie: Oh, but why would she play such cruel jokes? A girl her age should be reading poetry or trying on dresses. Eldoth: Skie dear, do these yokels look at all artistically inclined or like they have anything more attractive than potato sacks to wear? Skie: Oh.. well I suppose not... Eldoth: That’s right. Now remember in the future to think before you talk. Or better yet, simply refrain from speaking at all. >.> Yup, I tried to make Eldoth as much of a dirtbag as I could...

Oh I guess people wanted me to post some more of what I'm writing. Uhh... Someone wanna choose a number between 1 and 2500 and I'll just throw out a random line or conversation?

I'm sorta fine with leaving it up to players to regulate their own experience, with scaling as an optional feature. Scaling is never going to be a "perfect" solution but it is a solution of a kind. Another idea is just lowering the total XP gained in game by a percentage which I think probably works better but still will result in issues since it means you will need to switch between IWD and BG campaigns to not be underleveled. My own personal method of solving this is going to be to just swap in and out companion characters frequently throughout my adventure, trying to get at least a little bit of time with everyone which should even out the XP gains (and regularly just deducting XP from my PC to keep them at around the same curve). I was even thinking about making a mod around the idea of swapping characters in and out of your party frequently which I might look into after this releases.

Mostly I just like to have a better idea of the specifics before talking about stuff. I don't wanna be the monkey that says one thing and we decide later on the scrap it and do something else :X

It'll be available from both BG1 and BG2 Like Kathos said, I'm working with him on a plot centric reason to go to the original IWD campaign that fits into the saga comfortably. I don't think we're ready to reveal that quite yet but as we get closer we'll probably say more. It's not going to be a huge rewrite or mega-quest or anything but it'll be a little hook that's simple but (imo) pretty interesting. For now, all my work on writing party reactions/interjections into IWD remain fairly agnostic to how the party got there, mostly just bantering with each other or remarking on the events of the campaign itself. And there's banters/remarks for all BG1 AND BG2 companion characters and kind of a lot of them, I probably remarked I had written over 1500 lines in the other thread... it's getting substantially longer than that even... I'm actually revisiting and cutting stuff because I'm worried the party might be *too* chatty haha I'm super excited to share that all with you eventually

Same here

Oh hey! Yeah it has been pretty quiet huh? I guess that's because my part of the mod more or less is done besides any edits I do until the IWD-in-EET is a bit closer. But I'm still here and working with Kathos on some of the writing elements of IWD-in-EET and there are some revisions it looks like we'll need to look at as the scope of what IWD-in-EET looks like so I might be revisiting my dialogue and maybe I'll find a choice bit to post here ^^

*does a happy dance*

Thanks! Playing the BG series every few years for the past 15 or so has made me pretty comfortable for getting their "voices" right. I hope people enjoy it when they get to play the mod

Heh sure. If you're a fan of Imoen then good news I guess. She has by far the most written interjections at like 65 or something.

Got it. Keeping separate. Sure! Here's some of the more funny ones picked at random (they aren't all comical, but I thought these would be more fun to read )

I'm just putting the finishing touches on all IWD/HOW dialogues. I edited down the total number of interjections from my original script and included more back and forth npc banter during the interjections so there's now a a total of about 1400 individual interjections that I'm mostly really happy with. I've done some small bit of writing (mostly brainstorming) on possible Targos interjections. Should that be incorporated into the rest of them or is that a different thing entirely?

@bob_veng: Yeah I actually tried to keep all npc comments agnostic to anything outside of the immediate dialogue or story situation they were in within IWD. I don't think that there will be any contradictions within the text that might go against what the player is doing in the story outside of the IWD, HOW, or TotLM. Also update report: I've finally finished with all HoW (+TotLM) interjections. The total line count is now 1559 individual interjections among the cast of 42 possible npcs that could be along for the ride. So now it's time to start putting it together into code so I can have it ready for the mod. I tried to keep the scope of the types of interjections I was doing very limited and alike to each other so it shouldn't be too hard. Anyways, should be able to expect that soonish.

Just wanted to pop in and say my first milestone is complete and I have done the first writer's pass on the main IWD campaign. I probably went a bit overboard... all said, I've written about 30 interjections per character (except Baeloth and Sarevok who received a smaller number of lines) into the existing dialogue in IWD which equaled to almost 1200 lines in total. >.> oops. During editing I'll probably reduce the total interjections per character but make them a tad more substantial. I started out feeling like it was good to just have characters pipe in occasionally even if they didn't have much to say, but I'm feeling now like I should cut anything that doesn't convey a decent amount of personality, especially since I ended up writing so much. Also I want to add a few more back and forths between party members and npc characters so it doesn't seem like everyone's just making random asides all the time. So next up is going through HoW and TotLM which shouldn't actually take that long (a quick glance leads me to believe HOW has substantially less dialogue than the main campaign and TotLM very little at all). After that it'll be time to put together the proper script for use in the mod.

Yeah I know this is kind of a crazy undertaking for one writer to do so I'm starting out small with just limiting myself to interjections in existing dialogue, no elaborate questlines and probably not any kind of banter, at least for now, and really no "development" of the characters, just writing to slide their personalities into the existing storyline. I do luckily have some help of some friends to proof read and edit my work and the tutorials in the Branwen mod looks like they will be *very* helpful when I get to that side of it. Also I have quite a bit of free time during work hours (my job is in a slow period) so it gives me a good amount of time most days to bang out a good amount of writing

No limitations here! Just trying to tailor my approach. I was planning on just sending you a DM of the gdoc link to access for privacy. I have spoken to a few other friends who will be editing/proofreading and maybe even pitching ideas there too. I think I'll hold off on IWD2 writing to start then and just focus on IWD. Thanks!

just to clarify really quickly the flow of players through the IWD areas in EET and then I can make some edits to a master gdoc I have of the in-progress banter/interjections I've got and share it with you to keep you updated on that. That will be a separate doc from the actual coded interjections/dialogue which will be something I probably chip away at as I get more comfortable with doing so, or when you get impatient and just do it yourself cause I'm a dummy when it comes to coding ;p So the current plan is the player first arrives in Targos during the Goblin attack there and then from there can either resolve that or just travel to Easthaven? Initially I'm just writing up npc interjections for the main IWD campaign but I have IWD2 and could at least do some writing for that initial Targos area as well and then come back and whip up some script for the areas afterwards as a later update.

Hmm I'll check that out. I spent some time this weekend getting through some initial goals and writing a good amount up to cover prologue interjections in Easthaven. It's about 20 pages of text so far sooo... so far so good! I'll check back in with you soon when I've looked at this as over the next week I'll be getting back into the coding side to see if I can learn it well enough to construct it myself or at the very least give it to you in a format that doesn't require you to change much to implement it into the mod.

Thank you for replying in such detail! I definitely am interested and while I understand as a sole writer it'd be quite the undertaking, I'd like to give it a shot regardless. I'll probably have to set pretty humble expectations for how much banter/interjections each character has given there are over 30 of them I think, but we'll see how that goes. Your offer of taking care of the coding is appreciated. I actually did already download Kuylok's very helpful Branwen mod and I'll probably still try and figure it out myself when I have free time and am not feeling so inspired to write. I'm very familiar with Icewind dale's story and I have it installed so I'll probably be doing a run of it with a word doc to the side considering where appropriate interjections by the BG cast would take place during areas or dialogues. If nothing else I can share that script with you as I go. I'll keep you updated when I feel I have something to share. Thanks again!