temnix

Who can tell me if Weidu be used to check all weapons and all spells for damage effects, for the fire type of damage, and add a Set local variable effect equal to Amount, if Number of dice rolled for random damage is 0, or equal to Number of dice rolled + Amount if it is above zero? What I aim at is to make attacks leave a mark on the creature reflecting the minimum number of points of fire damage dealt, at least. Here there may be an obstacle in the form of active elemental protection spells, which would reduce the damage that goes through, but there is no other way to find out the number of damage points inflicted except by writing something on the attack side, is there?

This is a question for those who know their way about the technical side of creature sound sets - and what can be done about them. I just discovered that where in BG1 all animals and monsters had sounds defined for each in their CRE file (BATTLE_CRY, SELECT_COMMON1 and so on), the designers were lazy as shit in BG2 and simply let creatures go on sounds in their animations' INI files. The CRE files are all mute, as far as I can see. In BG2, then, all brown bears sound like the brown bear animation, all xvarts like the xvart animation, all minotaurs like the minotaur animation etc. Now in my mod Animate Dead assigns new CRE sounds to give creatures different voices after they have been killed and risen as zombies. In BG1, therefore, I can edit animation INIs and remove embedded sounds there with no loss to anything, because it is CRE sounds that are actually heard, but in BG2 the zombie sounds are going to be played mixed with embeds, which sounds terrible. And if I clean the INI files here to make room for potential voice additions, then animals and monsters in their living state are all going to be mute. What can I do about this 20-year-old corner-cutting by Bioware, other than recreate creature soundsets from the first game for the second?

Why, hello. Yes, I did decide to stop back here and implement a couple of ideas. "Animate Dead Now" also turned out to be uninstallable, but I'm working on it. It'll have more stuff in it, too. By the way, for you or anyone else who might be interested, I could use a hand with another mod idea. Especially if they had experience putting together kits.

The version uploaded here was missing a file that prevented the installation from completing, and the order of files was all off. I probably put it together in a hurry. The version at the new link is correct.

Let's try some new smilies here. Well, Endarire, that's a very thorough plan of a promotional campaign. If wishes were horses and I could pull white mice out of my ears, wouldn't it make for an entertaining time. But I've been banned on the other two forums, and this forum is only a remote corner of the third, and I haven't tried to be a crowd pleaser. So I'm not surprised or flabbergasted that my mods haven't been shouted from the rooftops about. Rather I was disappointed that the people who come around here, representative as a section, and with the knowledge of the toolset to appreciate what can be done with it, turned out to be so uncreative and remote, and often just tired. Those were the people I wanted to rouse, the ones who counted, not some impossible crowds of fawning fans. Those are only fit for a background. It's not surprise the modders were tired - they had hung around the forums for Infinity Engine games for 20+ years like restless ghosts. Naturally they had been consumed by "everlasting tedium," to quote from Cugel's adventure. By this time a lot of them are bandaging varicose veins and taking Viagra. But was it my fault that I came late and fresh with enthusiasm? I had ideas for the wrong place and wrong situation, but it wasn't wrong to have ideas. It wasn't anything I did that didn't work, not really, the environment was simply too dead - and altogether below my level, to speak the truth. Compatibility, self-touting and Patreon won't change that. But like I said to Fan there, I'm happy I made many of these modules. And you seem like you are still excited about the games, that's a good thing while it lasts. Well, that's enough about that. I alone know which of my creations were the best, quite possibly they weren't the ones most enjoyable to play. I did quite a few things that were really fine. Too bad no soul with the right musical strings in it came along to be strummed and know it. The fact still stands. All right, goodbye, everyone.

Thank you for the kind words. Sure, I tried to be original. I squashed a number of ideas which were just nice and would be popular but not very interesting. One film director, when asked why he had made only two pictures, both of which had been highly innovative and profound, replied that he could easily whip up a "festival movie," it is a genre of its own nowadays, but he didn't care to. So it is here. Not that I mind simple small pleasant improvements, if there is a grain of not-boredom in them. Here is a simple idea I leave for any takers: splashing potions. Go through all of the standard potions and add a second ability to them: deliver the effects at a short distance to someone else. Splash with healing, splash with strength or antidote. A little fizz to go with it, and it would be a good thing. Characters out of spells and ammo could help the party this way, sparing others an action around. An easy mod, maybe somebody will make it. Another idea was ley lines... Well, power nodes, special regions on every map, undisarmable traps from the mechanical point of view. They would be detectable as normal traps and standing on them would give some bonuses or penalties. There could be several in an area, overlapping, crisscrossing. They would need to be irregularly shaped, though, with many randomly placed vertex points. I wrote the code for creating one such in every outdoor area and dungeon, a rectangle to begin with, and I found that Weidu struggles with generating those vertices en masse, but maybe my old computer is simply short of breath. I asked for suggestions on the boards, and I got the usual flood of intelligence and enthusiasm in response. See, the thing is, it's possible to make all this and more, but why bother? For whom? Most people don't come here for "revolutions." They only understand numbers and adjustments to numbers: a touch of balancing down, a little up. They like these games just as they were when they came out. It is a nostalgia niche where they feel comfortable. Nor do I even think that my mods will become popular posthumously, so to speak, once I'm gone. Today's culture is not hierarchical, crap enjoys all the same rights as gold, hacks quote the relativism they brought from college to insist they deserve as much consideration as real writers. "Who is to say"... So let them enjoy themselves. The mistake is to continue casting pearls before swine once you have seen that they are, in fact, swine. And they may be friendly and helpful swine, too, on occasion, only that doesn't change what they are. I'm glad I tossed up a few little suns over these three or four years, but I should have left a long time ago. Okay, back to "Animate Dead Now." Here is the link. This version is still not the latest there has been, but it contains Gift of Life and Nigromancy, the spell for finding corpses. I don't know how well-developed and tested they are at this point. I can say where the mod stops more or less precisely, though. There was supposed to be a dealer in corpses in BG1, hard to find, in the Undercellar, selling bodies to carry around when you need zombies on the quick, or you could be generous and restore them to normal life with Gift of it. There was a lot of material there, but it's all gone. You can try to type in this creature as STEGOS_#, he should still buy bodies, at least. You may be able to sell Duke Eltan to him etc. This version also stops short of giving all dead NPC scattered across BG1 custom dialogue. Later I would go through most of slain soldiers and miners and adventurers and commoners and give them conversations for when, and if, they would be raised by Gift of Life. Duke Entar's son at the caravan raid was to receive one, so would Joseph of the greenstone ring. Usually raising them would improve the party's reputation and earn some experience. At this point, although they will get up, they are all silent except Emissary Tar. It's that fat woman who unwisely goes upstairs in the Iron Throne building to get killed. You can raise her now, and she will talk to you. Gift of Life will raise any neutral or friendly creature, though, only they will have nothing to say. The screenshot with Thalantyr is a little deceiving. I killed him with the mouse so I could show him get up, but in real play the party would have to attack him first, he would turn hostile and would not come back for them. I was going to give special dialogue to some alive NPC as well, for when they see their friends and relatives raised as zombies and paraded before them. Ah, wouldn't that be delicious. Yes, and Qlippothic Flesh is an 8th level wizard spell. It will be for sale at a few stores in BG2, and in BG1 Steegosaul can cast it on a party member for a lot of money. You can also just cheat and type in the scroll: EXHUME_#.

Good news! I found a later version of "Animate Dead Now." One with Gift of Life and other extras. I'll upload it tomorrow.

I remembered another one the other day. "Perilous Streets." It's on these boards also. The two mods mentioned here, "Animate Dead Now" and the other one, which went by the name "The Space-Fun Continuum," couldn't be recovered. I found early versions, though. They lack many features that I added later, but "Animate Dead Now" has both the new Animate Dead and Xzar's similar special ability, Reckoning (it can only be used away from light). I think these work without problems, but I don't guarantee anything with these versions. I probably returned to these spells later and made them more robust and improved them in every way. The mod is still missing the spell for resurrecting dead NPC and companions outside the party. It was called Gift of Life. I have it on one of the screenshots above, where it is used to raise Thalantyr, but the late version that contained it is gone forever. If this is the magic Fan here wanted, he is out of luck, unless Endarire wants to make a spell like that. I can explain how, but I'm not making anything myself any more, and I don't even have the games installed now. If there any complaints and errors during the installation, you will have to sort them out on your own. There may well be mutiny when installing for Icewind Dale, that game is a little different and it takes going an extra mile to make a complicated mod compatible with it. I realized this not long ago and went that mile with my last mods, but for this early stuff you may have to add missing entries to IDS files and so on. This version of ADN already has disease. Again, this may not be implemented as well as it would be later, but disease plays much more of a role. All corpses now are permanent in that they don't disappear like loot on the ground. After a while they begin to decay and throw up small puffs of stench before they disintegrate completely or monsters show up to chew on them. While they rot it becomes unsafe to hang around them, except for paladins, who are immune to disease. Some diseases are just unpleasant, others will kill you if you let them progress. Strikes with weapons, including the party's, can deliver tetanus, and monsters' and animals' claws add rabies. Later I would install a Cure Disease option at temples, but this is not in yet here. The standard Animate Dead, the one that summons skeletons, is also present, called Skeletal Servitor, and it is a Summoning spell (from Hades). Priests get it automatically, wizards can buy scrolls. One feature already in so early is that animated undead, as well as summoned demons, must not be brought in sight of various policemen in towns, or they will sound the alarm on the party. Keep your horde out in the park. Again, all sorts of problems are possible with this mod and the others. I'm uploading two other modules in this early state. One is called "See No See." It was to revolve around vision vs. reality. I introduce disbelief there and illusion spells. I don't remember the exact changes, some of the elements later went on to be used for other mods. The best idea is to read spell descriptions for True Seeing, Dispel Illusion and similar spells. Invisibility detection works differently now. Disbelief is a mechanic that lets creatures, especially intelligent ones, see through invisibility and ignore certain spells, called Performance spells. There are some new spells in this category, but Mislead, Simulacrum are now also Performances. All spells of this type come with an explanation of the disbelief mechanic in the description. I intended to make a large number of these spells and let parties choose the career of traveling performers. Performances that aren't disbelieved will bring some XP and gold for the caster from neutrals around, and fans, happy and unhappy, may show up later to share their impressions. Outstanding performances may even convert enemies to neutrals. If you use Performances often on enemies, and don't kill them right away, but, say, avoid them or stun them, monster fans may also begin to appear, from the ranks of minotaurs and hags, and may teach the party something useful in gratitude (or do something less pleasant if they think the performance sucked). I think I have Blind Fighting for fighters there, too, and a bunch of new spells in stores. The alignment-detecting spells (Know Alignment, Detect Evil) now use a nine-color system. When they work on a person, instead of a message telling alignment there is a glow on a spectrum between blue (law) and yellow (chaos) and green (good) and red (evil). Lawful Evil, for instance, is purple. Check out the new implementation of paladins' Detect Evil, too. Only one attempt to discern somebody's alignment can be made in a day, though. The Oracle spell now also gives information about creatures, it was completely replaced. There is a wizard spell in this module that you can only get from the console. I was going to insert it in a quest but never got around to it. The spell is called Red Stone of Gingema and the item name is GINGEM_#. Another spell that may not be found in any store is ILLREX_#, Carafe River. Actually, you may have to look in the tp2 a lot and type scrolls from there. Although this is a working iteration of the mod, it was not meant for play and there may still be problems not eradicated by the time I stopped working on it. Here are some screenshots from there. This last screenshot is for a spell called Yesterday, which in "See No See" is a Performance. It is a form of time travel, discounted for being in the Illusion school. In the next mod, "The Space-Fun Continuum," Yesterday is also found - actually found for scribing - but as an ordinary spell. "Continuum" was developed later, when I realized how monumental a task it would be to develop the disbelief system and the artistic career fully. If you want Yesterday as a Performance, you should install "See No See" after "Continuum." Now, "The Space-Fun Continuum" is a sort of medley. It included items that ultimately went to "Adventurer's Miscellany" and special effect improvements that made it to "The Elements of Destruction" (including cone breath for winter wolves). I snipped off those parts here, because they are already obsolete. What remains is, first, the patch-based barrier spells. These are versions of Web, Entangle and Grease that work on a number of small patches of ground, where the caster wants a barrier, instead of going off as one huge explosion. This makes it possible to build accurate tactical obstacles - and thicker, too. The patch version of Web is called Arras, Entangle's is called Seething Furrows and Grease's is called Lardgesse. They also employed updated representation for webs, grease and tangles for the patch spells and the originals. There is also a new barrier-type spell called Thunder Hedge. This one, unlike the others, is hard to find. A wizard in BG1 somewhere has it as a scroll, and it may be extracted from the flesh of one of the monsters you will end up fighting if you go down to Durlag's dungeons. A wizard may be able to derive a formula from that chunk to scribe, and a sorcerer can absorb this power, too, directly, but not pleasantly. Secondly, there are phantom trees and their fruit. I won't spoil it with these much, just say that before you go to Cloakwood in BG1 it is a good idea to listen to rumors in Beregost or the Friendly Arm. And if you find yourself mysteriously stuck among boles in the forest, remember that the trees are illusionary creatures and, when not summoned by you, hostile, so everything that destroys enemy illusions will work against them (except dispelling). They can be damaged, too, but not attacked. Thirdly, the Ice Island in BG1 received some new stuff. Fourthy, there are two valuable books of magic now in BG1: one is Dradeel's spellbook on the Werewolf Island and the other is the book the ghost of Ulcaster asks you to find. If you let Dradeel rot in his hut and plunder the book yourself for magic, you can extract some unique spells from it, and you may be able to do that with Ulcaster's book also, if you want to risk it. It is very old, and the poor ghost needs it so. Decisions... But there is a reason why there are so few white wizards. In this line of work good guys finish last. One new priest spell will only appear in scrolls of non-lawful clerics. I don't remember what else this mod might have, keep your eyes peeled generally. I think after 20 years of sleepwalking through familiarity in BG it is a good idea for anybody. But I repeat, some spells in "Continuum" overwrite Performances in "See No See." That mod should probably be installed later than this one. I'm attaching two more archives with resources. "Uncommon Elements" is a mod that, in principle, installs, but not all of its spells work. Among those that do, Memory Window is for taking a snapshot of the game at any time, even in combat (a forced save); Turn Living is what it says; Portcullis creates a grate that can be raised and lowered to block a passage; Seeker calls down a worm from the stratosphere, anyway the resources are there; Voices of the Grass is a telepathic roll-call for druids; Heat Metal and Chill Metal are D&D traditionals; Galvanize Self and Other strike small nasty lightning bolts out of the caster or somebody else; Nystull's Magical Aura is supposed to change class to wizard for a while, for dialogues and such, but I never fixed it to work right; Sorcerers' Moon is a folder of resources for igniting a sinister glowing orb that will, that would, that could inspire and strengthen everyone not from this reality. There are some shoots of ideas here. "Crane" is a folder with a giant paper crane. I'm uploading these for enthusiasts who will, who would, who could complete them or use the resources for something of their own. The monster replacements are now a complete and problem-free mod - "Blink Dogs and Phase Spiders." See No See The Space-Fun Continuum Uncommon Elements

Well... This is to Fan... I deleted "Animate Dead Now" and another mod in the making from my computer. They were more or less the essence of my dreams, what's left of them. I deleted them because there is no point. They were mostly finished, though. "Animate Dead Now" was completed except for some extras, some new quests. I always must have extras... I deleted it, but if you like I can use a recovery program and try to bring back the files. It isn't very likely to work, I made many downloads to the hard drive since then, and recovery tends to bring out garbled files when that happens. But I can try, if you want, and upload it as-is if it is recoverable. And if not I can tell Endarire there the secret, and he can make one like that himself.

I don't know why it wouldn't be compatible with EET. And the order doesn't matter, dammit!

Install order doesn't matter, and especially not for this module. Think!

You get bottom-window messages. What more do you need than "Protection from Magical Weapons"?

I happened by the valley with the halfling village a couple of days ago and was struck by how half of the terrain is impassable. There is only a little accessible space down in the gullies, and most of the area is taken up by perfectly flat and green plateaus with no way up and not even walkable. Somebody ought to edit the search map there, because there is easily enough space on those flats for a couple of encounters, if the party goes up via Dimension Door or other means. This takes me back to thinking, on the Beamdog board, where quests and NPC could be placed in BG without crowding, say, Nashkel any more than it already is. One of the chief pleasures of BG is the wide spacing between happenings in pristine wilderness, and Gullykin is a prime candidate for virgin soil.

Hah, the other time the end wasn't definitive at all. Now I reimagined two more creatures and this is it. I'm finished with them.

You do realize that no modder can respond here, lest he appear to claim the laurels so lavishly bestowed?

@Endarire No, I'm done with modding! The last mod just went up. I feel so free!

Slightly improved and fixed 1. Summary 2. Compatibility 3. The golds and how they work 4. The new system: handouts in a pecking order 5. The budget review 6. Buying at stores 7. Getting others' gold 8. What they spend it on 9. What Charname can spend it on 10. Platinum and locked caskets: sold and bought everywhere 1. Summary. In Baldur's Gate 2 why do the companions of Charname allow him to scoop up all of the 15,000 gold pieces they all earned in dangerous adventuring and spend on a personal cause - either vengeance or rescuing a friend, where the money does not even bring the friend back but only buys transportation to the place the friend may be? Don't they have their own ideas for that plunder? Even Harper do-gooders like Jaheira could probably buy a number of people from slavery with that kind of money, or do something else with it. Yet they all obediently play Charname's little game and pour out their purses into a common pot from where he - really, the player, out of character - reaches with an exclusive ladle? Is this a role-playing game or a 5 year socialist plan? With this mod private property sets its iron heel in Faerun. Party characters will now split any gold found, awarded or obtained from buying items to fill their separate purses, with no privileges whatever for Charname. They are not necessarily selfish now, but they have purposes apart, and if Charname or another character wants someone else's money for a special purchase, he needs to persuade or intimidate the other character into agreement. This is not a hopeless proposition, but it is difficult. In conversations the speaking character only has his own purse, light or heavy, to set against any requirement to pay, and in the case of sailing to Byzantium, I mean to the asylum, someone in the party needs to have 15,000 gold of his own, or the journey will not happen. This character will, in effect, be bankrolling the expedition. What is more, the collector needs to hurry up with the gathering, or private purses will be emptied to buy improvements for their owners. Charname or indeed whichever party member wants to pay the Shadow Thieves so much should not be lazy or slow, otherwise the party may end up scouring Amn, looting the dungeons, doing the quests, and all of this wealth will be happily spent by the others, each on his own articles of interest. The BG2 premise is only an example, though. Whichever game the module is installed for, these interactions around money are going to happen often enough, especially when one of the characters feels he must absolutely bang together enough money for something expensive that is being sold, like a robe of an archmagi et cetera. They can be role-played in many ways. I made this mod because one of the main attractions of real, tabletop fantasy play is the winning of treasure. There are some games that do treasure more vividly and attractively than Dungeons&Dragons, like Stormbringer, but in D&D, too, coin is important, if rather abstract, and when money is won, it is split. Much of the satisfaction of victory comes from this, and contention also. What to do about a gemstone too expensive for local buyers? Who ought to carry it and for how long? And so on. This module goes some way towards recreating this interaction and making characters, in effect, act independently instead of being marionettes in a bland overhead-view wargame. This is not my dream system. Some features I hoped for were impossible, others had to be made very differently. For example, the Infinity Engine turned out to be incapable of simple division, so the original idea to distribute plunder in equal shares had to go. I resorted to a "pecking order" distribution, based on proximity to the party leader, but this turned out to be fun in its own right. 2. Compatibility. This module is only for the Enhanced Editions. I should also mention that because the class title on the character record sheet is the only place in the interface where additional information can be shown (by replacing the class name), other mods' custom class titles, given with the one and only available opcode, are going to be overriden. @DavidW provided some important code and gets my thanks. 3. The golds and how they work. First, a few words about the composition of the gold system in the Infinity Engine. In all these games there are actually three golds. First, there is the gold piece item, the one most often found on corpses, sometimes in chests. It is an item whose description pic, I bet, is rarely seen and whose drop-down sound has never been heard, because as soon as it is clicked, it disappears and a corresponding amount of units is added to the the party purse. Second, there are private purses of all creatures. These are usually empty, but companions come into the party with some chump change in them, and as soon as they join, they drop their quarters into the same party purse, which is very nice of them. When they leave or are ejected, they depart without claiming any portion of the budget, which is very nice of them also. A creature with gold in the private purse will drop all of it in the form of gold pieces upon dying. Finally there is the great and all-powerful purse of the party. This idealized pool can hold any amount of wealth without encumbrance or taking up any space in the inventory. This is the only "gold" that is considered by shopkeepers, and money for sold items increases the party purse. Quest rewards usually also flow into the party purse directly. 4. The new system: handouts in a pecking order. The new system changes the role, if not the functioning, of all three golds. The gold piece, in any amount, is now called Plunder. It represents discovered cash of all sorts pending for distribution in the party. As before, it will fill the common purse when clicked, but the six or fewer private purses are its ultimate destination. Private purses represent the money a character owns completely and can spend without restrictions. They are used to pay in conversations and to buy improvements. As for the party purse, it is now only a junction, the low table on which plunder and money gotten from anywhere is spread before it is sorted out to the characters. Whenever the size of the party purse reaches 100, distribution begins automatically, just not in a fight. Gold is handed out in 100-point installments: the party purse shrinks by 100 and the private purse of a character swells by the same amount. The party leader, who is not necessarily Charname, always gets the dibs. If there are more than 100 units in the party purse still, the next, second, character receives another hundred, then the third and so on down the line, restarting from the leader again when the tailing character in the party has received his share. This continues until nearly all of the party purse has been distributed. Money under 100 gold pieces remains there, to be added for distribution the next time. Because money always comes from the top, it clearly pays to roost up there. Not only is the party leader always privileged, but there is intentionally a slight delay in distribution for lower-rank (rather, lower-file) characters. When money is plentiful, the party's winnings number in the thousands and handout rounds flicker past, everyone gets a good share to enjoy, yet the top characters' is still somewhat better, and the characters in the end of the party fall behind considerably. This should create some interesting party mechanics, as everyone will "want" to be in the front positions at least when the roar of battle stops. Partly the trickle-down is deserved, because front positions tend to be more dangerous. This is no voodoo economics, though: when there is little money to go around, moving up may be the only way to snatch a hundred. Example: a party of six has sold a few swords and had picked up a little Plunder before and now unties the strings on 1350 gold in the party purse. This is enough for two complete distribution rounds, after which everyone would enjoy 200 gold for the private purse, if life were fair. But reality bites, not bidens, and the playing table is more likely to be skewed in favor of those on top. The leader will claim the final hundred as well. 50 gold will remain in the party purse until the next time. Had there been only two-three hundred to distribute, the underdogs would have had to climb up to get anything, and they will need to indeed if the party never earns big or makes only small and slow sales. All characters are entitled to a share except those who are dead or panicking at the time of the distribution. Even incapacitated, confused or held characters will still have the money set aside for them, but not cowards or corpses. Another way to exclude someone from participation is to seal him off in a bubble of Otiluke, where he can watch despairingly and bang on the force wall as outside yellow metal dances into others' palms. This can even be done to the leader, but, of course, requires involvement of a wizard. Distribution is generally fast, yet, for techical reasons, faster for a fuller party than a smaller one. With all this irregularity and jostling it is important to know just how much money everyone has ended up having. For this characters receive a special ability called Review Budget. If someone in the party does not have this ability, make another party member use it, and the first one will learn. 5. The budget review. This button will display the current size of private purses. The roll call also proceeds in the top-down order. On this screenshot it is displaying results that correspond more or less exactly to characters' position in the party. Xzar is higher and richer than Imoen, and Imoen is ahead of Ajantis. The party leader has already responded that he has got 1200 gold stashed. You should get a replacement font, too. The standard font is just ugly. The purse size is also shown on the character record screen. Don't be surprised that the sum is different, this is from another saved game. On the upper left is an unfortunate artifact of using the title for info display - the class name is replaced there also. Can you live with that? The inventory page likewise shows the purse size on top: Below you see a couple of other things: Plunder, the undistributed money on the right, and Gold - a special and separate item, to be discussed in a moment. The tokens on all these pages are not updated dynamically. You need to use the Review Budget ability to refresh information there. The messages will also be emptied on game load, use RB to fill the tokens in again. 6. Buying at stores. While the private purse is what counts for quests and dialogues, shopkeepers still look into the party purse. As soon as the party acquires any money, however, it will be spread out to personal use. How, then, is anyone to buy anything from a store? Here you need to give up on the notion of the player controlling everything that happens to this group of travelers from above the clouds, an "omnipresent authority figure" that thinks it has the right to pool everyone's resource and dispense them at whim. The characters are alive and real. Or they ought to be alive and real. They have their own plans and purposes, and likewise they don't have others'. You must give up on the idea of absolute necessity "for the group," because there is rarily such a thing, and think of necessity for each character. What does this character want to buy, for whom, why and how much does he need? Then proceed to direct this character to gather that much money out of his own private purse, which he can always do, and from the private purses of others, which is difficult. Money appearing in the party purse on the overhead map will be gone in a flash. This does not happen while the store screen is open. Therefore, you need to sell something of value without exiting the screen, enough for the needed amount to materialize in the party purse, draw on this resource for the purchases and leave. Gather things that store value: gems, wands, other expensive articles. Keep them on hand until it is trading time. The content of private purses can be entrusted to a character, just for the purpose of making important deals, ones that will benefit the whole party, in the form of conditioned money. Gold (the item above) is that conditioned money. It is only there to exchange for store credit, you are not allowed to use it for anything else, like making a payment in a conversation, nor can you stuff your own purse with it. To get store credit, get Gold and sell Gold. Yes, Gold can be sold. I will explain shortly how a private purse can be converted to Gold. Any store that buys anything will buy items in the "gold pieces" category. This includes Gold and Platinum. The normal price of 1 item of Gold is 2 gp, so in theory you get more than your money's worth, but in practice stores buy items at half price at best, hence 1 gp per 1 unit of Gold. Selling 1000 Gold will increase the party purse size by 1000. Still, there may be special stores and friendly merchants who will give a better price, and you can try to get more credit for your Gold there. Gold has no weight, but it does take up inventory space. One slot can hold up to 1000 pieces. 7. Getting others' gold. As already said, the Gold item represents money from a private purse given for the purpose of shopping. Naturally, it can be simply sold without buying anything, and then, exiting the screen, distribution will pick up and stuff the proceeds around the private rat holes. This is possible but isn't likely to benefit the character, unless he is very clever about party position and who will get how many hundreds. But how does a private purse's units become Gold? For this all characters receive a second special ability - Fundraiser. Fundraiser, another ability that characters can teach each other if need be, is on the left, Review Budget on the right. Used on oneself, Fundraiser always converts the character's private purse into Gold, but it is a matter of chance and persuasion with the others in the party. Good-aligned characters are the most willing to surrender their wealth but resist strongly requests from evil companions. Charisma helps to win them over. Neutral characters mildly resist everyone. The applicant's Charisma is also helpful. Evil characters strongly resist everyone and very strongly - good characters. Both Charisma and Strength can play a role, however. If a request is refused, this character will not countenance any more pleas for the next 12 hours (using the "long," 360-second hour measure). Fundraising becomes something of a minigame, as it may be better to involve another party member, with a different alignment and more influential statistics, in the asking to lower the risk. It may also become a race against the clock. Can money be squeezed out of the character before he spends it all? The most radical and sure way of getting the entirety of a character's private purse is to kill him. He will drop the contents on death - but only as Plunder, and the gold will be distributed among the remaining party members. Somebody will have to do the killing, of course, and that someone could be killed too to send his purse into lotto as well, and so on, with the remaining members' shares growing all the time, together with paranoia. "Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" or the Joker coming out of the bank robbery by himself, take your pick for allusions. What will not help to get the money is to kick the character out and have him rejoin. Private purses of characters are now emptied permanently when leaving the party. This could and should lead to situations when a troublesome or useless companion is retained only for the sake of the greenback-stuffed mattress he sleeps on, and the others look for ways to part the two. 8. What they spend it on. Adventurers don't simply stuff the world's value into private purses as bottomless as a bag of holding. They are not offshore capitalists. They do better: they spend their earnings on self-improvement. As soon as a character other than Charname gathers enough gold, personal upgrades become available. Characters are not in a rush to spend, and there is randomness in this, but if money is available, they will usually buy something in a matter of hours. What they can buy depends on their class. The following improvements are bought one at a time in the order that is written. The first improvement the character can afford and qualifies for will be bought. Arcane shortcuts: -1 to casting time. Wizard, sorcerer, bard. 5000. Rites of undertaking: +3 to turn undead level. Cleric. 4000. Acupunctual stabber: +1 backstab damage multiplier, up to x5. Thief. 5000. Street academy T: +10% to all thieving skills. Thief. 4000. Street academy B: +30% to Pick Pockets and +20 to Lore. Bard. 4000. Steadier hand: -1 to THAC0. 4000. Fighter, paladin, ranger. Hidden plating: -1 to AC. 3000. All classes. Multi-class and dual-class characters will pick abilities for all of their classes in the same top-down order. Thus, a fighter/mage/thief with 4000 gold in the purse will buy Street academy during this check but nothing when the next opportunity flutters by, unless he replenishes his private purse before. Because the Armor Class improvement is the cheapest and available to all, party members will almost always improve their AC when they have some money to their name. This is fine by them. But if they decide to gather money for a bigger improvement, fundraising will be in order. Money spent on improvements is permanently gone from the game world. A cleric buys Rites of undertaking: 9. What Charname can spend it on. Everywhere in this mod Charname is in exactly the same position as the other party members, with no special rights, except with regard to improvements. This is a little different between games. In Icewind Dale there is no protagonist, so all of the characters will make purchases at will - an original completely player-independent party. I don't think there is a mechanic quite like that in any game. In Baldur's Gate there is a protagonist who will instead receive the option to buy them from the Special Abilities bar. When money is available and the chance to improve comes about a message will be shown and buttons will appear on the bar. Clicking one will dismiss the others until the next time. Here are all of the improvements available for selection, an illustration. In reality no character is eligible for all of them at once, nor can there be two uses of an option (the screenshot is somewhat bugged). 10. Platinum and locked caskets: sold and bought everywhere. In addition to gems and other expensive items a strategically thinking character may want to keep for exchange ("We must get a better price for this necklace, a better price!") value can be stored as Platinum. These coins are worth 20 gold pieces each so that the party is guaranteed to get 10 gp at an ordinary store when selling. Many stores carry some number of these, and all stores that buy anything will buy them. Although one still loses money by investing in Platinum, these coins are not legal tender, like gold represented by Plunder, and can be kept in the inventory until they are needed without companions crying that they must get a share now. Locked caskets will also be found at many stores. These small boxes, which one must open first, contain random treasure, often platinum, and sometimes nothing. They are a lottery of sorts, but unopened they cost a fair bit for their light weight. They may be better suited for keeping around for when one needs something to get store credit, buy gear on the same screen and avoid the egalitarianism of Plunder distribution. Download

I'm making a small follow-up update.

So would I, and killing more people too. It's a shame how little killing there is to be done that isn't of the quest-ruining sort. But no DLG files in the game use that journal entry, and that must mean it was left unused.

No, that's not what I want... Okay, thanks.

The way to go about this is to give the character a special ability, preferably with Caster - keep spell instant casting and "Non-combat only." This ability will apply a Change bard song effect and summon an invisible minion with the following line in its script: ActionOverride(LastSummonerOf,BattleSong()). This will work exactly like a real bard's singing, stop with attacks and spells and so on. For variety one could begin the ability from the Select spell effect, loading a 2DA with different song spells to choose from.

I would like some, but not all stores carry a random quantity of a certain item for sale. Here is the code I'm using: COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~^.+\.STO~ ~override~ PATCH_IF (SOURCE_SIZE > 120) THEN BEGIN PATCH_IF (RANDOM (3 3)) THEN BEGIN PATCH_IF (RANDOM (4 4)) THEN BEGIN ADD_STORE_ITEM PLATIN_# LAST #0 #0 #0 ~NONE~ #74 LIMITED END PATCH_IF (RANDOM (3 4)) THEN BEGIN ADD_STORE_ITEM PLATIN_# LAST #0 #0 #0 ~NONE~ #53 LIMITED END PATCH_IF (RANDOM (2 4)) THEN BEGIN ADD_STORE_ITEM PLATIN_# LAST #0 #0 #0 ~NONE~ #38 LIMITED END PATCH_IF (RANDOM (1 4)) THEN BEGIN ADD_STORE_ITEM PLATIN_# LAST #0 #0 #0 ~NONE~ #12 LIMITED END END END BUT_ONLY There is randomness within randomness here. The first check should patch every third store, but within that selection I'm not sure about using RANDOM. There are three of these checks in a row with the same maximum number (range size), and hopefully the same roll will be used for them. That is my intention. I don't want separate rolls that would put different amounts of the item in the same shop. The reason I have this extra randomness is because, apparently, there is no way to insert a randomness in the "stock" parameter of ADD_STORE_ITEM. Ideally I would put a roll there between about 10 and 80 and let every store be different, but that doesn't seem possible, so there is an imitation here. But the results are wrong. All of the stores get the item and all of them get 74 pieces, even though this is the (RANDOM (4 4)) amount, the least common roll in the 4 range. Why is this? Is there a better way?

Another update. This one is really the last. I discovered that the body search I had made, AMB_D18, is completely ridiculous. I remixed it and made it palatable and cool. Also Indian percussion I made for fun is out for the tavern music, AMB_TAV, and the file now comprises three Irish tunes, looped about. As a 21 Mb file, it is a real and dramatic playlist.

This is an important update. Required if you intend to install the mod over Icewind Dale. However, there may still be a problem with starting new games in IWD. See in the first message up there.

I ran into a line in the first BG's TLK file, for the journal, about how the party must raid a caravan with or for the bandits to join them. But it's not something I've encountered myself. Was that something Bioware left out?