temnix

It is mastarea.2da.

Does anybody know how simulacri's items are made undroppable? I need the same quality for my character. They receive two local variables, BDAI_INIT_ITEMS and BDAI_DISABLE_ITEMS, but setting those by hand for party members does not do anything.

The area I'm creating, having copied over and altered the files of an indoor place, is supposed to have weather. In fact, it has weather when I start rain there with a script, and "Outdoor" and "Weather" are both on. The storm howls, thunder rolls somewhere, only no streaks of water whip the expectant characters with their tongues stuck out. Just what Australian rituals am I supposed to dance here, sirrah?

Because simply copied the TIS appeared only as a gray shape on black, a geometric blot. And the only files that are listed in connection with an area are ARE, WED and TIS.

I would like to make a custom area, and one in BG2(EE) looked like the right place to copy. I took its ARE, its WED, and, this being for the Enhanced Edition, I exported its TIS as PNG, then carried these files to a different computer, with an installation of BG:EE, the first game. I renamed the files to refer to each other, then coverted the PNG to a "PVRZ-based MOS." Everything seems in place. The area looks cogent in the editor. But characters won't travel to this place from the console - nothing happens. What am I missing? Plus, conversion produces a MOS file with a standard name, MOS... and some zeroes, not including the custom name of the area or the original name. It looks like every conversion is going to produce a file with this name, which obviously creates a big compatibility problem, if I include it. So what gives?

So, it was known. Just not to me. All right. Has anyone made a mod with ready fog? That thread is about experimentation with this feature. Making green fog for some place may be handy, but I would like to see this weather type in my normal areas. Hopefully spreading in a natural manner.

Rangers are warriors, though, not mystics. What are their powers, dual-wielding and a dog? I think I have an idea for a kit, but I'm not going to make it. I want to finish other stuff.

@Endarire That's the way Spellhold is, on and off. This place is more stable. And if the world sinks, why should my little hut stand? Besides, the files aren't here, everything is hosted in the cloud. There are only mod descriptions and links here. You install the rays by putting the files in override.

Contrary to belief, the fog weather type has been implemented. Fog can be made to appear in Enhanced Editions with effect 320, type 4 - I can't vouch for the weather-changing script action. Fog requires entries in FOGPT.2DA, however. I tried "50 50 100 100 100 100" and it began to come in as uneven clouds, some crescent-shaped, moving altogether too fast. Someone should experiment with the values and achieve a natural look and spread.

That's a fair point, but I'm not dreaming about this kit. I'm trying not to. I have other things to finish, and this is simply something that would round out my next mod nicely. It's all the same to me what these bad rangers would be like, so long as they were a counterpart for blackguards, sincerely bad. So anybody who decides to take up this idea, in any fashion, and makes a mod, can write to me, and I'll add compatibility with it in my next mod, about reputation. "Animate Dead Now" will be made, yes. All of the mechanics have been in place for a long time now, but there are many extras and miscellany to finish. The next mod will be a vacation from that.

No, the peasants of Heroes II were the ultimate. In the next game they tried to make them simply weak, but in Heroes 2! They were perfect skeleton stock, though.

The kit I would like to see should be really evil, not just traumatized. Like I said, one could move the concept either towards something practical, like a poacher with some traps, poison and ettercaps or spiders for allies, or spiritual, a sort of defiler type. There is another good Magic card with a representative sense of loss and devastation, Ashes to Ashes.

People who make kits should sit down at a rangers' equivalent of paladins' blackguard. Call him defiler or devastator, maybe, or destroyer. Or poacher. Can take him one way, can take him another. But rangers can fall just as well as paladins, quite well even with this engine's mechanics, only there is no counterpart. Both white and green are enemies of black, and both can turn into black. Abilities might include poison, traps, turning animals into monsters or summoning them, a werewolf change for himself, an aura of corruption, an alignment change to evil for an ally. Summoning insects. Some inspiration from the dark side of nature. I could use a kit like that for an upcoming mod. That one has to do with reputation, losing it, gaining it, falling, rising, and it would be good to go the fully monty, not only with paladins but with rangers. But I haven't made kits, and I'm busy with the other stuff.

You are forgetting cyclops. And self-ribboning mummies. And liches with the hand-thrown gray ball of bad magic (liches in Heroes 3 are good too, but that poison cloud takes too long, in my opinion.) And cavalry clonk-clonking across the battlefield? And crusaders with their enormous swords (katana-shaped, by the way) clanging with every step, plumes flying? And titans... And peasants... with their mighty stats. Do you remember peasants' stats in HoMM2? But there weren't any sphinxes.

It's nice to see the old Heroes. I'm not going to say anything about the maps, it's just nice to see them.

Yes, I kind of had the same thought last night. But thanks anyway. Can this be done automatically for every trigger in every area?

The file REPUTATI.2DA has columns of actions that can be penalized and rows of current reputation. At the crossing are the effects. I would like to rewrite a few columns: KILL_INNOCENT, INJURE_INNOCENT and some farther one the right, the ones that have to do with killing guards, but without changing the rest. If I REPLACE_TEXTUALLY entire rows, I'll have to do away with changes that other mods might have introduced to, say, stealing penalties, donation values and so on.

Is it possible to make them display their strings in the bottom window instead of as floating text? Floats are disruptive.

I think the main question when you think about compatibility with the new engine is, am I going to permit installation of my mod on a EE or am I going to make the mod with EE in mind? Because the number one difference is in effects and script actions that exist for the new engine but not for the old. If you don't intend to use them and basically make an old-style mod, then the other advice here is good for you, and you just need some installation tweaks for Weidu. If you do want those features, then the whole table turns and you must announce in your mod's description that EE is required, and then you are free to look in the G3 guide for the EE sections and draw directly from there. You can look up string numbers in Near Infinity for BGEE as well, the only eventuality you should take heed of is installation on an Enhanced Edition Trilogy. For that you'll need separate sections in the tp2 file with !GAME_IS ~eet~ and GAME_IS ~eet~; Trilogy strings have the original numbers + 200000, and Trilogy areas for the first game start with "BG" instead of "AR," so you'll need to decompile and patch all of your dialogues and scripts that refer to areas. Other than this, you can look directly in Near Infinity and use all of the latest Weidu features. There is no point even to keeping a "classic" game installed in that case.

@Endarire Is this board going away? Why upload everything somewhere else? I might make a website with my mods, but the links will probably be to topics here. To copy everything and duplicate all of the screenshots is too much work. And all of my mods are listed in my profile. For beholders, if you want to know, I thought of giving every power a special ray. I had one for disintegration made. Come to think of it, it should be possible to make beholders fire all of their rays at once in the same round, which is how it is in Pen-and-Paper. But - let somebody else do it. Install order, you ask? You mean, for my different mods? It doesn't matter, they are pretty independent. Except in "Out, Brief Candlekeep!" one NPC dropped a bottle of wine, that was a sort of preview and early version of wine that's sold at inns in "Adventurer's Miscellany," which will overwrite it.

I felt like doing some more recoloring. This will really be final. The head message was updated.

@DavidWNo, I didn't notice that one. Should be okay now. Thank you. By the way, do you know if it's possible to copy a file over into override while playing? The TIS file. Would that change presentation of an area already in the GAM file?

I'm thinking of a changing an area so that it displays to the party in a completely different and confusing way, a sort of challenge raised against them by a sorcerer. And the area happens to be perfect for it, with unpredictable passages, rooms, gaps, dangerous enemies. All of that will seem to be tossed about, and it should be a lot of fun to try to navigate through that. But I'm kind of sorry to lose the impression this area would make in its proper form, and the NPC around, some of whom I edited myself. I would like to have my cake and eat it too: put some sort of magical plug or NPC to talk to or item that would restore the area to normalcy, and then the party would enjoy the proper sight of the rest of it. But by that point the ARE file and its WED would already be in the GAM file, so there will be no playing the area from scratch... I have a couple of solutions in mind: 1) present the jumbled area as "unreal," add some glows, then, when the trigger is found and activated, the party will be taken to the ordered, "real" version of the area to play through. Making a whole place an illusion is not desirable, though, the relevance and impression that end up conveyed are, as Donald Trump would say, weak. Besides, if the "real" area is a copy of the original, the NPC will be redundant, along with their quests, conversations, items they carry; 2) make a "real" version of the area, empty, then, when in the first area the plug is pulled, transport everyone from there to corresponding points in the "real" version. Can this be done? Or possibly I could script NPC in the "real" area to destroy themselves if their counterparts in the jumbled area have died. Suggestions?

Yes... I was looking for a way to remove my own internal spell, though, nothing so involved as all that. But it's all right, I found a workaround.

@DavidW I did it, and when I put the PVRZ files that resulted in override, the area showed the change - only the tiles were a-jumble, all over the place! This gave me a great idea about a level challenge, but still, the proper arrangement takes some file with instructions about putting the tiles together.