|
Speaking of containers, is there a mod that makes Bags of Holding/Scroll Cases etc genuinely infinite, or at least infinite for all practical purposes? That would be a nice QoL issue. While I'm not at all in real life except for buying too many digital games, which admittedly takes up little space, I'm a terrible RPG hoarder who saves everything. On another note, I wish that the BG games had more Potions of Regeneration. Those aren't worth much in fights, but they are fantastic for healing outside of fights when resting isn't possible or if one just doesn't want to abuse the game's permissiveness.
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 02:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 18:53 |
|
|
There's an option in EE tweaks to make all bags bottomless.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 02:06
|
|
|
So I recently looked into the state of Infinity Engine modding and boy loving howdy is it a hilarious hot mess right now. I gotta make an effort post about this. Forgive me. So, a brief history, from someone who was never involved in the BG modding scene and entered real late. In other words, I'll probably get some of this wrong. Baldur's Gate, extremely popular series that it was, and being in the PC and being a D&D-based RPG, always attracted people who went "ok but I bet I can add something better." Thing of it is, the Infinity Engine was really never built for modding, uh, in the slightest, so modding it involved lots of bad and dumb workarounds. It was extremely crude and primitive and, I'm sure someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, often involved literally just overwriting the game's files. In time, tools were made to help with that latter part, but at the end of the day, modding still mostly consisted of brute forcing poo poo. At the time, mods largely consisted of the three things Baldur's Gate fans loved most: over the top dumb "tactical" combat improvements, god-awful NPCs and romances with NPCs, and wholesale adding the most inane poo poo possible. A lot of these mods are real loving bad! Fast forward a bit, and an obsessive german dude - I swear to loving god there's one of these at the heart of every "older" PC game modding scene - named Westley Weimer starts making mods and decides that this brute force poo poo was dumb. He creates his own system of modding the Infinity Engine - WeiDu - and he's really into three things: The NPC Soulefain, those previously mentioned tactical mods, and making it so lots of mods can all work at once. The WeiDu system does wonders for IE modding. It adds a pretty robust language for implementing much bigger changes then was previously possible, allows existing game resources to be patched, and uses a scripting system for mod installation and uninstalling, meaning no more brute forcing through poo poo. Pretty drat quickly, absolutely everything converted to WeiDu. Lots nad lots of mods are being made, and guess what: a lot of them are still real loving bad! Now, I'm not sure on the timing here, but I believe this is where you get some of the more infamously terrible NPC mods, with the two shining stars being Saerileth, a mod focused entirely around romancing a fifteen year old paladin in the grossest and dumbest way possible, and Chloe, a horribly written kensai who reacts to absolutely everything and has everything react to her, and swiftly takes the role of Actual Protagonist while you end up their sidekick. But WeiDu still has one small bit of a problem: it can't really handle conflicts between mods that well. Oh, it handles it better then back when you were just overwriting the game files, but there's still plenty of problems. This is also when the m-m-m-megamod reigns supreme, as WeiDu allows people to make massive changes, and so, uh, they do, creating ungodly large mods with way too much poo poo in them. The standouts of this era are things like The Darkest Day and The Big Picture. This is also the time (I think) where you get Baldur's Gate TUTU (I dunno why it's named that) and Baldur's Gate Trilogy, which aim to literally combine the two games into one unholy engine so you can play through the entirety of the Baldur's Gate series in just one game. Fast forward a lot. WeiDu is prolific to the point where non-WeiDu mods really don't exist, there's a ton of mods and many of them are massive, and people start wanting to make it easier to combine them all, even if it's a terrible idea, or maybe especially because it's a terrible idea. Enter the Big World Project. Created by Leonardo Watson, the Big World Project is, at it's heart, a somewhat simplistic idea - it's a file that just goes through every loving Baldur's Gate mod possible and tries to fix conflicts and install them all in a semi-preset order to make them all work together. It's a bit shaky, and involves hilarious amounts of double-checking stuff in a pdf, and has absolutely no UI. Fellow goon Vorgen did an LP of this a few years back, and absolutely knows way more about this then I do. Some time after that, Big World Setup is created, which is...well, it's largely Big World Project, but with, you know, a UI. But that makes a huge difference, because now it's substantially easier to pick and choose which mods you want, meaning even if you're doing a relatively lite mod setup, it can still be worthwhile to use the Big World Setup to just automate most of it for you. In time, of course, Baldur's Gate gets bought up by Beamdog, who release the Enhanced Editions. There's a lot of shakeups when that happens, because some of those mods - and remember, we're talking poo poo from goddamn the year 2000 - are extremely old and barely functional, and the EE versions of the game require mods update. And so a long laborious process of updating begins. Mods are dragged out of archives, some are lost forever, some exist only in German (loving seriously Germany and these old RPGs I swear), it's a big thing. At the same time, the EE games introduce new players, which brings about new modders, learning the WeiDu system and using it to create their own new mods. At first thing are going pretty great, but more and more the Big World Setup shows it's age and gets creakier. It becomes harder to find some of those older or rarer mods, links get broken as Gibberlings 3 (which was at one point and possibly still is one of the biggest Infinity Engine modding communities, along with Spellhold Studios) rearranges it's site, you get the idea. That brings us to now, when things go batshit. So, the Big World Project / Setup has been in a bit of a state of disrepair for awhile. One modder, who goes by Roxanne, made a clone of Big World Setup aimed specifically at EET - Enhanced Edition Trilogy, a new version of Baldur's Gate Trilogy / TUTU for the Enhanced Editions - with a vastly slimmed down mod list that largely makes use of dropbox or other file storage locations instead of Gibberlings 3 to store copies of mods, naming it EE Mod Setup. This is somewhat needed because of how EET works - see, it requires any BGEE mods be installed before it gets installed, and then with BG2EE mods installed on top of that. You gotta order stuff kinda specifically. Roxanne becomes kinda prolific on different modding sites both for this and their NPC megamod, Sandrah Saga, which required a ton of work, meaning Roxanne is good at helping people with mods. Only, from what I can tell, that's all what's claimed to have been what was happening. In truth, Roxanne has been building EE Mod Setup to specifically focus around the Sandrah Saga, which, incidentally, is loving atrocious - like, Chloe levels of atrocious. It's also unreasonably large and involved a terrifying amount of work, jesus. From what I've seen, rather then just "keeping copies" of mods on dropbox and elsewhere, Roxanne has been stealth-editing those copies and basically taking them over, without ever asking the original modder's permission on any of it, with at least one modder flatly asking the copies of their own mod be taken down, and steadfastly ignored. Compounding this is the fact that Roxanne has gone full sock puppet everywhere they can, unleashing hordes of alternate accounts, having straight up discussion with themselves across these alts, sometimes to try and get people to use EE Mod Setup and Sandrah Saga, and other times just to let Roxanne flex on their modding knowledge. Like, posting "hey how do I do this" in an alt so the main Roxanne can come in and answer it. It's insanity. It's also insanity that you can't really avoid, because Big World Setup is, at least now, officially dead. There's a new mod to replace it called the Infinity Project, but where EE Mod Setup was a straight clone, Infinity Project is something different entirely - far more similar to Mod Manager for the Elder Scrolls game then a UI for a largescale mod combining and patching program. And Infinity Project is 1) very confusing, 2) doesn't work well with EET, and 3) is still in Beta. Where Big World Setup was made for non-modders, Infinity Project is extremely not made for the uninitiated or newbies to modding in the slightest, meaning if you want that kind of large scale multi-mod set up, or even just kinda want to play modded EET...you don't really have options beyond EE Mod Setup and the sheer batshittery of Roxanne. The whole thing is just a giant flaming mess, and god is it kinda hilarious?
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 11:11
|
|
|
The override folder doesn't really overwrite files, just is loaded last and can therefore make changes to the game. You are kinda mistaken on a few fronts there. Modding was technically supported, but the idea of game modding at the time was still pretty new and nobody had any idea of how to make it work, so compromises were made. This causes lists in 2da format being a norm and left the rest for the community to figure out. So, end result is that as long as you only ever install one mod touching a certain file, nothing outright breaks. Problem occurs when multiple mods start messing with the same files, such as the same dialog file or the same 2da. These games are 25 years old, back when modding was basically people making doom wads in notepad. It's a bit much to expect them to have the experience of all games leading into the modern era, most of which still do not have modding figured out and are still piles of incompatible messes. Like, have you seen Minecraft modding? If you aren't using a big smart pack deal, you are likely to break the game with constant crashes.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 11:37
|
|
|
BG Tutu = To two, in that it runs BG and BG:TotSC in the BG2 engine but still as a seperate game. This is distinct from Trilogy which piles them all into one .exe
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 12:16
|
|
|
Mordaedil posted:These games are 25 years old, back when modding was basically people making doom wads in notepad. It's a bit much to expect them to have the experience of all games leading into the modern era, most of which still do not have modding figured out and are still piles of incompatible messes. It's not really surprising that modding IE games is a clusterfuck, what's surprising is that any of it works as well as it does.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 12:58
|
|
|
Was curious what happened to Weimer, and  http://eecs.umich.edu/eecs/about/articles/2019/weimer-icse.html
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 13:03
|
|
|
It kinda stinks that BWP as we know it is dead because the last reinstall I did, BWP made life very easy.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 13:04
|
|
|
Goa Tse-tung posted:Was curious what happened to Weimer, and Quoting because that deserves it: quote:Patch fixes will always be a fact of life in software development – no program is perfect, and some of the largest industrial software products have millions of use cases to account for that no amount of testing can cover.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 13:33
|
|
|
Oh, I know. Two of the NPC mods out there for the Baldur's Gate series are mine.  There were some very talented modders out there even during the community's prime, and I know of one who got recruited to work at Beamdog on the Enhanced Editions, and one who now works at Blizzard doing UI work. There were also a lot of deeply socially maladjusted and just plain weird people, and these groups overlapped a lot. But funnily enough, those two I mentioned were among the most organized and sociable of the community, and least weird. They were also both gay, come to think of it.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 13:42
|
|
|
Someone needs to do a BG playthrough with the Sandrah Saga installed, it's so bad that it gives Saerileth a run for its money. Excellent write-up, ProfessorCirno!
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 13:47
|
|
|
Yeah so I wanted to play modded EET a while back and did use Roxanne’s installer to install it. Actually using it was, like you said, very easy for someone who can follow basic instructions but has not BG modding experience. I installed basically everything that was compatible in order to get a “kitchen sink” experience, including Sandrah. And yeah, it’s loving bad and I can very much believe the person who made it must be crazy. I haven’t played it in over a year now, but what I remember (before I gave up on that install due to instability lol) - Sandrah appears literally at the beginning of the game in Candlekeep on important business with Gorion and joining you along with Imoen - She is literally the daughter of Elminster - Her class is some custom made cleric of Mystara that gets wizard abilities as it levels - There’s a semi-mandatory romance component with frequent explicit sex scenes - Sometime in Chapter 2 you go to Elminster’s house in Waterdeep? It’s an entirely new city as far as I can tell, appeared to be the size of Baldur’s gate? I quit around here so I don’t know more. It was technically impressive but also loving bonkers and frankly embarrassing to play.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 14:34
|
|
|
Sounds about right. Solaufien, Saerileth, the Imoen Romance? All very technically impressive mods, but Jesus Christ. Coincidentally, none of those modders are the ones who went to work at Beamdog or Blizzard.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 14:45
|
|
|
Cantorsdust posted:- She is literally the daughter of Elminster Well that'd make for an awkward romance. My bhaalspawn is ALSO an estranged offspring of Elminster. He's the mother though. Drizzt is the actual father. A forbidden love consummated during Elminster's stint as a woman.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 14:55
|
|
|
Tin Can Hit Man posted:Well that'd make for an awkward romance. My bhaalspawn is ALSO an estranged offspring of Elminster. That's really not that implausible. There's a novel called Elminster's Daughter about how Elminster has a lot, a lot of daughters.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 15:00
|
|
|
Calls to mind our semi-official rules at Spellhold Studios when I was a moderator and modder there concerning mods asking for hosting: 1. No rape, of or by the NPC. 2. No underage characters. 2a. For God's sake no romance with underage characters. 3. No incest. 4. No Bhaalspawn. 5. No stats above natural limits for the race. 6. No forcing dialogue options or actions for the player (do-this-or-I-leave is fine, as long as you have the option to say no, bye). 7. No killing Bioware NPCs. 8. No unique class/kit. 9. No spoiling plot events (i.e. knowing that Yoshimo is working for Irenicus or that Imoen is a Bhaalspawn). 10. No personal items stronger than anything the player can reasonably obtain (nothing as powerful as the ring of gaxx or carsomyr, for example, much less anything stronger).
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 15:07
|
|
|
Yeah, I've used the EE Mod Setup thing and it works about as well as any of this stuff works, but there's definitely a subtle undercurrent of everything being built around the Sandrah Saga (though you certainly don't have to install it, it's just kind of what all the default choices are built around). Oh well, part and parcel of modding appears to involve people who do good work but who also you never ever want to interact with directly if at all possible.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 15:15
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:7. No killing Bioware NPCs. What, for companions or in general? Edwins amulet breaks rule 10 and kicks rear end. Most of those rules I agree with except the three above that just beg for an exception if done well. Granted most probably arent done well, but still
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 15:48
|
|
|
Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:What, for companions or in general? Edwins amulet breaks rule 10 and kicks rear end. Exceptions like Edwin we grandfathered in - see also Kagain and Coran in BG1 breaking rule 5. These three rules were some of our most common reasons to shoot down a mod, honestly. Rule 7 in particular. It's shocking how many people seem to have a homicidal hatred of Anomen and Nalia, and make mod NPCs who will straight up kill them with no input or response from the PC. I had fun with rule 9 when writing Valerie. If you choose to tell Valerie about your Bhaalspawn dreams and powers before you know what they really are, she'll do some research and thinking, and a while later tell you what she thinks is going on. She's completely wrong about what's happening to you and the source of your powers.
Cythereal fucked around with this message at 15:59 on May 20, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 15:53
|
|
|
Arivia posted:That's really not that implausible. There's a novel called Elminster's Daughter about how Elminster has a lot, a lot of daughters. I mean, what's the point of making my Mary Sue self-insert if I can't at least make their existence plausible?
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 16:40
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Calls to mind our semi-official rules at Spellhold Studios when I was a moderator and modder there concerning mods asking for hosting: It speaks poorly of my taste in playing bad mods that I can readily think of examples of all of these despite not having touched BG in 5 years and probably not completed a playthrough for well over 10. The big three of Imoen/Saerileth/Chloe pretty much cover it though I suppose.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 16:47
|
|
|
Willie Tomg posted:Speaking as someone who played the originals to death, and was expecting to like the EE, I was floored by how much I loved it. Being able to zoom in and out is excellent. The quick-loot bar is excellent, the maps are updated with waypoints that point out most things you're gonna care about, the UI is comprehensibly designed, and while Siege of Dragonspear is a very uneven experience it's overall a superb introduction to "tier 3" play to borrow a term from D&D 5e. Listen to this dude, he knows what’s up. BG EE series is the best poo poo.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 18:49
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Calls to mind our semi-official rules at Spellhold Studios when I was a moderator and modder there concerning mods asking for hosting: Pretty sure Sandrah breaks every single one of those rules too. Well 1 and 2 I'm not entirely sure about, but the rest definitely. Might explain why people are a bit reluctant about the author's BWP replacement.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 19:09
|
|
|
It’s hilarious and sad that those rules had to be made formally.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 19:14
|
|
|
Private Speech posted:Pretty sure Sandrah breaks every single one of those rules too. Well 1 and 2 I'm not entirely sure about, but the rest definitely. I can personally confirm Sandrah at least breaks rules 6, 8, 9, and 10. Maybe 5 but I don’t remember her stats. That reminds me she also gets a number of specially enchanted items including an overpowered NPC only war hammer.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 19:16
|
|
|
What makes this truly hilarious is that, from what I can understand, by all accounts, Roxanne actually is a very talented modder on the mechanical side of things. Their BWS fork does work, and works well (it was grabbing that, installing Sandrah on a whim without looking it up, quitting almost immediately on being given a hilariously OP longsword, and looking into it that had me find all of this), and as batshit and terrible as Sandrah Saga is, it's got a *lot* of hard work behind it. So they got really good at knowing how to make mods, and used that knowledge to do...this. Not just the madness and terribleness of the Sandrah mod, but also just the sheer insanity of all the sock puppets. There was a thread I found on the Beamdog forums that had nine consecutive posts that were just all Roxanne alts talking to each other.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 20:10
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:What makes this truly hilarious is that, from what I can understand, by all accounts, Roxanne actually is a very talented modder on the mechanical side of things. This was pretty common when I was active in the modding scene. Saerileth, for example? Genuinely brilliant and well executed from a technical perspective, and the other mods by the same authors (a husband and wife duo in Japan) - Tsujatha and Yasraena - were similarly very well executed mods, if smaller and less involved than Saerileth. Imoen Romance, too. I was one of the mod's proofreaders before I knew how insane it was (and I was expecting it to go 'we're not really related, let's sweep that under the rug'), and it's a huge mod that involved a lot of hard work that did some really complicated and nifty bits of scripting to get everything working. There was another modder named Lava del'Vortel who was similarly batshit - he made the Colors of Infinity mod among others - and likewise very talented and put huge amounts of work into what he was doing. Sure, he sexually harassed one moderator at SHS so hard she left the community entirely and was generally a crazy person, but still. Chloe, fortunately, has no such pedigree. And yes, she was written by a guy.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 20:15
|
|
|
poe2 has the capacity for dialogue modding. and there are a couple expanded romance mods for rekke and aloth out there. but alas it seems the golden age has passed..
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 20:24
|
|
|
Haha it's nice to know that nothing at all has changed in the BG modding scene since the days when I used to post on the forums for the predecessor to SHS.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 20:42
|
|
|
Zane posted:poe2 has the capacity for dialogue modding. and there are a couple expanded romance mods for rekke and aloth out there. but alas it seems the golden age has passed.. "Golden" age referencing piss, right?
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 20:46
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:At the time, mods largely consisted of the three things Baldur's Gate fans loved most: over the top dumb "tactical" combat improvements Properly configured sword coast stratagems > vanilla, no one will convince me otherwise
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 20:48
|
|
|
What "tactical" mods do is remove options that work, forcing you into (usually) one specific path to victory. Like (ab)using Carsomyr in every fight. Not every party should be minmaxed, not every random fight needs to be balls hard and take an hour to complete. It's ok for gnolls to just be gnolls.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 21:10
|
|
|
So I just finished watchers keep after getting done with the underdark (think I went too early and messed up the TOB experience - never gotten this far and usually just played BG1). The whole spell protection bullshit is annoying and combat feels like a horrible slog now, compared to what it was at levels 7 - 14 or so.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 21:24
|
|
|
Zarfol posted:So I just finished watchers keep after getting done with the underdark (think I went too early and messed up the TOB experience - never gotten this far and usually just played BG1). Welcome to high level Baldur's Gate, it only gets worse from here. I pretty much never play through TOB. Watchers Keep is my only post-game expansion content and I legit like it as a dungeon and a challenge, but the rest of TOB is a massive slog and a generally kind of lovely story This post is also the perfectly timed rebuttal to the poster above who said that SCS > vanilla because no it is definitely not, it just extends the slog down to like level 12.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 21:42
|
|
|
Even high level D&D and Pathfinder tabletop is a slog. There’s just certain stuff you are expected to always do to counter other stuff you are just always expected to do and it takes a long time.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 22:04
|
|
|
The primary value of Keldorn is specifically as a Dispel-bot so you can crap all over those encounters.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 22:11
|
|
|
Willie Tomg posted:The primary value of Keldorn is specifically as a Dispel-bot so you can crap all over those encounters. SCS has some bad news for you there in the form of automatically cast, obnoxiously well overlapped spell protections voiceless anal fricative fucked around with this message at 22:46 on May 20, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 22:40
|
|
|
bike tory posted:SCS has some bad news for you there in the form of automatically cast, obnoxiously well overlapped spell protections My patience with SoD dropped dramatically when I tripped a cutscene for a fight and the mage had a contingency that triggered 6/7 defensive spells immediately. When your own Mage(s) have to use high-tier spell slots exclusively for debuffing, the whole spellcasting side of the game just turns into basic algebra with graphics.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2019 23:54
|
|
|
SCS is almost exclusively for the people who want to play the combat portions like another expert level player aka GM is running the opposing sides. Mage battle? PC uses True Sight a lot so pre buff that negates True Sight then spam illusion spells that can't be beat unless the mage has the one single spell to dispel that specific protection and none others. Enemies setting up ambushes, using potions, wands, traps, targeting mages first etc. I could understand, min maxing mages for ultimate annoyance is not fun.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2019 00:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 18:53 |
|
|
SCS has a lot of granular difficulty settings, especially for mages. For instance you can turn pre buffing off, or toggle whether or not you still want mages to cast things that you're immune to, etc. What I liked about it is that you can buff the junk encounters to be a challenge and leave the already challenging encounters alone. It also included plenty of stuff to make your party stronger too so a healthy combination of buffs for you and the enemies made for the best experience imo
MMF Freeway fucked around with this message at 01:00 on May 21, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 21, 2019 00:56
|
|