Hello sufflaminandus! First of all, I'm long time player but only recently tried my hand in an actual mod creation, so some things are not known to me as well. Here is, however, what I know.
 

1. What is your favorite approach in creating creatures (specifically people)?

Whenever possible I'd create from nearest similar vanilla creature (or rather vanilla + BG2Fixpack). Specifically for people I'd advice to create a character ingame first, but you already know that.
 

2. How do ability modifiers get applied and how are they displayed in the NI.

NI shows base numbers before modifiers from characteristics are applied. That's 100% true for AC/Dex and for HP/Con. I was unable to come up with a simple enough test for THAC0 because I'm not sure how to check for base THAC0 ingame (whether the amount displayed in the character screen would be influenced by being a fighter with zero stars in unarmed), but I fully expect it would generally work in the same way.
Note though, that there's two fields for AC in cre file: to my tests only "effective AC" affect creature ingame, setting its base AC (counter-intuitive, I know).
 

3. Effects: is there are some tutorial about effects?

Sadly, no, I miss one dearly myself, especially in regard of targets/durations. For example I was unable so far to create an item with "while equipped" effect where the effect itself is provided through opcode 146 "cast spell". There's a trick to learn a bit on your own through observation: in NI open any effect, change the actual effect field to the effect you're interested in, and do a search for selected attribute. This will give you all instances where this effect were used, and you'll be able to learn what settings were set to attain this or that implementation of effect in question.
 

 
4. I created kensai lvl 12 and converted it to created to .CRE. When I open it I see a whole bunch of effects that (as I understand) emulate kit bonuses: x4 increase THAC0 (278), x4 increase damage(73), x4 increase speed factor(190). But there are some very confusing moments:
a) Why each THAC0 and damage effect increases corresponding stat by 1 ('value' field) but speed factor increases incrementally 1,2,3,4 ('amount' field)?
b) It's logical to assume that only last of the speed factor effect gets applied, but how is it implemented? As plausible explanation I discovered that only last of the effects has coordinates set to valid values but then why all of the THAC0 and damage effects works properly? I mean that both THAC0 and damage effect has coordinates set only in the last effect too so, consequently, I would expect to see +1 bonus in game and not + 4.
c) Some questions about "Target" field in effect structure. Specifically: when should I use "None (0)", why "Preset target (2)" is used for above effects and not "Self (1)" and what is "Self (1)" then.
d) Why MODIFYPROFICIENCY is "None (0)" and is it applied in runtime (its bonuses to THAC0, damage, etc)?
e) What is "Used internally" field?

a) & b) I've re-created kensai lvl12 chr -> cre, and for me amount in each case of opcode 190 set to 1. Also I only got 3 opcodes 190 which is correspondent with "for every 4 levels" description while you mention 4. Can it be that you did something wrong?
c) & d) I wish to knew that as well Experiments and testing is your best friends to get the desired effect, and dissecting other mods can help, but fundamental knowledge of targeting and duration options of effects would be of huge help if anyone care to write an essay on that Modify Proficiency is permanent, but the impact of that permanent effect is indeed applied runtime per wspecial.2da.
e) Huh? Can you elaborate?
 

5. Do I have to add all the memorization info (7 priest levels, 9 wizard, etc) even for non-casting creatures?

Of course not, why would you?
 

6. So in the end I need to create enemy kensai creature. Do I emulate kensai bonuses via effects or do I hardcode it into stats, if possible? Looking through game creatures I see that hardcoding is a go-for method but I still want to hear it from experienced people.

You can go either way, really, but creating kensai ingame and then turning it to cre is simpler in that you won't have to count how much of which bonus is appropriate for given level: the game will do it for you. Just don't forget to remove any protagonist innate abilities in case you originally created him in singleplayer or the 1st slot of multiplayer.
 

7. My Ray NPC is assassin so I based it upon Yoshimo creature file. When I studied yoshi10.cre I noticed that innate profession skills are not memorized but he still has them in the game. Why/How?

Engine provides these ingame: notice how when you join Yoshimo the engine says "Yoshimo - Special Snare: Yoshimo". That's because before that, as a creature, he didn't have those, which is consistent with your observation. See here to learn which abilities are applied and how, and you'll know what you had to apply/recreate for your creature.Sorry I forgot you're making an NPC, not an enemy creature. You won't be needing that for an NPC, the game will sort it itself.

I re-created kensai too and I still get the same effects ... I have BG2EE.

No, you did everything exactly as I did. Well I must say I know nothing about EE so perhaps, improbable as it may be, EE changes opcode 190 from cumulative to non-cumulative. However, let's first look at all options. If you use the link I gave you you'll learn that abilities of kensai are governed by clabfi04.2da. In my case (classic engine) attack speed improvement (opcode 190) is applied via spcl143.spl, which is listed in said clabfi04.2da as being applied at levels 1, 4 and 8 (and level 13 further which makes the whole progression inconsistent but whatever), that's why lvl10 kensai should have 3 instances of opcode 190 applied, and since it's the same spell applied 3 times it just can't have different numbers set to "amount" field. Does that implemented in the same way so far for EE?

 

It's just every humanoid creature in the game has all memorization info set, even when they can't cast spells at all. Well, I guess, it is some side effect copy-paste during original development.

Most probably. Still, what kjeron said - for EE he has 1st hand knowledge (for classic too, I reckon, but he mainly answers with EE in mind), so if he say add memorisation you add memorisation Or just don't bother and "cheat" with ReallyForceSpellRES("spcl144",Myself)

I think OP was referring to that [D/L] button right under forum name: it was broken indeed, so I fixed it. Thank you for the report SkeleTony!

If you reinstall with (almost) any changes to mod and component selection or install order, then your old saves are useless. If you plan to install with no changes at all it will work, but what is the benefit?

Hello all. I feel like I am posting issues way too much here.

Not to worry, this IS place for questions

All items in TDD are not droppable.

Like, ALL all items? Even mundane/quest/not-owerpowered? Then this should not be the doing of a balancer of any kind. Not sure what causes it though.

It is with great pleasure we are announcing latest shiny BGT release, which is another update over recent v1.19, done again thanks to the tireless efforts of CamDawg! This new version contain fixes to reported bugs of 1.19, insight into original developers' intent and leftover fixes from the Big World Fixpack.

Changelog:

Installation changes

• Fixed bug where a typo in the 1.19 music fixes could prevent installation of the music pack (thanks to Salk and Lunareon)

Incorporated the following fixes from the Big World Fixpack

• Typo fixes (thanks to Salk)
• Fixed systematic bug where NPCs leaving the party would often use the wrong dialogue or just not leave, especially when they were leaving due to reputation/alignment conflicts (thanks to Lunareon)
• Cloak of the Nymph could be sold for 40x its value due to a charge issue (thanks to Lunareon)
• Fixed bug with Candlekeep missing its patrolling guards (thanks to Skellytz)
• BGT was following Fixpack's lead in removing Zone of Sweet Air from Jaheira and Holy Smite from Viconia sue to class/alignment conflicts. However, Fixpack has since confirmed with the devs that these are intentional, and as such BGT now leaves them in place (as does Fixpack)

 

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Please note that hitting Download button will lead you to the choice of downloading BGT 1.20 for Windows, Linux or OsX.

Russian version attached. I've even managed to make sure it's in ANSI

One thing though - I have no idea what is official translation for Graveyard District to Russian, so unless someone could let me know chances are there will be mild discrepancy about that

how do I "Hide" a post so that the Weidu.log does not take up 50 pages here in the forums, please? 

Oh sorry, just noticed your previous question! Use [s.poiler] and [/s.poiler] tags (without dots of course)

That is weird. Your cre doesn't have effect #293 attached, so at this point I can't really say why does it function off screen. Unless you are making your NPC for EE and EE changed all scripts to run in the background by default (wild guess, I have no idea how EE works). BTW I find it most convenient to check stuff like this with Near Infinity, though Infinity Explorer would handle that too. Not so sure about ShadowKeeper, haven't used that for like 10 years. Still, whatever the reason for that offscreen behaviour, you could curb it by putting See(Player1) among the triggers of your dialogue initiation script snippet. Wouldn't hurt to refine his targeting as well so that he wouldn't try to chat with Viconia. Something like that:

IF
   See(Player1)
THEN
   RESPONSE #100
      StartDialogueNoSet(LastSeenBy())
END

Unfortunately your script afslay.bcs can't be checked unless you attach that too so this is just a general idea.

Hard to say anything without seeing your scripts.

 

Also, it's not precisely clear from your description does your NPC starts walking even when he is outside of the visual range of the party?

Regarding scripts: can you also attach your NPC's scripts, all of them? Your area script looks just fine.

 

Regarding walking offscreen - there's effect #293, it might be called "Enable Offscreen AI" or "Set Persistent AI" or something along these lines depending on what utility you use to check your .cre file. Do check if you accidentally had this effect attached to your .cre?

We are happy to announce that NPC Interaction Expansion Project (IEP), a grand endeavour to uplift non-romancing relationships with Bioware NPCs to the high quality standards set by modern mods in regard of depth and complexity, has been expanded once again now adding Valygar to its fold.

 

An old La'Valygar project got revived, enhanced, edited and renamed by fluke13, Lava Del'Vortel and Jastey, turning into a full-fledged Valygar Friendship.

With this mod installed, you should be able to experience up to 12 dialogues in SoA and up to 5 dialogues in ToB. Note that the mod has changed greatly when compared to its previous incarnation. The most prominent changes from La'Valygar project are additional proofreading and editing, new talks, and improvements to the old ones.

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@temnix
One more post anyone (me including) find impolite will be your last post on this forum. Just letting you know.

No. As far as I remember at some point BWS will ask you to provide manually mods it can not download. At this moment for each mod you'll had to manually point BWS to a downloaded version, and upon BWS noticing that size/version/filename doesn't match you'll have the option to tell BWS "yeah whatever, install this one".

The result would be questionable though in case mod components composition was changed since last BWS update.

My two cents:
- I think dropped items marked as game critical doesn't vanish with time, but they can't be sold
- I also think there was the sole case of a free-lying item in vanilla games - that axe in IWD 1 somewhere in the snake caves, but even if that is true there's surely no macros in WeiDU to add free-lying item so you'll have to code it old-fashioned way, with, like, 30 lines of code
not that it is of great help but still.
 
Edit: hmm, wasn't there also Heartstone Gem lying on the floor in NeJ part 1? If so, its code should be helpful.

Northern Tales of the Sword Coast (BGT, BG:EE, EET)

The mod adds several quests to the BG1 part (with TotSC) to the game and is compatible with BGT, BG:EE, and EET. Some are minor encounters with no further impact, but some are larger quests that are also partly connected to each other.
One large quest is given to you by Duke Eltan (before you go to Candlekeep). One of the longest quests also starts before Candlekeep: Talk to the lady outside the Sorceror's Sundries. One quest can be started by talking to Yness in Ulgoth's Beard.

Version 3.1.0 comes with rebalancing fixes by Angel, and some more fixes and minor tweaks.
Changes:
Angel's rebalancing fixes:
    -Officer Tytus, Haeball, the Black Hand cultists and General Ghotal now have appropriate stats for their levels, especially in HP and AC
    -Haeball has been given a proper spell list and script
    -General Ghotal will now actually be able to hit back much more often than once every two rounds
    -Tytus will no longer have guaranteed hits every round as his THAC0 has been fixed.
    -removed some items (one robe that was just too good for BG1, a potion that was utterly useless in BG1, and the duplicate ankheg plates),
    -added a few new ones (one original, the rest IWD imports)
    -tweaked a few existing ones (mainly those in Firewine).
    -included a few fixes for install issues on Linux, mainly the installer not being able to install tilesets properly on EE, resulting in black lines between the tiles.
jastey's bugfixes and changes:
     -Giving Ordolath his candle will now give exp, always
     -added reply option to decline Lobar's offer eben though the PC has the gold
     -several traps are now detectable (flagg was missing)
     -added ntotsc.ini

Download at SHS (Windows)
Download at SHS OSX
Download at SHS (Linux)

Discussion Thread at SHS

Download NTotSC latest Release from GitHub

I'm almost sure it's Ascalon's Quest Pack

Hello Miriamel, this subforum is fine as far as asking this on SHS is concerned, but you might want to also ask that on EET forum here.

We are happy to announce that BGT, one of the modding staples since the dawn of times, has finally received yet another update after almost six-year long hiatus. Thanks to the efforts of CamDawg, the mod has got improved compatibility with BG2 FixPack and as of now incorporate all BGT fixes so far employed in BWP FixPack.

Changelog:

Installation changes

• Resolved a minor compatibility issue with BG2 Fixpack

Incorporated the following fixes from the Big World Fixpack

• Fixed locked chest in Duchal Palace that couldn't be opened
• Cleaned up junk references in the rest spawn block of the Cloakwood Mines
• One of the piles in the werewolf caverns was using a bag container icon
• Added a delay for the playing of the BG sunrise/sunset movies to avoid repeats
• Imoen not gets her soundset fully moved over in BG2
• Ender Sai should now move to the door and leave more effectively
• The Sirine Queen will now leave after handing over Evalt's body
• BG area music is now assigned dynamically
• Compatibility fixes for TDD
• Fixed dialogue bug with Therella
• The BG-BG2 transition now sets variables before the movie to be a little more robust
• Due to a typo, BGT was not pulling over Polish soundsets

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Oh. Gosh.  Well, we don't need to see the dirty laundry.

What the hell are you talking about?

Any idea when G3 is going to be back up?  I thought SHS and G3 were on the same servers.

Not anymore. You can read more details here.

Today we welcome a new modder many of you may already know: Artemius_I - the author of companion mods, various tweaks, kits and many more. Many of those, who use Enhanced Edition games probably heard his name before. From now on you'll find his mods hosted here, at Spellhold Studios.


Joinable Companion Mods:

Sirene NPC for BGEE, SoD, BG2EE (forum│download)
A lawful good female tiefling paladin of Ilmater. Banters, friendship, romance for both genders and a custom-designed kit. Sirene exhibits many of the typical qualities expected of a paladin; she is kind, dutiful and faithful. However, beneath her calm exterior lies a hidden temper owing to the fell blood which flows in her veins.

Drake NPC for BGEE, SoD (forum│download)
A neutral good male human priest of Tyr with an irreverent and sarcastic attitude who serves the Order of the Radiant Heart, sent to investigate the iron crisis in the north. Banters, friendship and original voicing. BG2EE portion of the mod is under development.

Pai'Na NPC for BG2EE (forum│download)
A true neutral female half-drow hivemaster. An expansion of the original BG2 minor character with banters and friendship. Personality-wise, she can be moody, unsociable and temperamental, but she isnt that bad of a person if you get on her good side.

Aura NPC for BGEE, SoD (forum│download)
A lawful good gnome artificer thief. Banters, friendship, quest, new items and hints towards a romance with a female PC. Aura is kind and idealistic at heart. She can be rather shy and socially inept when interacting with strangers, but easily turns peppy and excitable when the topic strays into her fields of expertise. BG2EE portion of the mod is under development.

Most companions written by Artemius include crossmod banters between each other as well as with other companion mods like Fade (BG2), Verr'Sza (BGEE), Will (BG2EE), White (BG). Sirene also reacts to some quest mods, G3 Romantic Encounters and some more. You may expect even more crossmod content in the future.


Tweaks, Rule Changes and Additions:

Shadow Magic for BGEE, SoD, BG2EE (forum│download)
Adds a new school of magic to the game. Play as a Shadow Adept with a selection of 100+ exclusive Shadow Weave spells, some with similarities with Weave magic while others are completely original. Shadow Magic is more powerful than regular magic but also dangerous as it drains the user's life force. Includes new kits with exclusive spells, items and familiars.

Artemius' Tweaks (forum│download)
Assorted personalized tweaks that might interest many players. You'll find here components like: Expanded Racial Enemies, Expanded Shapeshifting, Expanded Racial Bonuses, Cloak of Dragomir only decreases stats in daylight, new kits and many more.


We're also happy to welcome some new kit mods written by Artemius:

The Artisan's Kitpack (thread│download)
This mod adds a collection of custom-made kits and reworks of existing kits for various classes.

Bardic Wonders (thread│download)
This mod adds new bard kits with specialized bard songs to the game, as well as a new merchant to Baldur's Gate II who carries new bardic items.

Warlock Mod (thread│download)
This mod adds a version of the Warlock as a kit/pseudo-unique class.

As you can see, many new mods joined SHS today. We encourage you to check them out! Enjoy!

P.S. Spellhold has opened a new subforum dedicated for kit mods. It's a communal subforum where kit mods of various authors could be hosted, so any kits of a good quality are welcome.

1. I see. The reason was: no one is allowed to mirror mods without authors permission. But there is also another one: maintaining links for backup location adds two times more work, especially when shsforums.net link will download new version and mirror site link points to older version of the mod.

Still not so obvious: I'm sure that for each author who forbid backup download there will be about five authors who will be glad to have one, and for workload increase it's both minuscule and optional. Even with all these limitations were there such possibility implemented we could have curbed "I can't find mod X" down in about 4 times.

 

2. The whole description is more inaccurate than I thought. No, it won't touch any files (except downloading new mod versions) when you launch BWS via Without Update". I've updated docs.

Indeed BWS readme was very nice except for that exact section, so thank you for making it as clear as the rest of readme.

Hopefully there's still some experts left to know the answers

1. Is there a functionality implemented in BWS allowing to provide backup link for a mod, which should be used when BWS decide that the main link is unavailable? Like may be

Down=http:/ /mods.pocketplane.net/AlassaNPC_v3.zip;http:/ /some.other.place/AlassaNPC_v3.zip
Save=AlassaNPC_v3.zip
Size=2129400

or

Down=http:/ /mods.pocketplane.net/AlassaNPC_v3.zip
BUDown=http:/ /some.other.place/AlassaNPC_v3.zip
Save=AlassaNPC_v3.zip
Size=2129400

or any other way to the same end.

2. There's this short and obscure remark in BWS readme:

BWS/AutoIt3 goes online
The BWS will try to update the mods data when it starts a BWP install. This is done by looking for some files hosted in the internet. The BWS (which uses the AutoIt3.exe) will attempt to fetch these files from the servers and continue.

What mechanic is behind this description, what exactly is downloaded and where from?

That was super fast, thank you!

For #1, my concern is, obviously, providing a backup plan. Having backup download is 50% less useful if BWS can't switch to it automatically. Something akin to TheWizard's IEGMC mirrors (if you remember that ancient times). As for obvious reasons, these are not so obvious to me I'm afraid

 

For #2, I know that BWS will update itself if launched via "Update If Needed" option and will not update itself if launched via "Without Update" option. However that quoted snippet of readme made me think there might be another update at some later step of BWS logic because "when it starts a BWP install" is something user will select few steps after selecting which vbs file to launch BWS with. So, my concern is if it might so happen that even if I launch BWS with "Without Update" file something will be updated later as soon as I select "BWP install", erasing all my locally made changes to general or mod related ini files.