OK, a quick follow-up on this while we're waiting for Miloch.
 
It seems that the Reference Picker program actually does not need any updates whatsoever - all it does is read the contents of the anims.list file from the same folder, and looks for the first open slot of appropriate type in that list when claiming a new animation slot. I swapped all slot prefixes in that file with new symbols, and it worked like a charm after that. This is very good news, 'cause I was worried someone (read: me) would have to rewrite it from scratch to make this work. I'm attaching the modified .list file and the .txt with latest reference list converted to new symbols in case someone wants to try this.
 
Locally, all ref slots have been converted to use new symbols. No significant problems so far. The only thing I haven't figured out yet are several dragon slots - they appear to be using a few non-conventional characters that are not used anywhere else in the .exe patch plus I'm yet to locate their offsets in the executable:

0x122c    XDRµ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x122d    XDRР   EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x122e    XDRÞ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x122f    XDRØ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1230    XDRÑ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1231    XDRÆ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1232    XDR    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1233    XDRß    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1234    XDRÇ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted

Fortunately, there are 35 more dragon slots free to use apart from these, but still.
 
The next step will be thorough testing of all slots listed in anims.list to make sure I didn't miss any old symbol references, and didn't replace something I shouldn't have.
 
Current table of symbol swaps in reference names: 

 OLD:          NEW:
µ = 0xb5  ->    0x7e = ~
Æ = 0xc6  ->    0x7d = }
¢ = 0xa2   ->    0x2b = +
£ = 0xa3   ->    0x7b = {
¥ = 0xa5   ->    0x2c = ,
Ð = 0xd0   ->    0x26 = &
Þ = 0xde   ->    0x27 = '
Ø = 0xd8   ->    0x3d = =

If anyone has objections about the chosen replacements now's the time to speak out, before I start full testing of the changes.

You should ask Miloch who is working on the next version of I.A. As far as I know, it will include the remplacement of the animation codes in a way that should solve the subject of this topic. But ask him to be sure.

Oh, I'm counting on Miloch to eventually notice I invaded his forum and started hacking his mod. I know he's one busy half-orc these days. But if you're saying he's been working on the same problem already, maybe I should wait for his input before wasting more time on this.

As far as I know, the source code was never released. I just forcefully decompiled it, but it may not have recreated the syntax to 100% of original (see the"Tidy Error"s). It's a start anyway.

Thanks, this could come very useful later if the converted patch ever gets finalized.

- CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("P5Tst") - Should look like a Bovine Axe Thing. Drawn location will not match foot circle - this particular animation is not centered properly.
 

 
Strange. It should have been fixed a few months ago : http://www.shsforums...-thing-axe-bug/
 
 
 

I might have the old version archive, before it was updated (these files have been gathering dust on my hdd for a while).

Meanwhile, I think I got another ref slot to work. CHARACTER BGII WQM which used to be referenced by "¢_¢_" has been switched to "+_+_". Tested on MOINESSE_NINJA_MALE_HUMAN animation (¢A¢B --> +A+B).

I was wondering about the ia_reference_picker program that comes packaged with IA. Was its source code ever publicly shared anywhere, or was it only Erephine who had it? If I manage to get this .exe patch fully switched (that's a big IF for now), the app ideally should be updated to accept lists with new symbol references as input, as well as hand out ready-to-use slot ids when claiming new slots. Otherwise, the process of claiming a new slot could become complicated...

Argh !!!

I will need to use new dragons slots (5 Tarasques and maybe more than a dozen new dragons if I can deal with their palettes).

So what do you mean : are the "35 more dragon slots free to use" vanilla ones (inluded in IE) or the number of free slots available in I.A. ?

As far as I can see, there are a total of 44 dragon (XDR) slots in anims.list, from entry 0x1209 to 0x1234. None of them are officially taken yet, all are free to use, judging by the latest ref list posted in this forum. Sounds like you will be taking a good chunk of them, Gwendolyne. Are you sure you need all the different paletted types?

The IwD young white dragon uses one of BGI MONSTER LONG 4 PART slots, not one of the dragon slots.

I'm not sure what you're asking is even possible - all "color-cloned" animations in the vanilla game which use different palettes for the same set of BAMs still occupy different slots for each variation. For example, each type of spider takes 1 entry in ANIMATE.IDS, even though they all use the same animation with different bmp palette:

0x7A00 SPIDER_GIANT
0x7A01 SPIDER_HUGE
0x7A02 SPIDER_PHASE
0x7A03 SPIDER_SWORD
0x7A04 SPIDER_WRAITH

It's the same for vanilla dragons (except black and silver).

The "paletted" bit in the slots descriptions refers to them using character colors (major/minor/hair/metal/etc colors in the CRE file), not to them being able to swap BMP palettes in some way while only taking 1 animation entry slot. At least that's my understanding so far.

You still have to extract the files using the English code page while doing so... as that's where the thing goes boom. ... so it would be better to reupload the files.

Hmm. This should only be possible if the file extraction program was non-Unicode. Which would be strange, to say the least, in this day and age.

But suppose that's exactly what happens and non-Unicode software is used, when you say "goes boom" do you mean that the files extract with incorrect filenames (i.e. for instance Жaag11.bam instead of Æaag11.bam on code page 1251), or that they fail to extract at all? Because in the first case, the renamer utility actually should still work - it should rename both Æaag11.bam and Жaag11.bam into }aag11.bam, I accounted for that possibility.

The second (under human) is wyvern_white_big, not a dragon.

It should show up on the tooltip if you hover your mouse over the picture in the readme for a bit.

I was referring to the adult version. The green ring should be the same as the normal dragons.

There's an adult version? The file you linked only has the young dragon, and there's no adult listed in current reference list... Yes, the foot circle used by the young animation is the same size (HUGE) as the XDR slots. The BGI MONSTER LONG 4 PART slot refspapce is split into 2 parts, entries in 0x1001 to 0x10ff range have LARGE foot circle, and 0x1101 through 0x11ff have HUGE foot circle size. The young white dragon uses the first entry (0x1101) in the second range.

Gwendolyne can just replace the palette on the creature file by the same means that ... no I actually don't know what it means... as Gwendolyne has done this, but... apparently there's problem !?!

So Gwendolyne just needs to append the animate.ids and name the files correctly... or ?

From that thread, looks like what he did was repalette a group of bam files using several different bmp palette files. Thus, he now has several sets of dragon and tarrasque BAMs, each of different "coloring". Each of them will require its own separate animation slot (entry in ANIMATE.IDS) to show up in the game, and will be treated as a standalone animation by the engine (the engine has no idea they are in any way similar, it just draws the contents of the BAM files as indicated by the animation id field in the CRE files). There's no problem, unless occupying 15-20 out of 44 available XDR slots for basically the same 2 recolored animations can be called such.

I could try, although exe patching is out of my usual area of expertise. But the devdoc file has some notes on offsets in the executable, and my initial attempts to decipher them have not been completely unsuccessful.

I've tinkered with 'µ' and 'Æ' refs and replaced them with '~' and '}'. The result appears to work, at least the animations show up. If a few people could check this and confirm it doesn't crash and burn on their end before I attempt the other slots, that'd be great.

Usage:
- unpack and install the test component
- start a new game or load existing save, shouldn't matter
- CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("P5Tst") - Should look like a Bovine Axe Thing. Drawn location will not match foot circle - this particular animation is not centered properly.
- CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("P5Tst2") - Should look like a Nabassu.
- CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("P5Tst3") - Should look like a Chimera.

Why not use various punctuation symbols like these instead?

 }  (ascii code 0x7D)
 `  (ascii code 0x27)
 ,  (ascii code 0x2C)
 &  (ascii code 0x26)
 ~  (ascii code 0x7E)
 {  (ascii code 0x7B)
 $  (ascii code 0x24)
 =  (ascii code 0x3D)
 +  (ascii code 0x2B)

They are valid filename symbols (in Windows at least, no idea about Mac or Linux), and they are NOT widely used in mods, despite what IA devdoc file says. Not to mention this mod will only ever use them for BAM and (very few) 2DA resources, reducing the chances for any potential conflict further. All these symbols exist with same ascii codes in Japan windows codepage 932 and russian 1251 (I think those were the ones who had problems with IA originally?).

The current solution to force a user to CHCP and reboot every time IA (or any mod using IA) needs to be (re)installed seems, frankly, horrible to me.

I assumed BG2EE, should've read more carefully. I didn't think it could be installed on anything except BG2[EE] or BG2+BGT.

I have BG2EE installed and I can confirm SW2H21.ITM is definitely there, so the problem is somewhere else. Which folder are you running the install .exe from? It should be the same folder which contains the game's CHITIN.KEY file.

Keep in mind WeiDU will auto-update itself if you run the old version .exe from same folder where you also have more recent versions.

Nope, I've tried it exactly as you said and I still get the tavern music on the gnoll and bandit maps. Like I said though, as long as you pick the just BG1 option the music will work fine. Except there's no music on the very first Candlekeep map but tbh I don't remember if there ever was. Candlekeep in Chapter 6 has the right music though.

And you updated the WeiDU .exe of setup-bgtmusic to v236 before installing it? You can check this in .DEBUG file - it should say "WeiDU v 23600 Log" at the top.

Don't work, tavern music start on GNoll Stronghold and Bandit Camp, and Imoen have wrong soundset.

 

Are you trying this on an existing save, by any chance? The changed TP2 from above won't affect areas already visited in your saved game. Imoen is not touched by BGTMusic at all, but messed up soundsets and strrefs are a common problem after loading a save made with a different mod setup/install order than the current one.

I think the easiest solution would be to make the .exe from the archive read-only. Right-click the .exe, set the read-only file attribute, click OK. It should fail to auto-update then. EDIT: Scratch that - testing shows WeiDU has no respect for that flag whatsoever, and updates anyway.

 

And I don't think this requires any other drastic action such as changing WeiDU ADD_MUSIC behavior - the change in v233 was logical and is actually useful, making it easier for "normal" mods to add their music into the game without creating duplicate entries in the .2da if the mus file already exists (i.e. added by another mod). Some other existing mods, or mods currently in development may rely on that behavior, and changing it could break more than just BGTMusic.

 

It is not a normal situation for a mod to add duplicate entries for the same MUS file to the songlist, in fact it's a very strange solution, I guess it was just chosen as a convenient shortcut. The ARE files should have been changed to refer to the same existing 2da entry instead.

EE only uses new formats for GUI files (+worldmap mos I think) though. And it will work fine with v1 bam and mos files too. So unless you intend to modify the new gui, there really is no reason to wait. Unless I'm missing something.

 

The following TP2 code will copy all V2 files in the game into "BAMBATCH/V2" subfolder if you want to check out a complete list of what's "uneditable":

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~.*\.bam~ ~override~
	READ_ASCII 0x4 ~version~ (2)
	PATCH_IF ~%version%~ STRING_EQUAL_CASE ~V2~ BEGIN
		INNER_ACTION BEGIN		
		COPY_EXISTING ~%SOURCE_FILE%~ ~bambatch/v2~
		END
	END
BUT_ONLY

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~.*\.mos~ ~override~
	READ_ASCII 0x4 ~version~ (2)
	PATCH_IF ~%version%~ STRING_EQUAL_CASE ~V2~ BEGIN
		INNER_ACTION BEGIN
		COPY_EXISTING ~%SOURCE_FILE%~ ~bambatch/v2~
		END
	END
BUT_ONLY

so where one would find updated tools?

http://sourceforge.n...es/DLTCEP 7.6g/

 

Not a modding suite per se, but a game files editor (which is enough to do almost anything you'd want, including a total conversion of the whole game). Yes, it should be compatible with both EEs.

nope. I cannot open the new audio files in ANY way.

 

They're simple OGG files. Extract them from biffs with weidu (weidu.exe --biff-get whatever.wav), change extension to .ogg and play with any decent music player (foobar2000, winamp, windows media player, etc.) to see what's in them.

 

DLTCEP menu option Sound -> WAVC to WAV will also correctly extract and convert them to old-fashioned WAVs which will be recognized by non-EE games.

Area Tilesets use the PVR format (which is uneditable ATM) as well. BGII:EE also introduced 32-bit bitmap files which is a new format to the Infinity Engine and which NearInfinity can't handle yet (although DLTCEP might can).

 

Yes, but old TIS tilesets are still accepted and will work just as well (so there's no need to wait for new tools to create a new area for your modding needs). New tilesets can currently be loaded in latest DLTCEP (use "Load MOS..." option) and exported as bitmaps/TIS, although not without problems (resulting images/tilesets have visible graphical glitches aka "tears" at tile borders).

 

Item description images is the only serious problem I've hit in modding BG2EE - old BAMs aren't displayed at the moment, but as I understand this is going to be fixed in a future patch.

Enhanced Editions have renewed interest in the Baldur's Gate series and attracted a host of new players who've never had a chance to try it before. Who knows how long that'll last, but I'd say now is the perfect time to get your mod out until such wide interest wanes again.

Even without EEs though, I think you underestimate how many people still play this game. Just browse the downloads section on this site and keep an eye on the downloads count of the mods listed there.

Don't know much about NWN modding or how active its community is these days.

Thank you, will add in next future version, whenever that comes (unless serious bugs are reported that need immediate attention it'll probably be after all other translations come in).

Those quoted lines I pretty much took as is from v2 released by erebusant and Badgert. They looked a bit strange but I figured they were just imitating archaic english (I'm not a native english speaker myself).

Gender-specific lines are ok, you don't need anything else to make them work as WeiDU should understand this just fine:

@10  = ~Aha, <CHARNAME>! Znow sie spotykamy. Wkrotce wyruszam do Doliny Lodowego Wichru. Pragnalbym, abys towarzyszyl mi podczas tej jakze niebezpiecznej wyprawy.~ // MALE
       ~Aha, <CHARNAME>! Znow sie spotykamy. Wkrotce wyruszam do Doliny Lodowego Wichru. Pragnalbym, abys towarzyszyla mi podczas tej jakze niebezpiecznej wyprawy.~ // FEMALE

using the second line for female CHARNAME (as long as DIALOGF.TLK is present and used).

ADD_JOURNAL was introduced in WeiDU v232, and you're trying to install with 231:

[./setup-arath] WeiDU version 23108

 

I don't know where/how BG Mac mod installer gets the OS X version of WeiDU it uses, but you need to make sure it uses latest version (v236) instead, see link in my previous post in this thread.

v3 is out, most noticable changes in this version as far as BWP is concerned:
- Instead of installing both components 0 and 1 (core + WM support), only component 1 must be installed with BWP
- To have the v2 changes (Drizzt joins after Durlag's Tower), component 3 must be installed as well.
- It's no longer needed to copy restored BGT .WMP in override before installing Drizzt Saga in certain mod configs
- BWP Fixpack modifications are no longer needed, as they're either included or redundant.
- Russian translation from BWP Russian Textpack is included
- Current version of The One Drizzt mod won't work without some updates

Drizzt Saga mod is currently undergoing an update for BGEE compatibility, as well as repairing various existing problems, bugs and compatibility issues along the way.

 

This topic is a request for information on existing fixes and known problems for the current versions of this mod in a generic mega-mod / BWS setup.

 

I'm aware of these files currently hosted at SHS:

- Drizzt Saga WM (7 or later) patch (changes: area location coordinates on worldmap)

- Drizzt Saga for BGT/Tutu v2 (changes: Drizzt joins after Durlag's Tower is completed)

 

I'm planning to include these changes in the upcoming v3, so these files will no longer be necessary (v2 adaptation will be included as an optional component).

 

If there are any other existing fixes applied to Drizzt Saga in the current BWS / BWP setup, please let me know here so I can include them in the new version as well. Any outstanding issues and bug reports can be posted here too. A fair amount of problems I have already found and fixed, but if it's something new I'll investigate. Note that I can't change the mod's quest and dialog content since I'm not the original author (props to flysoup for creating it), I'm just upkeeping the technical side.

 

Cheers.