Hi Roxanne,
is the incompatibility between the new bgqe component "Brage's Sword" and Sandrah Saga still valid? (I'm on bgqe's depencies for BWS.)

I have not looked at it yet but I assume there is not a real incompatibility. Unless Brage is killed when you give him to the bounty hunter?

Seems like BWS do not recognize TDD zip files or something? It always says it failed in extracting. When the option to manual extract appear the setup decided to open Adrian-NPC file in winrar.

Strange, both mod links are hosted here on SHS. Could there have been a mix in the database?

I checked them now and there is no problem.

Is the Caelar mod and the Tamoko mod compatible with each other? Or any plans for that?

There is no reason for them not to be. They are independent like any other two weidu mods would be. There is not even any content overlap. In fact, the two women only ever meet during the SoD final battle. Caelar as party member happens only in ToB.

I find it a bit strange however why Tamoko wanted Sarevok to let go of his goal and convince the PC to "save him". Or why she loved him if she was with him only for ambitions sake. Still, I find it appealing the idea of a more accurate in her evilness Tamoko based on her alignment.

 

I can certainly understand to let go of the old and overused romance formula though with Tamoko the potential for a "tragic" romance seemed more interesting than most NPC romance mods that offer typical happy endings. Especially since there are so few evil romance mods particularly with female NPCs.

Writing romance mods is not my cup of tea. I have no talent for it and only limited interest. I enjoy playing other writer's romances if they are well written but I stay out of that *genre* myself.

I rather bring out other aspects of the NPCs. Tamoko trying to save Sarevok? Maybe she tried to convince even herself of this, but was it maybe just not trying to go down with him?

Will the Sandrah mod offer some extra expansion for her maybe?

Sandrah and Tamoko have interactions for sure. Sandrah's main topic is *Time of Troubles are not over yet* and this is something she shares with Tamoko, even if from a completely different angle.

More importantly, are there any plans perhaps for the outcome of the Tamoko mod to affect interactions with Sarevok in ToB or/and perhaps offer some expansion to him as well? Maybe some extra endings or different options by the end which would lead to those endings? Or will it be possible ONLY by using it along those Sarevok mods that you mentioned(I assume the Sarevok romance and friendship mods)?

The intention is to make everything around Tamoko consistent with what is told in later parts of the game including the romance and the friendship mod. However there will be no dependencies. It will work in whatever mod or not-mod setup you install.

1. Ah, I see. I though that whever there was so major change or/and addition it was the reason for a new official version.

 

I have recently released some smaller mods that were originally planned as elements for the next Sandrah version.

I tuned them a bit so they now can be used on their own, but of course they really provide a much *rounder or fuller* experience if combined with the Sandrah mod:

- Shine on Caelar

- Corwin

- The Sword of Chaos (aka Tamoko)

Some mini-mods have been included into Sandrah itself

- Added Midnight's book to game
- Elfsong ghost added
- Bhaal's daughter plot added
- Black Pits integrated and accessible from Waterdeep

 

1) The mod is constantly updated and improved but a real bigger release is not expected until IWD-in-EET (if that comes).

 

2) Tamoko is WiP, it has a small quest regarding Sarevoks's missing sword to fit into the gap between his death and when SoD starts. It will have NO romance, Tamoko's man was Sarevok, and she is not a very likable character you would romance - after all, she was the one to torture prisoners for Sarevok and help him kill Gorion.

Different outcomes yes, PIDs probably not, as she would neither become a real friend nor a romance. Tamoko is a cruel and cold person, fueled by as much ambition as Sarevok had and she is serving an evil deity. She is not *poor* Tamoko who was begging the protagonist for Sarevok's life because of her good heart.

She will be very much at odds with Sandrah if both are in the party. Her content will be mostly in SoD and she will never again meet Sarevok when he re-appears in later parts of the game. This is to ensure complete compatibility with all existing Sarevok/Tamoko contents from the vanilla game and respective mods.

 

1. Ah, I see. I though that whever there was so major change or/and addition it was the reason for a new official version.

 

2. Actually I thought that since Tamoko could(potentially) be convinced to give up on Sarevok meaning that she had some code of honor despite being of evil alignment and so I considered it cool if it was at least possible to befriend her as she and the PC were not antagonistic towards each other at all.

 

As for romance obviously I do not see courting her or listening to her life story as she does not seem as the type(from what characterization she got) but if taking her as the Neutral Evil character she is supposed to be I was wondering if she could not fall with the PC for either strictly a lustful relationship or to see him/her as worthy opponent type. Perhaps only for a evil aligned PC who can satisfy her ambitions and desires better than Saervok did.  Granted one who is not as crazy as Sarevok was as it seemed a bit too much even for her(Sarevok's other lover was more ruthless and evil than her IMO).

 

At the very least a charismatic PC can make her abandon Sarevok which I doubt any guy who does not have a very strong infuence on her could pull it off.

 

Regarding PIDs I thought less about flirting but more asking her on what she think about the current situation or to convince for a specific course of action that could affect her loyalty to the PC or/and her fate.

 

A shame she won't go beyond SoD given that she is specifically for EET

I see your points , but I try not to repeat myself in the stuff I do. I used a concept like you describe for the Caelar mod already, where instead of the NPC coming with some talk every hour or so, the player gets the options to question her directly, and then the conduct of the conversation opens more option for the next PID. I did not want to repeat the same again for Tamoko.

Tamoko comes with some secret that the player may or may not reveal. She has chosen Sarevok first of all because of his heritage and she swears loyalty to the protagonist for the same reason. She has little interest in the protagonist as a personality.

There are many good romance/relationship mods out there for the game. Myself, I am not trying to compete with those. My mods are more about the story and the background that surrounds the bhaalspawn protagonist. The PC is a child of his/her times, or rather the Time of Troubles when he was conceived and born. I see this episode as a major event that has shaped and influenced a whole generation in Faerun, not just those in some way related to Bhaal and his children, but many more who suffer or profit from the aera when Gods walked among the mortals.

In my mods I try to fill those characters with more life and their own stories. The protagonist is just one example of the *Time-of-Troubles-Generation.* and his path entwines with many others. I try to tell their stories rather than going deep into the personal relationship between protagonist with any of them. It is a different approach of how you can mod the game, not every mod needs to follow the scheme of 1) getting to know - 2) having a romance/friendship - 3) ending with an epilogue.

PS - Tamoko will be an EET mod not primarily because of content but because it uses the EET transition and NPC continuity features and will not work on BGEE/SoD. However, It also is supposed to be compatible with all the Sarevok related mods and so it injects contents into later events up to ToB even if she is no longer in the party by that time.

A few questions:

 

1) Any new when ver 2.06 might be out?

 

2. I saw you uploaded a Tamoko mod on you Github page. Does it feature stuff like quests, romance, multiple outcomes regarding her fate, banters and/or Player Started Dialogue?

1) The mod is constantly updated and improved but a real bigger release is not expected until IWD-in-EET (if that comes).

2) Tamoko is WiP, it has a small quest regarding Sarevoks's missing sword to fit into the gap between his death and when SoD starts. It will have NO romance, Tamoko's man was Sarevok, and she is not a very likable character you would romance - after all, she was the one to torture prisoners for Sarevok and help him kill Gorion.

Different outcomes yes, PIDs probably not, as she would neither become a real friend nor a romance. Tamoko is a cruel and cold person, fueled by as much ambition as Sarevok had and she is serving an evil deity. She is not *poor* Tamoko who was begging the protagonist for Sarevok's life because of her good heart.

She will be very much at odds with Sandrah if both are in the party. Her content will be mostly in SoD and she will never again meet Sarevok when he re-appears in later parts of the game. This is to ensure complete compatibility with all existing Sarevok/Tamoko contents from the vanilla game and respective mods.

Tamoko is related to this discussion http://gibberlings3....topic=29338&hl=

Hi all. I am not sure what is going wrong. Every time I try to install EET either through Roxanne's EET-bws or through BWS, some new problem that I previously did not have pops up. For example, I installed Dark Horizons perfectly on my first try before running into an error of my own. However, ever since then, Dark Horizons will not install properly and this keeps happening with mods that previously had no issues in installing. Is there something I am doing wrong?

 

I completely restore from backup installs that have been modmerged each time I try and I even manually download the mods with problems but I keep getting more errors

At least the Chosen of Mystra download links including the backup links seem to be down. Dark Horizons for example is hosted there. It is possible that your download itself was incomplete.

The CoM forum is struggling for recovery since a while now...

The guards outside the gates of the temple area don't tell me nothing.

SetGlobal("BHHandSearch","GLOBAL",2) and talk to the guards.

Is it correct to assume that this mod is independent from planar sphere stronghold (and mods extending it)?

Also I does not change the original requirements to access the sphere in the first place?

 

Definitely how much content (mostly care about encounters, quest, companion) i can play without crashing. The last time I do BW installation was like 7 years ago and I just want to play Big World BG again.

 

I do play SoD without mods, but I inherently dislike how Beamdogs writer try to "fix" the characters so it is not really important for me for my overall experience because I just consider it as a slightly big mod.

On these conditions I would say the EET is the better choice since the integration of all game parts is more consistent and continuous and many of the quest and encounter mods have been updated in a way that makes it more of ONE game and experience. When you use some mods like EET_Tweaks with it, you get an overall good balance of difficulty vs. experience game. There have been a lot of enhancements in this direction even in older mods you may have used in BGT.

 

You also get a larger choice of new NPCs that are more interactive and individual than the older ones.

 

With respect to SoD - yes, in EET this is part of the flow of the story and you cannot skip it. But meanwhile many NPCs from BG1 can be taken into the extension and have additional content there, some new have been added. SoD within the EET context works far different than playing it in the original format, because it is integrated into the larger game. You do not even need to care about those SoD NPCs if you do not like them.

 

This is just my personal view and it comes from a player who has played BGT for countless times in the past and with similar preferences like you.

 

PS - maybe it is a good time to try EET now, before the bean dogs make it unusable with their 2.5 patch?

 

Nah, the actual new characters are actually fine. I just dont like what Ambers did with the old BG1 characters in SoD.

 

But you convinced me, will need to buy the BG2EE for it, but fuck it lets do this.

 

Additionally, is there any mod available in BW or otherwise to revert what Beamdog did to the UI. I like the stylized UI of Old BG better.

You just use the same GUI for all of the game, EET itself comes with its own which is the SoD GUI (my personal preference) but there is also a large collection of GUI mods for EET from which you can make your choice.

In gengeral in term of content right now is original trilogy big world or EET big world has more content?

Depends on how you would count that?

- number of available mods

- amount of content playable at one time without conflicts or crashes

- playing hours

- ......

 

There are different ways of looking at it. For example EET has the whole Dragonspear extension and all the big mods, while BGT may have NEJ....etc

 

Definitely how much content (mostly care about encounters, quest, companion) i can play without crashing. The last time I do BW installation was like 7 years ago and I just want to play Big World BG again.

 

I do play SoD without mods, but I inherently dislike how Beamdogs writer try to "fix" the characters so it is not really important for me for my overall experience because I just consider it as a slightly big mod.

On these conditions I would say the EET is the better choice since the integration of all game parts is more consistent and continuous and many of the quest and encounter mods have been updated in a way that makes it more of ONE game and experience. When you use some mods like EET_Tweaks with it, you get an overall good balance of difficulty vs. experience game. There have been a lot of enhancements in this direction even in older mods you may have used in BGT.

You also get a larger choice of new NPCs that are more interactive and individual than the older ones.

With respect to SoD - yes, in EET this is part of the flow of the story and you cannot skip it. But meanwhile many NPCs from BG1 can be taken into the extension and have additional content there, some new have been added. SoD within the EET context works far different than playing it in the original format, because it is integrated into the larger game. You do not even need to care about those SoD NPCs if you do not like them.

This is just my personal view and it comes from a player who has played BGT for countless times in the past and with similar preferences like you.

PS - maybe it is a good time to try EET now, before the bean dogs make it unusable with their 2.5 patch?

In gengeral in term of content right now is original trilogy big world or EET big world has more content?

Depends on how you would count that?

- number of available mods

- amount of content playable at one time without conflicts or crashes

- playing hours

- ......

There are different ways of looking at it. For example EET has the whole Dragonspear extension and all the big mods, while BGT may have NEJ....etc

Found what I believe to be an error in BWS of the romance cheats in Tweak Anthology. The romance cheat states that its multiple romance might conflict with third-party romance mods, but not for its other cheats such as racial requirements. However, BWS treats all of the romance cheat as the same so I cannot install the romance cheat and any NPC mod with a third-party romance even if I uncheck the multiple romance part.

I know what you mean and the problem is in how CDTweaks has its components defined. All Romance Cheats are component 3183 of the Tweak with sub-selections for some choices. BWS handles conflicts on component level, so whenever you select one of the choices, it rises the conflicts for the component.

You can safely add the choice you make to your game as you know why the conflict is raised. You just tell BWS to ignore this conflict.

You may look for this combination

The new EE Setup Tool allows this, it should be possible to do the same in BWS after you overwrite the conflicts but I have not tested it on original BWS.

Background information

CD Tweaks or formerly BG2Tweaks has its components designed for a user dialogue when you run the setup yourself and get the CMD window.

You get the dialogue

-*Do you want to use Roamnce Cheats?" Yes/No

-"Do you want to remove gender restrictions?" Yes/No

- ......

These are your new settings....Do you want to continue? Yes/No

BWS has to translate this into its own mechanism of presenting you a component list from which you make choices. What you currently see is the compromise of how such different user interactions are tried to make compatible with each other. It is a crutch of some kind.

Found what I believe to be an error in BWS of the romance cheats in Tweak Anthology. The romance cheat states that its multiple romance might conflict with third-party romance mods, but not for its other cheats such as racial requirements. However, BWS treats all of the romance cheat as the same so I cannot install the romance cheat and any NPC mod with a third-party romance even if I uncheck the multiple romance part.

I know what you mean and the problem is in how CDTweaks has its components defined. All Romance Cheats are component 3183 of the Tweak with sub-selections for some choices. BWS handles conflicts on component level, so whenever you select one of the choices, it rises the conflicts for the component.

You can safely add the choice you make to your game as you know why the conflict is raised. You just tell BWS to ignore this conflict.

Roxanne: Yes I saw that but I didn't really connect to put them in the override before starting. Hmm.

 

Since I didn't get any parse errors or any other error during my installation - am I safe? Or did I need them for something else?

Only you know. It depends on the mods you install. And even then it would be safe. Worst that may happen normally is that some remote AI action in some enemy scripts do not trigger, If you notice that at all in the play...

I am interested in playing this mod for my next game (won't happen for a few weeks, but still it's good to do the research before you start).The home page mentions "1 New NPC" - who is this NPC and can I please have any information about him/her?

 

Sorry if this is a dumb question, or already answered. I've read the home page, the readme and other documents in the text subfolder, and searched this forum and couldn't find the answer.

Her name is Rynn and she must be in the party for one episode during the quest done at Hlondeth. She is more of a plot character than a real NPC and she is just needed for this one episode. (If you played DSotSC with Jet'Laya, she is a similar type of NPC.) She has no banters or dialogues other than those few lines related to the quest.

You cannot recruit her other than during that quest when some leader calls her in and tells you that you would need her in party to carry on. After an hour of playing and when you finished the quest, she will leave you again.

In the bw fixpack (github version) there is a folder called "_IDS_ref" with a bunch of ids files (kit.ids spell.ids etc).

 

Am I supposed to use these at some point? Does the BWS use these? The BWP manual does not mention them. I faintly remember seeing this mentioned somewhere on the forum some time back when I was lurking and that they were standard ids files to use when mods had broken them or something but now I can't find any info about it.

Quote from BWP manual

the BiG World Installpack not only installs mod after mod, but also restores continuously missing entries
in several IDS files. Without this feature you would get “parse errors” with some mods and the installation
of many components would fail. for this reason I strongly advise against installing manually!

The BWS copies the IDS files contained in fixpack to override during the preparation phase before any installation is even started.

This means that both do basically the same, provide you with correct IDS versions for the following installation.

Check these conditions before you talk to Pelltar to send you home

You have the "Glorious Hand" = BHGHAND.itm

And these global

Global("BHHandQuest","Global") is 3 or more
Global("BHHandGrave","Global") is 6
Global("BHQuestAccept","GLOBAL") is 5 or 6

First of all - the creature name is acq16001. So rename the portrait file to acq16001.bmp.

Now download this

 MyPortraits.zip   877.41K   402 downloads

Unzip it to somewhere on your computer.

You have a setup.exe and a folder named MyPortraits with two subfolders backup and BMP.

(You can later give the stuff some name you like, here is just for the demo).

1. Copy your portrait files into BMP subfolder

2. Now copy everything to your game directory just like the mods you already have.

3. Run the setup

4. Spawn CreateCreature("acq16001") and see that she has her portrait.

Important - you only see the effects on new creatures, i.e. those you have not yet met and that are in areas you have not already visited, because your changes do not affect saved games.

If that initial test is successful, we can go to add more NPCs.

What do you mean with "have the right NPC codes". The small portrait is defined by the name of the corresponding bmp file which is defined in the cre-file at offset 0x34 (or 0x3c for the large one)  if there is any. If there is none yet defined, you need to define one yourself, i.e.the name of the bmp-file without the extension.

You do that either with Near Infinity for your local use, or you need to write a little bit of weidu code if you want to share your work (or preserve it for the next game as well.)

 

I mean the code you use with the command:  "CreateCreature"

 

As I said, not being a modder implies that I may confuse one thing with another.

 

I got these codes using the infExp tool.

This is the name of the creature file, SomeNPC.cre. Inside of this file there is the data that says what script the creature uses and which dialogue, which class and levels and many more things. One other piece of data is the name of small and large portrait. This is the information you need to match your picture to the creature.

If it is minor NPCs, it may be the case that this name is not even given, i.e. is *None* in which case you need to give it one.

So you either need something like Near Infinity to take a look INTO that creture file. Or you use weidu and blindly assign names to the ones you want, which is no problem if you only use this for yourself.

Just post the name of a creature file and the name of your bmp picture to give you some example of how to do it.

What do you mean with "have the right NPC codes". The small portrait is defined by the name of the corresponding bmp file which is defined in the cre-file at offset 0x34 (or 0x3c for the large one)  if there is any. If there is none yet defined, you need to define one yourself, i.e.the name of the bmp-file without the extension.

You do that either with Near Infinity for your local use, or you need to write a little bit of weidu code if you want to share your work (or preserve it for the next game as well.)

- Haer'dalis and Viconia in prison is two independent mods, Viconia/drow sister is my contents, Haer'dalis is not

 

That explains why they basically overwrote each other (i think i saved hae and he went to prison and then disappeared completely once vic also went into the same cell, i had to cheat a bit (ctrl j) to talk to her+proceed the quest cause the cell door was locked, i assumed that was hae related so was ok). e.g., I was too lazy to save him before vic also went to prison.

The drow fight was quite hard with all that drow plate (since I didn't do heaps of content but had 50% xp reduction, and this happened early bg2...). 

 

 

shauhana1 - seems like Sandrah's dialogue after the crash landing did not trigger. Once your party comes back to their senses she is supposed to have a dialogue about the events. Your global(locals) setting to 4 skipped this dialogue. It may have been some circumstances that hindered Sandrah to reach the PC for the talk when all regained their senses after the crash.

 

not sure what happened to cause sandrah to get bugged out trying to talk to me, the quest seemed to proceed OK. I recall her talking to me after waking up, but it was a few weeks ago. Sorry I can't be more helpful here.

 

 

Bodhi

I do not fully understand what you think went wrong? I know the scene you refer to but not sure what problem you had. Did Bodhi fail to abduct your loved one (whoever that was, Imoen?). She is not supposed to take Sandrah, regardless of your romancing her or not.

 

From memory when you enter the graveyard district (for the big fight), it's forced into nighttime and bodhi confronts you immediately (maybe this is just SCS or something though). Well instead of that happening, Sandrah had that scene and then it was day time and I could enter the crypts, but they were empty with bodhi nowhere to be found (I think leaving the graveyard and returning again fixed it). Yes I didn't have anyone abducted because Chloe was the target but she refuses to be abducted. Maybe that's related? I do have imoen romance installed.

 

 

I managed to recreate something with the entangled slippers. Not exactly what you reported but maybe related.:

 

This seems quite reasonable, I was not able to recreate the crash 100%. That seems to be related to what you are saying. 

 

All good though, had a lot of fun along the way.

 

I have a suspicion about the Bodhi thing. Did you use BWS for install?

I think it is a matter of install sequence of the mods. We need to install Imoen far earlier because of the way she adds to some scenes. She must tweak the dialogues e.g. Bodhi before any other mod does. Currently Chloe is prior Imoen, so even if you did not have the romance active it might have caused the glitch. Revisiting. i.e. having the scene a second time fixes it, because some globals have changed and can be correctly evaluated.

Sandrah had nothing to do with it, her independent scene worked as intended, the mess came afterwards in the Bodhi abduction dialogue - in which Sandrah does not participate.

You could test that by running the same scene without Sandrah but I guess it may be too late by now.

Anyway, even if the issue is not from Sandrah, I will take action to look at the BWS side of it and the install order there.

Viconia Haer'dalis

I have no real idea how such overlap can be solved. There are many when's and if's and depending on when you recruited whom etc. In addition, the prison is used by various other mods and quests (Amber, Thief Stronghold, Balthis murder etc). Hard to do anything to prevent completely independent story lines to sometimes intercept.

I've finally gotten around to playing a large EET install and I'm up to TOB. I might push through or maybe do a reinstall in a few weeks. 

 

Anyway here's some notes (with screenshots as applicable) I noticed along the way. These aren't all really bugs. I should note I didn't really do every quest or mod, just a mostly random selection of them. Some of these could totally be user error on my part.

 

[spoiler]

slippers-crash.jpg

After naronguth tried on the entangled slippers, trying to pick them up in sandrah's inventory result in a game crash. Unfortunately this was not 100% repeatable (I didn't test this fully, but I did get it to crash three times). Possibly related, the slippers when unidentified are named "copy of naroguths slippers." I do use item/ spell revisions but not sure if related.

 

I managed to recreate something with the entangled slippers. Not exactly what you reported but maybe related.:

If you want to equip an NPC (any, not just Sandrah) with the boots while this creature already wears boots, so that the game needs to move the already equipped ones out of the boot slot before equipping the new ones, the game ocassionally crashes when the unequipped boots are not yet in an empty slot AND the entangle animation already sets in. It never happens if you first unequip the existing boots before putting on the entangled ones. My guess is that switching the creature animation with entanglement while operating on the inventory is some game engine issue - inventory management in EE is far less robust then it was in classic games, due to the many new features introduced.

Anyway, those slippers are mainly a plot item for the Naroguth quest and not something you would use in game other than to try them out. The *Copy of Naronguh's Slipper* on the unidentified item is correct, it is what they are when Elminster gives them to you.

Kicking out Sandrah and rejoining her while she wears Boots of Speed (Boot10.itm) creates no problems in my game. Did you have other boots maybe? I think there are also some in SoD.

ust to confirm - the change to be made in my mod is to provide the modified qd_multiclass.tpa in the /lib folder, right?

Yup.

The mod is now updated with the revised qd_multiclass.tpa.

Hopefully another never ending journey comes to an end this way.

Hi Roxanne,

 

First, Thank you for your dedication to BG modding, especially to EET.

 

I have a question about sandrah : In the readme you say that the story mode is incompatible. Is there a technical reason to that ? and is ther a possible workaround to this incompatibility ?

 

I ask that because I play games for the stories, like i read a good book, not for the challenge.

I'd like to play a full (with as many mods as possible) EET install, but i don't want to get stuck with a unbeatable (for me) combat.

Please remind me of the details, this was written long time ago - if I remember correctly, story mode was a cheat that prevented the protagonist and party members to die, correct?

There is also a mod with some similar idea where the PC only dies when all party members are dead.

 

Actually those cheats are no problem for the Part1 of Sandrah Saga. You can even use the EET_Tweak component that does a similar thing (EET_Tweak uses a global to control the cheat and this global is just changed at ToB end, so the rules are adjusted to fit the reamaining parts - this is not the case for story mode.)

 

However if you decide the continue beyond ToB with the Part 2 and 3 you will get stuck because 1) in SandrahRTF, the plot is for you and Sandrah and both of you need to stay alive to succeed and 2) in SandrahToT the challenge is to keep those four party members alive you need for success, i.e. Cyric, Kelemvor, Midnight and Adon..

Story mode or some undying mod change the rules in a way that disables the challenge but it also leads to situations that are not covered, e.g. if someone dies but the game continues, you may be stuck in a plot that has no more solution. The remaining party will be alive with nothing more to do.

As i recall, the story mode prevent all your party to die, so it'll be safe to use in this case ?

I think it should be fine until ToB. It was the Legacy of Bhaal mode that you cannot change anymore after you started the game, but Story Mode can just be disabled from the options screen.