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#606611 Comprehensive IE Modding Tutorial Index

Posted by Alonso on 09 May 2019 - 05:38 PM in IE Tutorials

I want to use these tutorials to learn the very basics of IE modding, but I'm getting overwhelmed with so many tutorials. Which of these would be recommended for beginners?

 

I've noticed that many links are broken. Some examples of broken links are the ones to Gibberlings 3, igi's DLTCEP setup tutorial, IE modding 101, Adding a trigger to an existing map via WeiDU, and Explaining Creature Patching by .tp2: An introduction.




#606935 [HELP WANTED] Proof reading for Mod translations in English

Posted by Alonso on 05 July 2019 - 01:33 PM in Classifieds

Still need help?




#606951 [HELP WANTED] Proof reading for Mod translations in English

Posted by Alonso on 06 July 2019 - 04:22 PM in Classifieds

I've no particular preference. I'm Spanish and I'm fluent in English (fully bilingual). I own the full BG series and PS:T, but not IWD. So whatever fits me better.




#606877 Making a weidu mod with your custom item

Posted by Alonso on 24 June 2019 - 03:46 PM in IE Tutorials

Thank you, I forgot about this when I started my first mod a few weeks ago. Now I have completed the tutorial, but it's not quite working. It installs and it copies the sword and the dragon to the override folder, but the dragon doesn't have the sword. Can you have a look?

Attached Files




#606910 Making a weidu mod with your custom item

Posted by Alonso on 28 June 2019 - 02:45 PM in IE Tutorials

That fixed it, it works now. Thank you again :new_thumbs:

 

As I did this I corrected and expanded the original tutorial with everything we discussed here. I attach it in case someone is interested.

Attached Files




#606901 Making a weidu mod with your custom item

Posted by Alonso on 27 June 2019 - 04:19 AM in IE Tutorials

Hadn't thought about that. Still, I started a new game and I had the same result, the otyugh doesn't have the sword.

 

There is still the chance you didn't catch the one in Irenicus' dungeon, though. Try cheating in one of the cre files you patched.

That's what I've done.

 

Can you try it and see if you have the same problem?




#606895 Making a weidu mod with your custom item

Posted by Alonso on 27 June 2019 - 01:29 AM in IE Tutorials

Yeah, that's what I did to test: I loaded the first saved game I have, in which I still haven't moved from the first room in Irenicus dungeon, from there went to the room of the otyugh, and then I used the console to make it join my party. It didn't have the sword. NI, however, shows the sword in the otyugh's files, but with the error I mentioned.




#606891 Making a weidu mod with your custom item

Posted by Alonso on 26 June 2019 - 03:54 PM in IE Tutorials

Yes, I had already visited the dragon in the saved game I was using to test. So I tried with a game in which I hadn't visited the dragon yet. However, I didn't manage to test with this game. Using the console to travel directly to the dragon's lair crashes the game. I tried travelling to the temple ruins and going to the dragon's lair from there, but that also crashes the game, I guess the game must expect you to have completed all the previous steps in the quest before.

 

Since testing with the shadow dragon proved so complicated, I tried modifying the mod and giving the sword to the otyugh in Irenicus' dungeon instead. There are three otyughs in the game, so I gave the sword to all of them because I don't know which one is Irenicus'. The result is the same, the otyugh doesn't have the sword. Checking in NI, though, the otyughs do have the sword. However, when I try to open the sword item in NI I get an error: "Error reading null", "null". I attach the modified mod.

 

Attached File  mymod.zip   956.03K   261 downloads




#606609 Making a weidu mod with your custom item

Posted by Alonso on 09 May 2019 - 04:45 PM in IE Tutorials

Hi, I'm trying to use this tutorial to learn the very basics of IE modding. My question is: How do I create the custom itm file for this tutorial?




#606829 WeiDU Highlighter for Notepad++

Posted by Alonso on 09 June 2019 - 01:16 PM in IE Modding Tools

Thanks, Gwendolyne, but that doesn't seem to be the problem in my case. For instance, right now the colour highlighting just changed when I reduced the indentation of a few lines. However, increasing the indentation again or even undoing all the indentations doesn't change the colours back.

 

For the record, a few days ago I tried reinstalling Notepad++ and updating to v7.7 (I was still using v7.6), but that didn't help.




#606820 WeiDU Highlighter for Notepad++

Posted by Alonso on 08 June 2019 - 05:22 PM in IE Modding Tools

This works quite inconsistently in my machine. The colours of the syntax highlighting change very often after I do some editing, but so far I haven't managed to see a pattern of what kind of editing provokes this change. In the picture attached I'm editing a tra file and using the Replace function to remove the line "Saving Throw: None". After removing one line the text above the line removed changes its colours:

 

Notepad++.png




#606922 WeiDU Highlighter for Notepad++

Posted by Alonso on 29 June 2019 - 05:07 PM in IE Modding Tools

Try VScode.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm trying VScode and it looks quite promising, although I have barely scratched its surface so far. However, I'm not sure of whether your extension supports tra files. I just opened a tra file and it doesn't have any syntax highlighting.




#606610 Writing dialogue in .d for REAL beginners

Posted by Alonso on 09 May 2019 - 05:24 PM in IE Tutorials

I'm trying to use the tutorials in this site to learn the very basics of IE modding. Can you explain what the example talk is about? Is it a file you create as a base for the actual mod or is it something else? What are those funny letters and numbers in parenthesis (to v5b.1)?




#606622 Writing dialogue in .d for REAL beginners

Posted by Alonso on 10 May 2019 - 10:08 PM in IE Tutorials

Thank you, @jastey, that was so helpful :coolthumb: . Some questions:

 

What is the format of dialogue state names?

 

What language is this? I think I read somewhere that IE scripts are based on a funny scripting language developed in a Brazilian university.

 

this is the conditions for which this state is called

 

What conditions can be used to call a dialogue state? What is the purpose of calling a dialogue state?

 

either PC reply options or other so called "transactions", i.e. actions that will be performed after the NPC line when the player clikcs on "CONTINUE".

 

What kinds of transactions exist?




#606630 Writing dialogue in .d for REAL beginners

Posted by Alonso on 12 May 2019 - 08:51 PM in IE Tutorials

Thank you for all the effort you're putting into helping with this.

What is the format of dialogue state names?

Do you mean why for the tutorial the name "v5b.1" was chosen? Basically, inside the d-file it is whatever you want to name it so you can read your dialogue comprehensibly. So, it's any name+number+symbol combination you want to use to keep track of your states and flow of dialogues. Important: no space inside the name. I name the whole dialogue something I can see which dialogue it is, say "first_meeting" for the greetings dialogue. Then the following states that still belong to this dialogue (because you have some chat options with the NPC) would be first_meeting_01, first_meeting_02, etc.

OK, but why use a funny name like v5b.1 when you could use something like first_meeting_01? That "v5b.1" sounds like an important format that he's using for something...
 

you have a script block in his script which sets a variable, let's call it "Global("xxxNPCReactionY","GLOBAL",1)". The engine then searches through the appropriate dlg-file of that NPC top to bottom. And what it expects to find is a dialogue state with the trigger "Global("xxxNPCReactionY","GLOBAL",1)"

Does it mean that every time you change the value of a variable in an NPC script a dialogue state is called?
 

For NPC PID, the "always true" trigger is "IsGabber (Player1)", meaning "it is the HC talking to me!".

What is an "always true" trigger?
 

What kinds of transactions exist?

Basically anything from here.

But you said that transactions come after the CONTINUE button. One of the actions in that page is, for instance, attacking. But attacking cannot come after the Continue button, because after the Continue button there is always another dialogue part, and it's not possible to attack while a dialogue is on. Attacking can only come after the End dialogue button.
 
Back to the tutorial itself, what's the meaning of all the text colours?
 

Rule 1: Every line should start with a tilde (~) and end with a tilde(~).

Not a single line in the dialogue state we've been discussing starts with a tilde.
 

Every line NPC says should start with a SAY.

This is the opposite of what he said in the previous paragraph.
 

If NPC says several lines, all NPC lines after the one starting with SAY should start with an equals sign (=).

And this is the opposite of the two things he said before.

I think that I can guess what he means, but it looks like he's actually saying the opposite of what he means. Which feels quite confusing, especially for beginners.
 

Rule 3: PC replies should look this way: ++ ~Reply~ + NPC_answers_this_line

What is NPC_answers_this_line?
 

Note: if a line only works under a special condition

What does it mean that "a line only works under a special condition"?




#606677 Writing dialogue in .d for REAL beginners

Posted by Alonso on 20 May 2019 - 05:18 AM in IE Tutorials

I wanted to use this tutorial to learn some basics of IE modding, but this is a very complex topic (not for beginners in my opinion) and it's taking us a lot of  effort to clarify the concepts discussed here. I have a lot of mod ideas, but I don't think that these concepts are helpful for the kind of mods I want to create. So I think it's better to leave this area for now and focus on learning the concepts that are relevant for my mod ideas. Maybe I can come back to this tutorial when I have more experience with modding.

 

Thank you again for all your answers and clarifications.




#606797 Help with first mod ideas

Posted by Alonso on 03 June 2019 - 03:43 PM in IE Help

Your intuition is very good, Gwendolyne, that also worked :)

 

Looks like I have a fully functional mod now. I attach it to this post in case someone wants to try it. If you do try it, though, bear in mind that I'm still changing some descriptions. In that regard the mod is still incomplete, so you'll find mistakes and inconsistencies in the text.

 

As I work with spell descriptions I've realized that many of them are repeated. For instances, the files cdstaf12.spl, OHBWI308.spl, SPCL722.spl, SPDR301.spl, SPIN579.spl, SPIN714.spl, SPWI002.spl, SPWI308.spl, SPWI399.spl and SPWI997.spl are all copies of Lightning Bolt. That means that every time I change a bit of the description of Lightning Bolt I have to repeat that change ten times. That happens with hundreds of spells. Given the amount of changes I'm doing, that means an awful lot of repeated work. Therefore, even though the mod is perfectly functional as it is, I'd like to modify it to remove the repeated descriptions, so that when I change a description I only have to do it once.

 

That would be almost trivial in a language I'm familiar with, like Java, but in WeiDU I've no idea of how to do it. It would involve two steps:

 

1. Modify setup.tra: For each set of duplicated name/description pairs remove all the duplication and leave only one unique name/description pair. Associate each of these pairs with the names of the files to which they belong. This association can be done in several ways. I think the easiest would be to use some sort of numeric pattern in the string ids. I would do this manually.

 

2. Modify the tp2 file: Adapt the code to the modifications done in setup.tra in the previous step. This probably involves using arrays of strings (or the equivalent data structure in WeiDU) to handle the group of file names associated to each name/description pair.

 

I'm pretty sure it should be quite easy to do, 10-12 lines of code max. Any tips on how to go about this?

Attached Files




#606652 Help with first mod ideas

Posted by Alonso on 16 May 2019 - 11:30 PM in IE Help

I tried that, but I didn't manage to make it work. When I try to install, WeiDU says Install Component [UNDEFINED STRING:   @1]? I upload the updated version in case you want to have a look.

 

And, anticipating my next move even before the current one is completed: Is it possible to use more descriptive names for the string references in setup.tra? I'm thinking about something like @blur_description instead of @2.




#606650 Help with first mod ideas

Posted by Alonso on 15 May 2019 - 05:17 PM in IE Help

Will remove them.

 

Now that we've made it work, I'm wondering if we can make it a bit more handy. I want to do the same for many spells, and that can make the tp2 file grow a lot and become quite cumbersome. I'm wondering if we can store the improved descriptions in an external file and use references to that external file in the tp2. That would make the mod much easier to handle. Is it possible to do something like that?




#606648 Help with first mod ideas

Posted by Alonso on 14 May 2019 - 04:10 PM in IE Help

Yeeeeha! I have created my first mod! I'm the best! :D

 

At least in my computer it works. Would you like to check if it also works in yours?

Attached Files




#606657 Help with first mod ideas

Posted by Alonso on 17 May 2019 - 10:39 AM in IE Help

I tried that, but I still have the same problem. Anything else I might be missing? I attach the updated mod.

Attached Files




#606682 Help with first mod ideas

Posted by Alonso on 22 May 2019 - 08:12 AM in IE Help

Thank you, Gwendolyne, that worked like a charm! :new_thumbs:
 
In order to streamline my workflow I modified a bit that routine to make it generate also the spell file name, apart from the spell name and the spell description. I attach the generated file to illustrate what I'm doing. My goal is to use just string references, rather than string literals, in my tp2 file. This is what I want to do:

 

COPY_EXISTING @100001 ~override~
SAY NAME1 @100002
SAY UNIDENTIFIED_DESC @100003

 

Here, @100001 would be something like SPWI201.spl. However, it looks like doing this breaks some syntax rule, WeiDU complains about that @100001 reference. I attach the debug file with the error. What am I doing wrong?

Attached Files




#606807 Help with first mod ideas

Posted by Alonso on 07 June 2019 - 02:51 PM in IE Help

Thank you, Mike and Gwendolyne. I've revamped the whole mod following your suggestions. However, for some reason the tp2 code doesn't work. I guess it must be some very basic syntax problem, but in this case I just cannot figure out what it might be. I attach the mod again so you can check it.

 

I feel a bit silly asking basic syntax questions like this one, but so far I haven't managed to find any documentation that I can understand. I've tried the WeiDU readme several times, but it looks like it assumes that the reader is a BG modding veteran and it gives for granted many concepts that are unknown for me.

Attached Files




#606727 Help with first mod ideas

Posted by Alonso on 27 May 2019 - 10:24 AM in IE Help

Thanks again, Gwendolyne, that worked very well and the mod is essentially finished now. I ran into a minor issue, though: I removed some of the entries in my list of spells, which means that there is no longer a string for every single reference checked in the loop. Now WeiDU complains that it expected a string for one of the empty references. I guess fixing the code to deal with that should be very straightforward, a simple case of skipping the loop when the text references are empty. But with my almost non existent knowledge of WeiDU I can't figure out how to do it. Can you give me a clue?

Attached Files




#606855 Help with first mod ideas

Posted by Alonso on 16 June 2019 - 07:53 PM in IE Help

Thanks, Mike, that fixed it.

 

And my mod is finished now!  :cheers:

 

Who wants to be my guinea pig and try it in their computer?

Attached Files