7 replies to this topic

[Shed]

Saved from the move .

Disclaimer - PLEASE READ: Lists and links provided here are a snapshot summary in the categories listed. The most comprehensive and regularly updated Mod List on the web can be found at the Pocket Plane Group Infinity Engine Modlist, and the info I have provided is intended for convenience only and not as a replacement for information already available in more detail elsewhere. I strongly advise anyone serious about modding or playing mods to visit and peruse the PPG list in detail.

The Modder Resource Centre

For those visiting the Modder's Room for information on essentials for writing or getting involved in the modding scene, I have tried to summarise useful information here. Note that some of this information is repeated in the "Player Centre" tosave people having to click between threads

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1. Essential Tools and Information

1A. Editors and Browsers

Anyone who wants to do some serious modding needs to have (or at least be aware of) the following stock tools (all of which are "unofficial" browsers and editors):

WeiDU: The most widely accepted tool for compiling game dialogue, patching strings and scripts, modifying and extending and altering in-game text files for IE-based (Infinity Engine) games, as written and provided by Westley Weimer. Most mods today use "WeiDU installations", so this is a must-have. There is also a version available for the Macintosh OS.

Useful additional tools to make WeiDU more user-friendly (for those who dislike command line editors) include:

• DLTCEP: This is a graphic user interface (GUI) for WeiDU (originally written by the Dragonlance TC team) which also acts as a game file editor and browser for all IE games.
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• ConTEXT: This is a text editor similar to "Notepad", useful for editing raw game text files. It is more useful than Notepad in that it supports "file-format highlighters", some IE-specific ones for ConTEXT being available from the WeiDU site

Near Infinity: Originally created and developed by Jon Olav Hauglid, this is a combination file editor/browser for all IE games, which operates in a Java Runtime environment. Make sure you download the beta version from the site, as it is actually more stable than the latest "official" release.

Infinity Explorer: Written by Dmitry Jemerov, and again applicable to all IE games, this is a file browser. Although it lacks any file editing facilities, a lot of people prefer Infinity Explorer for browsing dialogues.

GameApps: GameApps contains a number of useful tools written by Theo de Moree, know to many as TheoTeamBG.


1B. Essential Game File Information

There is a definitive source for this - the IESDP (Infinity Engine Structures Description Project) site.

The site itself describes this as "an effort to research the workings of the Bioware Infinity Engine®, and act as a collective resource for those interested in such workings". It is essentially as full a listing of the contents and structure of Infinity Engine files as exists anywhere. IESDP is a site dedicated to explaining the Infinity Engine from a modders/developers point of view. It has been around in various incarnations for several years, and has lots of information on almost everything, from scripting triggers/actions to file formats, to area filename lists, and more besides. You can download the contents of the IESDP project from the website, or use the site itself as a reference point.

IESDP also has its own FORUM. Igi is its current maintainer.


1C. Useful sound recording/editing tools:

acm2wav: A small but very useful program that converts BG music *.acm files to wave (.wav) format so that they can be played/edited in any proprietary sound editor.

Audacity: This is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds, and is extremely useful when recording custom sounds for mods. It can import/export WAV, Ogg Vorbis, MP3 files, and many more sound formats, and enables easy playback and recording/editing.


1D. Other Tools

There are many more useful modding tools available, including various area/graphical modding tools. An excellent list (with brief descriptions) can be found at the PPG Mod Tools List Page.

Seifer also put together a more detailed mod tool list which you can find HERE

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2. Tutorials index

2A. General Tutorial Resources

There are many tutorials available for different elements of IE modding - and many different collated index threads for them as well. All I aim to do here is provide a collated list of where most of these tutorials can be found. You can then pick and choose which individual tutorials you find useful:

WeiDU documentation

SHS Tutorial Index Thread: (collated by Seifer)
SHS Tutorial Forum

Gibberlings Three How Tos and Tutorials Forum
Pocket Plane Group Tutorials Forum
RPG Dungeon Tutorials
Black Wyrm Tutorials Forum
Chosen of Mystra Tutorials Forum
Niezapomniane Krainy Tutorials Forum (Polish language)

TeamBG Tutorial Archive (hosted by Black Wyrm - some tutorials outdated, but still a useful resource)
Marc Wrench's tutorials


2B. Recommended Tutorials for New and Aspiring Modders

For first time modders, there are some basic tutorials spread out over the various modding community forums which every potential modder would do well to take a look at, including (in no particular order):

• Common Mistakes in Modding - Seifer
  
• Complete Scripting Guide - SimDing0
  
• Basic WeiDU tutorial - Japheth
  
• The Road to Banter - Blue (annotated by Jason Compton)
  
• Weidu - How to create a simple NPC - Ghreyfain
  
• WeiDU: EXTEND/APPEND (adding flirts to Kelsey) - Jason Compton
  
• Dialog tokens - Japheth
  
• So you are going to write a Romance? - David Gaider
  
• NPC dialogue files: What they are and what they do - Ghreyfain
  
• Romance Authoring Tutorial - Rastor
  
• Item making Tutorial - Rastor
  
• Tutorial on Voice recording - Wynne
  
• Adding Voice to your mod - SConrad
  
• BGII Kit Creation Series - CamDawg
  
• Tips and Tricks on creating .D files - Domi
  
• Area Editing with DLTCEP - Yovaneth

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3. Miscellaneous Useful Information

3A. RSS

RSS is a new way to deliver live content and keep the IE community updated with the latest news and events. This is the result of the successful collaboration of many IE modding sites to provide the Infinity Engine Modding News feed. For more information on RSS itself, go here. You will need an RSS reader, although Mozilla Firefox has one inbuilt.

Useful information from Gibberlings Three concerning RSS and its use can be found at:
Infinity Engine Modding News
What the hell is RSS anyway?

Many IE groups provide their own RSS feeds:
SHS RSS
G3 Forum RSS feed PPG RSS RPGD RSS

3B. NiGHTMARE'S quest & storyline altering mod list (Summary of NiGHTMARE's thread)

Any serious modder wants to know if his/her idea has been included already in existing mods. NiGHTMARE, in a commendable attempt to prevent this, has been compiling a list of mod content which could potentially interfere or overlap with another. The sorts of things NiGHTMARE has in mind is:
- Expansion or alteration of an existing quest/story (e.g. betraying Renal)
- New quest/storyline which provides an alternative to an existing quest/story (e.g. a new route to Brynnlaw)
- New quest/story which involves existing BG2 characters (e.g. the kidnapping of Aran Linvail's daughter)
- New quest/story which involves characters from pnp (e.g the Council of Six)
- Anything else quest/story related that seems likely to be repeated by another mod

NiGHTMARE requests that people email him with this kind of information at nick@frad.org. His current list (which contains SPOILERS for other mods) can be found here.

3C. Chevar's Community Assets

Maintained by Chevar as part of the World Transition Project, the Community Assets provide animations, soundtracks, areas and tilsets from several CRPGs for download. You can find it here. Black Wyrm Lair also has other useful (mostly graphical) resources which can be found here.

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4. Sources of Mods

It is always useful to have released mods to get some illustrative examples of good modding technique:

• Links to mods, very conveniently categorised by game and type, can be found at the Pocket Plane Group Mods & Patches Page. This site also provides brief descriptions of each mod so you can better decide what you want to download.
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• Alternatively, for downloading almost any mod you care to mention, head to the IEGMC!
  IEGMC America, IEGMC Europe, IEGMC Asia, IEGMC Asia (FTP).
  These sites are maintained by TheWizard. If you want to have your own mods hosted on the IEGMC, email TheWizard at rdupuis@gmail.com
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• Dragon's Hoard
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• The only bias I intend to show on these lists (in deference to SHS allowing me to host my own mod-in-progress here):- For a list of mods hosted by Spellhold Studios you can head HERE

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5. IE Gaming and Modding Communities

Note: This is an amalgamated precis of the list of main modding community forums/sites from the PPG site, again just placed here for convenience and as an amalgamated homepage/forum linklist. Visit the PPG list for a brief description of each IE modding community, which is not provided here:

• Adrenaline Vault: FORUM only
  
• Ashford City: FORUM only
  
• Balduran's Adventurer's Spa and Grill: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• BG2 Add-On CZ: HOMEPAGE and FORUM (Czech language site)
  
• Black Wyrm: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Black Sheep: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Candlekeep: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Chosen of Mystra: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Clan DLAN: HOMEPAGE and FORUM (Spanish language site)
  
• Dragonland TC: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Forgotten Wars
  
• Gibberlings Three: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• IE Modders: HOMEPAGE only
  
• KiwiLand: FORUM only
  
• Limbo: FORUM only
  
• Niezapomniane Krainy: HOMEPAGE and FORUM (Polish language site)
  
• Planescape: Vengeance: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Pocket Plane Group: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Return to Trademeet: HOMEPAGE and FORUM (Italian Language site, English language forum)
  
• Rosenranken.de: HOMEPAGE/FORUM (German Language site)
  
• RPG Dungeon: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Sorcerer's Place: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Spellhold Studios: HOMEPAGE and FORUM (well D'uh!)
  
• Travellers in Time: HOMEPAGE and FORUM
  
• Westley Weimer's Homepage: HOMEPAGE and FORUM

Edited by NiGHTMARE, 27 September 2006 - 03:51 PM.

[Yovaneth]

Change of link:

Area Editing with DLTCEP

-Y-

[Shed]

Fixed. Thanks!

[Seifer]

Where is the animation slot usage here?

[Baronius]

Since the thead hasn't been updated since Apr, these seem to be missing:
- IEGMC Canada is not among the list of IEGMC mirrors.
- BWL has an RSS feed as well. forums.blackwyrmlair.net/rss.php

Just thought I would mention them.

[Azkyroth]

Here's a site that might be extremely helpful with mod sound effects:

The freesound project, a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sound samples, apparently with pretty decent search capabilities.

[Philoos]

Hello everyone,

As a member of Children of Bhaal clan of Baldur's gate series, I'd like to reccommend visiting our forum as yet, the site is going to be released soon. We have some modders and translators in our community, that you can cooperate with, exchange opinions etc. in special international subforum - if only there is enough interest.
Besides, we're planning to organize BG2 tournament online (duels based on BG Combat mod by Riklaunim) for every BG2-player, after meeting certain requirements.

Sorry, if iposted at wrong place, but I was inspired by IE Gaming and Modding Communities

Edited by Philoos, 24 January 2008 - 04:22 PM.

[Azkyroth]

Another potentially useful resource, in a roundabout way: this page matches up HTML colorvalues with both the visual depictions and names of some popular webpage colors. Since the color values are in hex (format #RRGGBB with values from 0-255 (or 00-FF in Hex) for R(ed), G(reen), and B(lue)), these can be input into Windows calculator in Hex mode and the values switched to decimal mode to derive numbers that can be used for the Red, Green, and Blue bytes of some of the color-related opcodes, IE "glow by RGB", and thus used to create colored visual effects for spells and items.

Edited by Azkyroth, 05 October 2007 - 05:40 PM.