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Fishing For Trouble - an introduction


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#1 Yovaneth

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Posted 07 September 2008 - 10:32 AM

Fishing For Trouble is a large mod that had its start when I decided that I'd like to try my hand at area creation. The result is the fishing village of Porthpentyrch (which literally means 'the hill of the boar next to the harbour') and in places it does show that this was a first effort. So having completed that I thought I'd create a small mod to use this area I'd built and if it worked okay, maybe I'd release it.

I have no idea what happened next but the 'small mod' grew four more major areas, a long storyline and a handful of smaller fedex quests. As it grew I tried to change its direction so that although there is one main storyline, it is possible to complete it in a non-linear fashion and indeed, it is possible to miss out large parts of the mod and still complete it successfully. Equally, there are points at which you can bring part of the story to a halt without breaking the entire plot and a few - a very few - points at which you can break the entire storyline but still be given experience points for having completed it so far. In a lot of places plot development depends on your attitude and to some extent, your charisma. In nearly all cases there are multiple ways to complete sections of the main quest and some ways will give more experience points than other ways. The choice, as ever, is yours.

There were times when I lost interest in it for months at a time (hence why it's taken five years to complete) but it was never going to be completely abandoned, unless I could not find an answer to one particular problem. I really did not want to have to use those awful words 'you need to start a new game to be able to use this mod' and had determined that if that did become the case, I would abandon it completely. Well, I badgered SConrad for .tp2 code help and Seb badgered The Bigg for new Weidu macros and between the two of them they resolved that problem.

And at long last it's nearly complete. A very few people have been aware of the mod's existance but I did not want to go public until I had reached this point in case I hit insurmountable problems. I really didn't want to have the over-enthusiastic modder's traditional hard drive crash at the last hurdle....


A few useless statistics:

Five new major areas
Ninety-nine one hundred and two new internal areas
One new piece of music
One new movie
Almost 11000 lines of dialog
213 214 new NPCs
Sixty portraits for the major NPCs
Four cutscenes
Two new spells
Sixteen new stores
Twenty-two new items
Twenty-four new BAMs
Forty-nine new .cre scripts


All of the 'new' areas have been created from cut-up and recycled Bioware originals, but less than ten of the internal areas have not been modified in one way or another to distinguish them from the original areas. Much as Bioware themselves did, in fact...

FFT is designed for characters at mid-level (nine and above - it can be done with lower levels i.e. just starting out in BG2 but it will get a bit difficult in places). If you are a high-level character then it will be a complete walkover. It can be started at any point in the game but preferably before Saemon Haverian takes you to Brynnlaw. After the start of Chapter 4 a lot of options become restricted because Brynnlaw/Spellhold is no longer available after you leave there.

-Y-

[EDIT] Dialog count updated; thanks to GeN1e for making me go away and count them (sort-of) properly!

Edited by Yovaneth, 25 October 2008 - 03:01 PM.


#2 Dharker

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Posted 09 September 2008 - 07:06 AM

Let me be the first to say I am really excited about this- A lot of hard work is about to come to fruition, it seems!

Edited by Dharker, 09 September 2008 - 07:07 AM.


#3 GeN1e

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Posted 09 September 2008 - 10:14 AM

These drew my attention

3200 lines of dialog
213 NPCs
Four cutscenes

Is my assumption that FFTis more of hack-n-slash with short (well, mostly) dialogs correct? I'm not saying it's good or bad just wondering.
And how long it's supposed to be (in hours)?

Retired from modding.


#4 Yovaneth

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Posted 09 September 2008 - 12:11 PM

These drew my attention

3200 lines of dialog
213 NPCs
Four cutscenes

Is my assumption that FFTis more of hack-n-slash with short (well, mostly) dialogs correct? I'm not saying it's good or bad just wondering.
And how long it's supposed to be (in hours)?

I've no idea how long it will take to play through - I've never timed it. It's not a hack'n'slash per se - how much hack'n'slash is up to the player as quite a lot of the plot can be negotiated without fighting. As I've said, it depends on charisma and tact. If you're tactless you're more likely to get jumped on but yes, there are also some serious set-piece battles that are necessary to the plot. On the other hand, for example it is possible to work through the entire Imradim area without casting a single spell or drawing a weapon once. But if you want a fight...

As for the length of the dialogs; they're around Bioware standard but some of them are very much longer. It depends on tact, the place in the plot and how important the NPC is to the plot. 3200 lines of dialog is actually 3200 Weidu lines, so the number of actual sentences is probably in the order of three times that number, if not more. I suppose I could run the .d files through a sentence counter and find out.

-Y-

[EDIT] I can't find anything that will give me a sentence count, so I took a reasonable number of dialogs at (almost) random and averaged the sentence count. The final figure done this way is just short of 11,000 lines of dialog which does make more sense than 3200. Thanks for drawing my attention to that.

Edited by Yovaneth, 09 September 2008 - 04:03 PM.


#5 -Splunge-

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Posted 11 September 2008 - 11:39 AM

FFT is designed for characters at mid-level (six and above ...)

Is the "level 6" part a typo? If this is for BG2, then level 6 isn't mid-level. In fact, nobody (other than multi-classes) start at less than level 7.

#6 Yovaneth

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Posted 11 September 2008 - 01:17 PM

FFT is designed for characters at mid-level (six and above ...)

Is the "level 6" part a typo? If this is for BG2, then level 6 isn't mid-level. In fact, nobody (other than multi-classes) start at less than level 7.

Oops - I forgot BG2 starts at level 7. I've been testing with a level 8-9 party and had my a$$ handed to me on the proverbial plate a few times. Fun when your own NPCs own you.... see the 'Chaos in Cerendor' screenshot for proof of that!

-Y-

Edited by Yovaneth, 11 September 2008 - 01:18 PM.


#7 justthisguy

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Posted 14 September 2008 - 08:33 AM

From the size of it I'm guessing this is a huge undertaking.
Best of luck!

Edited by Gert Jan, 14 September 2008 - 08:36 AM.


#8 Shaitan

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Posted 18 October 2008 - 01:23 PM

How's work progressing?

#9 Yovaneth

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Posted 20 October 2008 - 07:48 AM

Just one NPC script to check for correct actions and the .tp2 file to finish. I have a week's vacation at the end of this month and I want it all done and packaged by the end of it.

-Y-

#10 Shaitan

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Posted 22 October 2008 - 10:20 AM

That's .... that is sooo close! Hurrah!!!

#11 -D. U. Bertie-

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Posted 28 October 2008 - 04:46 PM

This looks amazing! I do have a couple of questions:

1. If during FFT you reach the target amount for Gaelan Bayle/Bodhi, will their messengers (I forget their names - the vampire and the boy) wait until an appropriate time to contact you re the 25% discount i.e. they won't just appear out of nowhere and tell you about the reduced fee?

2. I really like the portraits you've chosen for some of the NPCs, but do you think you could maybe match the colour of their clothing in-game to the colours in the portrait?

Cheers.

#12 Yovaneth

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Posted 28 October 2008 - 04:57 PM

This looks amazing! I do have a couple of questions:

1. If during FFT you reach the target amount for Gaelan Bayle/Bodhi, will their messengers (I forget their names - the vampire and the boy) wait until an appropriate time to contact you re the 25% discount i.e. they won't just appear out of nowhere and tell you about the reduced fee?

I truthfully have no idea. I actually can't remember what happens in the unmodded game with Gaelan Bayle and I've never played the Bodhi path.

2. I really like the portraits you've chosen for some of the NPCs, but do you think you could maybe match the colour of their clothing in-game to the colours in the portrait?

Do you have any ones in particular in mind?

-Y-

#13 -Dirty Unlce Bertie-

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Posted 29 October 2008 - 06:42 AM

Well, I seem to recall that once you reach 75% of the target Gaelan Bayle originally set you, both the boy and Bodhi's vampire (Valen) contact you and say they'll get you to Spellhold on the cheap. I don't know if the unmodded game scripts their appearances so it only happens when you're inside the city, but if that is the case then there shouldn't be an issue with your mod. It was just something I thought of late last night, so perhaps someone more familiar with the game could say how things work.

Regarding the portraits/clothing, I'll have to have another look through the screenshots when I get more time. I'll try to come up with a list for you soon.

#14 -Dirty Uncle Bertie-

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Posted 17 November 2008 - 12:15 PM

Yovaneth, I've discovered that the Gaelan Bayle/Bodhi messenger thingy only happens when you're in Athkatla, so I'm sure it'll automatically be the same with your mod i.e. I don't reckon you'll need to do anything.

The only two portraits I found that don't match the clothing are these two:

http://simpilot.net/...mage10frame.htm
http://simpilot.net/...image8frame.htm

Hope this helps.

#15 Yovaneth

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Posted 21 November 2008 - 05:55 AM

Yovaneth, I've discovered that the Gaelan Bayle/Bodhi messenger thingy only happens when you're in Athkatla, so I'm sure it'll automatically be the same with your mod i.e. I don't reckon you'll need to do anything.

The only two portraits I found that don't match the clothing are these two:

http://simpilot.net/...mage10frame.htm
http://simpilot.net/...image8frame.htm

Hope this helps.

Many thanks for taking the trouble to check and my apologies for the delayed reply.

-Y-

[Edit] It seems that the light map has an effect on the colour of the clothing (including armour). What is white under the sun of Athkatla is definately yellow under the much stronger sun of Imradim. And no, I'm not going to change the lightmap - I like it the way it is! :P

Edited by Yovaneth, 22 November 2008 - 03:23 AM.


#16 Shaitan

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Posted 19 November 2010 - 11:08 AM

Just one NPC script to check for correct actions and the .tp2 file to finish. I have a week's vacation at the end of this month and I want it all done and packaged by the end of it.

-Y-

Just read this :ph34r:
Do you have any clues of how long there's before you can do a public release?

:cheers:

#17 Lava Del'Vortel

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Posted 19 November 2010 - 11:41 AM

I'm also quite curious :)

#18 -yago-

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Posted 19 November 2010 - 05:40 PM

<3

#19 psychlopes

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Posted 20 November 2010 - 02:20 AM

I dont know what <3 means , but, here goes <4
( Im also very much curious in case you ant to know)

#20 Daulmakan

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Posted 20 November 2010 - 09:49 AM

I dont know what <3 means , but, here goes <4
( Im also very much curious in case you ant to know)

<3 is supposed to be a heart if you look at it horizontally, as in "I heart this" or derivates thereof.

I'm eagerly awaiting for FFT as well. 8)

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