20 replies to this topic

[Ascension64]

Enable conversations with charmed/dominated creatures

Description
This EXE patch allows the player to speak to creatures that are under the effect of the charm creature opcode (used by charm, dire charm, and domination spells and abilities) in Baldur's Gate II. The normal behaviour in Baldur's Gate II is that talking to charmed creatures would be suppressed, and a string displayed in the text area reading "A mind controlled creature cannot speak to you." This behaviour is hard-coded into the BGMain.exe, with the relevant code shown below.

Conversing with charmed NPCs was a specific feature in Baldur's Gate I, since BioWare created dialogue that was uttered only when an NPC was spoken to when charmed. In Baldur's Gate II, this feature appears to have been disabled by the developers deliberately. The immediate ramification to this is that playing Baldur's Gate I using the Baldur's Gate II engine, as occurs in the case of using the modifications BG1Tutu, EasyTutu, and BGT-WeiDU, prevents the realisation of all dialogue uttered specifically by charmed creatures.

This EXE patch was created to remove the suppression of dialogue on charmed creatures, allowing charmed creature dialogues to occur in BG1Tutu, EasyTutu, and BGT-WeiDU. Additionally, this patch may open new possibilities for other Baldur's Gate II modifications.

The patch is installed through WeiDU, facilitating easy uninstallation and restoration of a backup copy in the case that glitches occur.

Installation Instructions
Extract 'A6CharmPatch_v1.rar' to your Baldur's Gate II installation directory.
Run the file 'Setup-A6CharmPatch.exe' that was created in the directory you nominated for extraction above.
Follow the on-screen prompts.
If the installation reports "Patched BGMain.exe at address <some number>", then BGMain.exe was patched successfully.
If the installation reports that "No patches made to BGMain.exe.", no changes were made to BGMain.exe. Please report it if this occurs, and give details as to your Baldur's Gate II version, distribution, and locale.

To uninstall this patch, run the file 'Setup-A6CharmPatch.exe' again, and follow the on-screen prompts.

Disclaimer
USE THIS EXE PATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK. The author is not responsible for any damage to your game, computer, or livelihood that may be caused by this patch.

This EXE patch has been tested to function correctly and without increasing the frequency of crash-to-desktops, but only on a limited number of differing BGMain.exe executables. Hence, it is not guaranteed that the patch will work correctly on your specific Baldur's Gate II version, distribution, and/or locale. If you find that this is the case, please report that the patch did not work or produced problems and give details as to your Baldur's Gate II version, distribution, and locale, so that the matter can be investigated.

Download

Edited by Ascension64, 30 November 2007 - 04:45 PM.

[vilkacis]

Let me just be the first to say uNF uNF baby!

No, serioulsy. That's awesome. (But shouldn't it be in misc released mods?)

[Ascension64]

vilkacis, on Nov 28 2007, 10:36 PM, said:

(But shouldn't it be in misc released mods?)

Oh yeah, probably. I don't know if this can really be called a 'mod', though.

[aVENGER]

Awesome work mate!

[berelinde]

This is so cool! I've got a load of dialogues I had to scrap because they'd never be seen. Coolness!

[Jarno Mikkola]

What about the Ctrl+K:ld chars?

And now we only need a speech option on going to the creaturess inventory and char tables , so we'll have the 16 character party.

[manwe858]

I take it this should be installed before all other mods?

[Ascension64]

manwe858, on Dec 1 2007, 01:51 PM, said:

I take it this should be installed before all other mods?

Goes anywhere, anytime.

[Yovaneth]

Brilliant move. Um.... this means I have to go back and add charmed conversations to my mod... maybe not-so-brilliant after all...

-Y-

[Ascension64]

Yovaneth, on Dec 11 2007, 04:11 AM, said:

Brilliant move. Um.... this means I have to go back and add charmed conversations to my mod... maybe not-so-brilliant after all...

-Y-

Well, no one said that you have to.

[Ascension64]

The patch patches the BG2 executable, so it will work with anything that uses a BG2 executable to run.

[Mayaserana]

Just curious...is there any known reason this is not included in the Big World Project? Or should I ask THEM that?

Is it compatible with other exe-patches such as NoCD (from NEJ)?

[Ascension64]

Mayaserana, on Oct 8 2008, 07:45 PM, said:

Just curious...is there any known reason this is not included in the Big World Project? Or should I ask THEM that?

Is it compatible with other exe-patches such as NoCD (from NEJ)?

It should work. Ask Leonardo Watson about the BWP question.

[Hoppy]

Mayaserana, on Oct 8 2008, 02:45 AM, said:

Just curious...is there any known reason this is not included in the Big World Project? Or should I ask THEM that?

Is it compatible with other exe-patches such as NoCD (from NEJ)?

You should be OK if you crack your game early before a lot installations especially with the A64 charm patch which alters your BGMain. I use it in that fashion and it is OK. It may work if you crack later on because the crack copies the BGMain anyway and gets rid of the ToB CD check. I have not tried any other cracks yet but there are a couple out there.

Installing the charm patch was tricky for me in a largely based BWP install. I should really document these things more because I can't remember what I did. Something like removing a stafxx.itm from the override because it made an error with the patch. Then the patch installed and I put the file back. Something along those lines.

Edited by Hoppy, 09 October 2008 - 12:58 PM.

[Leomar]

Quote

Just curious...is there any known reason this is not included in the Big World Project? Or should I ask THEM that?

We have found this patch and the XP patch of Ascension64 very late, because it was buried in this discussion thread. A link of Ascension64 signature has given us the clue, that these patches exists. Now, we try to include both patches in one of our next BWP versions.

Greetings Leomar

[Ascension64]

Updated patch to version 3. Thanks to all those involved.
- Traified the mod
- Added German, Spanish, Italian and French translations
- Added VERSION flag

Download: http://www.shsforums.net/index.php?autocom...&showcat=73

[Creepin]

I wonder if anyone tried this .exe mod with no-cd'ed bgmain.exe? If so, did it worked?

P.S. It really belongs to "miscellanious released mods"

Edited by Creepin, 04 December 2009 - 07:17 AM.

[Lollorian]

LOL The answer to your first question is right just 4 posts above yours

Ascension64, on Oct 9 2008, 04:45 PM, said:

Mayaserana, on Oct 8 2008, 07:45 PM, said:

Is it compatible with other exe-patches such as NoCD (from NEJ)?

It should work.

You should probably know that this patch searches for a particular 'code' in the .exe (which your noCD'ed one should also have) and makes changes to it

But you could also have made a backup of your BGMAin.exe and then run the patch to check ... if it fails, you could just restore the backup

Cheers,
Lol

Edited by Lollorian, 04 December 2009 - 09:27 AM.

[Creepin]

Lollorian, on Dec 4 2009, 08:19 PM, said:

LOL The answer to your first question is right just 4 posts above yours

Crap, what a shame! I usually read topics before posting but this time I was sure none but me would've come up with this question
Anyways, thanks for the hint!