11 replies to this topic

[mouser]

Do the "placed" NPC's (ie: the ones not showing up in chateau irenicus) keep the items they had in BG1 or is their inventory cleared?

The readme was unclear on this point, and I don't know the codebase well enough to tell.

[Azazello]

They don't keep their equipment (except Xan will maintain his Moonblade), they get new stuff.

[mouser]

They don't keep their equipment (except Xan will maintain his Moonblade), they get new stuff.

New stuff? I didn't see that anywhere...

To be clear, I'm referring to the NPC's like Alora and Branwen that get imported. Here's a snippet of the code:

//Placed NPCs
REPLACE_TEXTUALLY
~ActionOverride("Alora",LeaveParty())
ActionOverride("Alora",ChangeAIScript("",DEFAULT))
ActionOverride("Alora",ClearAllActions())
ActionOverride("Alora",DestroySelf())~
~ActionOverride("Alora",LeaveParty())
ActionOverride("Alora",ChangeAIScript("",DEFAULT))
ActionOverride("Alora",ClearAllActions())
SetGlobal("AloraPartyBG1","GLOBAL",1)
// Trademeet on left-side of Mazzy's house
ActionOverride("Alora",MoveBetweenAreas("AR2000",[2478.1262],4))~


Unless the AloraPartyBG1 global causes her inventory to be changed... I was wondering what that was for.

[Azazello]

Oh yeah, mouser, I do believe you are correct. I was thinking about NPCs from other mods like TDD or NeJ, where they are assigned new gear.

[mouser]

Oh yeah, mouser, I do believe you are correct. I was thinking about NPCs from other mods like TDD or NeJ, where they are assigned new gear.

Since I'm not sure either way... Does that mean you think they will keep their inventory and equipment (except for bags and stuff I know never stay on a character)?

[Taimon]

All imported NPCs drop their equipment in aram00.bcs. (BGTLoseAllItems)

[mouser]

All imported NPCs drop their equipment in aram00.bcs. (BGTLoseAllItems)

Thanks Taimon.

I see from the aram00.baf's how it's doing the "import some items" feature as well now. Makes a lot of sense.

I guess I'll play a multiplayer over serial (you get fewer random join requests that way ) and set up a dummy char to export for branwen or alora when I get to the end of BG1.

I tried putting ajantis inside the order of the radiant heart as well. Who knows, I may end up learning some of this stuff yet.

Such a counter intuitive language to me though... But my hat's off to the guys who did it - it's mods for games like Baldur's Gate that are the reason newer games like Morrowind, Oblivion, NVN, and now The Witcher come with modding tools already included.

[mouser]

Bah!!!

Multiplayer limps like a three legged cat.

3 cores, 6 gigs of RAM, 12 gigs of pagefiles on separate disks, and it can't handle a program ten years old...

Go Go Vista! Rah!


and yes, I tried compatibility mode...

[Jarno Mikkola]

Multiplayer limps like a three legged cat.
3 cores, 6 gigs of RAM, 12 gigs of pagefiles on separate disks, and it can't handle a program ten years old...

Did you try all of these? Especially the number 1.

0. Always patch the game(s) with the latest patch, start a new game and exit after the game has auto-saves itself(so you have to make a char or choose a pre-made one), before you do any moding, and you might as well make a safe backup from the important files: data and override folders, baldur.exe, BGMain.exe, dialog.tlk and CHITIN.key .
1. Put the ambient sounds off from the BGConfic.exe, as some of the areas might have no ambient sounds and so the game tries to start them many time continuously, and so looses processing power.
2. Don't mess with the game configurations so the speed adjustment percentages stay on "normal" ratings even if you have very high end machine, as the game has own it's internal fps counter, it sometimes tries to correct the fps on it's own by lowering graphs etc. Also the games frame rate should be set to about 30, as that's the default.
3. I wouldn't recommend to install any of the speaking item mods, as they run their scripts and fire their comments everywhere, and that's bad for the fps(frames/second count).
4. Delete the old files from the Cache folder time to time.
5. Inventory management(no stacks that have more than about 200 items, in a bag, arrows etc.), -might help.
6. Trying to avoid too many effects on a character(about 20 is fine, 200 is too many, and 20 000 is way way too many...)
7. De-fragmenting your hard drive might also help... as you don't have to go find the data in the pieces. (hmm, there is a joke in there, hih)
8. Install the mods in correct order, and make sure you started from a clean install, so there is no leftovers from old mods, by deleting the old mod files, the data and override folders(don't go and overwrite them), helpful links for for Tutu and BGT(the .pdf files) -based Megamods.
9. It might be a good idea to biff your override folder, but do that knowing that you generally can't change the game much after. Or use the End_biff from here.

[Azazello]

All imported NPCs drop their equipment in aram00.bcs. (BGTLoseAllItems)

This is true, but this is only for the NPCs that are in the party. The other NPCs [what mouser calls "placed"] keep their equipment (I just checked the code to confirm.)

[Ascension64]

Check \BGTTweak\18\*.BAF for what the extra imported NPCs get.

[mouser]

Multiplayer limps like a three legged cat.
3 cores, 6 gigs of RAM, 12 gigs of pagefiles on separate disks, and it can't handle a program ten years old...

Did you try all of these? Especially the number 1.

0. Always patch the game(s) with the latest patch, start a new game and exit after the game has auto-saves itself(so you have to make a char or choose a pre-made one), before you do any moding, and you might as well make a safe backup from the important files: data and override folders, baldur.exe, BGMain.exe, dialog.tlk and CHITIN.key .
1. Put the ambient sounds off from the BGConfic.exe, as some of the areas might have no ambient sounds and so the game tries to start them many time continuously, and so looses processing power.
2. Don't mess with the game configurations so the speed adjustment percentages stay on "normal" ratings even if you have very high end machine, as the game has own it's internal fps counter, it sometimes tries to correct the fps on it's own by lowering graphs etc. Also the games frame rate should be set to about 30, as that's the default.
3. I wouldn't recommend to install any of the speaking item mods, as they run their scripts and fire their comments everywhere, and that's bad for the fps(frames/second count).
4. Delete the old files from the Cache folder time to time.
5. Inventory management(no stacks that have more than about 200 items, in a bag, arrows etc.), -might help.
6. Trying to avoid too many effects on a character(about 20 is fine, 200 is too many, and 20 000 is way way too many...)
7. De-fragmenting your hard drive might also help... as you don't have to go find the data in the pieces. (hmm, there is a joke in there, hih)
8. Install the mods in correct order, and make sure you started from a clean install, so there is no leftovers from old mods, by deleting the old mod files, the data and override folders(don't go and overwrite them), helpful links for for Tutu and BGT(the .pdf files) -based Megamods.
9. It might be a good idea to biff your override folder, but do that knowing that you generally can't change the game much after. Or use the End_biff from here.

Went back and tried that. I did have ambient sounds on, but turning them off didn't make a difference. For some reason the BGMain's affinity was set to run on only one core (maybe because of compatibility mode), but setting it to all three and turning compatibility mode off didn't help any either.

Honestly, I'm getting used to this. I've got old DOS games - Might and Magic I-V, that will run without a hitch. Others, Wizardry and Ultima archives, won't install at all. Most of the old SSI gold box games installed. Newer games are also hit and miss, some will install, some won't, and some install and then have problems. And I don't think it's anything you guys can fix with modding if it's the engine banging up against the 64 bit kernel.

I'm happy BG runs at all (so far, it looks like the whole IE series does, or at least they all installed without problems). Even if it is only in single player mode (I don't really need multiplayer for anything). My guess is it has something to do with all the built in firewalls and kernel protections that freak out every time a program tries to talk to something else. Or maybe it's just a conflict with the old networking code and the x64 architecture. I'm leaning toward the latter since I turned off most of that other stuff (I'm behind a separate firewall that handles that job very well).


The one good upside to Vista that I've found (and it's big to me), is that no matter what locks up or freezes, if I hit ctrl-alt-del, the task manager will pop up. No more rebooting because of runaway processes.


I'll check that code in /18 to see what's going one with what the NPC's get.

Thanks to all of you.

Edit: and it's not just games. My guitar tab program (tuxguitar) won't run because the Java Virtual Machine won't run right (I'm sure Sun will come out with a fix for that soon enough). Ah well, that's what living on the bleeding edge of technology is about I guess. Although I was hoping SP1 would have fixed a lot of this.

Edited by mouser, 15 December 2008 - 12:35 AM.