Well, this actually should have been a PM rather than a post. But it seems I do not have enough posts to send a PM. I hope you won't mind.
I apologise for my far-from-perfect English beforehand.
Actually, about three years ago I was doing something similar to UB&FixPack, only on much smaller scale. I have beaten the game only once, but I'm the type who enjoys the process much more then the result.
Having started the game anew tens of times I couldn't help but notice some repetitiveness and a lack of challenge. And since I knew a little about BG2 modding and could use a primitive tool or two, I decided to spice things a bit. My modding skills were not that great and the only thing I used Weidu for was de- and re- compliling of dlg and bcs files. And because I was sure that nobody else will see this besides a few friends, I was not shy about editing existing strings of dialog.tlk. There weren't many (any?) mods to cause compatibility issues back then either. But I digress. So here is what I did.
The whole Mortuary ordeal was starting to feel a bit tedious after the n-th time. Do you remember Morte saying to be careful around Dusties so that they won't send you in the Crematorium or worse? I made it so that each time a Dustman sees you, the variable "Suspicion_level" (I don't remember the exact name anymore and it's not important anyway) gets incremented before he/she orders you to stop. If you comply, a Dustman approaches and asks you about your business, and then the variable is decremented based on what you say. If you had a good excuse, the Dustman ignores your presense, but the amount by which the variable is decremented is smaller than the initial boost. If you decide to break his neck the intitial increase is negated completely.
If you fail to comply, the Dustman will not chase you through the whole map and eventually return to what he was doing. But you would not want that outcome because if a Suspicion_level exceeds a certain amount, an alarm is raised and everyone goes hostile (and unless you strangle everyone, you WILL raise enough suspicion eventually). If you die while an alarm is sounded, you will get another (and last) chance to get out from the Mortuary before they realise what is happening and burn you in the Crematorium, ending the game (there is a game_over variable corresponding with a string that says something about elemental plane of fire, so I used that).
Finally the journey through the starting locations was exciting again! You actually had to sneak behind while their backs are turned and resist the temptation to loot all the containers because someone is usually standing near them. And at last you could make real use of that zombie disguise one of the Anarchists has to offer!
It was actually a bit more complex than it sounds. For example, if you tried to snap someone's neck while others could see you, the alarm was sounded immediately. The checks for DEX were also randomised. The breakpoint was shifted by 2 points in either side, and the check was picked at random out of 3. I have done so because I did not want to know beforehand if I succeed in a risky attempt. Before you could pick a craracter with 13 DEX and kill every Dustman in sight without actually starting combat. Now that was not the case, the only *sure* way to succeed was having a really high dexterity, 15 or even 17; but even if your DEX was a bit lower than was originally required, you still had a chance, albeit a small one. Even if you failed a DEX check there was a STR check to see how much damage you could do on your first blow (I don't remember anymore if it was present in the orginal). If you had a decent STR, you could actually kill a Dustman in one blow and avoid the alarm. CHR checks in dialogues went through the same randomising, although to a somewhat less degree. There actually was a reversed check when you are in a zombie disguise (if your CHR is greater than some const, your disguise fails; I always thought about high-CHR character's as good actors, not beauty models), you might want to look into that, if you haven't already.
What else? You could steal a key from that lycanthrope Dustman near the gates, so that you could leave the Mortuary based on your DEX stat alone (and you really, really shouldn't ask him to open the gates later). The DEX check for Dustmen Guards was higher by 2 points so that you had much more problems strangling them (and there are two of them in sight range of each other, you actually had to lure one behind a corner). The most problematic part was when one of the Dustmen spots you and then, while he is walking towards you, you start a conversation with another. How can you make a game recognise that it was not the man who spotted you (there are different dialogues)? I don't fully remember, but I think it was solved with local variables and a bit of luck...
Finally, when you exit the Mortuary, the Suspicion_level is nullified. If you killed someone inside or there was an alarm, you cannot re-enter unless you are smuggled inside or found dead on the steets. And I did not decide what happens then or when you are allowed indide. I thought the Suspicion_level should be incremented by very small amount each time a new Dustman sees you (you wouldn't want to hang there longer than you need) and nullified again on exit, but AFAIK never did that.
I have also seen you talking about altering the checks in the game to make it more challenging. Well, I did that!
Manually. They aren't THAT many, anyway. Mostly it was randomising the stuff from repeating encounters, so that they wouldn't *always* have the same outcome. At least in the Hive, when you have a stat greater than 12 you are almost guarantied to pass a check and otherwise you are almost guarantied to fail. I'd like to see a mix of both, and found that bit of a reasonable randomness a great addition. Some checks that were there for flavor I did not alter, and those important to the plot (like getting the Blade of the Immortal from the Golem) I raised significantly. Found an unholy amount of bugs in the process, too. And my second piece of work that I was proud of was Mantuok. It was very difficult to make that cursed creature behave in a way that made sense! I saw someone complaining about his dialogue. I made it so that you cannot pass across the bridge without talking to him EVERY time. The authors did have a code for him to return to the bridge, it was just almost never executed (AFAIK it was present only in one of the dialogue lines). I made his dialogue dependant on which location you came from, and he will no longer make way when you tell him that you are seeking a master of this place if you have come from the Lower Wards. Instead he will just give directions. He will move away after you tell him that you are on a mission for Lothar, but will get back to the bridge when you come back, with or without a skull. There was also a dialogue line that suggested him attacking you alone without the aid of his kin, and I made it work. More checks, more of everything - that's the way I like my game.
The third was a duplicate of your work, that is, a Pendant of Yemeth quest. I'm dying out of curiosity how did you implement that. I added a noble who was taunting the passers-by and a robed figure who was walking in circles around him to a section of a Hive with a Smoldering Corpse bar. When the night falls, I made them leave the map and then spawn another figure in the Alley of Dangerous Angles. I figured it was easier to handle two different creatures than one.
Had to restructure dialogue a bit. The behavior of a noble and a fiend was dependant on whom and how you approach (or attack) first. If the noble was alive and nearby when you tried to attack (or threaten) the fiend, the former interfered while the latter tried to escape, never to be seen again. If you talked to a fiend without letting her know that you realised her identity, she will pretend to be scared of you and run away, often away from the noble too! That's when you could talk to her without fear of being interrupted. Another option is to approach her in the Alley at night or when her defendant was dead (you had only one chance then, though, as she would try to escape). I had sooo much fun writing this down. I also tried to restructure many of the dialogues in the game. For example, I do not like when the same line is repeated twice in a dialogue. Takes the authentic feeling out of the game. And much more so if that is an important character, like TTO. Took me two day to make him like I expected him to be. Made the stat checks VERY HIGH along the way, too.
Another example is that drunk women in the Wards, who tries to insult my party members. I always travel with the same party, and I grew tired of her constantly badmouthing Annah and never Dak'kon. Again I randomised things here a bit. I was in the process of restructuring Trias' dialogue and adding the option to let him go even with Vhailor in your party (had to kill Vhailor first, of course... a fair trade for a decision which was not originally there), when my HDD died. I had a two-months-old copy, but I was not keepeng track of what was changed and simply couldn't bring myself to go though every file. Thus I put it somewhere on a spare HDD and never looked at it again since. Sad, sad story.
But checking these forums I found out that Planescape modding community is far from being dead. And that makes me want to play the game once more. And that means I will want to change something again. But since my modding skills surely haven't improved with 3 years of not playing IE games, I might not be able to. So, if any of my ideas interested you, I could upload the files I still have and put this burden off my shoulders.
In not - feel free to ignore my long-winded musings. With deep respect for your work, Nevill.
Edited by nevill, 03 June 2009 - 02:28 PM.
