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Aldric Offline OP
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I bought two copies of this game because I love RPGs and the thought of having an editor excited me. However, I'm kninda glad I didn't support the kickstarter now with the lack of support from the modders and larian. . . I take that back - I probably would of supported the kickstarter had I known about it. I'm just frustrated. In fact I'll probably buy a third copy for my wife on her PC.

Here are my question / vents:

Keep in mind I'm new to modding, but want to learn.

1. The engine is so unstable. I know it is just a toolset being provided, but so many restarts and deleted mods because of quirky bugs happening.

2. This forum. It seems like the majority of posters are all modders who want to manipulate the main campaign so they can have overpowered characters. Where are the people who just want to build their own mod from scratch like me and have their own story? Look how many 0 reply posts are in this forum. Some of the posts are with the same questions I have, but nobody wants to answer them. Is this the real truth about modders? I thought they supported each other. Either there are no reply's or the basic response is download the lstools.

3. The lstools. Why are we having to use this third party application. I don't want to have to rely on that. Is there no other way to get what we need?

4. _Start goals. Why provide a video of how to script and inform us that the goals must be under the "_Start" goal, but provide no instruction on how to get them.

5. Three videos on how to get three apples. I appreciate tutorials being made and I have learned some things from them, but seemed like time could have been used on more of the basic questions - how to get the _Start goals, how to set up initial mods with equipment, skills, how to make sure fights happen, etc.

Yes - just frustrated frown

Thank you Larian for the great game and think you guys rock and will continue to support.


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(I bought two copies...)
I bought two copies of this game because I love RPGs and the thought of having an editor excited me. However, I'm kninda glad I didn't support the kickstarter now with the lack of support from the modders and larian. . . I take that back - I probably would of supported the kickstarter had I known about it. I'm just frustrated. In fact I'll probably buy a third copy for my wife on her PC.

I get your point and understand why you're upset. However, I feel they are actually providing good support. AFAIAA, they don't have a really large team and they're putting in a lot of hours into patching.

(Keep in mind...)
Keep in mind I'm new to modding, but want to learn.

We all are, for this game. This is, in fact, my first game that I've tried modding with since years.
I fondly remember building elaborate maps for DooM II. laugh Before I knew all the nooks and crannies, I couldn't get done what I wanted in those maps.

(1. The engine...)
1. The engine is so unstable. I know it is just a toolset being provided, but so many restarts and deleted mods because of quirky bugs happening.

I'm not sure if it's unstable. Rather, I think there are just a lot of files missing that depend on each other, once you start modding or editing.

(2. This forum...)
2. This forum. It seems like the majority of posters are all modders who want to manipulate the main campaign so they can have overpowered characters.

Where did you get this idea? I haven't seen a lot of threads dedicated to editing existing characters and those that are here - like my own - are geared to alternatives, not overpowered characters.
Did you know, by my count, that both Madora and Jahan are lacking stat points, in vanilla, at level 3? If you balance the stats out to 5 each, you'll be missing 5, if I remember correctly.

(Where are the people...)
Where are the people who just want to build their own mod from scratch like me and have their own story? Look how many 0 reply posts are in this forum. Some of the posts are with the same questions I have, but nobody wants to answer them.

That's because those type of mods require a lot more work. And most of the people who make these don't want to release a lot of info/screenshots until they feel satisfied it's done to a certain extent.
Seeing as it's all loose ground for all of us, it doesn't surprise me that those threads aren't getting a lot of replies. If only they are working (hard, on their own) on those types of mods, they will get the same speedbumps, the same questions and most will not have answers either.
Pioneers need to start somewhere! smile

(3. The lstools...)
3. The lstools. Why are we having to use this third party application. I don't want to have to rely on that. Is there no other way to get what we need?

It was a solution for what we needed. The editor is incredibly undocumented at the moment. My guess is they released it before documenting it so that modders at least have the tools to mess around with. In the mean time, some dedicated Larian staff is busy creating documents, tutorials and guides for the editor.

(4. _Start goals...)
4. _Start goals. Why provide a video of how to script and inform us that the goals must be under the "_Start" goal, but provide no instruction on how to get them.

Can't answer that one, sorry mate.

(5. Three videos...)
5. Three videos on how to get three apples. I appreciate tutorials being made and I have learned some things from them, but seemed like time could have been used on more of the basic questions - how to get the _Start goals, how to set up initial mods with equipment, skills, how to make sure fights happen, etc.

Let me ask you, without offending you, what have you found out, yourself?
Whatever you did find out might help us all. Maybe you have a piece of the puzzle and someone else does, too. Maybe those two puzzle pieces fit together, or maybe they're the same piece and you can build on from there! smile

Originally Posted by Aldric
Yes - just frustrated frown

Same here. I'm trying to mess around with the first two companions. It seems like one of the easier things to start out with. Plus, I prefer to have a tank fighter vs. a 2-hander fighter. And if I could change Madora, I might as well optimise Jahan for my own needs, too.
I'm getting there, slowly! Eventually I want to try and make my own add-on area with stuff going on for the main campaign. smile

Last edited by Bucket; 19/07/14 08:51 PM. Reason: layout clean up
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Quote
1. The engine is so unstable. I know it is just a toolset being provided, but so many restarts and deleted mods because of quirky bugs happening.


Beta is beta. This isn't how the toolset was designed to be use, but they are working on making it more usable.

Quote
2. This forum. It seems like the majority of posters are all modders who want to manipulate the main campaign so they can have overpowered characters. Where are the people who just want to build their own mod from scratch like me and have their own story? Look how many 0 reply posts are in this forum. Some of the posts are with the same questions I have, but nobody wants to answer them. Is this the real truth about modders? I thought they supported each other. Either there are no reply's or the basic response is download the lstools.


There are people working on them. The problem is, we know very little about how the engine works. It's all part of a learning process. The full scale campaigns rely on the work others do figuring out how to change stats, make custom items, etc . . . Really good full campaigns in Neverwinter Nights took over a year from when the game was first released to come out. Start small is always the motto when working in a new environment, so that's what we are doing.

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3. The lstools. Why are we having to use this third party application. I don't want to have to rely on that. Is there no other way to get what we need?


See #1.

Quote
4. _Start goals. Why provide a video of how to script and inform us that the goals must be under the "_Start" goal, but provide no instruction on how to get them.

5. Three videos on how to get three apples. I appreciate tutorials being made and I have learned some things from them, but seemed like time could have been used on more of the basic questions - how to get the _Start goals, how to set up initial mods with equipment, skills, how to make sure fights happen, etc.


These tutorials are designed for people new to modding. If they started in the deep end, it would deter a lot of people from even trying. More advanced stuff will come, but the community is already making a lot of progress on it's own.


TL;DR version : Be patient

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Honestly, it's the lack of tutorials/documentation that is leading to the issues you are mentioning. We can't answer a question related to modding if we ourselves don't know.

The Editor is something that Larian has stated several times is a Work In Progress. Unfortunately right now we're forced to rely on third party tools and file editing outside the Editor to accomplish what we want.

Regarding point 2, Main-campaign modding is talked about a lot simply because we know more about how to do that, compared to starting a mod from scratch. On the flip side, Main-campaign modding is limited in several major respects, and so far the official support from Larian has been focused on getting completely new map mods to work (the Video tutorials have almost no relevance to main-campaign modding).

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Originally Posted by Aldric
-snip-


All your questions can easily be answered with one answer:
The game just got released.

People are still trying to get through the main campaign and/or trying to figure out how the editor works.
Meanwhile Larian is undoubtly working overtime to fix bugs and make the game more stable. After they're done with that, they'll likely turn their attention on the game's editor.

It's really the same with any other moddable game out there. You can't expect mods popping out the day a game is released.

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1/ Don't start anything big yet. Just make some light tries, until the editor becomes more polished.
2/ this is frustrating indeed. Not anybody knows anything. The only one that could be really helpfull are the devs. but they must be on vacation mostly, or creating tuts that are unexploitable because some basic knowledge is missing... As for other people, when you consider some modders want to sell there mods, this is NOT going to be a sharing and helpfull community if we go this way. People will bumbly stick to there stuff. Sounds ugly to me...
3/ I rather not either. We simple folks never know what kind of malicious software can be hidden into this.
4/ Yes, very frustrating indeed.
5/ Fucking system they have here. I mean, just a simple discussion requires DB handling and stuff ? Sounds overcomplicated to me. I miss the NWN2 Toolset :-(

Frustrated, too.


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Yes, they should provide more info on (4) it's very frustrating as you need to unpak them but it still aint working as it's causing a fail or the dialog still not work in game.

Jack David, seems to have talked about the issue, that I'm having and most other modders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CNcQz7j5KY&list=UUQ-AAXSt0M5Gx0-A9UGut8g

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Originally Posted by Aldric

4. _Start goals. Why provide a video of how to script and inform us that the goals must be under the "_Start" goal, but provide no instruction on how to get them.


I just got that one working. You got to go to your Divinity Folder to "\Data\Editor\Mods\Main" and copy the "\Story" Folder to "\Data\Mods\%YourModFolder%"

then you got at least the prefab Story.

Cheers

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Thanks for the tip, however, grouping to parent doesn't work, and building doesn't work either, as I have a lot of errors.
Fed up with having to tweak the editor, and copy paste stuff, and mess up everythings, for very basic feature like starting a dialogue.
And after that, people will call me names because I rage :-(
And godammit, I don't call modding changing numbers in an axcell sheet, ffs.

Last edited by Cromcrom; 20/07/14 01:01 PM.

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I get crashes all the time and the need of 3rd party tools and copy/pasting stuff in order to make scripting work is no good. I give up for now and wait for updates.
Hopefully Larian will fix these issues.

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To me what frustrates is all that we have said, but on top of that they really only have so much time to make right. Sure there will always be some that can wait long periods of time to get this working and then playing around with things. But not being more ready at release and each day moving forward without getting this ball really rolling, the majority will go look elsewhere soon enough.

Personally I'm all about a D:OS 2, D:OS was too much "all in" and "new" that I see shades of that many places. The next effort if there was one will have so many advantages from more $ to many lessons learned. I do hope when they decide their next project it will be that.

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Indeed, 5. is the issue. If just a guy from larian would show up here once a day to answer our questions.

We're hanging around in our public chat trying to figure out stuff. We keep the group open to have a place for all modders to discuss stuff and get help. If you want to join, just join our group (no invitation needed) and click the "join chat" button on the top right side.

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Lots of good points made here.

My view: Since the editor (for external use) is work in progress, try to fiddle with what is ready, and don't waste time getting frustrated with other things. Wait for more documentation and instructions. Yes, I know it's not easy...

@Larian: A lot of annoyances would be taken away if creating a new module started up with a lot of basic things "ready for use". A few important points:

- Being able to write conversation and use the story editor.
- Being able to make use of existing script functions, etc.
- Having a module setting panel for various module start purposes.


And a few nice, but less immediately important points:

- Add a better "create area" menu to make it simpler and less confusing for new modders to get started.
- Improve the user interface of the resource manager, a preview window (where applicable) would be nice.
- Add a simple menu system (maybe area settings) for custom music, events, atmosphere, weather, etc.
- Add a better way to change creature/NPC abilities/skills.
- Improve the camera controls (in the toolset and in the game).


Some less important, but still nice features:

- Add a day/night cycle system (god dammit!)
- Add a fps/cpu test function.
- Add swimming, flying, climbing and mounted combat into the game (just kidding).

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We're all impatient to dig our hands in, but yeah -- the toolkit clearly isn't done yet. The NWN and NWN2 toolkits were far from perfect at launch (in fact, they continued to have strange bugs throughout) and Bioware as well as Obsidian had huge teams compared to Larian's.


Here's a thought regarding the scripting tutorial: I can't be the only one who was thinking "there must be a simpler way to do this". I am really hoping the choice was to take a roundabout attitude to scripting for instructive purposes. What is really to stop us from just running a simple inventory check (the command to do so is even shown to us!) when the dialogue triggers? I mean, sure, it may not be optimal in that huge scripts at the start of dialogues may cause unnecessary pauses, but the scripting engine can't be that slow.

Furthermore, inventory contents is bound to be a database in itself -- wouldn't it be practical to just use that database instead of creating tiny ones in a cumbersome script to do something that is done a thousand times throughout a campaign?


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Originally Posted by Ahn?n
I can't be the only one who was thinking "there must be a simpler way to do this".


I think this about almost everything regarding the editor. Everything seems overly cumbersome. Like look at adding a texture to the terrain painter. What should be a two step operation (click add, select texture) involves an extra pop-up window and several extra clicks, and then when you add it, for some reason the terrain is de-selected, and you have to select it again if you want to add another one. A minor annoyance, but there is literally no reason for it to be that way.

edit : And why in the world is there no tessellation tool?

Last edited by dsvw56; 20/07/14 10:41 PM.
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Editing characters doesn't seem to work at all in the editor, either.
Had to go through great lengths to figure out how to get my mod working. With a little help from fellow modders, we got there!

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Originally Posted by dsvw56
Everything seems overly cumbersome.


This is very true. We could really use a proper Q&A thread between modders and the Larian folks working on the toolset. I'm sure there are reasons for many of their design choices, as well as parts that are just put in on a provisory basis, but we have no idea which is which or why.

The YouTube guides are nice and all, but what we need is solid information on things like capabilities, limitations, hurdles and best practices as well as specifics on script commands and the various assignable properties. All of that is infinitely better communicated via written word than via video.

Once we have that information, we can start thinking in terms of what is possible. Before that, all we can really do is make experimental stabs in the dark in an unstable and unfinished toolset while drawing up loose plans for our future mods and campaigns.

These are vacation times, though, and I suspect we'll see activity rise again in the second week of August or so. Hopefully, the toolset folks at Larian will start talking more directly to us then.


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Aldric Offline OP
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Thanks all for the advice - be patient is the key. I've made a little progress so I feel better about things. Thanks to everyone posting tidbits on things to try.

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@Lord Mephisto
I fully agree. Maybe having a "basic module set up" as a downloadable mod, instead of a "cow simulator" would be a nice move from the devs.

Last edited by Cromcrom; 21/07/14 04:38 AM.

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