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So I'm working on this fully now and things are going pretty well. I'm going to document everything here that needs to be done to get a classic mod working in the EE.

The first step is getting the mod to load which you can find in this thread:
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=580624


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The first thing I ran into was a whole mess of errors caused by Root Templates that have been removed. The vast majority of these are related to skill books though there were others.

The error is something like this:
00:31:42 - Template could not find root with id: 536306f6-252e-41e2-aec7-e0735cfa481e, type: character!

At first I was worried I'd have to use Norbytes tool to modify the files and delete the entries manually. But I found a handy option right in the menus.

Simply click View > Invalid Objects

From there you can just start deleting them.

I haven't yet messed with the invalid objects that are global so I'm not sure what I'll do there. But all the local ones deleted easily.


To be continued.

Last edited by SniperHF; 29/08/16 07:35 AM.
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Huge potential roadblock averted. Everything was going swimmingly in the editor so I loaded up Dunamis in the game proper only to find that I Couldn't walk on ANY terrain. Click left just moved my character in a single direction.

At first I thought this might be relating to some sort of scripting differences between classic and the EE I missed in a sweep causing the problem.

But after some trial and error I noticed that certain patches of my land I could walk on but some I could not.

I have 6 pieces of terrain in Dunamis and 005 and 006 worked. I remembered that I did some smoothing on those pieces in the EE editor so I checked in the Mods\Dunamis_GUID\Levels\LEVEL NAME\Terrains folder and found that 005 and 006 had a new file called Terrain_005.bullet in addition to the normal file.

So I figured that those files had to be generated by my edits. So I simply went to each offending terrain and did a minor edit like raising the height of a small piece, saved them, and now all the terrain works fine for walking.

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Latest:

Apparently switching the mod to the EE seemed to nuke a bunch of my terrain smoothing and some items are shifted around a bit. Nothing too critical but it's kind of irritating. Also a bunch of camera triggers are slightly pointed in the wrong direction.


Character Creation: Rhidian when he was working on the Journey of a Lone wolf mod found that in the EE the creation screen doesn't play nice with only 1 PC. Seems they added some hard coding where the old version worked perfectly fine with one PC. So I had to fix this problem the same way Rhidian did, adding a 2nd PC and making it invisible during creation. After creation I removed it from the party and set it offstage. It's ghetto but far easier than rewriting the entire mod for 2 PCs.

Last edited by SniperHF; 30/08/16 03:33 AM.
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Marker Prototypes File - The one that places visual dots on the map for points of interest.

This wasn't working in the EE so I took a look at the file from main and apparently they changed the UUID format of this file to this type SUBREGION_TradingPost_37e0c493-d738-49bf-957e-024540639cbb. Where as in classic this type: SUBREGION_TradingPost <37e0c493-d738-49bf-957e-024540639cbb> worked perfectly fine. Quick and easy change and now it's working.



Object Scale: For whatever reason Larian decided to change the default size of the Leaves on some trees. So I had to edit all of them in my mod to make them the appropriate scale.


SoundVolumeTriggers - Because of that exceptionally irritating bug in the EE which keeps playing the MAIN menu music in any area that doesn't have an ambient/music resource defined, I had to update all my SoundVolumeTriggers that were supposed to be silent with "Playlist_Mute_Trans" so that the music stops when it's supposed to.

Also I had to add SoundVolumeTriggers to every location otherwise it will start playing the MAIN menu theme.

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Experience:
So all the calls that add experience from osiris are different. They changed it from "PartyAddExperience" to "PartyAddActualExperience". Presumably to differentiate between using mapped values and raw numbers. Since my mod is a mod and not a 80 hour game raw numbers work fine.

Also they added a character to the call to define which party gets experience, presumably this is for D:OS 2 since there can be competitive parties.


Instances:
I had to update a whole bunch of these to 360 degrees. Not sure why Larian didn't update these automatically like they did some others.


Remaining Errors:
I kept getting a bunch of missing treasure table errors so I dug into the file and found that they removed all the tables titled "SecGear". So I had to remove those from my files as well.


Erroneous skills:
Since the EE removed a bunch of skills I had to go into my charscripts and remove those same ones and swap them for something else.


TranslatedStringKey Speaker Errors:
There were a whole bunch of these as well. Since my mod predates the "Shared" structure I had a bunch of translatedstring files copied over manually. They referenced removed speaker list entries that don't match the EE. For now I've just removed them.


Finally my mod is error message free in the editor.

Last edited by SniperHF; 12/09/16 07:59 AM.
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One problem of converting Dunamis to the EE is the day/night atmosphere settings behave a little differently.

If anyone wants to opine, which of the first two screens is better?


Same settings as Classic but in the EE:
[Linked Image]

Darker settings:
[Linked Image]


Should I try the darker style and make it look as good as possible or just keep the brighter playable "night" and accept it isn't going to look good?


Here's how it looked in classic for reference:
http://i.imgur.com/HPo7RcI.jpg

I was never happy with how "night" looked but since the game doesn't really support moonlight it kinda makes it difficult.

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Gotta say, the one from the classic version looks better than the other two images. From the two screenshots, 2nd one looks better. If you can make it even more darker, then it will be even better. You can take a look at witcher 1's swarm forest(night) as an example.

By the way, the NMC mod had much better environment/area designing than this one. But I guess you are not planning on using resources from that mod.

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Originally Posted by Echo123
Gotta say, the one from the classic version looks better than the other two images. From the two screenshots, 2nd one looks better. If you can make it even more darker, then it will be even better. You can take a look at witcher 1's swarm forest(night) as an example.


Well real talk, I think classic flat out looks better regardless of the mod involved. It has a less ridiculous color palate if nothing else.

My concern with making it too dark is the lack of moonlight and how enjoyable it would be to play over several hours in the dark like that.

I've tried simulating moonlight using spotlight placements but it doesn't look very good.

Quote

By the way, the NMC mod had much better environment/area designing than this one. But I guess you are not planning on using resources from that mod.


Aye, it does have much better environments. That's because I made it after having over a year and a half experience in the editor. Dunamis was started the very first day I had the editor and built up as I learned things hahaha.

It was even called "learning mod" before I figured out how to rename the thing.

But the quest design is superior in Dunamis by far thus I'm converting it. And I was always disappointed that like 5 people played it since the EE was released like 2 weeks after I released Dunamis for Classic.

Improving the environments was on the table but it's really difficult to do since it was an old classic mod and has pieced together terrain made before they added the "increase size" option.

I'm also not sure how much more I want to work on the EE with D:OS 2 right around the corner. Because just like before it might be hard to find players.

I'm playtesting Dunamis now, the quests so far seem to be working so it might actually be releasable soon.

Last edited by SniperHF; 16/09/16 08:31 PM.
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Quote
Because just like before it might be hard to find players.

I'm in for a playthrough and will try to duplicate myself smile


My mods for DOS 1 EE: FasterAnimations - QuietDay - Samaritan
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Well, DOS 2 is not exactly 'around the corner'... it will take a long time since it will be ready in its final form. Meanwhile, EE has many more potential players. I've played your excellent mod for Classic, and I will play it for EE if it does come out. Good luck.

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Originally Posted by mbpopolano24
Well, DOS 2 is not exactly 'around the corner'... it will take a long time since it will be ready in its final form.


Yeah the EE will always have more players than the classic transition caused.

But if I were to dive deep into improving the mod that would take a lot of time as well. So by that point the D:OS 2 release would be pretty close.

I'd guess it would take me 2 months minimum to get Dunamis on par visually with my EE mod A Necromancer's Crusade. Probably longer since I have less free time now than I did a few months ago.

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DOS 2 will release around "late 2017"(so 3rd quarter maybe), as per its steam's early access description. So I guess you have plenty of time for this.

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Originally Posted by Echo123
DOS 2 will release around "late 2017"(so 3rd quarter maybe), as per its steam's early access description. So I guess you have plenty of time for this.

Wow, that is quite long actually. (A year from now ?)
I quickly looked in the Steam client but could not find anything.

If that were really the case there would still be room for new EE mods hehe

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While I'm not going all in on graphics improvements, I have been doing some things. Example:

Classic version:
[Linked Image]


Improved:
[Linked Image]

In part the classic version wasn't as bad as it looks because of the camera locks I used and the limited rotation of classic. Also part of the reason it was crappy was again the terrain issue, I have 3 separate terrain pieces converging in that spot. Now I'm a little better at managing that though.

But now it's better regardless.


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More work:
Before:
[Linked Image]

After:
[Linked Image]

Not quite done but again, a lot better. All the side walls are going to be improved since I had backburnered that before so I could release it.


Testing progresses slowly because I'm playing D:OS 2 horsey

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Well to this point I've knocked out all the critical bugs I can find, still a lot of little stuff left to go.

Most issues left are relating to the NPC schedules/daynight cycle, some of them are just old issues from before but others are created by the EE.

I did a small re-balance pass to account for the EE changes compared to classic as well. More could probably be done but that's lower priority.

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One of the old problems with any day/night cycle in D:OS Classic was that if the player character wasn't moving during an atmosphere transition, the transition would never happen.

But I've noticed that this issue is gone in the EE so you can have your character stand still and the cycle will work fine.

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Thoughts on this as a thumbnail? Or will it not be obvious enough what it is as a smaller size?

[Linked Image]


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A binary day-night distinction might be more obvious; otherwise it may tend to be perceived as flag on the first glance, if it's smaller (at least this is what my perception always tries to tell me when I look at the picture, although I like it).


My mods for DOS 1 EE: FasterAnimations - QuietDay - Samaritan
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