232 replies to this topic

[Hety]

Oh, and one more issue. The moment you will announce the development of the Tutuology, that will stop the development of any mod anyone wanted to do for BG in its tracks until you have Tutuology out, tested, proven and preffered by the player base - because a casual new-generation modder (who is not a programming genious, but a simple WeiDU user) will have neither rules to code by, nor working testing platform. And by the Seldarine, we get little enough mods developed for BG1 nowdays.

Mod is 90% platform independant. Everything else is that what u put into TP2. So it nt prevent any serious mods from being developed.

[Thauron]

Re-inventing the project from scratch is foolish, and no one has advocated such an approach. When development starts the logical approach is to begin with one of the two projects (I'd suggest BGT-WeiDU, slightly, over Macready's new EasyTutu) and build in changes/functionality from the other.

Maybe this should be the main focus of our discussion right now, shouldn't it? - just to get away from endless discussion on many rather small things and get to a more practical level.

So suppose we start to build on the existing BGT-weidu, what major issues should be adressed?
- Change map names
- Import Tutu spawns
- Make the transition cutscene an optional part of the install
- Make the installer so that TOB and TOTSC are no longer required
- Some minor bugs which might still be present in current version ZETA - but as far as I can see, there are very few

Suppose we start with Tutu v4
- maybe change some file names? (if we agree the _XXXXX isn't ideal either)
- Spawn fixes
- Import the BGT transition as an optional component
- Make sure the new mod is compatible with all the mods BGT is currently compatibel with (CtB, SoS, TDD,...)
- Some minor bugs which might still be present in current version - but if I understand correct there are almost none

Suppose we start with Tutu v6
- file names?
- Import the BGT transition as an optional component
- Make sure the new mod is compatible with all the mods BGT is currently compatibel with (CtB, SoS, TDD,...)
- Adress all the known issues (cf PPG)

The central question should now be: which is easiest to do?
I think I am not in a position to answer this question however, but just my 2 cents:

Biggest problem for BGT is the TOB/TOTSC thing, I guess the corrected spawns can easily be copied over from Tutu and making a component optional which is already there, shouldn't be too difficult.
For both Tutu versions: the implementation of the BGT transition as an optional component should be doable - but it's a tricky thing. I know many people have worked long and hard to get it to work properly in BGT - imported BG1 characters had a nasty tendency to behave 'funny' for a long time.
I don't know how difficult the compatibility issue is - and how difficult it is to import it from BGT. I guess it might be tricky too.

After that things as Journal, Map Notes, GUI and other what I consider minor issues might be adressed.

From my point of view (as limited as it might be) it seems building upon the current BGT build might be the best starting point, as CamDawg suggested. But of course, it might be my arrogant SHS/BGT-self which makes me ignore a far better approach.

[NiGHTMARE]

A potential problem with having BGT-Tutu use the CDs instead of an existing BG1 installation: how would the BG1 patch be applied?

[NiGHTMARE]

Guest: I believe the proposal is that the existing Tutu file name scheme (including areas) be used in the merger, so there should be no problems in that regards.

[ScuD]

Someone here was talking about the joyous era of the BG1 modding when we don't have to worry about which platform we are coding for... Alas, alas, that will not be true. And the project like BG1NPC would have to be recoded and retested, something that I view with a combination of mild distaste and foresight that I won't have enough enthusiasm to do.

Plus, with a certain sense of dread I can see the schism actually deepening with the emergence of the 4th platform. Let us face it - majority of the users who had managed to have the relatively stable platforms working well on their machines - and I am one of those happy customers of TUTU4/14 won't like the idea of breaking their install yet again in favor of something experimental. No, I am not talking of the people who rebuild their installs weekly or something like that and made BP+14542 mods work on their machine. I am talking about a regular user for whom one finally working conversion is more than enough.

So we will have the installs of the BGT, BG1TUTU V4/15, BG1TUTU V6/16 and the New Tutuology.

And then, we have a question of timing. Sim, Ascension64, Cam, Andy, Ghrey how long do you think it will take you to make the Tutuology, put it past alpha and beta stages, and release as a finished product? A year? More? Uhm? The modding scene is growing empty, guys, and the chances are that either TUTU or BGT had already sucked in the fans that wanted to play BG1 in BG2 engine.

There is also this: BGT and TUTU cartered each to the specific group of players. Tutuology will try to please all, but it will fail, because it will have to go one way or another - with the transition or without it. So, it will spiritually inherit either from TUTU or from BGT, marginalizing one group of the players.

Oh, and one more issue. The moment you will announce the development of the Tutuology, that will stop the development of any mod anyone wanted to do for BG in its tracks until you have Tutuology out, tested, proven and preffered by the player base - because a casual new-generation modder (who is not a programming genious, but a simple WeiDU user) will have neither rules to code by, nor working testing platform. And by the Seldarine, we get little enough mods developed for BG1 nowdays.

Wisely said. I wanted to write almost the same right now.
And BTW, guys, any "merging" project should only start once both projects are TOTALLY bug-free. These are not hollow words, this what an analyst from a large software development company says

Edited by ScuD, 17 January 2006 - 02:05 PM.

[Thauron]

Won't it be like... the CtB, SoS, TDD etc teams' problem? After all, by re-vamping TUTU you damp like recoding the whole thing into the TUTU-specific mods people's laps. So how come it should be made compatible with *theirs* mods?

Fact is, BGT is now compatible with all these mods (well apart from a few things regarding TDD, shouldn't have listed that too.) - and this has been achieved after long and tedious work from many people here, both BGT (and especially BP) people as well as the authors of all these mods. (It's basically a joined effort, just like Vlad and Ascension are trying to make BGT and NEJ perfectly compatible right now.)

Just discarding all this hard work like that, and then go to these modders with your new BGT/Tutu and say any compatibility issues are THEIR problems so they can start all over again, seems rather selfish and unsympathetic to me.

[NiGHTMARE]

It's hardly discarding "all" their hard work. It's not even discarding the majority of the work.

Really, just changing file names isn't exactly all that hard or time consuming; most of the time you can simply use a text editor's "find/replace" option .

[Hety]

That's incorrect. I have modded in TUTU, but I have no clue how to do things in BGT

Hmmm... .D files are BGT/Tutu dependant? Or .BCS and .ITM maybe? its all about naming as i understand that. Ascensions Tutu2BGT works pretty good as i know so its mostly machine time involved.

[ScuD]

More 2 cents...
Do you guys remember that the essence of the evolution is in the variety of species?

[Thauron]

I don't think area renaming is a big issue for compatibilty, Nightmare - you were replying to my last post weren't you? I am all for BGT area renaming, see some of my earlier posts.
What I suggested was that if we start building from a Tutu build (v4 or v6) - I suppose much more issues should be adressed or at least checked than just filenames for optimal compatibility. I was just reacting against one of our guests posts who seemed to suggest to start from Tutu with no regard to (CtB,SoS,NEJ) compatibility at all. That would be discarding 'all' their hard work.

[Thauron]

It is no more unsympathetic than advocating BGT as the base instead of TUTU towards TUTU specific mods. Someone will have to do much recoding. I am not altruistic enough not to try to advocate that it should not be me. 'Cause I love BG1NPC a tad more than TDD, and because I was never a BGT client, or sprirtually close to BGT ideal of the Monster Game.

I disagree here, Domi. The issues are not that big with Tutu mods. Most of them (all but one NPC mod of which the author didn't want it to be ported to the BGT platform?) have already been made 100% compatible with BGT in the past so making them compatible with the new BGTUTU, even if starts from BGT won't be that much of a problem, would it? - As far as I can see, only area names should be rechanged.

On the other hand - TUTU was (logically) never designed to work with SOS, TDD, CtB and so on - But merging BGT and TUTU would require to add a transition to BG2 - otherwise it would not be merging with BGT, it would just mean creating TUTU v7 or somesuch. Compatibility issues with these big mods would arise for those who want to combine them. But since TUTU has never taken these compatibility issues into account (unlike BGT) making them compatible would require a massive amount of work.
It's not that I like TDD and these mods that much, it's just that compatibility should be possible, otherwise most people here on SHS would probably keep on playing the old BGT anyway.

And nope, I will not be able to use the BGT converted version of BG1NPC, courtesy of BGT team, because in case of merger I ill have to support it, and because I have made fixes post V11 already, and by the time Tutuology is out... why, there will be even more content in it.

We could add these fixes and new content to the current BG1NPC4BGT without too much problem I suppose (as long as you kept track of what content you added and what you changed).

Edited by Thauron, 17 January 2006 - 01:52 PM.

[Borsook]

For me the merger could achieve two things:
- one unified platform for mods (which would be better from player's point of view, if not from modder's having to make a new version)
- more people working on the merged project, so maybe less bugs... this may be important because currently both tutu and bgt have too many flaws. And it seems that fixing the disadvantages of any of current builds may require for the current existing teams more time and effort than getting a merger going. I may be wrong here of course.

PS. And yes, incedently I too would prefer Domi working on her IWD2 project not another version of bg1npc...

[NiGHTMARE]

Domi, apparently you missed Cam's post where he said he converted BG1NPC's chapter checks in 15 minutes . I can't imagine file name changes would take all that much longer (surely the vast majority are in the .tp2, so find/replace would be your friend). Besides, as I mentioned before, most people seem to be advocating using Tutu's file names, so most likely you wouldn't need to change anything in this regards anyway.

Edited by NiGHTMARE, 17 January 2006 - 02:23 PM.