232 replies to this topic

[Thauron]

Promise me something, *anything* that I can do with the new conversion and could not do with TUTU4, and I am going to change my mind. Playing BG2, dragging zombie-NPCs into BG2 from BG1, or a prespective of working for another few years on more BG1NPC to BG2 mods, or playing CtoB/TDD/SoS/NEJ and similar mods aren't my idea of fun. BG2 is done for, as far as I am concerned.

Well, if you'll stop playing BG as soon as Sarevok falls, BGT or BGTUTU can offer nothing more (but nothing less either) than TUTU. For others however it would be much easier to have a single platform on which all BG1 mods work.
If you will continue: BGT basically offers a sense of continuity to the game in the sense that it adds a transition and the NPCs in BG2 who also appeared in BG1, keep their stats (and any changes you made to them) from BG1. Also NPCs you killed during BG1 won't reapper (Minsc won't be in his cell f.e.) That's basically all, I think. Not that much maybe, but if it can be done (and has been done) why not?

On the zombie-NPCs. I never liked these either - NPCs without BG2 content should not reappear unless they have as much content as a normal BG2 NPC. I don't know if Ascension removed them from his latest BGT version, kicked them out of the party right before transitioning to BG2 before.
Also, who forces YOU to make the BG1NPC to BG2 mods - I know you made Kivan, Vlad wants to reintroduce Shar-teel, Seifer is working on a mod in which Ajantis reappears... Ideally, these authors should take into account whether these characters were part of a BG1-romance or not but that's maybe asking for a bit too much.

With Ascension's Mequel the feeling of continuity should become much stronger - explaining why characters leave, where they go to, what the PC does in between the death of Sarevok and the capture... And I know he will take all BG1NPC and all mods on BG1NPC to BG2 mods into account.
It's just that, without the compatibility, this new project will never be a 'merge' - since many BGT players will stick to the old BGT. Of course it is possible the merge might never be a succes in the first place and will divide the community even further, as you seem to believe. I hope it will not though.

Hey, and you know why this place is called Spellhold, don't you? This is the place for those criminally insane due to an excessive obsession with compatibility.

[Sir BillyBob]

Domi is correct in that BG1NPC is a bear to convert. It usually takes me 2 or three days to open every single D and BAF file to change the ARE, dialog, item, creature references. If a tool could do this, great. But so far, I do it manually.

Domi, this is all I change (other than some typos). So I would say 95% of BG1NPC ports over just fine. The other 5% is where I insert bugs into the process (hey, I just said it was a manual process).

[Sir BillyBob]

And there is the mess if TDD NPCs that BGT had inherited.

The only "mess" is that no one yet has made an NPC mod for the BG1 NPCs TDD brings over. With all the damn NPCs out there, you would think someone would just add to an existing party member. The potential here is that someone could make a sequel to BG1NPC but for SoA.

[Hety]

There are enough NPC's in BG1 currently. All those custom one's with their out of the box enchanted gear and w/o any background or dialogs are crap. BG1NPC made me FEEL every party member. First time i played with a party of 6 just to hear more dialogues. In case of BG1 not the low number of NPC's is problem., their quality is.

In BG2 we got fewev but better made NPC's. So adding NPC's is main aim there and polishing current one's.

TBH i've never seen single big mod with decent NPC's. Make them is a pain in ass(the one i'll never be able to endure). SO /cheer to all those who do that kind of job. One day NPC's ftl. If i'll need em i'll make myself multiplayer party.

[Sir BillyBob]

I hate to say it but the reason why we all don't like the NPC is Domi's fault. She has raised the bar on what we all expect. Remember folks, BG1 was a quiet game. Banters and romances didn't kick in until SoA. Now we all expect it in every mod.

There is still room for expansion in BG/SoA/ToB (specially in ToB) as well as improvements. I am holding back on my opinion of merging Tutu and BGT. There are pros and cons here that need to be worked out.

[Shed]

Domi is correct in that BG1NPC is a bear to convert. It usually takes me 2 or three days to open every single D and BAF file to change the ARE, dialog, item, creature references. If a tool could do this, great. But so far, I do it manually.

Domi, this is all I change (other than some typos). So I would say 95% of BG1NPC ports over just fine. The other 5% is where I insert bugs into the process (hey, I just said it was a manual process).

Suit yourself, but I can do it in seconds with Mass Find/Replace .

[Hety]

/bow Domi
The main thing why i chosen BGT over TuTu is transition. I never did it mostly coz i never managed to make BG1 game i wanted to finish. Install few mods - start again. But it all went to seamless transition into BG2. Thats the option which is imperative imo.

[Sir BillyBob]

Using what? NI or DLTCEP? I edit the files in Notepad and basically do the same thing. If I can edit 20 dialog files at the same time, that would be great.

[Shed]

Notepad? That must be why you find it hard!

www.ultraedit.com for the best text editor ever - you can download a free trial.

Open up every file you want to edit.
Choose "Replace in Files" from the toolbar or the Search menu.
Replace your text.
Save days of painstaiking labour!

Edited to add:

WeiDU highlighter here: http://download.shed...et/wordfile.txt

[Hety]

[offtopic]
Also Hex editing included, for all those offset lovers.
ConTEXT can do multifile replacements also
[/offtopic]

Edited by Hety, 17 January 2006 - 03:40 PM.

[Shed]

The feature list is far too extensive for us to get bogged down in atm !

[CamDawg]

ConTEXT has a huge edge on other text editors because it has WeiDU syntax highlighters for d, baf, and tp2 files. I loaded all of the BG1NPC dialogue, script, and tp2 files and did a mass search & replace for the chapter global changes.

[SimDing0]

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

Users of old versions can continue to enjoy crashing and broken spawns. I won't support them.

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?

Allowing for everybody having time to attend to it, a few weeks, give or take. Nobody seems to be quite grasping that *this should not be a lot of work*.

TUTU 6 inherited everything from the file naming to the structure from TUTU4. Re-testing on TUTU6 was theoretically, as per authors' words more or less easy, with only Chapter Globals being a potential problem for TUTU4 to TUTU6 thing.

Tutu naming should be universally preserved. There is next to no excuse to change it.

That's incorrect. I have modded in TUTU, but I have no clue how to do things in BGT. The file naming for areas, dialogues and scripts are all different.

Which serves only to reinforce the above point, since I can't stress it highly enough: the conversion should not dick around with file names. A simple prefix is all that's needed.

And BTW, guys, any "merging" project should only start once both projects are TOTALLY bug-free. These are not hollow words

Hollow or not, they're far from sensible. Sure, we can both spend ages trying to bugfix both our projects, or we can merge and develop a single set of bugfixes. The latter is vastly more productive.

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.

Assuming they're correctly coded WeiDU mods, new incompatibilities would be minimal.

[Sir BillyBob]

And BTW, guys, any "merging" project should only start once both projects are TOTALLY bug-free. These are not hollow words

Hollow or not, they're far from sensible. Sure, we can both spend ages trying to bugfix both our projects, or we can merge and develop a single set of bugfixes. The latter is vastly more productive.

Sounds like the Microsoft solution. Why fix it when we can just release another version? A serious look at bugfixes would help both environments before you combine two sets of bugs.

[SimDing0]

Right. Now read what I said and try again.

Us both bugfixing our mods to perfection is a waste of fucking time and I'm tired of "fix swapping". Everybody working to fix the same project is vastly more sensible. "Why fix it when we can just release another version?" is similarly irrelevant because you're releasing double the versions when there are two mods to maintain.

[Sir BillyBob]

And potentially double the bugs. Since we don't know all the bugs, we don't know which unknown bugs will be added to the final product. Your logic is to merger the two and then concentrate on a single set of bugs. Not a bad solution but I would rather put more time into cleaning up both systems. Ah well, not my problem since I am not doing this project. Those who are actually interested in merging the two together can have fun with it. I have my own projects to work on right now.