232 replies to this topic

[cirerrek]

[Begin Appeal for Love, Happiness, and the BG Way.]

Okay, lets take this from the point of view of someone that has set on the sidelines from several years hoping that someone would come up with a stable, bug tested way to play BG1 & BG2 as whole rather than individual parts.

History:

TuTu

Installed it way back when. My character had 1 hp and died fighting one of the assassins in Candle Keep.

TuTu unistalled.

BGT

At one point someone put together a very well designed .pdf detailing how to install BGT. I think it was something like 8 pages long.

BGT never installed.

Modern Day:

TuTu still has its issues.

BGT

Version Zeta? I can't tell from checking the boards whether or not it meets my aforementioned critieria. No resounding HUZZAHH it is done, it is good, play brothers and sisters.

What about Mods:

Great so there are Mods for one 'platform' vs. the other. Definitely not player friendly.

Note that I said I had sat on the sidelines so I'm not trying to be critical of anyone's efforts, but for the love of Pete, Scott, and Jackie, I would be ecstatic to see one version that works as a stable platform for all other modders to work off of.

[End Appeal for Love, Happiness, and the BG Way.]

Thanks,
Cirerrek

[J Beau]

Ditto

I think my experience matches cirerrek.

[Andyr]

I agree with Sim's points. And while not trying to sound too harsh, I don't think that most of the people who are arguing against them have a clue what they're on about.

(Domi's reluctance is understandable but I don't think it will be as tough as she fears, provided we stick to Tutu naming conventions, which would be the sensible thing to do).

Andyr, what is your own opinion ?

I am for merging as it means there'd be only one platform to support.

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

As Sim mentioned, this would be a waste of time.

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

Evolutionary comments support the view of merging, actually. Survival of the fittest. Take the better aspects of each conversion (Tutu area naming, for example) so we get a fitter mod which will come to dominate.

[Drew]

So, what we're really talking about doing is taking BGT, switching the naming conventions over to those used by Tutu, making a couple BGT features optional, and adding Tutu's spawn fixes. I fail to see how doing this is going to add any bugs. It looks more like a couple fixes and a tweak or two, to me.

[Shed]

So, what we're really talking about doing is taking BGT, switching the naming conventions over to those used by Tutu, making a couple BGT features optional, and adding Tutu's spawn fixes. I fail to see how doing this is going to add any bugs. It looks more like a couple fixes and a tweak or two, to me.

I think that's what some people have been saying all along, yeah .

[Salk]

Yes...People got scared without understanding that there's going to be no revolution here. Nothing new (or almost) is going to be part of the new Merger. It's just the combination of the two project's best aspects. I really fail to see what can actually go wrong with it...

[King Diamond]

Yes...People got scared without understanding that there's going to be no revolution here. Nothing new (or almost) is going to be part of the new Merger. It's just the combination of the two project's best aspects. I really fail to see what can actually go wrong with it...

It would be necessary to carefully check and update EVERY single mod that enlisted as compatible with BGT, including all big mods (TDD, SoS, CtB, TS, BH, DSotSC, NTotSC, BP) and tonns of small ones. And it is absolutely useless.

Keep BGT areas/files naming, combine all nice TuTu features like spawns into a tweak pack if you wish and enjoy the result.
But do not touch the basic things that ALREADY WORK. It would be much better to concentrate on G3 Fixpack developing instead that is a really necessary stuff.

[Grim Squeaker]

Why keep the BGT names when the Tutu names are so much superior given that they are entirely logical and predictable from the names of the BG1 resources?

All those big BG2 mods would work fine on this anyway, because it'd just be the same as installing them on normal BG2. And most of the other BG1 ones are desperately trying to get Tutu support available if they haven't already. I've noticed its more common that people have needed to add BGT support on top of the existing Tutu support.

[Hety]

You are not the one....But its offtopic once again

[Thauron]

It would be necessary to carefully check and update EVERY single mod that enlisted as compatible with BGT, including all big mods (TDD, SoS, CtB, TS, BH, DSotSC, NTotSC, BP) and tonns of small ones. And it is absolutely useless.

I don't think this is entirely true - if the structure of BGT remains intact, as well as all the in build checks for these mods Ascension built into the BGT-installer it shouldn't be too big an issue. But as long as none of these big mods uses file names which are identical to those in Tutu (_XXXX)(which they don't) there should be no new compatibility problems - at least I don't think there will. Changing all the names would be a very tedious and timeabsorbing job none the less - or can we just copy them from Tutu? - but that makes me nervous from a compatibility perspective.

All those big BG2 mods would work fine on this anyway, because it'd just be the same as installing them on normal BG2. And most of the other BG1 ones are desperately trying to get Tutu support available if they haven't already. I've noticed its more common that people have needed to add BGT support on top of the existing Tutu support.

It's not that simple either - Those mods might interact - we have had a BG1 company with Xzar and Monty in it, which was suddenly attacked by some TDD-harpers (designed for level 12 characters...) - That's of course TDD's fault - if you only check for InParty("Xzar"), without any additional globals, these things do happen - but of course when TDD was build they couldn't know something like BGT would ever be created.

Edited by Thauron, 18 January 2006 - 12:37 PM.

[Grim Squeaker]

You shouldn't get any bugs like that now however, unless the mod in question is very badly written as prefixes are a standard now.

[Chevalier]

Yes...People got scared without understanding that there's going to be no revolution here. Nothing new (or almost) is going to be part of the new Merger. It's just the combination of the two project's best aspects. I really fail to see what can actually go wrong with it...

It would be necessary to carefully check and update EVERY single mod that enlisted as compatible with BGT, including all big mods (TDD, SoS, CtB, TS, BH, DSotSC, NTotSC, BP) and tonns of small ones. And it is absolutely useless.

Keep BGT areas/files naming, combine all nice TuTu features like spawns into a tweak pack if you wish and enjoy the result.
But do not touch the basic things that ALREADY WORK. It would be much better to concentrate on G3 Fixpack developing instead that is a really necessary stuff.

I am not a programmer so I am likely all wrong, but I will say this. It seems that to make this work, we need to make it as painless to Tutu modders as possible and make the BGT modders do all the work to make their mods (including mods not part of BG1) with Tutu. Is this right?

[Hety]

Well neither Tutu nor BGT modders did nothing wrong. Tho Tutu naming system is obviously better. They will have to get thru this pain, but only once i hope. And after - free modding ftw. I also hope...

[ScuD]

I'd say the following. If you can make ALL TuTu mods compatible with the upcoming project - you go ahead. If you can make all BGT mods compatible with it along with TuTu - you go ahead too. But if it will take the time like KD (by his own will ) spent on TDD, SOS, CtB remake, guys, please, can anyone tell me why it is needed?
I don't accept "players will appreciate it", as there are not so many BG players all over the world.

Edited by ScuD, 18 January 2006 - 02:52 PM.

[Drew]

@scud: actually all it takes is a little judicious use of the find/replace function of a text editor. Not much time at all. You select find (BGT name) and replace (Tutu name) for every area in BG1. This might take as much as half an hour to an hour, so it isn't as big a hassle as it seems. Besides, I'm willing to wager that plenty of folks will come out of the woodworks to help anyone who doesn't feel like going through the hassle of doing it personally.

[ScuD]

Actually, I'm all for it.
Can you persuade me it is worth the efforts?

[CamDawg]

Changing a BG file name from BGfoo.itm to _foo.itm is not going to affect TDD, so everyone can rest easy.

[horred the plague]

(for example DYNAHEIR.BCS translates into TUTU as _YNAHEIR.BCS to keep the 8 signs convention).

I think that was a poor choice of naming convention. Would it not be better to have put that slash at the end of the file name? It is not far easier for an outside observer (glancing in any editor) to guess the last character of a root file name, instead of the first? (--e.g., DYNAHEI_ instead of _YNAHEIR). For original files with names shorter than 8 characters, you could simply add more slashes (e.g., IMOEN1__) to keep 8-character consistency in all files, NTM make sure nobody has to ever worry about null bytes.

Perhaps the TuTu crew should revise their naming convention as well as the BGT crew...