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Arcanum: Unofficial Patch & Extras


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#1 Archmage Silver

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 08:31 PM

The following content for Arcanum was created by Drog Black Tooth. This thread was posted and is maintained by Archmage Silver @ Spellhold Studios.

Updated on December 28th 2009.

List of Contents:
  • Download Links
  • Unofficial Patch - Summary
  • Extra Content - Summary

Download Links:


December 28th note: Drog Black Tooth surprisingly posted a new version of the Unofficial Arcanum Patch [V091225] that includes his work from the past year. The changelog is included with the patch. Note that this is the end-of-line patch and everyone uses it at their own risk. I've fixed the broken DL links in this post now. I've also attached some of the files into this post directly due to temporary/non-existent download locations. FINAL -AMS

October 19th note: Apparently Drog Black Tooth has pulled the plug on these mods and pulled most of their links as well. All download links are broken, and the files are no longer distributed where they used to be, but you can still get them from the download links provided. The author's account at Terra Arcanum is also gone. A mysterious ending to this project... thus it ends and so do my updates.

September 24th note: Drog Black Tooth has moved his modding business exclusively to Terra Arcanum. All links have been updated accordingly.



Unofficial Patch - Summary:

See your downloaded mod archive for the changelog. There are hundreds of bug fixes included at the present time.

This patch fixes almost all of the remaining bugs in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Most crucially, this patch restores the *cut* animations for every NPC/creature in the game, single-handedly disabling the now-present sprite mirroring.

What this means basically, is that the vanilla game now only uses 4 out of 8 animation frames for all of the NPCs and creatures and their actions, but this patch allows the game to use all of the original 8 animation frames, which are still included in the game's files.

There are extra animations for walking, running, prowling, fighting with all weapons, everything. This patch will drastically improve Arcanum's graphical state by restoring over 200MBs of unused animations.

The CD check has been removed as well, no point in it after all these years. The patch should be installed after the official 1.0.7.4 Arcanum patch, and no other mods than Drog Blacktooth's should be used due to conflicts.


Extra Content - Summary:

The Extra Content Module included in the UAP does the following:
  • Charged Axe is restored (the schematic can be bought from quality smiths (5% chance)).
  • Schreck's Multi-Barreled Pistol is restored.
  • Clockwork Physician, Illuminated Decoy and Explosive Decoy are restored (all three schematics can be bought from inventors (10% chance)).
  • The conversation of Virgil and Maug is restored.
  • Restored art for Great Helm.
  • Restored attack sound effects for Half-Ogres, Ogres and Orcs.
  • Added correct palettes to Human Blacksmith's art.
  • Different blacksmiths now have different palettes.
  • Levered Machine Gun is restored. The only copy of it is held by Captain Wheeler.
  • Restored unused lines related to the Panarii in Constable Owens' dialog. (You get more dialog if Virgil isn't in your group.)
  • Added more checks to the dialog of the ogre guarding the painting to make it more plausible. Now you can use all relevant pieces of info, such as Madame Toussaude's hint, info from the Hall of Records, Rorry Limes' passport and the note to bluff the ogre.
The Original Bedokaan Model restores the original model for the lizard people, plus the original portrait for the NPC Waromon. Unlike the vanilla in-game model, this one also has animations for being stunned, a gory death (decapitation in this case) and a lower attack with a bow.

High Quality Music is the lossless version of the Arcanum soundtrack. It's also available in mp3 format (320 kbps) for in-game use. The original soundtrack included with the game is only mp3 (128 kbps). This was made possible by the surfacing of an original Arcanum soundtrack cd handed out for free in Europe for promotional purposes.

High Quality Townmaps dramatically increase the visual quality of Arcanum.

Arcanum High Resolution Patch is an extensive engine hack and rewrites many subroutines to make the engine fully scalable to any resolution, and calculates positions of all elements of the interface (well over 1000 offsets) for the desired width and height by using formulas. Additionally, it adjusts sound positioning, fixes a number of UI bugs and disables sprite mirroring (if used without the UAP). Full support for any resolution.

13 New Riddles adds 13 new riddles to Naked Halflings riddlers. You'll get only one random riddle from each of the halflings. 4 riddles are added to the first riddler, 4 to the second and rest 5 to the last halfling. Due to it being custom content it won't be included in any of the patches.

Enable Complex Shadows Tweak enables full shadows for Arcanum. Follow the instructions behind the link in the downloads section.

Original Troika In-Game Cheat Mode is the infamous cheat mode that was used for testing the game. It was disabled in the final version. A complete ReadMe is included with the download.

Edit: Final Update: December 28th 2009

Edited by Archmage Silver, 10 January 2010 - 06:50 AM.


#2 Bookwyrme

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 09:22 PM

Good news indeed!

You mention that there will be no custom content in this patch. Where have you found custom content of any sort? Last I looked, there was very little.

Mods: <a data-cke-saved-href="http://www.shsforums...-auroras-shoes/">Aurora's Shoes (released),

 


 

 


#3 Archmage Silver

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 09:30 PM

Good news indeed!

You mention that there will be no custom content in this patch. Where have you found custom content of any sort? Last I looked, there was very little.

Clicky

#4 Bookwyrme

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 09:34 PM

Ooooh, nifty! That is a much, much longer list than I had found before.

Um... do the mods have any descriptions anywhere? Or is it download and then find out?

Mods: <a data-cke-saved-href="http://www.shsforums...-auroras-shoes/">Aurora's Shoes (released),

 


 

 


#5 Jarno Mikkola

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 09:39 PM

And the patch can be expected to be download -able at

Anyway, the version will be released this Saturday at the noon GMT +9 (or 3 a.m. GMT)

hmm, very interesting.

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#6 Archmage Silver

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 11:26 PM

Ooooh, nifty! That is a much, much longer list than I had found before.

Um... do the mods have any descriptions anywhere? Or is it download and then find out?

I think some of them have ReadMes included, but I haven't really played any of them aside from the official ones.

#7 Bookwyrme

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Posted 08 May 2008 - 09:46 AM

So--download, look for a readme, and install if you like? The IE modding community has me so spoiled.

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#8 Archmage Silver

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Posted 08 May 2008 - 09:13 PM

So--download, look for a readme, and install if you like? The IE modding community has me so spoiled.

Quite so. Most mods have a ReadMe included in the archive.

#9 khay

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Posted 09 May 2008 - 01:50 PM

Oh, most joyous news! Thanks for the tip, AMS!

#10 Archmage Silver

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Posted 10 May 2008 - 07:08 PM

Oh, most joyous news! Thanks for the tip, AMS!

I'm always happy to share good news... Arcanum will improve a lot after this patch is finished.

It's good to see that you're still around, khay. :)

#11 Sir BillyBob

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Posted 11 May 2008 - 08:22 AM

Along the lines of this game (which crashed so much on my older computer I never got far so I need to retry with my new system and this patch), have you ever seen a tool that can really grab the area maps? I tried to use the world creater but I can only see part of the default map in the editor. There is a location with tree houses (great for an elf area) but I wasn't able to figure out how to capture it and convert to BMP files. Any ideas?

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#12 Archmage Silver

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Posted 11 May 2008 - 02:33 PM

Along the lines of this game (which crashed so much on my older computer I never got far so I need to retry with my new system and this patch), have you ever seen a tool that can really grab the area maps? I tried to use the world creater but I can only see part of the default map in the editor. There is a location with tree houses (great for an elf area) but I wasn't able to figure out how to capture it and convert to BMP files. Any ideas?

I haven't dabbled in Arcanum modding, but if there is some way to extract the maps, it's either via the WorldEd or simply unpacking the .dat files in the installation directory. I'm pretty sure one of the .dat files has the BMP images for the maps, seeing that the WorldEd shows a loading screen at the beginning where it loads BMP files on to the editor.

Browse Terra-Arcanum Downloads for Arcanum modding resources and modding tools. There is also a modding tutorial here. It may help with using the the various tools, some of which should be able to unpack the .dat files.

#13 Archmage Silver

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Posted 11 May 2008 - 08:53 PM

New version of the patch is out:

Here we go. I've put a lot of work into this one, spend a lot of hours tracking and fixing bugs, finding and restoring lost content. The main feature of this release is that sprite mirroring is disabled. I was very interested in this matter from the very beginning, I even contacted Leonard Boyarsky this week (and he was kind enough to forward my question to Tim Cain, those guys are really amazing), and in the end, encouraged by Tim Cain's words I hacked the engine myself. Basically, the number of animations is now almost doubled, near 200 mb of disabled animations are back. Without any kidding, this is the most important and revolutionary update to Arcanum since its release back in 2001...

AMS Note: Read the full description here. Download links can be found here.

Now, this doesn't mean that the patch is complete yet, but you it does, for the first time, switch off the sprite mirroring. I'm looking forward to its full completion, so I can launch Arcanum once again.

Edit: Deprecated link removed.

Edited by Archmage Silver, 27 December 2009 - 03:56 PM.


#14 Darziak

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Posted 12 May 2008 - 02:18 PM

Cool I loved playing this game (though I never finished it) the patch will do some good, thanks for the link. :)

#15 Archmage Silver

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Posted 18 July 2008 - 04:04 AM

The final version of the patch is out. :)

Incredible work by Drog Black Tooth, can't say much more than that.

Edit: Deprecated link removed.

Edited by Archmage Silver, 27 December 2009 - 03:57 PM.


#16 khay

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Posted 19 July 2008 - 01:05 PM

Damn straight, time to play through the game once again. :)

#17 Gabrielle

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Posted 19 July 2008 - 08:46 PM

An unofficial patch? Cool. This has always been one of my favorite games.
For all of your BG modding needs: Chosen of Mystra.

This is The End.

#18 Lysan Lurraxol

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Posted 21 July 2008 - 12:20 AM

Hmm, I might look into buying Arcanum now.

Does anyone know if there are any mods that add new followers with personalities and a fair bit of content or add more content to the existing Followers? I find it difficult to play games with bland companions, and from the info I've seen the only followers with any depth are Virgil and Raven.


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#19 Gabrielle

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Posted 21 July 2008 - 04:09 PM

Try here.
For all of your BG modding needs: Chosen of Mystra.

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#20 Lysan Lurraxol

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Posted 23 July 2008 - 07:26 AM

Thanks for the link. :)

Sadly there doesn't seem to be anything there that really expands on the followers, though I've not really looked at what the WiP actually does.


Longing for the old pen and paper modules of the 70?s and 80?s. Experience AD&D?s greatest adventures using the infinity engine: Classic Adventures Visit our homepage at Classic Adventures Homepage