122 replies to this topic

[Andrea C.]

I don't play vanilla BG1 anymore either, mostly due to being stuck with 640x480 on a widescreen monitor; besides, if I wanted to play it vanilla I wouldn't want it modded, now would I?

Yet, I've just recently played my first EasyTutu game and I liked it a lot. I've never tried BGT but conceptually I'd rather keep the two games separate, than to merge them into one whole game like BGT does... so, I welcome Tutu/EasyTutu support on mods, and couldn't be thankful enough for it

[Jarno Mikkola]

I don't play vanilla BG1 anymore either, mostly due to being stuck with 640x480 on a widescreen monitor;

The Widescreen mod today supports most games, including the BG1:TotSC v1.3.5521 . And if you feel that the black boxes in the GUI are obscene, then just use the BG1GUI mod after the Widescreen mod is installed on 1280x800 resolution (or one of the others the mod supports).

[Andrea C.]

The Widescreen mod today supports most games, including the BG1:TotSC v1.3.5521 .

This is what I get for not being through enough while reading the Widescreen Mod's readme file

Edited by Andrea C., 28 August 2011 - 09:52 AM.

[Andrea C.]

Ok, cheers. Erephine in fact fixed this already so it'll be in the next version, but it is taking me a while to update the code (it also involves switching everything over to ANSI so we don't need to switch codepages during installation).

Hi Miloch,

any news on this?

[Miloch]

Hi Miloch,

any news on this?

Not really. I try to chip away at it on weekends when I can but realistically it might take several months, as I am otherwise quite busy with academic work.

[Andrea C.]

Ok, thanks for the update

[Andrea C.]

I was thinking... would making BG1 character animations dual-wielding friendly require actual drawing skills (e.g. you'd have to manually draw stuff, scan it and use it in conjunction with the existing animations somehow) or it would be pure coding monkey work? I'm not a good drawer, but I could learn coding

[Jarno Mikkola]

I was thinking... would making BG1 character animations dual-wielding friendly require actual drawing skills (e.g. you'd have to manually draw stuff, scan it and use it in conjunction with the existing animations somehow) or it would be pure coding monkey work? I'm not a good drawer, but I could learn coding

Now, as the BG1 lacks the needed files used in BG2, the game normally crashes when you equip the seconds hand weapon. The current model of fix is to not animate the second weapon, but use the single weapon in use -files to copy to new files, that can later be re-drawn later.

Yes, the drawing is done manually, but unlike you think, it's done directly at computer level, into a .bmp file... and when you have enough of those, they are compiled into the animation .bam file.
OK, so there's a possibility of converting from game to another, but it's requires good knowledge on how to match the conversion.

[Andrea C.]

Yes, the drawing is done manually, but unlike you think, it's done directly at computer level, into a .bmp file

That would be even harder unless one had a tablet and were comfortable with it (and good drawing skills would still be required). But... if the only part that needed to be drawn is weapons, then I wouldn't need to draw anything if all I wanted was to make BG1 animations able to dual-wield weapons that are already present in the game, would I? Either that, or I didn't understand what needs to be drawn

[Jarno Mikkola]

That would be even harder unless one had a tablet and were comfortable with it

It has nothing to do with the tools you use... actually it's probably harder to draw pixels with table.

But... if the only part that needed to be drawn is weapons, then I wouldn't need to draw anything if all I wanted was to make BG1 animations able to dual-wield weapons that are already present in the game, would I? Either that, or I didn't understand what needs to be drawn

Well, the whole character is drawn in layers, and the BG1 characters are not in sync with the BG2 once... a picture might enlighten this:

From here. The sword, helm and shield are in the wrong point in the picture... now, with animations, it's as complex if not more.

[Andrea C.]

Well, the whole character is drawn in layers, and the BG1 characters are not in sync with the BG2 once...

I see. But what if I wanted to create the off-hand animation from scratch, rather than cut&paste&adjust the BG2 one? I have a gut feeling that this would create more issues than it would solve... but you know, just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes...

[Jarno Mikkola]

I see. But what if I wanted to create the off-hand animation from scratch, rather than cut&paste&adjust the BG2 one? I have a gut feeling that this would create more issues than it would solve... but you know, just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes...

Well, the solution is already at hand... you just replace the invisible animation with the visible one.

[Andrea C.]

Well, the solution is already at hand... you just replace the invisible animation with the visible one.

You lost me there. At the cost of admitting I'm a newbie and a nuisance, or possibly even falling for a joke, I must ask you which "visible animation" you're referring to I'm no modder but I could try to learn coding if that meant I could make BG1 animations dual wield. Just trying to assess whether this is something realistically within my grasp, or toally out of reach.

[Miloch]

But what if I wanted to create the off-hand animation from scratch, rather than cut&paste&adjust the BG2 one?

You would have to create the weapon graphic for every frame in every sequence of every .bam file for all the character animations. Then you'd have to do that for every gender/race combination (probably as "easy" as repositioning it, if you actually got that far). For an example, look at something like wpmssa1.bam with an editor (DLTCEP/BAM Workshop/Near Infinity) which is the existing short sword animation for the main hand. That should map to the chft2a1.bam, which is one sequence of the female human thief animation. As for what you see on the paperdoll (presumably what Jarno's referring to), that would be a very minor thing after all that. It might also need a tweak to the .exe patch, but that sort of code is beyond either you or me - Erephine would probably need to look at it. But I'm guessing that would also be minor - the major effort would be the graphics editing I mentioned first, which needs very little "artistic" talent, but a lot of tedious drudgery. If you ask me, it would be easiest to reposition the existing BG2 offhand animations to the BG1 avatars, but they'll probably need heavy editing because they're quite different (BG1 animations aren't "mirrored" so they'd need more directions, but it could still be done possibly). Anyway, none of that would involve WeiDU coding.

[Andrea C.]

Hi Miloch,

thanks for your reply. I reckon, as I had suspected, that creating those animations from scratch would be nightmarish. I'm not afraid of tedious drudgery, though, so repositioning the existing BG2 animation is still something I could pursue, no matter how heavy an editing is required. As for paperdolls, I believe Erephine has already implemented dual-wielding in BG1 paperdolls, so I don't think any further adjustment should be made. I had a look at the comprehensive IE modding tutorial index but I'm not exactly sure what I need for this task (well, apart from the fact that I'd need to work with BAM workshop). I'm a complete newbie so I may need some help in detecting what I should do exactly Is animation editing the same as putting together a huge number of still images, which I could learn through Awake's BAM workshop tutorial?

[Miloch]

I'm a complete newbie so I may need some help in detecting what I should do exactly Is animation editing the same as putting together a huge number of still images, which I could learn through Awake's BAM workshop tutorial?

You would assemble a bunch of still images to create a BAM (animation) but to edit one, you would just need BAM Workshop or DLTCEP. There should be some decent tutorials for both, particularly Yovaneth's for DLTCEP, though it covers mainly area-editing not BAMs. For changing the offsets of existing graphics, you wouldn't need much image editing at all, you just change the numeric values that tell you the horizontal and vertical placement of the image. We had a workroom where we were messing with some experimental scripts and tools for this sort of thing, but largely in the context of creating new animations from NWN models. Still, it might be useful, I don't know. There is not much action there these days, but maybe Sam. or I could give you access if you want - he was working on a new BAM tool that might help.

[Andrea C.]

Hi Miloch,

I think accessing the work room would make sense, as I could have a thread over there where to ask my newbie questions. From what I can gather from your words, editing BG1 Animations to make them dual-wield shouldn't be too difficult, just overly long and repetitive. I can do that in my free time, but I still need to ask approximately a ton of "technical" questions that are probably overbearingly obvious for experienced modders like you and Erephine (and which are probably best put in the work room, as said above). If you don't mind coaching me a bit to get me started, I could start gathering what I need and understanding the basics - then I'll start working on it when the work on my thesis allows me

[Sam.]

We had a workroom where we were messing with some experimental scripts and tools for this sort of thing, but largely in the context of creating new animations from NWN models. Still, it might be useful, I don't know. There is not much action there these days, but maybe Sam. or I could give you access if you want - he was working on a new BAM tool that might help.

Sorry it took me a couple of days to respond, I've been at Bridge Day in West Virginia all weekend. I was on one of the rappelling teams and did 3 rappels and climbed it once. Anyway, with some tweaking, I think my tool could be set up to overlay the first frame of the weapon animation over the first frame of the character animation. You could then correctly position the weapon animation using the arrow keys, and apply that incremental offset to the entire weapon animation BAM. This is what you would need to do, correct (or have I misunderstood what you intend to do)? Other image manipulations that need to be done (e.g. mirroring, rotations, etc) can be done fairly easily with ImageMagick (and could be added to my tool if you wanted). What is the Matrix? wasn't able to get my tool to work for him, though, but I'm hoping it was just a fluke as it works great for me... That could mean that it still needs some debugging, though.

I don't think I have the administrative privileges needed to add someone to the hidden workroom, though. Sorry. You could ask Erephine to add you, but I haven't seen her in a while. K'aeloree could add you, but he's away on a personal trip for the time being.

Edited by Sam., 16 October 2011 - 08:45 PM.

[Andrea C.]

Hi Sam,

don't worry about timing, I have no idea what the "Bridge Day" is but I sure am not in a hurry (actually, I'll be hellaciously busy writing my thesis in the immediate future, as I'm quite behind schedule)

Anyway, with some tweaking, I think my tool could be set up to overlay the first frame of the weapon animation over the first frame of the character animation. You could then correctly position the weapon animation using the arrow keys, and apply that incremental offset to the entire weapon animation BAM. This is what you would need to do, correct (or have I misunderstood what you intend to do)?

Sounds precisely like what I need to do, and you're making it sound quicker and easier than I had thought (then again my thoughts may have been a tad on the catastrophic side)! So basically I would be using your tool (instead of, say, BAM Workshop) to reposition the off-hand weapon animation and make it fit the BG1 character animations, then work with ImageMagick for further tweaking until the dual-wielding attack animation looks consistent, right?

Other image manipulations that need to be done (e.g. mirroring, rotations, etc) can be done fairly easily with ImageMagick (and could be added to my tool if you wanted).

That would be quite convenient, if it weren't a problem for you Of course I have no problem working with ImageMagick or any other software I may need if adding those features to your tool were either long, tedious or both (I have no experience coding/programming so I have no idea).

K'aeloree could add you, but he's away on a personal trip for the time being.

That will not be a problem. I am not in a hurry and even if I were, I would cease being so upon reading of the impending loss of his relative.

[Dakk]

I'd just like to chip in that I'm watching and cheering on your effort with this Andrea C.!