115 replies to this topic

[Erephine]

Question: How important is the resizing on the Abishai? The PST ones are all the same size, slightly larger than the IWDII abishai. The IWD one is almost exactly as tall as a male human avatar.

My MM suggests that they should be different according to type: Red Abishai 6', Green Abishai 7' and Black Abishai 8'.

The first one would indicate to resize to fit the IWD scale, but the other two seem closer to the current size. Should I resize them according to what they should be (resizing does reduce quality somewhat), should I resize them all with my standard PST->BGII ratio (that renders human/oid characters correctly) or do we say screw it and keep them as they are? Keep in mind the ratio is not consistent for all animations though - the Cornugon animation in BGII is actually larger than its PST original.

I suppose yet another option would be that I port them as they are (saves time, too!) and we can resize them later if it's deemed necessary.. it's not significant enough to chage footcircle size or anything like that.

So... any opinions on what should I do?

Edited by Erephine, 06 December 2009 - 10:24 PM.

[Miloch]

I think you can do hard recolours like that with an effect actually if memory serves right (set creature colour? something like that).

You can. I got some semi-decent looking Marid going by dying Djinn green with an inventory item. Was modified (I spent literally hours testing different shades of green)from a little resource called, I think, Colour Robes. You just dropped it into the creatures inventory, and it recoloured 'em. Nice and easy. Can't seem to find that anywhere on my computer or the internet now though.

You can make such an item yourself very easily. Just create a blank item in DLTCEP (or edit an existing one like a gold ring), click on the Equipping Effects tab and Add/Edit a new effect. Change the opcode to 51 and "Explode" the RGB colour field. Enter the red, green and blue values (picked from a graphics program like PSP/PS or whatever) in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th fields then Exit and Save Item As (whatever you want). Or you can do the same thing directly on a CRE from the Effects tab. Don't use NI for that or it will probably hose your CRE (and is harder to do in NI anyway).

There are no marids even in a BWP game, but I suppose you've modded one (or tried once). There are plenty of efreet though, and a dao, who could all certainly use a recolour. Maybe if you used a slightly greyer red with orange minor colour values it'd look better? It looks like you used 2 values for the marid (blue and green) which looks good. The dao I suppose should be a brown/grey sort of colour. I can add this easily to an optional recolour component if you find values that work.

A lot of the abishai are actually already set with a colour effect, but I have no idea how it works. I would guess they are very garish, because the green are set to 0 200 0 and the red to 255 0 0! Which would be the brightest red there is, but who knows, it might work with that opcode. But they're probably going to be all red and green anyhow, like the frames I posted above.

Those smilies that it has annoyingly decided to insert into the codebox are 8 ) without the space inbetween.

You can uncheck "Enable emoticons" when posting, but don't bother. There is better code to do this now since WeiDU has a built-in ADD_CRE_EFFECT macro.

@Erephine - I guess use the MM values? The red at least should be resized, as you say. Interesting how the more powerful abishai are smaller, heh.

[Erephine]

What is it with your NI hatred?

I've edited item and creature effects just fine with it, haven't broken a single file doing that.

[Miloch]

What is it with your NI hatred?

I've edited item and creature effects just fine with it, haven't broken a single file doing that.

You won't know if they've broken your game until you go up against the creature in a fight and your game crashes with some weird assertion error, and *then* only if the creature switches its weapon to darts or something. How do I know this? The megamod installs are riddled with creatures of this nature, which the Creature Fixer utility attempts to fix. The fact that devSin (one of the NI developers) recommends not using it for CREs also confirms this.

I don't hate NI. It's a nifty tool. I use it for quite a lot of things (it's "where-used" searches are unbeatable - DLTCEP has nothing equivalent) but creature editing isn't one of them. Anyway, it's far easier to add effects and such in DLTCEP.

[Arkenor]

There are no marids even in a BWP game, but I suppose you've modded one (or tried once). There are plenty of efreet though, and a dao, who could all certainly use a recolour. Maybe if you used a slightly greyer red with orange minor colour values it'd look better? It looks like you used 2 values for the marid (blue and green) which looks good. The dao I suppose should be a brown/grey sort of colour. I can add this easily to an optional recolour component if you find values that work.

The Dao attempt was on the right hand side of the picture. Brown is hard. That was just a pic I took to show the BP gang what I was up to at some point, not the final appearances I went with.(It survived because it was tucked in a backup of an old website I had that got found when I was searching for the mod files). I know there's no Marid in BG, but I rather thought there ought to be, along with Jann. That was kind of the point of creating them. I was trying to get all varieties of geniekind into the game, and getting the existing ones more in line with their PnP roots (They're a bit of a jumbled mess in unmodded BG2). Anyhows, that pic and some design notes (And some sound effects from the old Arabian Nights pinball machine) is all I have left over from the project, which is pretty infuriating considering how much time I spent on the creature abilities and scripts. Was 6 years ago, I'm a couple of hard-drives along from then, and the sites that there might have been some alpha files kicking about are long shut down. That'll teach me to back things up properly. I might look into redoing it at some point, assuming I don't get distracted again by the next shiny game to come along.


On the resizing Abishai question, I guess it depends how much quality is lost in their resizing. If they don't look too out of place in their original size, it might be best to try that first. If the PST ones are better, maybe we could even make a new white Abishai by sucking all the colour out of one of them.

Also, we mustn't forget BLUE Abishai! At least not if they wouldn't be too horribly difficult to make.

According to Monsters of Faerun, all 5 varieties are medium sized. White being the weakest, then black, green, blue, and red being the strongest, just like their dragon counterparts. All varieties seem to have the same natural variance of being between 5 and 7 feet tall. This is a 3rd edition resource, but should be reliable enough (Especially if it avoids the problem of resizing things.)

Just looking through the stats of the abishai in my modded install, most of them have not at all been well-served by the conversion. They seem to be lacking any of their distinctive powers and flavour. This is exactly what annoyed me with genie. Bah.

Edit: Managed to find my Outer Planes chunk of my 2nd ed Monstrous Compendium. Loose-leaf folder version was a horrible idea. It's rather falling apart. Abishai were a lot less interesting in 2nd Ed by the looks of it, and it only lists black green and red. A bit of a botch job, as when Abishai were first introduced in Dragon 75 (according to a wiki) it had all 5 varieties. I've got that somewhere. Half a mo.

OK, I'm now covered in dust from my attic, and probably spiders

Hmm, this was even worse. 1st edition Red were size small and 4 feet high, blue 5, green 6 , white 7, and black 8, and they were even less interesting. I'd say let go with the 3rd ed and have them be the same size (or whatever requires the least resizing of the animations)

Edited by Arkenor, 07 December 2009 - 07:32 AM.

[Erephine]

Well, I like the PST ones better than the IWD one (white), but I guess it's up to taste.

I'll definitely be making a quick-ish blue one (all or nothing, folks)! Just to note, the PST ones actually look different, not just differently coloured.

[Miloch]

I might look into redoing it at some point, assuming I don't get distracted again by the next shiny game to come along.

Like what, DA? As I said, you can make quick work of those items in DLTCEP, takes about 10 seconds to change them and maybe another 10 or 20 to restart your game, CLUA your creature in to see how it looks.

According to Monsters of Faerun, all 5 varieties are medium sized. White being the weakest, then black, green, blue, and red being the strongest, just like their dragon counterparts. All varieties seem to have the same natural variance of being between 5 and 7 feet tall. This is a 3rd edition resource, but should be reliable enough (Especially if it avoids the problem of resizing things.)

I don't mind using Monsters of Faerun over the 2nd edition MM, since it is Faerun specific (though using the 3e MM over the 2e MM would be right out ). But this means they would *all* need to be resized to human size.

Just looking through the stats of the abishai in my modded install, most of them have not at all been well-served by the conversion. They seem to be lacking any of their distinctive powers and flavour. This is exactly what annoyed me with genie. Bah.

Yes, it sucks... green abishai tails should inflict strength damage and the red ones fire damage (personally, my character would rather be hit with fire, but that's what Monsters of Faerun says). Probably beyond the scope of this mod, but someone should do it.

[Arkenor]

I might look into redoing it at some point, assuming I don't get distracted again by the next shiny game to come along.

Like what, DA? As I said, you can make quick work of those items in DLTCEP, takes about 10 seconds to change them and maybe another 10 or 20 to restart your game, CLUA your creature in to see how it looks.

There's no point just making a green djinn. The time consuming part was sorting out their abilities and script. Even the existing Djinn and Dao in core BG2 don't have half the powers they should have. This is from my notes from the time:

Marid (Chaotic Neutral). They were the most powerful of geniekind, from the plane of water. A greenish or blueish tint would be ideal. Legged version.
AC0
HD 13
Attacks 1
Damage 8-32
Magic Resistance:25%
7/day Liquid Form, Wall of Force (Fog), Water Breathing, Water Walk.
1/day See Invisible, Detect Magic, Liquid Form (similar to Gaseous Form), Invisibility, Polymorph Self
A Marid can also Create Water at will, and direct it in a jet up to 60 feet long. Those struck by the jet take 1d6 hit points of damage and must make a Reflex save or be blinded for 1d6 rounds.

I don't know why I have liquid form listed twice there. Might have been two different effects with similar names. I was juggling Marid from various editions trying to find a good balance of powers.

The water jet was the most tricky part. I ended up recolouring Agnazzar's Scorcher, but I'm rather bad at such things, and it wasn't a particularly satisfying solution. Looked more like a cold ray. My desires tend to be greater than my skills when it comes to graphical editing.

Edited by Arkenor, 07 December 2009 - 01:23 PM.

[Miloch]

I ended up recolouring Agnazzar's Scorcher, but I'm rather bad at such things, and it wasn't a particularly satisfying solution. Looked more like a cold ray. My desires tend to be greater than my skills when it comes to graphical editing.

Very easy to recolour BAMs too. I already mentioned DLTCEP's "colour shift" feature, but Erephine probably has better suggestions. There are ways to preserve colour variation if you dissemble and reassemble the BAMs (using BAM Batcher for example) and just edit the palette with a graphics tool.

Anything else we need (with priority) right now?

I suppose we should slot the vampire from Moinesse's Avatars. I don't know if it's worthwhile slotting the other ones - they'll just overwrite existing ones, which should be expected behaviour for the mod. There's no good way of, say, patching character (.chr) files to use different animations (it is possible, but kind of silly).

Edited by Miloch, 07 December 2009 - 01:39 PM.

[Arkenor]

I suppose we should slot the vampire from Moinesse's Avatars. I don't know if it's worthwhile slotting the other ones - they'll just overwrite existing ones, which should be expected behaviour for the mod. There's no good way of, say, patching character (.chr) files to use different animations (it is possible, but kind of silly).

What does that look like in game with the proper colours? At first sight, it doesn't look particularly vampiric.

[Erephine]

It looks a little off because it's flat-shaded. We can add it though.

I'm uploading the fixed NWN ports right now (optimised, properly centred Basilisk) so I'll finally be able to see about adding the Abishai and Her Serenity.

[Erephine]

Okay, here is a quick test run with the Red Abishai walking animation to illustrate:

| | | | | |

For the purpose of direct comparison I resized them to exactly match the IWD animation.

As you can see the quick resize is horrendously unacceptable in quality. It isn't very smooth either - quite warbly, actually - because the offsets inevitably end up off if you resize to an uneven ratio (i.e. you can't offset a BAM at something like 0.8 pixels). The proper resize needs more time and effort, but looks sort of acceptable. It's just a quick example as well, really, so in contrast to the quick resize it can be tweaked further to slightly improve quality.. especially since we don't have to resize pixel perfect.

Make sure to look at it with both forum skins (the bright background isn't very representative of BGII for the most part).

[Arkenor]

Okay, here is a quick test run with the Red Abishai walking animation to illustrate:

| | | | | |

For the purpose of direct comparison I resized them to exactly match the IWD animation.

As you can see the quick resize is horrendously unacceptable in quality. It isn't very smooth either - quite warbly, actually - because the offsets inevitably end up off if you resize to an uneven ratio (i.e. you can't offset a BAM at something like 0.8 pixels). The proper resize needs more time and effort, but looks sort of acceptable. It's just a quick example as well, really, so in contrast to the quick resize it can be tweaked further to slightly improve quality.. especially since we don't have to resize pixel perfect.

Make sure to look at it with both forum skins (the bright background isn't very representative of BGII for the most part).

I think that the red one is fine at his natural size. White ones are supposed to be the weakest anyway, so it fits that they might be a little smaller. And it saves you some work, and avoids any detail loss. The original red one doesn't really look much taller than a human, especially if you don't count the wings.

Edited by Arkenor, 07 December 2009 - 04:59 PM.

[Miloch]

What does that look like in game with the proper colours?

I've no idea. It's a paletted character animation, so those aren't the actual colours - it gets whatever you assign just like other character avatars. But if you look at the existing male vampire, it looks more like a mummy if you ask me. Jarno tried to tell me it wasn't, but the fact he used words like "sarcophagus" and "Egyptian" to describe it wasn't really too convincing .

Okay, here is a quick test run with the Red Abishai walking animation to illustrate:

I think both resizes look fine. The are just a wee bit larger than the white abishai it seems, but not enough to worry about. The "proper" one is a bit crisper... but is it "too sharp" in-game? Because the white abishai now looks extremely blurry next to it (which I suppose is how most animations are). Also, they are both missing a couple pixels from the tail shadow - the "proper" one not as badly though. Not a major issue.

Edited by Miloch, 07 December 2009 - 04:49 PM.

[Erephine]

Because the white abishai now looks extremely blurry next to it (which I suppose is how most animations are). Also, they are both missing a couple pixels from the tail shadow - the "proper" one not as badly though. Not a major issue.

No, actually... the IWD one is indeed extremely blurry (which is why I don't care for it much).

But this...

I think both resizes look fine.

I think you are blind

[Jarno Mikkola]

Question: How important is the resizing on the Abishai? The PST ones are all the same size, slightly larger than the IWDII abishai. The IWD one is almost exactly as tall as a male human avatar.

Screw the resize and keep them as they are in the original animations. And if someone wishes to then resize them later, it's their own foot they'll be shooting at.

[Miloch]

Screw the resize and keep them as they are in the original animations. And if someone wishes to then resize them later, it's their own foot they'll be shooting at.

Obviously, you didn't read *why* we're resizing them. It's because (wait for it... wait for it...) they're the wrong size .

For PS:T animations (which are larger than BG/IWD ones by a 4:3 ratio - see here) I suppose it makes sense to port both the native and resized versions, assuming enough slots are available, in case someone wants to use the larger animation for a different CRE. But it doesn't make sense to have a red abishai bigger than the white, when according to 2e rules anyway, they're somewhat smaller (or the same size anyway in 3e/Monsters of Faerun rules).

@Erephine: I didn't say they looked the *same* - I said they would both do, particularly when even the "quick resize" looks sharper than the white abishai. If it's incredibly time-consuming to do the "proper resize" (which I could imagine, having to do all frames of all BAMs) then maybe the quick version will suffice.

[Erephine]

For PS:T animations (which are larger than BG/IWD ones by a 4:3 ratio - see here)

This is not generally true.

@Erephine: I didn't say they looked the *same* - I said they would both do, particularly when even the "quick resize" looks sharper than the white abishai. If it's incredibly time-consuming to do the "proper resize" (which I could imagine, having to do all frames of all BAMs) then maybe the quick version will suffice.

Yes, hence my comment

It's not incredibly-incredibly time consuming. Barring any unforeseen issues, I'm mostly done with it.

edit: Nevermind that, haha :/

I'm leaving the black at its current size, and have put the green about half-way between the two. I don't think we need both the native and resized ones generally.. it might make sense for animations where there's more of a difference, though.

Edited by Erephine, 08 December 2009 - 10:14 AM.

[Miloch]

For PS:T animations (which are larger than BG/IWD ones by a 4:3 ratio - see here)

This is not generally true.

Eh... how is it not? Judging from this:

The PST ones are all the same size, slightly larger than the IWDII abishai.

And this:

| | | | | |

It looks to be to be pretty much exactly the case. If anything, the PS:T animation is somewhat larger even than 4:3 (maybe 4.5:3 or something) but close enough.

[Erephine]

It's not though, like I said...

should I resize them all with my standard PST->BGII ratio (that renders human/oid characters correctly) or do we say screw it and keep them as they are? Keep in mind the ratio is not consistent for all animations though - the Cornugon animation in BGII is actually larger than its PST original.

| |


^ Pictures if you don't believe me.


Yes, the first one is actually the PST animation and the second the same animation from BGII.