8 replies to this topic

[marty]

Hi, I was having a discussion with Jarno about installing Kits for my BWP install, and he warned me that:

you can install from 220 or so kits places... did we tell that you can only have a total of 255 kits in the Kit.IDS, after which, the characters are assigned the last one, and in some cases corrupted totally, and the Refinements HLA component actually doubles the number of kits in the Kit.IDS file...

My question is: If we install Refinements, does this effectively limit the number of custom kits we can install to ~90 (accounting for the default BG2 kits that also get duplicated)?

This is looking bad for me, since I'm planning on installing TDD Kits which already add 76 individual kits. Is there any way I can increase the number of kits I can install?

Thanks

[the bigg]

To be precise, Refinements creates two copies of every thief kit (that doesn't receive penalties to its thieving abilities, so no dupes of bounty hunter and assassin) and of every warrior/cleric kit that can dualclass to thief. As such, the actual figure is strictly less than 3* (but an estimate of 2* is probably safe, since many kits aren't duped).

I don't know if BG2 can actually support more than 255 kits (either natively or with ToBEX); even if it did, many mods would have troubles with that (they read and set kits using bytes, meaning that kits over the 255^th will be handled incorrectly, possibly with disastrous results).

All in all, you should consider some things things:
- The kits from TDD tend to be of lower quality than kits from other mods (buggy and/or grossly over/under powered). On top of that, many of the TDD kits have equivalents in other mods (that are likely to be better than the original).
- Even without Refinements halving the number of available kits, it's possible to run into issues before hitting the limit (especially regarding item unusabilities).
- Refinements, the TDD kits and a bunch of other kit mods are included in BWP Standard and I can't recall an instance of this actually breaking something, so it's likely that either the kit count doesn't overflow 255, or that it does and doesn't cause problems (of course, it's also possible that people have regularly problems and never notice them and/or report them and/or properly figure out the source).
- You can only have six people in your party, so you'll have an hard time trying to actually use the gazillon of kits you've installed

[marty]

Thanks for the quick reply, Bigg.

I like to play with a lot of kits because I multiplayer with my friends and we often switch up our characters to test different tactics on the fly.

I really like some of the kits in TDD, but I agree that there are better versions in other packs. The best solution would be for the each kit in TDD to be individually selectable. I wonder why they are forced to be installed as a package? Maybe, I'll look into editing the .tp2 file manually for only the kits I want.

Refinements creates two copies of every thief kit (that doesn't receive penalties to its thieving abilities, so no dupes of bounty hunter and assassin) and of every warrior/cleric kit that can dualclass to thief.

Is it possible for Refinements to replace the entries in the IDA file instead of appending them? That would free up a lot of slots for kit maniacs like me

Thanks alot the Bigg

Edited by marty, 19 August 2010 - 03:56 PM.

[the bigg]

I really like some of the kits in TDD, but I agree that there are better versions in other packs. The best solution would be for the each kit in TDD to be individually selectable. I wonder why they are forced to be installed as a package? Maybe, I'll look into editing the .tp2 file manually for only the kits I want.

it's not too hard to do - you just need to comment out one (or more) ADD_KIT statements from tdd's tp2 (I'm sure somebody will provide a step-by-step guide if you need it and ask in Modding Help or another forum that receives more reads). The reason why TDD doesn't offer you the choice to individually install kits is that it'll take ages to individually [I]nstall 72 kits

Is it possible for Refinements to replace the entries in the IDA file instead of appending them? That would free up a lot of slots for kit maniacs like me

It's not possible, since correctly scripting Use Scrolls does require the original kit and two copies thereof. Give me some credit - if I was duping kits without a need, I'd have fixed it sooner or later once people started complaining

[marty]

The reason why TDD doesn't offer you the choice to individually install kits is that it'll take ages to individually [I]nstall 72 kits

Haha, well you know I've spent about a week learning just what the heck I'm doing when installing all these mods in BWP. Pressing [I] 72 times seems like a blessing if simplifies this kit business. And I'll most likely end up creating a customized install.bat to automate everything anyways.

Hmm, if all it takes is commenting out a single line per kit, I think I just might do this after all...

Give me some credit - if I was duping kits without a need, I'd have fixed it sooner or later once people started complaining

Sorry, no offense intended of course. In fact, I love your additions. The HLAs are very creative and your revised armor system is the best out of all the mods that I've seen.

Thanks for all your help, the Bigg.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Haha, well you know I've spent about a week learning just what the heck I'm doing when installing all these mods in BWP. Pressing [I] 72 times seems like a blessing if simplifies this kit business. And I'll most likely end up creating a customized install.bat to automate everything anyways.

Hmm, if all it takes is commenting out a single line per kit, I think I just might do this after all...

Well, it's not just 1 line, but the function that makes the kit appear in the game. I am also making a mod that has some of the TDD kits and some other kits, a few of the TDD are revised a bit, but they can be all installed one at a time. ...

[the bigg]

Hmm, if all it takes is commenting out a single line per kit, I think I just might do this after all...

It's a block of lines per kit, not a single line. Either way, somebody is bound to explain the process in full detail if you ask in IE Modding Help (I'd do it, bu I'm too lazy ).
One caveat: if you play multiplayer, everybody must comment out the same exact things, or everything will be messed up in ways I dare not imagine.

[marty]

It's a block of lines per kit, not a single line. Either way, somebody is bound to explain the process in full detail if you ask in IE Modding Help (I'd do it, bu I'm too lazy ).

One caveat: if you play multiplayer, everybody must comment out the same exact things, or everything will be messed up in ways I dare not imagine.

Wow! You guys responded in like 2 seconds!

I JUST finished reading the WeiDU documentation and was about to edit my post to say I would comment out the code block for each kit in the tp2. But you guys beat me to the punch!

And for sure, I will make certain that all my friends get exact copies of my install.

To Jarno, actually I'm planning on using your MegaModKits mod to install the NeJ kits into my BWP install. I like the work you've done so far, you really should expand it into the ultimate kit repository

Edited by marty, 20 August 2010 - 05:26 AM.

[Hoppy]

Many of the kits in TDD have been fixed as of version 1.13 with couple of miscellaneous fixes for upcoming 1.14 as well as the usability of unique items for the kits. Some never worked since the earliest version of TDD that I have but they should be OK now, barring a couple things that I am fixing for the future release.

They may still be classified as overpowered and unbalanced but my intentions were not to nerf the kits. There were more pressing bugs that called my attention. Let me know if any kits are still messed up but they all work well with Refinements to my knowledge.