49 replies to this topic

[Ulb]

File Name: Animal Companions
File Submitter: Ulb
File Submitted: 08 May 2013
File Category: Miscellaneous Released Mods

Available Languages: English, German, Polish, Italian
Mod Forum: here
 
 
 

Animal Companions Mod
For BG2:ToB / BGT / TuTu / (SoA) / BGEE / SoD / BG2EE / IWD1EE
 

What's it all about:
 
This mod aims to give Rangers (and possibly Druids, should you choose so) some unique flavor by
allowing them to befriend a permanent animal companion.
 
Overview:
 
With this mod, all ranger/druid characters will gain the 'Find Animal Companion' ability at level 1.
(Note for BGT players: Even though your character will gain the ability at level 1, you still need to get to level 3
in order to actually have success in finding an animal companion.)

Upon using your 'Find Animal Companion' ability, you will be able to pick an animal companion
from a list of available animals in your current area. (If there is no animal to your liking in a given
area, you can of course try it again in another area.)

Once you've picked your new animal friend, it will follow you around on your adventures and even
increase in power as you do.
 
For a more detailed overview, including all available animal companions, as well as information regarding compatibility and installation, please check out the readme!
 
 
Many Thanks to:
(In no particular order)
 
- Alessandro Nosenzo for the Italian translation
- Aedan for proofreading the Italian translation
- Cahir for the Polish translation.
- Gwendolyne for the French translation.
- Argent77 for being a great source of advice on anything coding or scripting related.
- Daulmakan, Callindor & Jastey for proofreading.
- Everyone who contributed to the discussion about animal companions.
- Kwiat_W for all the inspiration I've gotten from looking at the Pack Mule code.
- CamDawg for all the inspiration I've gotten from looking at the Divine Remix code.
- ineth for looking up IWD1EE area codes.
- The Spellhold Studios, it's forum community and the people that keep it up and running.
- Fauxpress of freesound.org for a whistling sound. (Which I took from Kwiat W's Pack Mule Mod.)
- Atari for their Panther and Leopard NWN portraits, which I used in this mod.
- The following DeviantART accounts, for allowing me to base some of the animal portraits on their stock photos:
 

• Wincey (wolf)
  
• Easydreams (rabbit)
  
• Melyssah6-Stock (groundhog)
  
• slime-stock (dog)

 
- The makers and maintainers of:
 

• WeiDU: Westley Weimer & Valerio Bigiani (The Bigg) & Wisp
  
• NearInfinity: Jon Olav Hauglid, Argent77
  
• Infinity Animations: Erephine & Miloch
  
• TobEx: Ascension64
  
• all the other awesome BG2 mods

 

Click here to download this file

[The Imp]

Ehm, do the animals gain any damage bonuses ? I would suggest at least +1 per companion level. And the bear needs a better thac0 and damage bonus to offset the attacks per round.

[Ulb]

@ -PutridWalker-

 

Thank you so much, I feel flattered

 

I hope the mod will deliver what you are expecting and won't disappoint you.

 

With that said, (to lower your expectations a little ) please be aware that, since those animal companions are just animals (duh ), there really isn't a lot of dialogue for them.

 

Also, please be aware that this really is the first release and not yet tested by anyone but me. So, if you chose to install the mod in your new huge mega-mod, you have been warned.

(Though I am of course very grateful to anyone who is willing to test the mod!)

 

As for the BWP install order, I would suggest you install the mod after any item mod that would affect the Rod of Resurrection, at least if you want to install the Rod of R. Component.

 

Other than that, I can't think of any specific position requirements or possible conflicts. (I don't really mess with too much other game resources.)

 

Oh, it might be note worthy that you don't have to bother installing it after any ranger / druid kit mods, since the ability is granted via a script in the starting areas and not via the kit files themselves.

 

@ The Imp

 

No, they don't get any damage bonuses per power-up.

 

The reason for that is quite simple:

I really don't want them to be too powerful, since they are basically a free addition for all rangers and druids and could therefore easily cheese the game.

 

Also, bear in mind that the THACO increase will keep their damage values 'stable' through the game. ALSO don't forget that there is some kind of 'mythical' damage increase in ToB.

 

(What I mean by that is, that even though I don't know how or why, all animal companions will do almost double damage once you reach the ToB part of the game.)

 

Regarding the bear, that one is obviously the most tanky one (I think he is almost as resilient as a real fighter) and certainly doesn’t need a damage buff.

 

@ -PutridWalker-

 

Should you do a play-through, I would also be very happy to get feedback about the animal companions' fighting performance.

(I gave them a last-minute THACO buff because they weren't really hitting anything in ToB before that.)

 

 

Anyway, thank you both for your interested in the mod,

 

Ulb

[Ulb]

Just uploaded a new version, which includes the 'Rod of Resurrection' component into the main component.

(The file gets patched now instead of overwritten, thanks to Argent77 who came up with a more elegant solution. )

 

This means, there shouldn't be any position requirements for installing Animal companions in a BWP install.

[Ulb]

Great, I'm looking forward to your feedback. Hope you'll have fun with your install.

[Creepin]

Why don't you enclose the readme into the mod distrib, or at least upload it in some better place where one wouldn't be asked to register to see 6 of 7 pages? I believe this will do a great things towards popularity of the mod: right now I'm striking it out of my BWS install as I can't read readme.

Edited by Creepin, 21 September 2013 - 08:10 AM.

[The Imp]

IN ANY CASE, your mod looks very awesome to me, so i was wondering if you ever thought about converting it to be compatible with the Enhanced Edition games... i'm sure many would be interested in it!

Have you already tried to install the mod using the current archive and replacing the setup-*modname*.exe with the most up to date weidu.exe(in the Windows Binary archive) renamed as the setup-*modname*.exe ? And what was the result ?

[Ulb]

Why don't you enclose the readme into the mod distrib, or at least upload it in some better place where one wouldn't be asked to register to see 6 of 7 pages? I believe this will do a great things towards popularity of the mod: right now I'm striking it out of my BWS install as I can't read readme.

 

Hey there, I've been gone for half a year so sorry for the late response.
 

Thanks for pointing that out.

 

Back when I uploaded the readme on that web page you could view the whole file for free and without logging in.

I've only just yet discovered that they won't show the whole file and seem to even ask for a paid subscription which is, quite frankly, pretty ridiculous.

 

I'll try to find a better place for my readmes as soon as possible.

 

 

IN ANY CASE, your mod looks very awesome to me, so i was wondering if you ever thought about converting it to be compatible with the Enhanced Edition games... i'm sure many would be interested in it!

 

Aye, I am currently not familiar with EE and the differences between normal and EE mods but I intend to change that.

So there is a good chance I'll come up with a EE compatible version in the near future. (Near future being a few months though )

 

 

Have you already tried to install the mod using the current archive and replacing the setup-*modname*.exe with the most up to date weidu.exe(in the Windows Binary archive) renamed as the setup-*modname*.exe ? And what was the result ?

 

Don't tell me it is as simple as that to convert a normal BG mod into a EE mod?

(That would be pretty awesome..)

 

 

 

[The Imp]

Have you already tried to install the mod using the current archive and replacing the setup-*modname*.exe with the most up to date weidu.exe(in the Windows Binary archive) renamed as the setup-*modname*.exe ? And what was the result ?

 

Don't tell me it is as simple as that to convert a normal BG mod into a EE mod?

(That would be pretty awesome..)

In some cases yes, others need EE specific coding, to count the lack or resources in BG1EE that are present in BG2... etc things.

Kit mods need the LAF fl#add_kit_ee from this, but if there's no kits or ToBEx used, or specific GAME_IS etc commands, the update might be as simple as updating the weidu.exe .

Edited by The Imp, 25 May 2014 - 07:07 AM.

[Ulb]

Thanks for the info, I guess I'll be holding back with EE updates until I own the EEs myself and can test stuff before releasing it.
 

Also a quick update on the read-me issue: I've uploaded the read-mes to googledocs, so they should be viewable again without some stupid login/subscription prompt.

Also, I just checked and the read-me should already be included in the actual mod folders, so maybe you just missed that Creepin?

 

*Edit* I just read your sig.. I shall not use EE as a short for BG1+2:EE from this day forth! Promise!

Edited by Ulb, 25 May 2014 - 07:38 AM.

[zelurker]

Err there is probably something wrong somewhere, I got this mod from beamdog while spellholdstudios was down, and my version is 1.2, when this one is only 0.5 ?!!

 

Anyway my test for 1.2 with bgee : great idea, but healing the animal is a real hassle at this level + he doesn't seem to recover while the group is resting which makes it even worse. So I finally lost it because of that (well I could have reloaded but it was too much pain to heal it all the time). So there should really be some easier way to heal it, eventually just tell it to go away until he has recovered...

[Ulb]

Thanks for the feedback zelruker.

SHS had some server issues and lost a few months or weeks of content.

 

The mod is up-to-date now.

Also, I've buffed the animal companions a bit (more health, passive hp regeneration and more stealth for stealthers) to make them more useful.

[Ulb]

Updated to v. 1.4:

-Added Italian translation

[shareazu]

Hello there!


I was very thrilled to see this mod, since i always thought the BG lacked a proper animal companion for rangers and druids; However, when i install this on my BG:EE and try to use the spell, i get an error: the spell is named 'invalid: 34075'. a dialog then appears, but the only option is 'invalid: 34013', which brings no result when clicked.

What did i do wrong? there are no other mods (i removed bg tweaks to see if that was it, but alas, nothing happened), and, like i said, i installed it on BGEE V.2.3.67.3

[Roxanne]

Hello there!


I was very thrilled to see this mod, since i always thought the BG lacked a proper animal companion for rangers and druids; However, when i install this on my BG:EE and try to use the spell, i get an error: the spell is named 'invalid: 34075'. a dialog then appears, but the only option is 'invalid: 34013', which brings no result when clicked.

What did i do wrong? there are no other mods (i removed bg tweaks to see if that was it, but alas, nothing happened), and, like i said, i installed it on BGEE V.2.3.67.3

If you have a steam or Gog version of the game, did you use modmerge prior to installing the mod?

[shareazu]

Hello there!


I was very thrilled to see this mod, since i always thought the BG lacked a proper animal companion for rangers and druids; However, when i install this on my BG:EE and try to use the spell, i get an error: the spell is named 'invalid: 34075'. a dialog then appears, but the only option is 'invalid: 34013', which brings no result when clicked.

What did i do wrong? there are no other mods (i removed bg tweaks to see if that was it, but alas, nothing happened), and, like i said, i installed it on BGEE V.2.3.67.3

If you have a steam or Gog version of the game, did you use modmerge prior to installing the mod?

No, i don't even know what that is (modmerge, i mean)!

But yes, i forgot to mention that i have the Steam version.

Edited by shareazu, 21 December 2016 - 01:20 PM.

[Roxanne]

Due to some packaging differences, users of the Steam and gog Enhanced Edition games must use the modmerge tool before they can mod their games with anything that contains text (dialog.tlk).