47 replies to this topic

[Austin]

Now this is fixed, the archive at the link has been updated!

https://www.dropbox....3 (EE).zip?dl=0

Edited by Austin, 11 August 2022 - 04:18 AM.

[Austin]

I updated the archive and disabled the installation of Boots of the Bar, which would take the player to any inn of their choice. This item was the cause of many bugs and problems, according to our players - because it allowed the player to get out of the areas of the game or other mods, from which it is impossible to leave without completing some task, or to get (into EET) from BG1 to the BG2 areas, which is completely would break the plot.

Edited by Austin, 28 January 2022 - 07:05 AM.

[Endarire]

Thankee, Austin!

May we get the latest EET version of this mod on GitHub?

[Austin]

May we get the latest EET version of this mod on GitHub?

The old version of the mod is on this GitHub: https://github.com/S...Shoes-and-Boots

The new version (since vanilla game compatibility is disabled in it) can be posted in another parallel directory there or on the SHS Github (if Gwendolyne checks my edits and finds them suitable). In any case, I can't post it on my Github account, since the mod already has another official account.

 

The mod can also be installed on EET, but on this version of the game there may be errors in the game, this requires testing.

Edited by Austin, 11 August 2022 - 04:18 AM.

[Austin]

Considering that there were reviews on G3 about possible problems with version 5.3 on EET, I added a clarification about this to previous messages.

On BG2EE, the mod (v.5.3) works without bugs (I tested the main component completely and found no errors).

If anyone is ready to modify this version so that it works without problems on EET, I will be grateful. I don't have enough experience to do it.

Edited by Austin, 11 August 2022 - 04:26 AM.

[Graion Dilach]

IIRC, the alu-fiends ending up with missing/wrong artwork also affects BG2EE (they're supposed to end up with Isair and Madae, but the mod includes them using the IAv5 μ prefix, which shouldn't be used on EEs, additionally the INI files are also missing for those two artwork). The EET section is indeed problematic on BG1.

 

TBH, the alu-fiends issue alone makes me want to not try updating this before the next Infinity Animations, to ensure the sync remains between the two mods (and maybe even migrate this one to ToBEx AL along).

Edited by Graion Dilach, 11 August 2022 - 06:37 AM.

[Austin]

IIRC, the alu-fiends ending up with missing/wrong artwork also affects BG2EE (they're supposed to end up with Isair and Madae, but the mod includes them using the IAv5 μ prefix, which shouldn't be used on EEs, additionally the INI files are also missing for those two artwork). The EET section is indeed problematic on BG1.

 

TBH, the alu-fiends issue alone makes me want to not try updating this before the next Infinity Animations, to ensure the sync remains between the two mods (and maybe even migrate this one to ToBEx AL along).

Where are these alu-fiends found in the game? Are you sure they are used by mod files? I just checked and I don't see any cre file that has alu-fiends animation. I played the game with this mod many times (both vanilla and EE) and never met them. The mod contains a lot of unused files - apparently, some plans of the author were associated with them.

 

Animations do not require IA on the EE version, as there are no animation slot restrictions in the EE version. As you can see, the mod is fully functional on BG2EE and all necessary animations work as they should (Aurora herself, her assistants, svirfneblin with and without an axe, goblin shamans, etc.)

Therefore, I see no reason why complicate the life of the players and force them to install some additional mods (IA or Tobex) for the sake of the work of Aurora, if I have added all the necessary animations in full and now you don’t need to install any other mods.

Edited by Austin, 12 August 2022 - 05:14 AM.

[Graion Dilach]

The Daemon Noble Boots (agboot37.itm) which can be crafted within Aurora's dialog tree allows summoning an alu-fiend (agaluf01.cre) or a cambion (agcamb01.cre) once per day. The Deamonfey Boots (agboot31.itm, distributed randomly to a shop in the game) can also summon these monsters, alongside the 02 supposed-to-be-hostile variants. agaluf01/02.cre would use Madae's animation, agcamb01/02.cre would use Isair's animation. These two animations are only included in the folders with their old IA animation filenames using the μ prefix and lack their necessary EE INI files. They are listed in the EE ANIMATE.IDS list as 0xE275/0xE277, but that's all what those two got even in SoD which backported a lot of IWD2 anims to BG.

 

Yes, animations do not require IA on the EEs, but the latest classic version shares all the animation data(-related) setup with the classic-only IAv5 to ensure the two mods remain compatible and this should remain the way it is. Last I followed, IAv6 intends to revert to the IWD2 original filenames on these mobs atleast on the EEs (maybe even on classic now as well, considering that ToBEx AL caught up to the EE INI softcodings). Gwendolyne's WIP IAv6 repo already include all the relevant resources for these two btw.

[Austin]

I didn't know about these items (never bought them in the game and did not use). Thank you very much for the information! I have animation files of these creatures and sound files, I will try to add them too if I can!
Their digital prefixes in EE are different, but changing them is not a problem. The only difficulty that I see in this is that I do not have an ini file for these creatures. As far as I know, they were in the IWD2 game, but I did not find the necessary ini file.

Until this is done, I can temporarily disable the installation of these two items,this would solve this problem.

Edited by Austin, 13 August 2022 - 04:45 AM.

[jastey]

Hi Austin, what is the status of your AS&B EE version?

Is there any change this could be unified with the original version so we do not have two different versions for oBGII and BGII:EE?

[Austin]

Hi Austin, what is the status of your AS&B EE version?

Is there any change this could be unified with the original version so we do not have two different versions for oBGII and BGII:EE?

Hello! Unfortunately, I did not manage to make a "merged" version of the mod, only add EE-compatibility (by creating a separate version for EE). In addition, it has a problem that Graion Dilach reported above, but I have not had time to fix it yet. To solve this, you can disable (comment out) in the tp2 file the installation of two problematic items on EE (agboot37.itm and agboot31.itm) for the time being, since these items summon creatures for which there is no animation yet. This was discussed in more detail above. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time to finalize the EE version and solve it myself.

[jastey]

Thanks for the info!

[Graion Dilach]

TBH, the last updated version also had issues with the BG1 segment of EET ending up with broken areas which I think was caused by the broken TIS installation on those areas. I have a local version where I have worked around all those (including the boots) but at the cost of bypassing some of the classic coding (+ I've added some changes to use random treasure tables instead of the AI snippets used for the random treasure generated runtime).

 

I still maintain my opinion though that this should be merged only after IAv6 comes out with it axing the mu prefix so this mod can follow suit.

Edited by Graion Dilach, 30 October 2022 - 02:25 AM.

[Austin]

TBH, the last updated version also had issues with the BG1 segment of EET ending up with broken areas which I think was caused by the broken TIS installation on those areas. I have a local version where I have worked around all those (including the boots) but at the cost of bypassing some of the classic coding (+ I've added some changes to use random treasure tables instead of the AI snippets used for the random treasure generated runtime).

 

I still maintain my opinion though that this should be merged only after IAv6 comes out with it axing the mu prefix so this mod can follow suit.

Even if you're right, the problem is that it would make installing the mod more difficult (requiring you to install a large IA mod to add only two or three new animations that work now without it), and also that this IA update hasn't happened for a very long time, and players wanted to see the mod "Shoes of Aurora" compatible with EE and play it instead of waiting for years. The mod deserves it. Therefore, a version was made that works and makes 99 percent of the mod (except for two boots) available at least on the EE version of the game (compatibility with the EET version is a separate issue, since it was not carefully checked by our testers and me due to there is no EET on the computer at the moment, so I can't answer anything about the possible problems with the locations on EET that you mentioned).

Edited by Austin, 31 October 2022 - 10:17 AM.

[Graion Dilach]

Austin, don't put words into my mouth. Please.

 

I wouldn't make the mod dependent on IA. That was never my intention. What was my intention is to ensure that the two mods keep using the same filenames for the same assets. Both IAv5 and current Aurora installs the same assets to the classic engine. In fact, when IAv6 arrives, Aurora will immediately require the migration to the new filenames, because the two mod will conflict if IAv6 does revert the IWD2 artwork to use the original filenames on top of ToBExAL.

 

The current status quo is that IA and Aurora uses the same animation slots, animation slot IDs and asset filenames for the same creature animations for cross-compatibility. My aim is to ensure that this status quo remains and in order to do so, if IA renames any of these (which it needs because the μ prefix leads to well-known installation issues and codepage hulabaloo and Aurora also uses this μ prefix on classic and also affected), Aurora needs to follow suit to prevent issues and keep the cross-compatibility.

 

The sync would just ensure that the two mods would still be able to detect that they're copying the same assets. The issue is that https://htmlpreview...._ref_chart.html was last updated prior to the TobExAL advancements and the IA boards are closed for the most people to know if Insomniator's & skellytz's work regarding the filenames are approved for IAv6.

 

The only dependency I would introduce to Aurora would be ToBExAL, if the ToBExAL dependency for IAv6 is approved. If there would already be a decision on the new filename standard for classics and this decision would be public for the people outside IA development, work could already be started on an Aurora version which would use IAv6 filenames and IDs for classic, IWD2 filenames and IDs for EEs.

 

To reiterate: I never intended to introduce IA the mod as a dependency of Aurora. I only intended to introduce IA as the dependency of the direction of Aurora's development.

 

PS.: Your Aurora version also still uses TIS for the new areas, instead of PVRZ, which can lead to greyscale-colored tiles mishaps during pausing/resuming.

Edited by Graion Dilach, 31 October 2022 - 12:24 PM.

[TotoR]

Hi Austin, what is the status of your AS&B EE version?

Is there any change this could be unified with the original version so we do not have two different versions for oBGII and BGII:EE?

Hello! Unfortunately, I did not manage to make a "merged" version of the mod, only add EE-compatibility (by creating a separate version for EE). In addition, it has a problem that Graion Dilach reported above, but I have not had time to fix it yet. To solve this, you can disable (comment out) in the tp2 file the installation of two problematic items on EE (agboot37.itm and agboot31.itm) for the time being, since these items summon creatures for which there is no animation yet. This was discussed in more detail above. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time to finalize the EE version and solve it myself.

FWIW, the animations incompatibilities could be to check with 'IDS_OF_SYMBOL'. With this function, changes are done if the identifier does not exists :

 

COPY ~aurora/cre/agaluf01.cre~ ~override~ //Alu-Fiend (summoned)
           ~aurora/cre/agaluf02.cre~ ~override~ //Alu-Fiend (hostile)

...

PATCH_IF !(IDS_OF_SYMBOL (~animate~ ~MADAE~) > 0) BEGIN

    WRITTE_LONG 0x28 0x6111 // FIGHTER_FEMALE_ELF

END

 

COPY ~aurora/cre/agcamb01.cre~ ~override~ //Cambion (summoned)
           ~aurora/cre/agcamb02.cre~ ~override~ //Cambion (hostile)

....

PATCH_IF !(IDS_OF_SYMBOL (~animate~ ~ISAIR~) > 0) BEGIN

    WRITTE_LONG 0x28 0x2300 // DEATH_KNIGHT

END

 

The code make the mod compatible with EE, IA (v5 or hypothetical v6) and actual version

 

After reading the setup-aurora.tp2, this modification is already done for soa only game, so this could be extend to 'EE' with little rework of the 'tbs' var...

Edited by TotoR, 31 October 2022 - 10:40 PM.

[Graion Dilach]

Yeah, but that also needs some recoding, because the goblin animation IDS entries were renamed by Beamdog to drop the IC prefix and the IAv6 list I linked at seems to follow suit.

[Austin]

PS.: Your Aurora version also still uses TIS for the new areas, instead of PVRZ, which can lead to greyscale-colored tiles mishaps during pausing/resuming.

These areas are not used in the main content of the mod and none of the testers have therefore experienced or reported any issues. But you are right, I will make a variant of these locations for EE. I'll try to get to that next weekend. After that I will update the version.

 

Regarding animations - as I wrote earlier, I made all animations, except for the alu fiend (which are not used in the mod if two boots are temporarily disabled), compatible with EE and now they work well.

 

If you know of any other issues in the current version 5.3, please let us know. At the moment, the mod is being used by players and no one has reported any issues.

 

I will be glad for any specific help in finalizing the mod. I understand that my experience is often not enough to take everything into account, but I do my best. The only reason I made an EE version was because no one else was willing to do it and the players were asking for it.

Edited by Austin, 01 November 2022 - 03:04 AM.

[Graion Dilach]

When it comes to the EEs, Aurora shouldn't be treated as a BG2EE-only mod. There's BG1/should be BGEE content, with the goblin encounter in Larswood, the goblin cave in North Nashkel Road and Karaea spawns in Nashkel with a hideout for her hidden in the wall of the tavern atleast (IIRC there's something in BG as well though). I'd consider Karaea's room and the goblin cave as part of the main content and these use the TIS areas.

 

Have any of your players tested for BGEE?

Edited by Graion Dilach, 01 November 2022 - 03:49 AM.

[Austin]

Have any of your players tested for BGEE?

No, only in BG2EE