70 replies to this topic

[agris]

Hey community, long time no post.

 

Are there any concrete plans by the BGT maintainer(s) to support BG1/2:EE and the upcoming Adventure Y with BGT? Since Adventure Y occurs between 1 and 2, it seems like a natural point for BGT to begin incorporating the EEs.

 

If this has already been discussed to death, my apologies.

[The Imp]

No. But there is a EET beta, that does almost the same thing for the Enhanced Editions games. Ascension64 has, kinda retired/not been seen since forever.

[K4thos]

just a note - it's not a public beta yet, unless you want to deal with broken water. And yes, Adventure Y is meant to be used for the EET BG1->BG2 transition (currently transition starts right after killing Sarevok, but once Adv Y is released I will try to merge it in).

Edited by K4thos, 06 March 2015 - 10:38 PM.

[The Imp]

unless you want to deal with broken water.

Have you though of asking Yovaneth's help with that ? I assume he should know about this stuff in both engines as he is working on the BG1 Graphics Overhaul mod.

PS, if I were you, I would PM him.

[K4thos]

Crevs Daak is already working on a tool that (if he succeeds with this task) will be able to uncompress PVRZ files to TIS, and this way EET will be able to convert them on the fly to fix the water issue. Adding pre-made TIS files into package is out of the question because EET download size is already big due to inclusion of BG1 movies in HD resolution and animations from IWD:EE. We want to keep it below SHS 512MB limit for the whole package. EET also supports some BG:EE mods installed on BG:EE previous to installing EET on BG2:EE (unofficially, hopefully they will have native EET BG2:EE support at some point), so these would also need to be taken into account, which would result in even more useless data to download and confusion.

 

Yovaneth knowledge may be indeed useful, so I will send Crevs Daak link to your post.

Edited by K4thos, 07 March 2015 - 12:40 AM.

[ScuD]

K4thos, why are you bungling BG1 movies and IWD:EE animations in the EET package? I am not sure it makes your mod more attractive if you say it is 500M is size. The whole idea about the original Asc64's BGT was creating a very slick mod that "stitches" two BG games together using the BG2 engine. The original BGT before that was quite big and semi-manual.

Can you use the same approach as Asc64's? You can say BG1 HD movies and IWD:EE animations are recommended and make them optional downloads. That will make the main EET package small enough giving some options to people who for example want new BGEE movies (I hope such people exist ).

[K4thos]

giving some options to people who for example want new BGEE movies (I hope such people exist ).

BG2:EE uses vanilla BG2 movies converted to HD. The same technique with smoothed out low res nosises has been used for BG1 movies. Beamdog's BG:EE movies on their own are not that bad (it's probably unpopular opinion, but I think some of them looks cool ), but when you mix them with BG2 ones in the same game, it's immersion breaking, imo (really hope that Adventure Y won't have any movies, unless they follow vanilla art style). Also they are available only in English and this mod doesn't favor any language (as you can probably see from my poor grammar English is not my mother tongue).

 

As for IWD:EE animations: I hope that in future there will be some mods that will be available for both IWD:EE and EET at the same time. In such case author won't need to bundle them with a mod. Another thing is forcing modders to follow the Extended Animations reserved animation slots. Also some mods, for example Drizzt Saga, are compatible when installed on BG:EE previous to installing EET on BG2:EE. It's easier to make them compatible when all animations are in place instead of waiting infinitely for authors to follow the common standard (that post is mine, just under swit nickname). EET also allows you to come back to BG1 areas in BG2 and ToB, so it's possible that some of these animations will be used for custom spawns via area INI files later in the game (not sure yet, probably we will stick to vanilla BG1 and BG2 creatures). I wouldn't be shocked if Adventure Y would use some of these, so it's also in preparation for it. Finally EET uses animation INI files (support for them has been added in IWD:EE and BG2:EE patch 1.3) for all animations in game, and none of the mods available follow this new EE standard - so this is a convenient solution.

 

I am not sure it makes your mod more attractive if you say it is 500M is size.

It's not 2000 any more to be worry about dial-up download speeds, or at least I hope it isn't big problem for majority of the users. I hate mods that forces you to download separate packages and than watch out to extract them into correct dirs. So as long as it can be hosted in a single file, than I'm ok with it, but nothing is set in stone, so EET could be as well separated into several archives if there will be demand for it.

Edited by K4thos, 09 March 2015 - 07:52 AM.

[The Imp]

So as long as it can be hosted in a single file, than I'm ok with it, but nothing is set in stone, so EET could be as well separated into several archives if there will be demand for it.

I would promote separating the archives heavily, because even if you don't want to, there's always size limits, like the 512MB you already mentioned, also the BWS, which is the community maintained install tool for reasonable sized modded game, can handle any amount of archives. And the HD movies can be in different downloads according to the languages in them. That's 40MB's per language for only the movies, the v1.3.2064 has 3 languages supported and your Polish translation, that's 120 MBs extra in just the movies for downloading. An addition of 80MBs that's not yet in the ~500MB of the current archive(that has just the English and Polish translations).

The animations(well, the .bam files in EET-master.zip\EET-master\EET\base\bam -folder) take 230MBs alone, that could be made into a mod of it's own.

Edited by The Imp, 09 March 2015 - 06:57 AM.

[K4thos]

I would promote separating the archives heavily, because even if you don't want to, there's always size limits, like the 512MB you already mentioned, also the BWS, which is the community maintained install tool for reasonable sized modded game, can handle any amount of archives. And the HD movies can be in different downloads according to the languages in them. That's 40MB's per language for only the movies, the v1.3.2064 has 3 languages supported and your Polish translation, that's 120 MBs extra in just the movies for downloading. An addition of 80MBs that's not yet in the ~500MB of the current archive(that has just the English and Polish translations).

yep, with more localized movies the package would exceed the limit, so yes this will be probably the only way. As for the rest we will see.

[ScuD]

My point is if EET is a simple conversion, like BGT, there's no need to inflate its size. Localized movies mod can be installed the same way as BGT Restored Textscreen Music, with just the language the user needs. And 230M of animations deserve to be a separate mod in my opinion

Other than that, keep up the good work man. What you are doing is really awesome!

Too bad I can't help with the coding of the conversion tool for PRVZ and TIS

[dabus]

Since I guess that most people will not use some tool to get your mod but some kind of bundled download-package, you'll have a whopping piece of "wasted" bandwidth for the hoster if you fix a small bug and the big files (movies, animations) stay the same..
So I'd just think that it would be kinder to make things optional.

If you hate unpacking stuff, why not write a script for a zip-program or installer that will unpack the stuff if other optional packages are in the same folder?

[K4thos]

thanks, ScuD

 

dabus, that's a good argument. I tend to forget that download bandwidth limits per month exists (never heard of such internet providers practises in my country). As you mentioned wasting SHS hosting resources is also controversial. If there will be many updates down the road, than it will be indeed better to have a package with just a code for download, and keep all the rest in a separate package (still necessary to run the installation, just without need to re-download, when it has been already downloaded before).

Edited by K4thos, 21 July 2015 - 07:30 PM.

[Salk]

I am neutral about inclusion or not of files that would inflate the download size but I certainly support the choice of using the original BG movies.

 

Good luck with the project. So far I had no reason to play the EE versions of the games but with EET might give me one (pending compatibility with mods).

[Himself]

Heya!
I'm looking very forward to running both EEs in the same "incarnation", as I'm sure all the hardcore players will love to, its such an inconvenience having to set up tables, spells, etc etc, at 2 *different* games ^^

I have not read this project in its entirety, but does the songlist.2da, which used to be limited to 99 entries (pre tobex?) was extended in EEs to allow more?

(This was one of the worst, if not THE major flaw with BGT back in the day... I'm crossing fingers in hopes that its not back again)

Godspeed!

[The Imp]

Well there's a 106 .mus links in the BG2EE's songlist.2da file, so it's likely ... the-he-he-he.

[ikonomov]

Instead of Enhanced Edition Trilogy if somebody can port the EE UI into BGT it would be awesome...

Edited by ikonomov, 21 May 2015 - 09:17 PM.

[Saigon1983]

Hi to all!

 

Is the problem in EET with water layers from BG1EE to BG2EE solved?

[The Imp]

Pretty sure i read in the beta updates the water problem was fixed.

Well, there was more than one, but indeed they are now solved. The official release waits for the BG:Siege of Dragonspear's release, and probable incorporation within the project, but you are free to use the above link in my post to test the thing out.

Not that I did actually a thing to the linked files... it's all thanks to K4thos.

Edited by The Imp, 22 July 2015 - 01:55 AM.