13 replies to this topic

[Bill Bisco]

There's lots of mod ideas out there.  Here are some that I am fond of that I believe are feasible.

 

1. Prologue NPCs: Canderous, Arkanis, Osprey, Mordaine, Deder - In vanilla BG, without tricks these NPCs stay with you for one battle in the prologue and then disappear.  With tricks, you can get them to stay, but they're largely silent.  It would be really awesome for these NPCs to be easily recruitable in the Prologue (or Chapter 6) and be fitted with personality and banters.  One would be able to play throughout the entire Baldur's Gate Trilogy with the same party.

 

2. Return and stay in Candlekeep mod - CHARNAME should be able to return to Candlekeep given the recent death of his father.  CHARNAME should be given the option to stay at home where it's safer instead of adventuring out into a dangerous world.  The events of BG1 would unfold differently.

 

3. Gorion NPC - In D&D, death is rarely permanent.  Gorion is no different.  Gorion will leave a corpse on the ground that can be taken to a temple in the game to have Resurrection cast upon it (or resurrection can be cast by the PC or NPC or by a magic item).   Gorion will then become a joinable NPC who will travel with you throughout the entire Baldur's Gate Trilogy.  A few changes in ToB when necessary: Wraith Gorion will be changed to Wraith Aliana.  Dead Gorion's words will be said instead by the living Gorion in party or suddenly teleported there.  Gorion may have to occasionally remind people that he's alive.

 

4. Tamoko NPC - If the player doesn't kill Tamoko, she'll be found later in BG2 or TOB.  Interactions with Sarevok, Yoshimo perhaps, and a different Sarevok Epilogue to boot. 

 

5. True BG1 to BG2 NPC Continuity mod - Make Baldur's Gate Trilogy and/or Enhanced Edition Trilogy do what players have been wanting for years: Enable a party in BG1 to remain together for the entirety of the game until the end of Throne of Bhaal.  BG2 no longer assumes that your BG1 party was CHARNAME, IMOEN, KHALID, JAHEIRA, MINSC, and DYNAHEIR.  Whoever was in your party at the end of BG1, will be in Irenicus's Dungeon.  NPCs will appear in the multiplayer cages and will appear in place of where Minsc and Jaheira were, ready for you to rescue them by finding all 5 cage keys.  If Minsc and Jaheira weren't in your BG1 ending party, they'll appear where in a vanilla BG2 game they'd be kicked out.  Dialog will be modified to account for the different events.

 

Dead NPCs will not re-appear.  If Quayle died in BG1, he won't appear.  If Xzar died, he won't re-appear.  However, Biff the Understudy-like characters will replace dead BG1 NPCs or BG1 NPCs that vanilla BG2 assume traveled with you.  Ex. If you transitioned from BG1 to BG2 with Edwin or Edwin died in BG1.  You can leave Irenicus's dungeon and go to the Thieves Guild to find another Wizard who will give that Thieves Guild Quest.   If Safana and/or Coran died or traveled with you from BG1 to BG2, you would find a different lover or pair of lovers.  If Imoen died in BG1, a different green-haired female Bhaalspawn Thief / Mage will free you from your cage in Irenicus's Dungeon.  Your quest in BG2 will change to rescue this woman that you barely know (who also happens to be your sister) instead of Imoen.  Biff the Understudy-like characters will be joinable if who they replaced was normally joinable.

 

For Enhanced Edition Trilogy.  The mod would ensure that Adventure Y would start out with all the BG1 NPCs present at the end of BG1 and would ensure that at BG2, all the NPCs present at the end of Adventure Y would be present in BG2 in Irenicus's Dungeon.

 

6. The One Branwen mod - Combine all the content from the Branwen mods together in one Branwen NPC

 

7. The One Kivan mod - Combine the content from the Kivan mods together in one Kivan NPC

 

8.  The One x mod - Combine all the other relevant mods together to ensure one Yeslick, one Quayle, etc.

 

9. TDD Revised Mod - Add banters and interjections for all TDD NPCs and breathe life into them.  Remove BG1 NPCs as there are other mods that address these NPCs better.  But, add modding options to add their quests if another releveant BG1 NPC in SoA type mod is present.  .  Make TDD quests an optional component.  Add TDD sin TDD merchants to the game.  These last two items will remove the need for TDD sin TDD mod. 

 

10. Ehlastra NPC - This is the slave woman held in Yaga Shura's Stronghold.  In vanilla TOB, you can ask for her to join, but she will refuse.  I think she'd make a great NPC companion.  Her dialogue file is named YAGCON.DLG

 

11. New ToB Ending: Resurrect Bhaal - After Amelyssan tells Bhaal to "remain dust my foolish god" and before you're teleported to the final battle, a cutscene will occur in CHARNAME'S MIND/SOUL with Bhaal speaking to him/her and asking CHARNAME to defeat Amelyssan and restore Bhaal to life and divinity.  At the end of ToB, when CHARNAME decides to become a god or give it up, another option will appear allowing CHARNAME to give up all the essence of Bhaal (including his/her own) and ressurect Bhaal.   The Solar won't like it and may fight CHARNAME.  Good aligned NPCs won't like it and will fight CHARNAME.  Evil NPCs will like it!  At the end of this battle, CHARNAME will complete the essence transfer and  Bhaal will be ressurected.  A new Ending Epilogue for CHARNAME and some possible different epilogue endings for NPCs: romantic and otherwise.

Edited by Bill Bisco, 23 June 2015 - 01:37 PM.

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

Some of those are quite ambitious.  The wholesale rewrites of the main plot will be the most extensive, and thus, unlikely to ever be achieved.  I do have very similar goals about #5, though.  If you get to that one, let's not be redundant if the path is similar enough.

Edited by Fiann of the Silver Hand, 24 June 2015 - 07:19 PM.

[Creepin]

If OP is not trolling then I don't know what trolling is.

Edited by Creepin, 23 June 2015 - 10:07 PM.

[Almateria]

Those mod ideas are... Pretty much the opposite of feasible.

[Ithildur]

Yeah, someone's a little out of touch with some practical realities. Most of the ideas may or may not be completely impossible, but to practically pull off some of the more ambitious concepts (without resulting in an absolute mess) would involve project effort beyond the scope of what most currently active good modders are willing to invest in at this stage of the game's history.

 

Easy to talk the talk... or maybe he is trolling.

Edited by Ithildur, 24 June 2015 - 05:48 PM.

[Bill Bisco]

Thanks for your reply Fiann.  It's nice to see someone who wants better transitions from BG1 to BG2 like I do.

The most ambitious of the possible mods that I proposed is the True BG1 to BG2 NPC Continuity mod simply by the amount of coding to be done. 

 

The Return and stay in Candlekeep mod is ambitious too, but only in the sense of having to code in some quests, tactical encounters, and a modified storyline.  None of these proposed mods require any new areas or animations.  The death knell of many a mod seems to be in requiring new areas and none of these ones do.

 

I never liked Imoen back when in the BG1 days.  I always took her items and kicked her out. When BG2 and ToB came out, I used Imoen and I played a BGT game with Imoen as a permanent member.  I've taken her plenty of times and don't consider her a must have.  Good point on BG2 Imoen though.  We could easily give her a scroll or other magic item of magic missile to cast at Irenicus and that satisfy that cutscene enough to take her to Spellhold.  The Never Ending Journey mod had the Charming Rogue kit which gave Imoen various special abilities one of which is Magic Missile to satisfy that cutscene.  The Sandrah mod flat out converts Imoen to a Mage instead of a Thief.  I like the idea of her having a magic item to do the deed better I think. 

 

Jaheira is very removeable.  I don't kow why you think she's central to the plot.  She's not central at all; Imoen is.  My idea/suggestion is just to replace her with another NPC if she's dead and copy all the dialogues affecting Imoen and add IF statements to Imoen Dialogs.  If ImoenDead = 0 then use dialogue/cutscene/Chapter Intro referring to Imoen, If ImoenDead = 1, then use dialog/cutscene/Chapter Intro referring to Imoen's clone.  The main work in my mind is simply to recompile the original area scripts, dialogs, and whatnot to now check for a new ImoenDead variable and add in our new duplicated lines that refer to an ImoenClone.  We'd have to remove voice acting from lines that say Imoen's name directly which will affect at least 1 chapter intro and perhaps some of Irenicus's (can't remember). 

 

I'd suggest the same with Edwin.  If Edwin is dead or Edwin traveled with you to BG2, the role of Edwin in Maevar's guild will be taken up by an Edwin clone in a Blue Robe.  We'd edit of Edwin's lines and coding to check EdwinDead variable.  IF EdwinDead = 0, then regular Edwin appears and the game assumes he didn't travel with you from BG1.  IF EdwinDead = 1, then the game assumes that Edwin died in BG1 and EdwinClone appears and recites the quest.  If EdwinDead = 2, then the game assumes that Edwin transitioned with you from BG1 and EdwinClone appears and recites his quest.  The work is to add those variables into all the relevant lines and scripting for Edwin's part in Maevar's Guild to properly refer to Edwin or Edwinclone and let those quests complete properly in any context.  This method has the advantage of allowing True Transitions, but not removing game content.

 

 

I agree with you that Jaheria would be the most extensive work probably.  We'd have to account for these various states:

1. Vanilla BG2 Jaheira with Vanilla BG2 Khalid dead in Irenicus's stronghold

2.BG2 Jaheira with BG1 Khalid alive but questing for the Harpers separately and now they need to re-unite somehow. (reason/excuse as to how the Jaheira / Khalid pair could be feasibly separated

3. BG2 Jaheira with BG2 Khalid alive and with Jaheira traveling togther

4. BG2 Jaheira with BG2 Khalid alive but Khalid was kicked out of the group mid-game (maybe we ignore this one)

5. BG2 Jaheira with BG2 Khalid dead, but died midgame to someone/something other than Irenicus 

6. BG2 Jaheira with BG1 Khalid dead who died during BG1. (most of the original dialog is salvageable here.)

Khalid is also very addable.  He would have similar multiple states like the above.  

 

There is at least one mod adding every vanilla BG1 NPC not playable in BG2 as a playable NPC.  My thought was to gain cooperation to have other mods coding be open to their NPC transitioning from BG1 to BG2 with that NPC arriving in Chateau Irenicus (CI) rather than somewhere else in Athkatla / Amn and having the NPC dialog / quests continue normally after leaving  CI.

The other alternative is to simply require that the other mod components be unzipped / unpacked or whatever and the True BG1 to BG2 NPC Continuity mod simply installs the components as it sees fit.  Or, the mod simply edits the already modded game to allow True Continuity from BG1 to BG2.

I'd rather not have yet another mod implementation of these same NPCs.  Ideally we'd be able to work with Smiling Imp in some form, since his BG1 NPCs in SoA mod only lacks that Continuity aspect.

 

An alternate transition than Ascension64's would be fine but I'd rather it not be tagged to Imoen, Jaheira, or anyone not in the party.  In fact my  ending party for the first game was  Ajantis, Khalid, Coran, Yeslick, Shar-Teel.  I liked fighters that could operate decently at range.  We shot everything to death from a distance and never melee'd.  I didn't get to take any of my team with me to BG2 and I'm still a little miffed at that.

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

I'm changing enough things overall (not even the same ruleset) that compatibility is not even being considered.  The only reason I would keep Jaheira as is is because I find the Harper stuff interesting, and she's the least annoying romance.  I'm still not sure if I'm even keeping any of the romances at all.  I'd rather turn all that into less personal, but still deep, friendships.

 

Candlekeep would be okay as a base of operations, but somewhere else on this forum, I had a hard time justifying being able to legitimately return and stay there.  I am changing it so the keep is enterable at the start of the game, so Charname can read more history if he wants.

Edited by Fiann of the Silver Hand, 24 June 2015 - 08:43 PM.

[K4thos]

5. True BG1 to BG2 NPC Continuity mod - Make Baldur's Gate Trilogy and/or Enhanced Edition Trilogy do what players have been wanting for years: Enable a party in BG1 to remain together for the entirety of the game until the end of Throne of Bhaal.

EET aims to fully implement upcoming Adventure Y which is an official interquel set between BG1 and BG2. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that this Beamdog's new game will explain why you start with the canon party and what happened to the one from the end of BG1 (if I remember correctly they even hinted that you will start Adventure Y with your party from BG1 if you import save, not canon one). Consider waiting for this official content to be released before starting the project. Then you will have proper perspective if additional continuity tweaks are still needed or if Beamdog already did good enough job with it.

Edited by K4thos, 27 June 2015 - 10:05 AM.

[Bill Bisco]

5. True BG1 to BG2 NPC Continuity mod - Make Baldur's Gate Trilogy and/or Enhanced Edition Trilogy do what players have been wanting for years: Enable a party in BG1 to remain together for the entirety of the game until the end of Throne of Bhaal.

EET aims to fully implement upcoming Adventure Y which is an official interquel set between BG1 and BG2. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that this Beamdog's new game will explain why you start with the canon party and what happened to the one from the end of BG1 (if I remember correctly they even hinted that you will start Adventure Y with your party from BG1 if you import save, not canon one). Consider waiting for this official content to be released before starting the project. Then you will have proper perspective if additional continuity tweaks are still needed or if Beamdog already did good enough job with it.

Well, we certainly can't code for full EET and changes to Adventure Y until it comes out.  I hope that Beamdog will stick to that ability to start Adventure Y with your original party; it would certainly make a True NPC Continuity mod easier.  Ideally, one would be able to play with their default BG1 party all the way up until the very end of Adventure Y when the party is arbitrarily switched out with vanilla BG2 NPCs and we could just change the cutscenes and dialog to make that not happen. 

 

Truthfully though no matter how well Adventure Y might try to logically decipher why suddenly or slowly I have to ditch my old party members (or they ditch me) and I have to acquire all these NPCs that I don't like and abandoned long ago, it won't really satisfy me.  I don't really want Minsc, Jaheira, Imoen, or Dynaheir.  My original endgame BG1 NPCs were Ajantis, Coran, Khalid, Yeslick, Shar-Teel; I want them back and I want others to be able to take the party of their choice with them.

 

I'm not working on that idea now: I'm working on another mod currently, but #5 is definitely on my most desired list.

 

Thanks for your efforts with EET.  I really wish it was feasible to upgrade all these mods to BG2EE.

Edited by Bill Bisco, 27 June 2015 - 11:26 AM.

[aniagie]

Gorion NPC would be interesting, but it could spoil all lust for revenge I would say haha Tamoko would be great, considering the fact that Angelo already is joinable as NPC in BG2, I think some crossmod would be interesting, and romance for main char, and Sarevok would be really angry hahahaha maybe some fight scene heheh

[NIEN]

"the one Branwen mod" - to think that it actually makes sense to just throw together the contents of several NPC mods (of the same NPC) is... ignorant, the least. Some mod authors put effort into telling a story with their mod, you know.

Some of the other ideas are great, but as the others already pointed out, very ambicious.

 

Well... Depends on the content. Copying banters from one mod to another shouldn't be too much problem.
Of course there is the """"copyright""" of the mod, the modder feelings, etc.

 

N.-

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

"the one Branwen mod" - to think that it actually makes sense to just throw together the contents of several NPC mods (of the same NPC) is... ignorant, the least. Some mod authors put effort into telling a story with their mod, you know.

Some of the other ideas are great, but as the others already pointed out, very ambicious.

 

Well... Depends on the content. Copying banters from one mod to another shouldn't be too much problem.
Of course there is the """"copyright""" of the mod, the modder feelings, etc.

 

N.-

I think the only thing that should be off the table is giving new dialog or character development to someone's original NPC, aside from in-character banters.  Most (non-canon) NPCs are written with the understanding that other NPC mods are going to be used at the same time, and don't want to unnecessarily restrict interactions.  Putting a bunch together really isn't a problem.

 

The issue here is that rewriting major plot points is going to require massive changes to all pNPCs, canon and non alike, and that's where the problem is.  There might be a subtle difference between modifying someone's original NPC, and modifying someone's original expansion of a canon NPC.  But that's a level of hair-splitting that's not worth the bother.  Simply enough, don't alter someone else's original (creative) work without permission.

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

I hope that Beamdog will stick to that ability to start Adventure Y with your original party; it would certainly make a True NPC Continuity mod easier.

Not really. There's no issue with starting SoD with your party, since the capture for the start of BG2 can happen after anyway. But there's no way Beamdog can alter what the canon beginning of BG2 is. Dynaheir and Khalid are going to stay dead. Quayle is still going to inexplicably be Aerie's foster "uncle". Edwin is still alive and part of Maevar's gang. Etc. The only thing of substance they might be able (be allowed) to do is putting Final Party members in Chateau Irenicus.