6 replies to this topic

[lawofzero]

A lot of threads on this website are from long before BGEE so I hope that it is ok for me to ask a couple of stupid questions here that may or may not have already been asked / answered.

 

1. I've been wanting to modify the Find Familiar spell but I don't seem to be able to find all the neccessary components in NearInfinity or DLTCEP. I know of the CRE files for the familiars, the spell itself (SPL) and the spell effect (EFF). I have a feeling that I'm missing a script or something. What I want to do is make the Find Familiar spell castable by any party member, not just the main protagonist and I want to rearrange the familiars slightly between the alignments eg. Ferret for True Neutral, Rabbit for Lawful Neutral. How would I go about doing this? I'm at a loss here.

 

2. What tools do people use to unpack and repack BIF files? For example, I want to remove all of the CHR files from misc.bif so that when I go to the character import screen, only the characters that I have created will be there without any of these premade characters that I will never use. NearInfinity is able to read BIF archives but the most it seems to be able to do is extract files, not remove them entirely. I haven't seen a tool of this sort mentioned anywhere.

 

3. Seeing as I think that most of the Vanilla NPCs stink as far as stats are concerned, I usually modify the ones that I plan on using throughout the game with slightly better stats so that they're actually useful in their classes. For my next playthrough I'm planning on using Viconia. Is there any information around about the stats and available classes for the Drow race? I know that they are a type of Elf and that they have 50% magic resistance but that's it. This isn't the biggest deal but before I modify her, I would like to know what the lore friendly approach is. For example, I would've liked to make her a Cleric/Mage or Cleric/Thief multiclass but I don't think that's an option for Elves so would it be available for Drows?

[The Imp]

2. What tools do people use to unpack and repack BIF files? For example, I want to remove all of the CHR files from misc.bif so that when I go to the character import screen, only the characters that I have created will be there without any of these premade characters that I will never use. NearInfinity is able to read BIF archives but the most it seems to be able to do is extract files, not remove them entirely. I haven't seen a tool of this sort mentioned anywhere.

Weidu.exe .. and you do not remake the .bif, you remove the resource from the game internal library. chitin.key... Why ? Cause usually the .bif files are rather big and removing 1kb file from a ~32MB file can damage the internals of the game, as the .bif files contain other than obvious in game resources. For example, there's a "0x0" -file. What does it do... who knows.

Of course the misc.bif file is small 19kb's, but still I would advice caution. You could cut paste the file to be outside the game folder and see what the game does when you start it, it could fix all your problems, and you have the file as you moved it... so you can restore it without a problem.

The above is done via DISABLE_FROM_KEY -command, but you will want to read this.

 

3. There's a mod that makes her a thief/cleric. The lore fiendly approach is that you make a elf character, and copy the stats .. And if you can't make a Cleric/dual-class you want out of an elf, you won't make her such. Clear ? So no.

Good, now you can make her to be what ever you wish her to be with EEKeeper and cheat as much as you like, 25 in all the stats, but it's the same as making her to be one with 3 in all the stats ... the game doesn't give a darn, how lore fiendly you claim to be.

In 2ed D&D, drows have -1 to Constitution, and +1 to Dexterity, same as regular elves. Just (mostly) evil. And chaotic.

 

1. Again, there's a couple of mods that do this already. There's the .itm files, the .dlg file. What you try to do won't be easy...

Edited by The Imp, 12 August 2016 - 07:38 AM.

[Argent77]

2. What tools do people use to unpack and repack BIF files? For example, I want to remove all of the CHR files from misc.bif so that when I go to the character import screen, only the characters that I have created will be there without any of these premade characters that I will never use. NearInfinity is able to read BIF archives but the most it seems to be able to do is extract files, not remove them entirely. I haven't seen a tool of this sort mentioned anywhere.

You could give WinBif a try. But I would advise against removing these files. Earlier patch versions of the games behaved strangely when there were no CHR files available. Not sure if this is still the case.

[lawofzero]

There's a mod that makes her a thief/cleric. The lore fiendly approach is that you make a elf character, and copy the stats .. And if you can't make a Cleric/dual-class you want out of an elf, you won't make her such. Clear ? So no.

Good, now you can make her to be what ever you wish her to be with EEKeeper and cheat as much as you like, 25 in all the stats, but it's the same as making her to be one with 3 in all the stats ... the game doesn't give a darn, how lore fiendly you claim to be.

In 2ed D&D, drows have -1 to Constitution, and +1 to Dexterity, same as regular elves. Just (mostly) evil. And chaotic.

Yeah I'm not going to be giving anyone 25 in any stats. The kind of changes I make are just to improve their class stats. I mean, no one in their right mind would roll a Cleric with 15 Wisdom and 16 Intelligence, that's just stupid. Or a mage with 17 intelligence with a whole bunch of stats to spare in useless things. Even if I was making a character with a limit of say, 75 points, I wouldn't make such stupid decisions. The vanilla NPCs have been created as if a complete beginner who doesn't know the rules and didn't bother to read any descriptions created them. On the one hand, I can understand that BioWare wanted to maybe make them seem 'natural', on the other hand it's just completely dumb. I guess I'll look for a 2E rulebook for more info on Drows. As far as I understand they are basically elves with 50% magic resistance. In other words, better than elves with no other downsides. And that can't be right.

 

Good call on modifying Bif files. i'll look into the WeiDu method but really it's not such a big deal. One hack way to remove those CHR files is to create blank files with the same name in the override folder. It's worked for me so far so I'll just stick to that. Was just curious if there was another way.

 

As for editing Find Familiar, I'm aware of a mod called 'More Style for Mages' that makes a lot of changes to this spell. However, I don't like all of the changes. I guess what I'll do is try to dig through that mod's files for more information on what I want to do. This is the modification I would really like to be able to make out of all.

 

Thanks for the info guys, my questions have been mostly answered.

Edited by lawofzero, 12 August 2016 - 09:07 AM.

[The Imp]

As for editing Find Familiar, I'm aware of a mod called 'More Style for Mages' that makes a lot of changes to this spell. However, I don't like all of the changes. I guess what I'll do is try to dig through that mod's files for more information on what I want to do. This is the modification I would really like to be able to make out of all.

Well, here's a link to WTP Familiar mod by Salk... the forums links are a bit crazy, it'll probably throw you through a ad that's unavoidable. Apologizes...
And there's a couple of others older ones here in our forums that you might have to convert to EE's... but those are smaller ones, clearly.

[lawofzero]

Thanks man, those will be a good place to start finding out what I need to know, ultimately I'm probably going to want to create my own mod altogether. I think the devs must have been drunk when they were creating the familiars but there are a few things about them that irk me.. I haven't looked into the workings of WeiDU at all really but I'm starting to think it'll be very much worth my while to do so. Maybe I'll end up contributing here sooner or later.

 

If you don't mind me asking one more stupid question that i forgot to ask: the last thing that bugs me that I'd like to deal with is the portrait selection. I'm not sure what either BioWare or BeamDog were thinking by making portraits of NPCs that are already in the game available to player characters but I would like to replace all of these with my own custom portraits. I know that I can just use custom portraits the normal way so this is not a big deal, more of a convenience thing. My question is, do I also go about editing these in the chitin.key file with WeiDU?

[The Imp]

portraits... I know that I can just use custom portraits the normal way so this is not a big deal, more of a convenience thing. My question is, do I also go about editing these in the chitin.key file with WeiDU?

Well, if you wish to replace an NPCs picture with some other picture, I first would advice you to do so in the savegame with an editor like the EEkeeper, here's a link to it. This is because doing it so in the main game, you'll either need to edit the .cre files, or replace the portrait files themselves(.bmp) by putting exactly same named file to the override folder, which will replaces all of them except the ones in the past saved files. The EE keeper edits the save files .cre files, which will only effect that save.