17 replies to this topic

[Ulb]

This mod aims to improve the visual art of the druid grove outdoor area.

To me this area has always been a huge disappointment.

When you think ''druid grove'' you usually imagine some enchanted mythical forest and a few monoliths or rune stones. Instead of all that BG2 delivered a barren, swampy wasteland covered in orange dirt and a druid grove that looks more like a futuristic nuclear bomb shelter than anything else.

My goal was to only edit the actual area art and not touch anything else (lighting and pathing). Because of this, the lower part of the area has only been slightly modified as there are simply too many dead tree polygons to make any significant changes and still keep the area in line with the underlying .wed file.

Here is a short overview of what has been changed:

Lower part of the map:

-added some ground vegetation and adjusted coloring in some parts to make the ground look less like plain orange dirt and make the whole area look more alive.

Upper part of the map:

-changed the ground to a healthy, grass covered floor
-added trees to the upper map border to make the area look like it is bordering on a (slightly) higher altitude forest
-reworked druid grove exterior to look like a natural cave entrance (which is inline with the vanilla druid grove interior area art)
-changed the ground around the stone circle in front of the druid grove to look more natural

Here a side by side comparison between the edited and the original druid grove exterior.

 

 

 

and here is an imgur link to the complete new area map

Compatibility:

The mod should be compatible with all mods that do not alter the area files of the druid grove area (ar1900) and comes with a legacy .tis file (untested) for the classic BG2 game and a new PVRZ .tis file for BG2EE/EET.

Currently there is only one known conflict: If G3's BG2Fixpack is installed/to be installed then Druid Grove Makeover needs to be installed AFTER BG2Fixpack to work properly.

Installation:

You can install/uninstall this mod at any time and there is no need to start a new game for the changes to take effect.

Credits:

Many thanks to Argent77 for his work on NearInfinity and coding.

The mod can be found here.

 

*edited*

fixed inconsitent description as pointed out by Roxanne

added link to complete area map

Edited by Ulb, 10 January 2017 - 11:08 AM.

[Roxanne]

Very subtle work and I just visited it in my EET game without any issue. Nice.

 

PS - In your screenshot above, the left half is the new one, the right side is the old (text may be confusing).

[Creepin]

Hey Ulb, many thanks for this piece of art - this goes immediately to my "must have" list! Do you think I could safely slap it on top of BWS install (what with biffing and all) or I had to wait for it to be properly added thereto? BTW, please don't forget to drop a line in this topic

Edited by Creepin, 08 January 2017 - 03:43 AM.

[The Imp]

Do you think I could safely...

Yes, it can.
Biffing only fastens the load times the resources take to load.
Of course you can't have any mod that alters the druid grove area (ar1900), like Ulb said.

Edited by The Imp, 08 January 2017 - 03:53 AM.

[Creepin]

Yes, it can.
Biffing only fastens the load times the resources take to load.
Of course you can't have any mod that alters the druid grove area (ar1900).

Thanks Jarno! I don't think there's a mod altering vanilla druid groove area graphics but I'll doublecheck.

[Ulb]

Thanks guys, I'm glad you like it!

 

@Creepin

As Jarno has already said, as long a there is no mod incompatibility you can freely install this mod whenever you like and it will work in your current game even if you are already in the area.

 

There might be a few mods that cause issues though.

Baldur's Gate Graphics Overhaul might and I think there is also a mod that improves the night areas (not sure though if that one isn't BG1 only).

If those mods only alter the art (.tis file) themselves then my mod would simply overwrite their changes (so no problem) if they however alter the general area structure (.wed) there might be inconsistencies between what you see and where walls/shadows and so forth are but I very much doubt any mod does that, so you probably won't run into that issue.

 

As Argent77 pointed out, there might also be a tweak mod out there that activates the "extended night areas" for some areas that have those files. If you have such a mod installed you would see a different (the old original) map during night time. In that case you would have to edit out the "extended night" flag from the ar1900.are file via NearInfinity to solve that issue.

 

As for the BWS, I intent to post there once I've got a better understanding of which mods might have what kind of conflicts with this file.

Edited by Ulb, 08 January 2017 - 04:38 AM.

[Ulb]

Mod has been updated to V1.1: Added compatibility fix for BG2Fixpack conflict (see first post for details).

[PutridWalker]

Okay, some imp whispered in my ear that "The mod should use COPY_LARGE command, while it uses COPY". Just so you know thanks for the mod btw, it looks great!

[Ulb]

Thanks for the note.

Turns out Roxanne had already a fixed version waiting on GitHub for me. I'm updating the download file right now, should be up shortly.

[Miloch]

Truly, all druid monuments should look like they're on the moors. Nice work.

[Ulb]

Thanks.

[Azaghal]

Hi druids and druidesses (?),

 

no activity for a looong time in this thread, so I'm afraid that obviously no one else has encountered this problem. When I try to enter the druid grove in my BGT megamod install (WeiDu log attached) I get a CTD due to assertion failure in ChDimm.cpp at line number 7641. The bug report states the programme attempted to use a compressed BIF from CD3. Free hard drive space should be checked (disk space is definitely not the problem).

Since it's the first time I have this problem and also the first time with this mod it's my guess I should start the search here.

Any ideas for a work around?

 

Thank you!

 

Azaghal

Attached Files

•  WeiDU.log   81.35K   91 downloads

[jastey]

Can you cheat your party into the area?

[Azaghal]

Nope.

Same result.

According to the posts above I should be able to simply uninstall the mod. But I would so like to see the grove in all its beauty...

[Argent77]

I could find a similar report: http://www.shsforums...p-at-line-7641/

 

Apparently it happens when an area references game resources which are stored in other area's biff files. You can probably fix it by inspecting the responsible area file with NI and exporting all referenced game resources (e.g. ambients or animations) to the override folder of the game.

[Azaghal]

Arrgh. What a mess! When trying to find a solution (not the one recommended here), I fiddled with my stable installation - and ruined it completely

So, back to installing from scratch. If I decide to put this mod back in I'll report on the progress.

 

Thanks for the support.

 

Azaghal

[Avallach]

Hi druids and druidesses (?),

 

no activity for a looong time in this thread, so I'm afraid that obviously no one else has encountered this problem. When I try to enter the druid grove in my BGT megamod install (WeiDu log attached) I get a CTD due to assertion failure in ChDimm.cpp at line number 7641. The bug report states the programme attempted to use a compressed BIF from CD3. Free hard drive space should be checked (disk space is definitely not the problem).

Since it's the first time I have this problem and also the first time with this mod it's my guess I should start the search here.

Any ideas for a work around?

 

Thank you!

 

Azaghal

 

Hey there, sorry for necroposting but I have the same exact issue. Druid Grove crashes with the same error message.

 

I looked around a bit and tried some solutions like uncompressing the bif of AREA1900.bif (it creates another file in BG2/data), but it did not help, still crashes. :/

 

Any solution to this, anyone?

 

EDIT: Managed to solve the issue by putting the uncompressed bif in both data and cache. That seemed to have fixed it?

 

But unfortunately it reverts the Druid Grove back to vanilla look

Edited by Avallach, 26 April 2023 - 07:23 AM.