190 replies to this topic

[The Imp]

.. that was announced here. I was hoping that the update includes a rename to all the old latin letters to be regular letters... so the old problems with Ø and µ etc. won't re-up-themselves with foreign languages and other character sets, and hopefully you package everything in .zip's, rather than .rar's where the above problem is MORE pronounced, because the .rar uses standardized character sets set within the OS.. and you have to unpack the file after the restart rather than what the installer is set to do, which just sets the character codec to be the Latin during just the install.

Edited by Gwendolyne, 02 March 2019 - 04:17 AM.
link edited to the moved topic

[Gwendolyne]

Done and done...

 

and more to come!

Edited by Gwendolyne, 01 March 2019 - 06:01 AM.

[Gwendolyne]

Yes, IA will be released in one single package.

[khelban12]

Hello.

 

Firstly, thank you for updating the mod.

 

Now that i read the non-ascii filenames are changed, i thought to ask a question. I am not familiar with the engine code so maybe my question is stupid but do you know how does the engine know what speed to play each animation at ? Does the binary exe patch mention it somewhere ? Does it check something in the animation files themselves ?

 

I ask because while IA works perfectly on the vanilla engine, those of us who use gemrb on linux, had two problems. One is the non-ascii filenames which i am glad to read that it is resolved. The other problem is that gemrb, for lack of better implementation, uses the number of frames in the animation file as speed. So, when IA is installed, this results in creatures moving way too fast.

 

Because i can't play the game without IA, I tried to implement in germb a extspeed.2da file like the EE has and used the vanilla engine to discern visually the speed of certain animations. It works but a) i can't be sure it's the right speed, b) i can't do it manually for every animation. Do you know of a way to programmatically get the speed of the animations ?

 

Thank you for your time.

[The Imp]

I ask because while IA works perfectly on the vanilla engine, those of us who use gemrb on linux, had two problems. One is the non-ascii filenames which i am glad to read that it is resolved. The other problem is that gemrb, for lack of better implementation, uses the number of frames in the animation file as speed. So, when IA is installed, this results in creatures moving way too fast.

Erhm, does this approach take into account the fact that most of the file is empty filler ? ... aka as the animation file has multiple empty frames, that are meant to be the exact replica of the former frame. It's meant to just saves bit space.

 

@Gwendolyne. good, good.

Edited by The Imp, 01 March 2019 - 05:53 PM.

[Miloch]

I ask because while IA works perfectly on the vanilla engine, those of us who use gemrb on linux, had two problems. One is the non-ascii filenames which i am glad to read that it is resolved. The other problem is that gemrb, for lack of better implementation, uses the number of frames in the animation file as speed. So, when IA is installed, this results in creatures moving way too fast.

 

Because i can't play the game without IA, I tried to implement in germb a extspeed.2da file like the EE has and used the vanilla engine to discern visually the speed of certain animations. It works but a) i can't be sure it's the right speed, b) i can't do it manually for every animation. Do you know of a way to programmatically get the speed of the animations ?

I think extspeed.2da became obsolete (though perhaps still supported) when we implemented the move_scale setting in the individual animation INI files. However, I believe both address the speed at which the creature moves but not the frame rate at which the animation plays. To be honest, I'm not sure if there is a setting for this or if it is hardcoded, possibly just a constant rather than a variable. But that would seem to be the case (at least in vanilla) at least by observation.

 

[Avallach]

Heya, any word on the update?

 

I've been pretty much postponing my next playthrough for this, so just wondering if I should wait a little longer or just go right ahead.

[Isewein]

Same here! Would be amazing to have IA in EET!

[The Imp]

Let's not get overhyped just yet, but get a well working non-EE BG2 release out first. And then later get the EE thing to work with that. Apparently it's this thing called Standardisation, that build our current mechanical world, in which you only lift ~10 kg bags of molding material, rather than ~1000 kg stones. Just put a little more effort on it, thanks.   

[Avallach]

Let's not get overhyped just yet, but get a well working non-EE BG2 release out first. And then later get the EE thing to work with that. Apparently it's this thing called Standardisation, that build our current mechanical world, in which you only lift ~10 kg bags of molding material, rather than ~1000 kg stones. Just put a little more effort on it, thanks.   

Fair point, lol. And good thing I've been mostly sticking with non-EE so far.

 

In all seriousness, I am just looking forward to the next version with a bated breath is all.

[Magus]

Thanks to everyone who works on updating, you're doing god's work.

I tried the latest beta and it even installs on linux, which means that Pack Mule should finally work on it too.

One thing I'd like to point out is that TobEx supports virtual patches. I didn't actually try them yet, but it might be a good idea to use those instead of changing the exe directly.

[The Imp]

Question @Gwendolyne, so is there anything I can do to help at this ? I am very bad coder, but I can upload files, test builds in many games, dream of th big day etc aka peasant work.

[Miloch]

Question @Gwendolyne, so is there anything I can do to help at this ?

Well, you could start by tracking down Gwendolyne and getting the update he promised ages ago. (And then do the same for Miloch from ages before that.)

 

Not that I'll be readying anything soon, but I'm guessing you have a non-Western European system you can test on?

[The Imp]

... but I'm guessing you have a non-Western European system you can test on?

No. It's very Western system and it uses the Windows 1252 to type from what I can tell, so I can't actually help with testing with a legitimate non-western european system.

! Then why did I raise this issue ? Well, let me tell you how the BiG World Setup exploded over it and ... that's about it, really.

[Miloch]

Well, let me tell you how the BiG World Setup exploded over it and ...

So tell then... (*cue "he's going to tell" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail* "Not like that! Not like that!")

[Salk]

2021... is the year of the new Infinity Animation!

 

We wouldn't have wanted it out in 2020 with the pandemic stealing its thunder.

 

Seriously, I hope Gwendolyne will find new motivations about putting together a public release but it seems he has been quite busy in modernizing many old mods and that can be quite time consuming. 

[Andrea C.]

One more item for the new IA update.

 

In BG1, Flaming Fist officers were universally assigned the Cleric sprites despite being Fighters. This gave them a distinctive look and set them apart from all other Fighter-classed characters in the game, and is part of the overall flavor of the game.

 

When restoring BG1 sprites with IA, Flaming Fist officers are all given the Fighter sprite—likely because their class is Fighter and that's what IA uses to determined which animation to assign (logically.)

 

It would be great if code could be included in the new iteration of IA to identify Flaming Fist CREs and assign Cleric sprites to them when restoring BG1 sprites.

[Andrea C.]

Ah, just one more thing (in hope this update is still a thing and Gwendolyne still reads this thread.)

Courtesy of Imsomniator, here's a fix that will prevent the game from crashing when equipping a weapon in the off-hand with BG1 sprites:

 

COPY_EXISTING ~bgmain.exe~
       WRITE_BYTE 0x5B9977 0xEB
       WRITE_BYTE 0x5CCB00 0xEB

This will make BG1 sprites behave like they do in the Enhanced Editions:

 

• Equipping an off-hand weapon won't make the game CTD.
• Equipping the off-hand weapon first and the main-hand weapon second, only the main hand will display a weapon. All mechanical perks of dual-wielding apply except the main hand visually performs all of the attacks.
• Equipping the main-hand weapon first and the off-hand weapon second, no hand will display a weapon. All mechanical perks of dual-wielding apply except it looks like you're punching your enemy to death.

 

All of the above is leaps and bounds better than crashing to desktop, so I believe it would be good to include this code into the BG1 sprite component of IA.

 

Edited by Andrea C., 11 May 2021 - 05:56 AM.

[The Imp]

Courtesy of Imsomniator, here's a fix that will prevent the game from crashing when equipping a weapon in the off-hand with BG1 sprites:

COPY_EXISTING ~bgmain.exe~
       WRITE_BYTE 0x5B9977 0xEB
       WRITE_BYTE 0x5CCB00 0xEB

You will want to make sure that that's the intended .exe and not a random pick from a box.

[Andrea C.]

You will want to make sure that that's the intended .exe and not a random pick from a box.

How is "bgmain.exe" a random pick from a box, exactly?