How does IWG....

[Ashara]

I know I can find it out by installing the IWG, but I am not really interested in replaying BG2, but in modding IWD2 itself, and so I have very specific questions. I hope, that maybe someone will be able to answer, w/o me having to handle a pretty heavy install.

1) What extension do the joinable NPCs files have? Is the assignment of the Death Variable, Override Script, Dialogue file straightforward (ie with NI)?

2) How does IWG handles the scripted joinable NPCs dialogue and the "random" banter dialogues? Does IWD2 engine recognise the INTERDIA.2DA and PDIALOGUE.2DA and able to handle the B and J files? Or does Weimer load every dialogue onto the initial NPC dialogue and sets them on (including the random banter) on timers and triggers and trigger them via override script? Or...?

3) Can IWG handle the "Dream Scripts"? If yes, how are they assigned to the joinable NPCs. If no, is there a mechanism that Weimer uses to trigger dialogues at rest, and what it is?

4) How does IWG handle the Main Character? Does IWG recognise <CHARNAME> tag and assigns <Player1> slot to the first created character, or does <Player1> "shifts" depending on which character occupies the first slot in the party?

Thank you in advance!

[FredSRichardson]

I haven't been around in a while, so I'm sorry for replying so late.  Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong, this this is what I remember.  Joinable NPC's never really worked correctly in IWG2 and dream sequences were highly problematic.  Random banter was another serious problem.  In short, the IWD2 engine was never designed to handle banter and joinable NPC's...

I can't remember any more detail than that.  The code in IWG2 for handling the conversion of the dream sequence scripts and banter dialogues is pretty complex.  I was ripping that out for my IWD1tutu project.

[Ashara]

I know that in general the join-kick out sequences cannot be made work, so Weimer resorted to importing-exporting characters; which will work for what I plan. What I want to know is in details how he handled them afterwards. 

Could you share the work-around Weimer used for Dream Scripts?

[FredSRichardson]

Hi, sorry to take so long to get back to this.

I'm not exactly sure how Weimer got this to work (I have to admit that I was happy to be able to toss that code for the project I'm working on).

The code for doing all this stuff should be in the source code for WeiDU.  weimorph is compiled from iwg2.ml and a few other files.  I've found the code to be pretty tough going in parts.  I'm not sure I can be much help

-Fred

EDIT:  I'm not sure if you're still interested in this, but one thing you could do is to install iwg2 and look at the scripting that it generates for the dream sequences (they would all be in the override folder and should be brousable with NI).

[Ashara]

Yeah, I think, in the end I will have to isntall IWG2 for studying override when I come to burning that bridge. Hopefully Wes did drop everything in Override, the same way TUTU does.

[Drew]

Even if he biffed it, you'd still see it in NI.

[the bigg]

Even if he biffed it, you'd still see it in NI.

I don't think Wes was a biffing idiot affecionado anyway.

[FredSRichardson]

Yeah, I think, in the end I will have to isntall IWG2 for studying override when I come to burning that bridge. Hopefully Wes did drop everything in Override, the same way TUTU does.

Yes, it's all in the override with the exception of references to big binary files like the WED's and TIS from the source game.  iwg2 hacks the chitin.key so it references certain BIF's directly in the source game.  This all seems to work, and it's really only important if you want to convert whole areas over.  NI handles all this stuff just fine.

I've recently looked at a cut-scene from IWD1 to IWD2 and that was a pretty simple conversion.  I'm not sure if that's at all what you're looking for though.

[Ashara]

Nah, nothing fancy. Just vanilla dialogues and scripts. Good thing it is in the override, it should not be too bad then.

[FredSRichardson]

Oops, I looked back at your original post.  I think what you're really asking is way over my head, so yes I think you might get a lot out of installing IWG2 and examining stuff with NI.

You might find this tool helpful: NIDigGen for examining the text version of various resources (aside from DLG/BCS which WeiDU handles well).