Author Topic: The really old days: Snippets of modding history  (Read 40256 times)

Offline jcompton

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The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« on: May 23, 2008, 05:43:29 PM »
There are literally one or two of you out there who wonder what the hell is going on when the oldsters talk about things which happened six years ago, and keep coming up empty when you try to research them. Small wonder. The oldest continually active modding forum is Studios (summer 2002), but a a lot of the formative discussions/arguments didn't take place there, and were already starting to die out when it came online. (CoM has operated for longer, but their forum DB has been replaced at least once since then, and the former archive is difficult to access.) The collected wisdom of both Forgotten Wars and TeamBG is unavailable to us, held hostage by their capricious, absent owners. The Black Isle forums, once a hotbed of modding spillover discussion, are similarly disbanded.

So, as it's convenient and I try to avoid other, more pressing things to do, I'll fill in some gaps here. Feel free to contribute your own reminiscences, although I reserve the right to brutally split the thread as it suits me.

What better place to begin than the defining nadir of the pre-WeiDU era, the...

TeamBG Alignment Test

Back in 2001, useful modding tools were few and far between. What few there were which could actually open a file, allow you to make changes, and save them again in a potentially working resource tended to be located on TeamBG. The leading resource (item in particular) editor of the time was IEEP. And for a relatively brief period of time, TeamBG had the download of this crown jewel protected by an online questionnaire--a self-styled "alignment test"--which had to be passed in order to obtain the goods. The questions involved the downloader's proposed uses of the tool--as I recall the questions were fairly obviously leading to see if you were going to make +12 Hackmasters, or do "good work."

Depending on who you asked, there were two reasons for this. The first was that enemies of the state were maliciously downloading the program over and over again in order to run up TeamBG's bandwidth consumption bill. (Not impossible--hosting was a lot more expensive back then, although it was such a small download that you'd have needed to be a pretty dedicated hooligan.) The second was that the Mplayer/Gamespy/etc. multiplayer rooms were reportedly being ruined by people bringing their +12 hackmasters into games and killing everybody else's PCs and spoiling the fun, and TeamBG felt it had a moral responsibility to curb this sort of behavior.

This proved pretty unpopular, for all the reasons you can imagine, and wasn't in force for more than perhaps two months.
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Offline Ana Christina

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2008, 02:37:58 PM »
Thank you so much for posting this, jcompton!

Back in 2001, useful modding tools were few and far between. What few there were which could actually open a file, allow you to make changes, and save them again in a potentially working resource tended to be located on TeamBG. The leading resource (item in particular) editor of the time was IEEP. And for a relatively brief period of time, TeamBG had the download of this crown jewel protected by an online questionnaire--a self-styled "alignment test"--which had to be passed in order to obtain the goods. The questions involved the downloader's proposed uses of the tool--as I recall the questions were fairly obviously leading to see if you were going to make +12 Hackmasters, or do "good work."

Heh, I cannot imagine the test having such a huge effect by preventing people who wanted to cheat from doing so. I imagine that's why it was dropped after a couple of months. Both BWL and teambg.eu FAQ pages mention the bad behaviour of +12 Hackmasters in the context of explaining the origins of the "~TeamBG" suffix, so your information about the questionnaire really helps me get a better grasp of the situation.

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Depending on who you asked, there were two reasons for this. The first was that enemies of the state were maliciously downloading the program over and over again in order to run up TeamBG's bandwidth consumption bill. (Not impossible--hosting was a lot more expensive back then, although it was such a small download that you'd have needed to be a pretty dedicated hooligan.)

You really should charge people for these "laugh out loud" moments. Thankfully, I wasn't drinking anything at the moment.

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This proved pretty unpopular, for all the reasons you can imagine, and wasn't in force for more than perhaps two months.

I won't repeat the rest of my questions here (I am so looking forward to hearing about the WeIDU origins - going by your "criminally biased history of modding", I assume thunder struck the moment it started to spread), but I have another one: has BioWare staff ever got involved in the TeamBG discussions? Or were they unaware of its existence? If yes, what was their attitude towards modding? In the review thread, you said this:

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Infinity was very emphatically not designed with modding in mind, yes. Bioware gave some half-hearted support in the early going to people doing AI scripting, but that was the extent of it. They didn't document a thing--NWN has elaborate public documentation, for instance, but virtually everything we know about Infinity, we know because people took the painstaking time to observe, experiment, collect, and report data. Then others came along and built tools atop that information. Then others came along and built better tools... etc.

Was this happening at teambg, or somewhere else?

BTW, I hope it is fine to post my other history questions here. I have another one, about Kelsey's origins. I found this topic a few months ago, but the link you gave does not work anymore. :( Any chance on convincing you to tell the story again? As you remember it, with context and everything you feel so inclined to share? I ask because it is my understanding from everything I have read so far and from what you have told me, that the modding community from back then (read: teambg), which, as I understand, was the first place you hanged out at, discouraged such attempts and was more orientated towards really game changing experiences. So, while the players must have been adamant about how it sucked that Anomen was the only romance option, did the teambg attitude towards modding create some sort of anvil and hammer corner for you, with you being in the middle?
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Offline Taimon

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #2 on: May 24, 2008, 04:27:31 PM »
Although the BG newsgroup is not active anymore (besides spam) you can still search in it.
Maybe it was Empathy for female players ?

Offline jcompton

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2008, 05:22:52 PM »
has BioWare staff ever got involved in the TeamBG discussions? Or were they unaware of its existence? If yes, what was their attitude towards modding?

I can't say for absolute certain that no Bioware employee ever took part in the discussions of TeamBG and IEFFHP (the reverse-engineering group, their work lives on in IESDP), but if they did, their contributions were exceedingly minor. Apparently the Bioware folks were pretty active on the Interplay forums during BG2's production (hence the in-jokes, characters like Sir Kalthorine and the scimitar-thrower being included, etc. etc.) but the connection to modding was likely pretty limited.

They were certainly aware of TeamBG's existence, but you have to keep in mind that NWN was in development in parallel with BG2 (and I believe BG1 as well in the latter stages), so even at the time BG2 was being produced, Bioware was already making a conscious decision which game was "intended for modding." From their perspective, there was little to be gained in stimulating modding demand in BG2.

A few staffers were active on a couple of third-party mailing lists which focused on AI scripting, as mentioned. The most obvious evidence is the Gaider "Harder TOB" fights and then Ascension, which he produced with help from what at the time was the IEEAIS mailing list crowd using only third-party tools. Nobody associated with Bioware, other than Gaider, ever published or contributed to what we would call "a mod" unless they did so under a pseudonym.

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Was this happening at teambg, or somewhere else?

TeamBG and mailing lists, primarily. IEFFHP did a lot of file format reverse-engineering work. There was definitely some overlap. By time TOB was released, most of the file formats were well-documented, although IESDP continues to integrate new material even today, of course.

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BTW, I hope it is fine to post my other history questions here. I have another one, about Kelsey's origins.

Taimon's link is correct. Leo Fellmann is the one who lured me in. The deal was that I would write and he would implement Kelsey, but he very quickly found the task too onerous and bowed out. This left me in the lurch until Ghrey came along to save the project. (And of course that thread shows a young Weimer working on Solaufein...)

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Any chance on convincing you to tell the story again?

It intersects with the foundation of FWP, which makes it something of a longer story. I'll work on that next, perhaps.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2008, 05:27:28 PM by jcompton »
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Offline CoM_Solaufein

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #4 on: May 25, 2008, 08:20:37 AM »
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(CoM has operated for longer, but their forum DB has been replaced at least once since then, and the former archive is difficult to access.)
Those bastards at DB-Forge cut me off before I had everything completely removed. I really would have liked my forums database.

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TeamBG Alignment Test
I forgot all about that until you mentioned it. That was one of those lame moments in IE history.

Offline jcompton

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #5 on: May 25, 2008, 08:59:12 AM »
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(CoM has operated for longer, but their forum DB has been replaced at least once since then, and the former archive is difficult to access.)
Those bastards at DB-Forge cut me off before I had everything completely removed. I really would have liked my forums database.

What about the more recent one, though? chosenofmystra.net/forums shows the old forum for a brief instant, and then it redirects to the new one.
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Offline Ana Christina

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #6 on: May 26, 2008, 02:52:10 AM »
Maybe it was Empathy for female players ?

Thank you! I had no idea what to search for, so...

I can't say for absolute certain that no Bioware employee ever took part in the discussions of TeamBG and IEFFHP (the reverse-engineering group, their work lives on in IESDP), but if they did, their contributions were exceedingly minor. Apparently the Bioware folks were pretty active on the Interplay forums during BG2's production (hence the in-jokes, characters like Sir Kalthorine and the scimitar-thrower being included, etc. etc.) but the connection to modding was likely pretty limited.

Oh, in-jokes! I think I've seen some references to them on the Dragon Age forum. Something about how that werewolf, Lanfear, was actually a forum regular, and Gromnir referred to another frequent poster, Gromnir's Ghost. Unexpected that they would include in-jokes. Then again, from what I've noticed, BioWare guys seem to be pretty fond of their forum posters. That said, if I find zombie kitten references in Dragon Age, I'll kill myself.

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They were certainly aware of TeamBG's existence, but you have to keep in mind that NWN was in development in parallel with BG2 (and I believe BG1 as well in the latter stages), so even at the time BG2 was being produced, Bioware was already making a conscious decision which game was "intended for modding." From their perspective, there was little to be gained in stimulating modding demand in BG2.

Ah, I understand. Too bad that the Interplay / Black Isle forums are not online anymore. I'm sure they would have been an interesting source of information. I know NWN was in development (amazing it took 5 years - IIRC - to come up with that original campaign), when apparently better games took less.

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A few staffers were active on a couple of third-party mailing lists which focused on AI scripting, as mentioned. The most obvious evidence is the Gaider "Harder TOB" fights and then Ascension, which he produced with help from what at the time was the IEEAIS mailing list crowd using only third-party tools. Nobody associated with Bioware, other than Gaider, ever published or contributed to what we would call "a mod" unless they did so under a pseudonym.

Thanks for the info, that is good to know.

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TeamBG and mailing lists, primarily. IEFFHP did a lot of file format reverse-engineering work. There was definitely some overlap. By time TOB was released, most of the file formats were well-documented, although IESDP continues to integrate new material even today, of course.

So, speaking of ToB, is what I've heard correct: that TDD was intended as an expansion for SoA? And there were people who actually bought the CD?

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Taimon's link is correct. Leo Fellmann is the one who lured me in. The deal was that I would write and he would implement Kelsey, but he very quickly found the task too onerous and bowed out. This left me in the lurch until Ghrey came along to save the project. (And of course that thread shows a young Weimer working on Solaufein...)

That was an interesting read.

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It intersects with the foundation of FWP, which makes it something of a longer story. I'll work on that next, perhaps.

Well, I did find some tidbits of the story in this topic some time ago. But not much. I guess that what interested me most - considering that due to the FW missing database, there was no early Kelsey development forum I could see - was precisely this: how did it start (already answered), how did it continue (bonus points if certain people tried to burn you as a witch for writing an NPC mod), how was it received and so on. The earliest posts from you concerning Kelsey's release and its reception I could find were on Sorcerer's Place, where, if memory serves, some people were complaining about the fact that the (later added?) voice made the download too big.
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Offline jcompton

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #7 on: May 26, 2008, 08:26:28 AM »
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A few staffers were active on a couple of third-party mailing lists which focused on AI scripting, as mentioned. The most obvious evidence is the Gaider "Harder TOB" fights and then Ascension, which he produced with help from what at the time was the IEEAIS mailing list crowd using only third-party tools. Nobody associated with Bioware, other than Gaider, ever published or contributed to what we would call "a mod" unless they did so under a pseudonym.

It's actually probably worth adding at this point, for the sake of people who don't know the history, that Ascension was originally distributed as an overwriting mod. This posed a problem because, by virtue of its content and its pedigree, lots of people adopted it as a "must"--but that created headaches for players because it meant always having to remember to install it first, etc. I coerced Weimer into porting Ascension to WeiDU (with Gaider's go-ahead) so that the most significant (and unnecessary) .tlk-overwriting mod could be more compliant. As those who have explored its code know, it's a pretty quick-and-dirty hack of a port, but it did the job.

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So, speaking of ToB, is what I've heard correct: that TDD was intended as an expansion for SoA? And there were people who actually bought the CD?

As I recall the initial release of TDD didn't even work if you had TOB installed--although it was released after TOB, so this made for a lot of angst.

And yeah, some people sent off checks for $9 or whatever to Ken for TDD on CD which were not all fulfilled.
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Offline Kulyok

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #8 on: May 26, 2008, 08:35:56 AM »
I bought TDD in Russia together with ToB, as I keep telling people. Both cost about four dollars. They still don't sell legal copies of SoA/ToB in Russia, by the way; 1C keeps talking of a localization, but I'm not sure it's ever going to happen.

Offline jcompton

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #9 on: May 26, 2008, 02:54:09 PM »
I sat down to try to tell the story of why there was a year of screaming and yelling over WeiDU. It turns out the story is really long and must be told in multiple parts.

Why So Much Screaming and Fighting Over WeiDU?
Part 1: From Solaufein To Kelsey


First, I ask that you accept/allow me to grant a few things as given.

  • The history of WeiDU begins with the history of Solaufein, so even if you're not interested in Solaufein, it's important to the tale.
  • There were modding tools before WeiDU.
  • It's just that some of the most important ones didn't work very well.
  • No, their authors didn't make them that way on purpose, but the fact remained.
  • The research of "pre-Weimer people" was very important to WeiDU's development.
  • Perhaps no one other than Weimer and the bigg understands better than me the ways in which WeiDU is imperfect, having made feature requests or bug reports which took something like seven versions in one day to sort out.
  • The parallel refinement of other programs, such as NI and later DLTCEP, were also important in the modding revolution.

Background:

In mid-2001, the technology of the time allowed two methods of mod redistribution.

One was a complete overwrite--essentially, the modder would package up his dialog.tlk and override directory and ship that. Some files, like script changes, didn't necessarily require a new dialog.tlk. (Why does Irenicus recite Neeber lines in the Shorter Cutscenes mod? For this very reason!)

The other was based on the TBG/IAP file formats. By using a special front-end installer (or, later, a self-extracting installer), modders could redistribute creature, item, dialogue, script, etc. files in a single, compact package. Modders did not need to ship their dialog.tlk file--the IAP installer would add new strings to dialog.tlk for, say, the name of a creature or the detailed description of a new item. The IAP system had some pretty significant limitations, however.

All of the resource files introduced were still overwrites. In other words, adding a banter to Anomen didn't require that you overwrite dialog.tlk, but you still had to overwrite BANOMEN.DLG. (same for script files, 2DAs, etc. etc.) So although more than one mod could hypothetically be installed, any mod which altered a file already altered by another mod was going to create problems. This meant, among other things, that modders had to be very careful about what they had installed while beginning to work--unlike today, when changing Aerie's script means simply EXTEND'ing it with a small block of code, an IAP modder would be distributing all of AERIE.BCS. So if the modder had installed a different mod which, say, enabled multiromance, then changed AERIE.BCS, then built an IAP with that change, people would end up getting multiromance along for the ride. (This exact thing happened at least once.) There was also no way to uninstall a TBG/IAP file.

This meant that, say, a new store operated by a new storekeeper who sold only brand-new items could pretty reliably be packaged into an IAP without any serious danger of fouling up other mods. You would have to start a new game (since if you want a new creature in the game without changing a script, you can alter the BALDUR.GAM file, which the IAP installers were capable of doing) but it was better than nothing.

You might think things could have gone further, but we have yet to introduce IDU. Infinity Dialog Utility was the only real option at the time for dialog editing and creation. There's really no way to get around the fact that IDU was pretty wretched. It could only edit one DLG file at a time, so developing even the simplest banter or interjection was a complicated exercise. It was prone to crashing, which could take the DLG file or the .TLK file with it, requiring that users make frequent backups. It did not support the "state weighting" concept used in the DLG format, which meant not only was it extremely difficult to correct mistakes or add new, higher priority dialogues, but loading, editing, and re-saving any existing Bioware DLG which used non-standard state weighting would be munged, causing the wrong dialogues to occur in game when the creature was click-talked or issued a Dialogue()-style command.

IDU's severe limitations, therefore, strongly discouraged anybody from trying to write dialogue of any appreciable length and complexity.

When, in the summer of 2001, Weimer decided that he was interested in making Solaufein a joinable character and giving him a PC romance, he tried to use IDU and ran across some of these problems. So, like any good Unix geek with a computer science degree would do, he decided to solve his problems with a new command-line utility. Using the already fairly-detailed information available on the DLG and TLK formats, he created a compiler which would take simple instructions and both build new DLG files and expand existing ones, along with the ability to append one BCS file to another, and append text to a 2DA. (The ability to compile scripts directly with WeiDU came later.) The tool didn't really have a formal name, but the compiler executable was called "dc.exe" so it has become retroactively known as "Weimer DC". (The installer was actually a different file at this time.)

So Wes released the first working version of Solaufein (something like v4 or v5) and pretty much called it a day. You see, many modders (often when under critical duress) will say things like, "Well, I primarily mod for myself." But among those modders who actually share their work with others, I have never known anyone who means it to the extent that Wes did. I do not believe I am exaggerating when I say he provided a link to Solaufein less than five times in 2001. (He would mention it a little more frequently in Usenet posts and so forth, but the reader always had to search around for the URL to his homepage.) From his perspective, it was out, it was Done, that was more or less the end of the story.

The point of which is that Solaufein's initial impact was somewhat muted. Usenet readers could find it, and word spread slowly to other discussion groups, but the technological aspects of the mod weren't understood or explored by most of the active modders out there. Every once in a while somebody would pick up on it, like Blucher (Expanded Thief Stronghold) and Arian (Tashia), but the active modding sites simply weren't aware of what was going on. A little later, Ghrey and I started working with it.

With a few different modders now poking and prodding at the application, Wes encountered a problem. The initial pass at his programs pretty literally did what he set out to do with Solaufein, but no more. We were asking for features Wes hadn't anticipated. The emergence of other mods meant that a logging-and-uninstallation system was going to be needed soon. Kelsey, which had more content and more demands on dialogue manipulation than Solaufein did, was causing dc.exe to crash. Wes made a few tweaks here and there but it became clear to him that his original C-based code wasn't going to cut it. So in a fevered weekend in early 2002, he started anew, and created what Ghrey had taken to calling "WeiDU." Unlike the "Weimer DC" system, it was a single executable to compile, decompile, and install, and has worked more-or-less the same now for six-plus years.

WeiDU saved Kelsey and undoubtedly Tashia as well from being infeasible and unpublished. As was his way, Wes didn't make any sort of an Event out of this--he just quietly updated his website when he released a new build, answered our questions and addressed our feature requests as best he could, and went about his business.

As we ported the old IDU materials over to WeiDU and started implementing things which simply had no good solutions with the old toolsets, Ghrey and I found that we were pretty stoked about this, and about the possibilities this could open up for other modders.

That is, if only all of the other modders knew about it...
« Last Edit: May 26, 2008, 02:56:54 PM by jcompton »
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Offline the bigg

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #10 on: May 26, 2008, 05:17:04 PM »
Perhaps no one other than Weimer and the bigg understands better than me the ways in which WeiDU is imperfect, having made feature requests or bug reports which took something like seven versions in one day to sort out.
Don't get me started about this  :)
Author or Co-Author: WeiDU (http://j.mp/bLtjOn) - Widescreen (http://j.mp/aKAiqG) - Generalized Biffing (http://j.mp/aVgw3U) - Refinements (http://j.mp/bLHoCc) - TB#Tweaks (http://j.mp/ba02Eg) - IWD2Tweaks (http://j.mp/98OFYY) - TB#Characters (http://j.mp/ak8J55) - Traify Tool (http://j.mp/g1Ry9A) - Some mods that I won't mention in public
Maintainer: Semi-Multi Clerics (http://j.mp/9UeIwB) - Nalia Mod (http://j.mp/dng9l0) - Nvidia Fix (http://j.mp/aRWjjg)
Code dumps: Detect custom secondary types (http://j.mp/hVzzXG) - Stutter Investigator (http://j.mp/gdtBn8)

If possible, send diffs, translations and other contributions using Git (http://j.mp/aBZFrq).

Offline Ana Christina

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #11 on: May 27, 2008, 03:57:18 AM »
It's actually probably worth adding at this point, for the sake of people who don't know the history, that Ascension was originally distributed as an overwriting mod. This posed a problem because, by virtue of its content and its pedigree, lots of people adopted it as a "must"--but that created headaches for players because it meant always having to remember to install it first, etc. I coerced Weimer into porting Ascension to WeiDU (with Gaider's go-ahead) so that the most significant (and unnecessary) .tlk-overwriting mod could be more compliant. As those who have explored its code know, it's a pretty quick-and-dirty hack of a port, but it did the job.

Oh, yes, I've heard about that. What I didn't know was that it was you who prompted the WeiDU-ification (does this word exist? It should, or at least something similar) of Ascension. Thanks for that!

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As I recall the initial release of TDD didn't even work if you had TOB installed--although it was released after TOB, so this made for a lot of angst.

Yes, well, the TDD page that the Modlist links to has a big announcement like "TDD is now compatible with ToB", so it's kind of funny to look at it.

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And yeah, some people sent off checks for $9 or whatever to Ken for TDD on CD which were not all fulfilled.

Oh, my. Pardon me for asking a silly question, but has no one ever told Ken that it was illegal to sell a mod?

I bought TDD in Russia together with ToB, as I keep telling people. Both cost about four dollars. They still don't sell legal copies of SoA/ToB in Russia, by the way; 1C keeps talking of a localization, but I'm not sure it's ever going to happen.

Romania has the same problem with legal game copies of older games (i.e., games older than 3 years). There is only one way to bypass this, other than trying to order from Amazon (which, last time I checked, did not include Romania on countries to which it shipped stuff): buy online. There are several sites that specialize in offering new copies of old games for sale. Perhaps Russia will have something similar in the future.

I sat down to try to tell the story of why there was a year of screaming and yelling over WeiDU. It turns out the story is really long and must be told in multiple parts.

"Thank you" simply does not cover it, but it will have to do. Looking forward to hearing the rest of the story.

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Why So Much Screaming and Fighting Over WeiDU?
Part 1: From Solaufein To Kelsey

I don't know if anyone has ever told you this (well, I, at least, have not come across it yet), so here it is: you have a marvelous story telling capacity when it comes to history. I confess I searched for exactly this type of information in various places (especially the IE Radio).
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Offline the bigg

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #12 on: May 27, 2008, 04:10:55 AM »
Oh, my. Pardon me for asking a silly question, but has no one ever told Ken that it was illegal to sell a mod?
Illegal to sell a mod? who told you?
It's one thing to write something in an EULA and have some lawyer thugs threaten you, it's a completely different thing to actually lose a court battle (see: that recent case of Blizzard vs. Glider).

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<...> Amazon (which, last time I checked, did not include Romania on countries to which it shipped stuff) <...>
Er, not even amazon.co.uk? The .com doesn't ship to Italy, but IIRC the .co.uk ships games to all the EU.
Author or Co-Author: WeiDU (http://j.mp/bLtjOn) - Widescreen (http://j.mp/aKAiqG) - Generalized Biffing (http://j.mp/aVgw3U) - Refinements (http://j.mp/bLHoCc) - TB#Tweaks (http://j.mp/ba02Eg) - IWD2Tweaks (http://j.mp/98OFYY) - TB#Characters (http://j.mp/ak8J55) - Traify Tool (http://j.mp/g1Ry9A) - Some mods that I won't mention in public
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Offline Lantier

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #13 on: June 12, 2008, 03:40:56 PM »
Jcompton,

Thanks for the posts.  This is really interesting stuff for someone who discovered the BG series well after all the mods came out.

Offline AkashaCatBat

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #14 on: July 20, 2008, 01:14:53 AM »
*cough cough*

BUMP
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Offline CoM_Solaufein

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #15 on: July 20, 2008, 07:23:10 AM »
Quote
(CoM has operated for longer, but their forum DB has been replaced at least once since then, and the former archive is difficult to access.)
Those bastards at DB-Forge cut me off before I had everything completely removed. I really would have liked my forums database.

What about the more recent one, though? chosenofmystra.net/forums shows the old forum for a brief instant, and then it redirects to the new one.
There is always a way around something. Just click stop on your browser before it redirects you and quickly click to go into one of the forums. Just stay out of the index.php and you won't get redirected.

Quote
The Black Isle forums, once a hotbed of modding spillover discussion, are similarly disbanded.
A lot of the BIS developers can be found at Obsidian. Some of the developers browse the forums and relive the old days like JE Sawyer.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2008, 07:27:19 AM by CoM_Solaufein »

Offline GeN1e

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #16 on: November 14, 2008, 05:47:59 PM »
Not to be a necro, but what about Part 2, please? The history is pretty interesting subject after all.


Quote
Just click stop on your browser before it redirects you and quickly click to go into one of the forums. Just stay out of the index.php and you won't get redirected.
Disabling ActiveX or Java (can't recall which one) in browser settings works too. Or just set the security level slider to the highest possible - for my IE6 it works like a charm.

Offline Kulyok

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #17 on: November 15, 2008, 02:47:51 AM »
Necromancers of all countries, unite!

Me wanna. (I've heard some of it over ICQ, but there's always more to tell. So, whenever you got time. :) )

Offline jcompton

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #18 on: November 15, 2008, 12:05:43 PM »
Oh yeah. I'll try to get inspired.
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Offline Isewein

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #19 on: May 23, 2019, 06:57:18 AM »
It's pretty amazing to have these anecdotes preserved for History. For some reason I really enjoy reading them. Props to JCompton for keeping records so many years ago.

Offline Azazello

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Re: The really old days: Snippets of modding history
« Reply #20 on: May 23, 2019, 08:28:12 AM »
Necromancers of all countries, unite!
:-yin  "Power of Necromancers - Powers Unite!"

Here's another annal of modding lore involving JC:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020802033818/http://www.db-forge.com:80/article.php?sid=523

And let's not leave out THE bigg  ;D :
https://web.archive.org/web/20090106053622/http://ier.iegmc.com/bigginterview.html
Anyone know where's the full transcript?
« Last Edit: May 23, 2019, 10:28:22 AM by Azazello »
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