Any interest in IWD tutu?

[Kulyok]

1) I have a set of 5 NPCs that have tons of cross-banter already written for them. I will try to treat the Player1 as the 'Protagonist' and see if I can make them talk to him/her. Basically, if that is possible, the scenario will be no different than KOTOR, when all NPCs are hanging in the same place, always available. Only to bring them into the party, you will need to 'import' them, not to talk to them.

The main danger I see here is that it will all be your writing. I do not doubt the quality, but your personality may start to shine through when there are too many. Two or three per the author may work, but five? I guess it will be very difficult. In BG1 NPC I had such a problem with Kagain-Eldoth's banters, and Coran-Kivan's. (And almost everything of mine, of course.)

[Borsook]

1) I have a set of 5 NPCs that have tons of cross-banter already written for them. I will try to treat the Player1 as the 'Protagonist' and see if I can make them talk to him/her. Basically, if that is possible, the scenario will be no different than KOTOR, when all NPCs are hanging in the same place, always available. Only to bring them into the party, you will need to 'import' them, not to talk to them.

The main danger I see here is that it will all be your writing. I do not doubt the quality, but your personality may start to shine through when there are too many. Two or three per the author may work, but five? I guess it will be very difficult. In BG1 NPC I had such a problem with Kagain-Eldoth's banters, and Coran-Kivan's. (And almost everything of mine, of course.)

Let's not be pessimistic, the scope or banters should be a bit smaller and I can give you twenty mile long list of books written by 1 person with more then 6 unique and interesting characters.

[Kulyok]

Yes, but there were printed books. Printed novels tend to have better average quality than fan fiction.

[Borsook]

Yes, but there were printed books. Printed novels tend to have better average quality than fan fiction.

yes and far more characters/pages. This should even things out. 

[Kulyok]

That might work, yes, but I am always thinking about the worst.    Ah, anyway, as Sim said: a year may pass, and things'd stay the same.

[Borsook]

That might work, yes, but I am always thinking about the worst.    Ah, anyway, as Sim said: a year may pass, and things'd stay the same.

yes, but IE mods are not always the fastest in the making, hopefully if we're not tired by IE games by now we may never be. And the way new games are heading nothing better should ever appear (talking about thinking about the worst )

[Dark Raven]

IE mods are not always the fastest in the making,

thats for damn sure. It takes years for some of us.

[Ashara]

The main danger I see here is that it will all be your writing. I do not doubt the quality, but your personality may start to shine through when there are too many. Two or three per the author may work, but five? I guess it will be very difficult. In BG1 NPC I had such a problem with Kagain-Eldoth's banters, and Coran-Kivan's. (And almost everything of mine, of course.)

Yes, it is a risk, and it's not that I have illusions about my er... writing talent, but I think I partially alleviated the problem by having very different characters. So far, I think they sounded and behaved uniquely. My problem will start with the sixth person (Diriel), because he will be an evil cast of my favorite male type, and I already have one who is good (Jaemal). On another hand, I am also doing more "extreme" backstories, to make sure that the banters are entertaining and the relationships are sharp. I will see how it turns out. My big challenege right now is to weasel in the sixth character who was unplanned without breaking up the relationships. If it does not work, well, it does not work.

[Borsook]

The main danger I see here is that it will all be your writing. I do not doubt the quality, but your personality may start to shine through when there are too many. Two or three per the author may work, but five? I guess it will be very difficult. In BG1 NPC I had such a problem with Kagain-Eldoth's banters, and Coran-Kivan's. (And almost everything of mine, of course.)

Yes, it is a risk, and it's not that I have illusions about my er... writing talent, but I think I partially alleviated the problem by having very different characters. So far, I think they sounded and behaved uniquely. My problem will start with the sixth person (Diriel), because he will be an evil cast of my favorite male type, and I already have one who is good (Jaemal). On another hand, I am also doing more "extreme" backstories, to make sure that the banters are entertaining and the relationships are sharp. I will see how it turns out. My big challenege right now is to weasel in the sixth character who was unplanned without breaking up the relationships. If it does not work, well, it does not work.

Should this be aproblem you can always stay with 5... I'm not one of them but many people play iwd with a party of 4-5.

[Ashara]

Nah, he seems to be doing just fine in prelim casting of banters I did for him this morn. 

[Borsook]

Nah, he seems to be doing just fine in prelim casting of banters I did for him this morn. 

Good to hear! Are working only with text at the moment or have you tried actual "bantering" in IWD2?

[Ashara]

Not yet, we are buying the new system in the next week or so. As soon as we have it up and running I am going to start experimenting and we'll see how it will work out.

[FredSRichardson]

Well I just played through IWD2 again and quite enjoyed it.  I also was thinking "gee, it would be great to play the original IWD1 series in this new engine!".  It sounds like there was some interest in doing this here, is anyone still interested?

I know that there were many issues with IWG2.  In one sense an IWD translation would be easier since IWD is much less complex from a dialog scripting point of view (and the whole game is linear in general), but I think the IWD1 series used an even older version of the engine so maybe more patching would have to be done.  I'm not nearly enough of a modder to know, but in IWG2 I think Weimer had to make a lot of "translation" decisions when brining resources over from bg2 (like how to assign classes to monsters).  A starting point might be to take a look at the IWG2 tp2 file and see what they did there.  But I think a lot of hand work would be required (I was evening thinking that it would pay off to compare things that are the same in both games, but the whole thing could be impossible if big things like area objects are too different).

[Borsook]

Well I just played through IWD2 again and quite enjoyed it.  I also was thinking "gee, it would be great to play the original IWD1 series in this new engine!".  It sounds like there was some interest in doing this here, is anyone still interested?

I know that there were many issues with IWG2.  In one sense an IWD translation would be easier since IWD is much less complex from a dialog scripting point of view (and the whole game is linear in general), but I think the IWD1 series used an even older version of the engine so maybe more patching would have to be done.  I'm not nearly enough of a modder to know, but in IWG2 I think Weimer had to make a lot of "translation" decisions when brining resources over from bg2 (like how to assign classes to monsters).  A starting point might be to take a look at the IWG2 tp2 file and see what they did there.  But I think a lot of hand work would be required (I was evening thinking that it would pay off to compare things that are the same in both games, but the whole thing could be impossible if big things like area objects are too different).

Well, I have a very early alpha of Totlm for IWD2 (decided to start small) and indeed many problems result from the move to 3e rules, you have to more or less do all monsters by hand to achieve proper game balance. Dialog scripts require probably less work than with BGtutu,  and even if rewriting is less painful due to the fact there's not much of it. Unfortunately I don't remember when was the last time I did anything, I have little time and mod other games beside IE...

[Andyr]

Well I just played through IWD2 again and quite enjoyed it.  I also was thinking "gee, it would be great to play the original IWD1 series in this new engine!".  It sounds like there was some interest in doing this here, is anyone still interested?

Definitely be fun to play. You offering to code?

[FredSRichardson]

Definitely be fun to play. You offering to code?

That's a definite maybe! 

I'm tempted to look into it.  A starting point we be a great help.  Borsook, do you think I could look at what you've done for TOTLM? (Is that really smaller than the first IWD?  I guess it must be since it's an add on)

[Borsook]

Definitely be fun to play. You offering to code?

That's a definite maybe! 

I'm tempted to look into it.  A starting point we be a great help.  Borsook, do you think I could look at what you've done for TOTLM? (Is that really smaller than the first IWD?  I guess it must be since it's an add on)

Yeah, though it's on my home PC, so a bit later. You've not played TOTLM? It's... very small. Mostly a dungeon. And since it has no connection to the plot it fits with IWD2 as good as 1. I wanted to "move it" since I'm annoyed by expansions in IWD1: you play the main game, then you start in the middle HOW (trying not to forget what you were doing in IWD1) then you start TOTLM (trying to remember HOW and IWD1)... I really rather they did it like TOB, i.e. after the main "adventure" not in the middle...

[FredSRichardson]

Yeah, though it's on my home PC, so a bit later. You've not played TOTLM? It's... very small. Mostly a dungeon. And since it has no connection to the plot it fits with IWD2 as good as 1. I wanted to "move it" since I'm annoyed by expansions in IWD1: you play the main game, then you start in the middle HOW (trying not to forget what you were doing in IWD1) then you start TOTLM (trying to remember HOW and IWD1)... I really rather they did it like TOB, i.e. after the main "adventure" not in the middle...

Yes, I remember playing TOTLM, but it's been a while.  It seemed to take me a while to get through, but maybe I was thinking that because it seemed like such a diversion from the main plot of HOW.  But now I see what you mean, it's definitely much smaller than anything else (except maybe an isolated chapter).

Did you hack IWG2 to get TOTLM into IWD2?  I looked at the the iwd2 executable and script some time ago, but I've no idea now where to begin.

[Borsook]

Yeah, though it's on my home PC, so a bit later. You've not played TOTLM? It's... very small. Mostly a dungeon. And since it has no connection to the plot it fits with IWD2 as good as 1. I wanted to "move it" since I'm annoyed by expansions in IWD1: you play the main game, then you start in the middle HOW (trying not to forget what you were doing in IWD1) then you start TOTLM (trying to remember HOW and IWD1)... I really rather they did it like TOB, i.e. after the main "adventure" not in the middle...

Yes, I remember playing TOTLM, but it's been a while.  It seemed to take me a while to get through, but maybe I was thinking that because it seemed like such a diversion from the main plot of HOW.  But now I see what you mean, it's definitely much smaller than anything else (except maybe an isolated chapter).

Did you hack IWG2 to get TOTLM into IWD2?  I looked at the the iwd2 executable and script some time ago, but I've no idea now where to begin.

Well, it can take a while, but it's short from modding perspective. No, I have no clue about oclam (only learned Visual Basic) so what I did I did "by hand". It's not really much and I doubt it'll be of help to you...

[Andyr]

Definitely be fun to play. You offering to code?

That's a definite maybe! 

I'm tempted to look into it.  A starting point we be a great help.  Borsook, do you think I could look at what you've done for TOTLM? (Is that really smaller than the first IWD?  I guess it must be since it's an add on)

That'd be nice.

[Borsook]

Well, I gotta say I'm an idiot. A mindless creature. I have a folder where I keep all the mods, and I've never moved TOLTM there, dunno why. Which in itself would not be a problem only that 3 days ago I deleted and reinstalled my IWD2, since it was getting "screwy" from too many experiments... Right now I'm looking through all the different backup cds in the hope it is there... if not I'm gonna bang my head against the wall really hard...

[Ashara]

Ouch, that does not sound too good. Here, keeping my fingers crossed that you backed it up somewhere. 

[FredSRichardson]

Oh no!  Well, I'm really sorry to here about the backup problem.  I hope it all works out okay though!

[Grog]

At one point in time I had a skeleton version of Easthaven converted to IWD2.

[FredSRichardson]

Well, I've installed IWD1(HOW+TOTLM) and I'm remembering how much I really liked this game from a story line/plot point of view.  The Hand and Dorn's Deep were so nicely done.

Anyway, I'm gonna see what it might take to port a few areas into IWD2 and take it from there.  I'm hoping I can figure out how to hack iwg2 to do the same sort of thing it was doing with the BG2 files.