NOTE: There is an "official" IWD1Tutu forum here
GENERAL INFOI thought I'd start updating the top of a new thread with general info on how this little project is going. This may include tons of minute details that don't mean much to anyone but me, but it will at least give a sense of something being attempted here, and if anyone wants to chime in with a solution, that's always welcome.
PROJECTILE GHOULSunspiration I started playing IWD1 again after a very long time and realized something. In relation to BG2, IWD1 has something quite different to offer. NPC's with inter-party banter and associated quests dissappear, but that empty void is filled with a obsesive attention to detail that I find compelling. I have to admit that I fell in love with Dorn's Deep and the Severed Hand all over again, the story line behind these areas as well as the artwork itself pulled me in. I suspect that there are only a few other people who share my enthusiasm for this particular game.
For me, IWD2 is a somewhat different story. Um, and yet it isn't. Actually, in some ways it's too much of a rehash of the same story. They recycled pieces like Kuldahar, The Dragon's Eye and the Severed Hand giving the game a very "derivative" feel to it. The story line is "okay", but various things draw away from it like the "tic tac toe" Barbarian boulder puzzle, or the long and tedious "Battle Square" arena. I believe that the real achievement of IWD2 is the revamped Infinity Engine, which proved to be the very last of it's kind, and now supported the D&D 3E rule set (more or less).
Not long ago (in a not-so-distant galaxy), Wes Weimer put a substantial amount of effort into trying to port BG2 to IWD2 (IWG2), but this project was impeded by the vast difference between the two game engines (and IMO their design philosophies). Others were able to apply the results of Wes' efforts to port BG1 to the BG2 (BG1tutu).
This thread is about the possibility for another project that's only just in it's infancy: porting IWD1 to IWD2 (IWD1tutu?).
I thought I'd try to do a "forward/backward" approach to this. The "forward" part being the porting IWD1 into IWD2 and the "backward" part being the application of IWD2's conventions to IWD1. So I was hoping to be able to play IWD1 with the look and feel of IWD2. Unfortunately there's a large amount of stuff that falls between the two directions. Messy dialog and script convertions loom in this foggy convergence.
ObservationsThere's a lot that's similar between IWD1 and IWD2. Just playing the two games, you see the same monsters and many of the same items. Looking a bit further into the games, you see other things, details like the "bit flags" used in scripts or variable and file names. One of the first things I noticed is how clean the IWD2 name space for CRE and ITM resources. CRE prefixed with 10 are all in chapter 1, 20 are in chapter 2 and so on. The IWG2 source code completley munges variable and resource names during conversion so that they don't conflict with what's already a part of IWD2 (for better or worse).
CURRENT STATESo far, not much. I'm struggling to get one area converted over. I have the area, but it crashes the machine. I've been going through it with IESDP, and checking iwg2 code, and it's forcing me to go into the iwg2 source in greater and greater detail. I'm close to this first step at least.