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Bardez

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About Bardez

  • Birthday 08/10/1984

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Peoria, IL, USA
  • Interests
    To be keeping a secret.
  • Mods Worked On
    Baldur's Gate Trilogy; Thalantyr Item Upgrade Mod Extensions; Caster Crafting

Contact Methods

  • Discord
    bardez#8689
  • AIM
    bardez0an0avatar
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    bardez_the_avatar

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  1. I'm in the planning/research phase of wands for Caster Crafting. I'd like to solicit opinions for how powerful wands should get to be. In the base game of BG2, we see a Cloudkill wand, and Spell Striking wand (which has an effect identical to spell of level 6, and its ability has a power of 6). Everything else seems level 4 and lower. D&D 3E games only go up to 4th level for wands, so I'm curious if wands should be generally restricted to the first 4 spell levels, or if there is a desire to see obscene things like a wand of Time Stop.
  2. Caster Crafting v0.7.4 (beta) released Features: Adding assets for missing scrolls Level 10 wizard Pretty much all priest scrolls Adding assets for leveled scrolls (spells which have different duration, damage, effects at different levels) Adding assets for new potions based off of existing spells Copying spells between spell book casters Crafting for base-game potions Brewing new potions Changelog: Added leveled scrolls component Bugfixes Mod documentation
  3. Introducing Caster Crafting A mod for all your casters' crafting desires Hello, there! I'm Bardez. You may remember me from such mods as "Thalantyr Item Upgrade Mod Extensions" and "Baldur's Gate Trilogy". Well, I'm here to introduce my latest creation: Caster Crafting, a mod for BG:EE, BG2:EE, and IWD:EE Currently in a stable beta, Caster Crafting allows you to: Scribe Scrolls Protection Scrolls Priest Scrolls even Quest Spells Arcane Scrolls even Level 10 Spells Create caster-leveled scrolls Brew Potions Base-game potions New potions based off of existing spells Copy Spells between arcane spell book casters Mages Bards ... and more planned features Yes, finally, a use for all that gold, aside from tossing some of it towards saving Imoen! Caster Crafting will allow the player to share that one rare spell amongst all the mages and bards (looking at you, Icewind Dale); allow clerics to stock up on healing supplies; ready fighters with Stoneskin; brew all the fireball flasks; and much, much more. With the right install options, this mod will install many new potions (95+), scrolls (looking at you, Priest spells!), and add two items that drive the crafting to spell shops near you. There's even a component for installing leveled-effect scrolls, letting you spend like crazy to abuse Spell 50. The mod currently integrates with and supports two common spell addition mods: IWDification OlvynSpells and I'm planning to support more. I spent the past few days writing up somewhat extensive documentation, so feel free to poke around, read the recipes and the overall manifesto (kidding). So... some examples: cheat off of your friend's notes hoard beefy spells for a rainy day navigate menus scribe some scrolls scribe all the scrolls brew a potion ... maybe get carried away As I stated, Caster Crafting is in a fairly stable beta state, and since some components are big, I'm looking for people to test it out, give feedback, and see what works and what can be improved. Future Plans: Leveled Potions Wands Leveled Wands Oils (think 3E weapon salves) ... Staves? Download it today Disclaimer: some of the art assets are modified from generative AI, which I know some people have feelings about.
  4. Having been using both Bammer and PS-BAM extensively the past month, I wanted to point out a raised issue with Bammer, which seems to reduce the palette extensively for reasons not yet known.
  5. I'm looking at introducing levelled scrolls for Caster Crafting. My thought process is to read through my registry of spells, and if they have multiple abilities† to loop through them and if the level isn't `1` to create new scrolls for each ability with a level > the minimum caster level necessary to cast the spell. So the dynamics that came immediately to mind were: "what about Spell50?" I'm curious what other gotchas exist that this group can think of. †: things like spontaneous casting and Olvyn (I think) add new ability headers to spells that I'd need to ignore. These abilities are only tangents to the original spell, so I'd have to ignore spell headers that aren't matching the first spell's opcodes or something similar.
  6. Update: potion crafting has been implemented; casters should be able to buy an alchemy kit/crafting station that can be used by any caster to create potions. I have also included a component to allow potions of a (large) subset of spells to be craftable as well. https://github.com/BardezAnAvatar/BGEE-Caster-Crafting/releases/tag/v0.6.1 Current status is that the mod should be working for BG1:EE, BG2:EE, and IWD:EE, with the following components available to install and play: copying spells between player spellbooks scroll crafting potion crafting missing scrolls' resources (craftable) missing potions' resources (craftable)
  7. Update: scroll crafting has been implemented; casters should be able to buy scribe tools that can be used for spell copying between bards/wizards, or by any caster to create scrolls of their spells. https://github.com/BardezAnAvatar/BGEE-Caster-Crafting/releases/tag/v0.3.2 Current status is that the mod should be working for BG1:EE, BG2:EE, and IWD:EE, with copying spells between player spellbooks and scroll crafting components available to install and play.
  8. Neat! I'm curious to see (eventually) how this looks and feels once I'm done modding.
  9. So I'm working on a mod for caster crafting. Right now, I have a component ready for copying spells between player spellbooks and would like interested parties to beta test it out. It is currently working only for BG1:EE (new items are missing from SoD stores, since I've played that but once), but I plan to add in support for BG2:EE, IWD:EE, and potentially PST:EE and eventually IWD2 as well. I'm soliciting any parties interested in this crafting component to install it, give it a whirl, see what works and what doesn't in user/player experience and provide constructive criticism. This mod will expand in scope to add in additional components, but I'd like to polish what's here before moving on. https://github.com/BardezAnAvatar/BGEE-Caster-Crafting
  10. Thanks! I'm on a road trip this weekend but will merge it in when I get back.
  11. Introduction I just pushed out a new mod: Thalantyr Item Upgrade Mod Extensions. This mod extends Thalantyr Item Upgrade Mod (which is a prerequisite). This mod will extend the crafting dialog state introduced in the aforementioned, adding new responses to craft additional items. Download Go to Thalantyr Item Upgrade Mod Extensions What does it include? So far: Core functionality: Amulet of Protection +2 Wizard Slayer +1 Wizard Slayer +2 Golden Axe +2 Shandalar's Cloak +2 Nymph's Cloak of Protection +2 War Hammer +2: Hammer of Dawn Mace +2: Stupefier Koveras' Cursed Ring Koveras' Ring of Protection +2 Varscona +3 Longsword +2: Harrower Light Crossbow +2: The Army Scythe Ankheg Plate Mail +1 Kiel's Buckler +1 Buckley's Buckler +1 Kiel's Helmet +1 Dagger +2: Werebane Component Group: Koveras' Ring of Protection Koveras gives you a cursed ring instead Koveras gives you the normal +1 ring as usual Anything else we should know? I plan on making a series of mods for these and additional item recipes that can integrate throughout BG1+2. There will be multiple possibilities for crafting these recipes when I am done (multiple enchanters, etc.) as individual mods. Some recipes use random crap gems for fun. Why make this? I killed Shandalar recently and still had his cloak and wardstone. I wanted to use it. Also I have tons of love for Varscona. Finally, I had some obsession with Koveras' ring dating back to including junk about it in the earliest versions of BGT that I think got stripped out since. Are you supporting the mod? If anyone recognizes my username, you'll know that I don't stay on projects. So... I dunno. I tend to mod whatever I'm playing, and discover new things. I update when/if I see fit. If I see notifications, I tend to at least look at them. Issues page should be public, so it should be available for bug feedback and the ilk.
  12. Looking to reserve "BZ" for Bardez. Looks open in the list. Trying to register on Black Wyrm now-ish
  13. Just as an overview for DXT compression, it's worth mentioning that DXT1 and DXT5 are 16-bit color compression algorithms, so standard 32 bit colors are converted into 16-bit color, then split into 4x4 squares and lossily compressed according the the specified algorithm. It makes me chuckle a bit how the 32-bit color renders that were preserved immediately get axed down to 16-bit color. A final note on the DXT1 and DXT5 compression algorithms: If you follow the Wikipedia article's algorithm, Read the colors as unsigned 2-byte shorts. These values indicate whether color0 > color1 or color0 ≤ color1. Then, in order to produce colors matching those intended, prior to division and multiplication, the 16-bit colors need to be expanded into 24- or 32-bit color, and each channel must separately be divided by the appropriate amount and multiplied; I have gotten output that slightly differs from BG:EE output, so I'm not sure 100% how the division and multiplication are executed, but this is a very close approximation: Let us assume that color0 is 18884 and color1 is 0: So for an R5G6B6 color0, { 9, 14, 4 }, this expands the 5-6-5 bit color into 8-8-8 bit color: { 74, 56, 33 }. Assume color1 would be { 0, 0, 0 } and expands to the same. In this case of color0 > color1, the yielded color2 would be { ( ( (74/3 => 24) * 2 => 48) + (0/3 => 0) => 48, ( ( (56/3 => 18) * 2 => 36) + (0/3 => 0) => 36, ( ( (33/3 => 11) * 2 => 22) + (0/3 => 0) => 22 ) }, that is { 48, 36, 22 }. Similarly, color3 would be { ( (74/3 => 24) + ( (0/3 => 0) * 2 => 0 ) => 24, ( (56/3 => 18) + ( (0/3 => 0) * 2 => 0 ) => 18, ( (33/3 => 11) + ( (0/3 => 0) * 2 => 0 ) => 11) }, that is { 24, 18, 11 }. If anyone has conflicting experience with this algorithm, please speak up.
  14. Speaking to the PVRZ format itself, I'll reiterate what Avenger pointed out to consolidate information. In a PVRZ file, as Avenger pointed out here, the first 4 bytes (DWORD) indicate the uncompressed data size. There is no header indicating the type or version. The remainder of the data is the ZLib-compressed pvr file (for .NET people, there is a difference between Deflate and ZLib, so specifying is helpful). If you go to imgtec, there are apparently utilities that can read pvr files and Photoshop plugins for them.
  15. I'm quoting Avenger from the BGEE thread: I have found that some pvrz files in BG2:EE have DXT5-compressed pixels. Anyone supporting PVRZ generally should be prepared to implement both DXT1 and DXT5. You can find algorithms to do so on Wikipedia (DXT1; DXT5). I can only anecdotally say that MOSxxxxx use DTX5 based on the 12 or so test files that I am currently using, but cannot yet say with a lot of certainty what the pattern of files that use DXT5 are, but I'll look into that once I have PVR decoding/displaying properly. I would hazard a guess that the MOSxxxxx images which might have some reason to include an alpha channel would be DXT5 (BAM icons, for example) but that is only a guess. I've not looked into BG:EE yet, either, but it could also share that compression.
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