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The Future of the Tweak Packs


CamDawg

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After some discussion amongst the various tweak pack authors, the current versions of the various tweak packs are probably the last.

Starting with Tutu and BGT, continued by IWD-in-BG2, and ongoing with the EE versions of the games (BGEE, BGIIEE, and IWDEE) the lines between engines and games is getting very blurry. We're in the awkward place where BG2 Tweaks applies to not just BG2 and BGIIEE, but also to Tutu, BGT and BGEE, and kinda sorta to IWDEE and IWD-in-BG2. Or to think of it another way, we could potentially end up with a player of IWDEE needing pieces from BG2 Tweaks, IWD Tweaks, and tweaks from DavidW's IWD-in-BG2 Tweak/Fixes.

Tweaks already has a long history of forking and recombination. The original G3 Tweaks was a combo of Alec's pack and mine; we then split off a Tutu Tweaks before we re-combined them back into BG2 Tweaks. Along the way we had the project forked into packs for BG, PsT, IWD and IWD2.

With the blurring between projects, we're calling everything home into one, consolidated mod (The Tweak Omnibus, though I'm open to suggestions) that can be run on any platform, any game. With the advances in WeiDU syntax, platform/game identification is very easy as is game-specific coding, and the bandwidth concerns we may have had even five years ago for an expanded package are fairly minimal. The additional benefit is that the 10 translations of BG2 Tweaks would also be farmed out to a lot of places they haven't been before. With DavidW's permission, we'll also be adding the tweaks from the IWD-in-BG2 fix/tweak pack, as a lot of stuff there can be adapted for IWDEE and/or IWD.

 

From a player's perspective, you should end up with one mod for all games that will only present relevant options. The consolidation should also allow us to make options previously unavailable to your game available.

 

We'd love to hear your feedback on the idea.

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This sounds great! And a nightmare to maintain? But it sounds great, for players, definitely!

 

"Omnibus" means the bus for driving in German, so I'd rather vote for Kulyok's suggestion or something else (but preferrably without a silly superlative like "Ultimate" or something like that)

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With the blurring between projects, we're calling everything home into one, consolidated mod (The Tweak Omnibus, though I'm open to suggestions)

The One Tweakmod ("one tweakmod to rule them all, one tweakmod to find them, one tweakmod to bring them all, and in any IE game bind them").

 

Alternative suggestion: Gospel Tweaks ("Thou shalt have no other tweak mods before Me (afterwards is OK; just use protection). The only Tweak Mod that deserves capitalization is Me! Other tweak mods are false mods, undeserving of capitalization." Suggestions 1:1)

 

In seriousness, Infinite/Infinity Tweaks is pretty good (IT for short).

 

While you're at it, you might as well throw in LuizTweaks, d0tweaks, igi_tweaks, bigg_tweaks, plainab tweaks, Mix-Mod, Zyraen's Tweaks, p5tweaks, most of Aurora's Shoes except the core component, etc., etc. I mean, didn't you promise to do this ages ago? :D

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Well, the good news is that everyone seems to think this is a good idea. I'll be honest, though, I'm not really feeling it for Infinity/Infinite Tweaks, sorry.

"Omnibus" means the bus for driving in German, so I'd rather vote for Kulyok's suggestion or something else (but preferrably without a silly superlative like "Ultimate" or something like that)

Heh, the bus thing actually makes me like the name even more. Tweaks isn't flashy content--no one ever lists Tweaks as their favorite mod, yet it always turns up in weidu.log.

I would slip in a word word to the above, but then came with the 'Infinite Engine Tweak Packs'... Hmm, so shall the PST get to use the same thing too ? Cause without that, we are nowhere ... :snickers:

PsT Tweaks (this one, not that one) will be rolled in as well. Granted there's not a lot in either the PsT or IWD2 packs, but hopefully consolidation will open a few doors. grogerson's also done some fun stuff for BG1 Tweaks that I think BGT/Tutu/BG2 players will like.

The One Tweakmod ("one tweakmod to rule them all, one tweakmod to find them, one tweakmod to bring them all, and in any IE game bind them").

I actually joked about this name in the past. Sadly, I don't think it'll bind the other Tweak packs to me, though I'm very sure a Nazgul DavidW would be able to write a PsT-to-IWD2 converter in his sleep. Or unsleep. Or whatever it is ringwraiths do.

While you're at it, you might as well throw in LuizTweaks, d0tweaks, igi_tweaks, bigg_tweaks, plainab tweaks, Mix-Mod, Zyraen's Tweaks, p5tweaks, most of Aurora's Shoes except the core component, etc., etc. I mean, didn't you promise to do this ages ago? :D

Yeah, and I have actually started on it before, but it just bogs down into tediousness. This time though the code's never been in better shape for the effort--BG2T v15 gave it full IWDEE compatibility, for example, and both IWD and BG1 Tweaks are in very good places code-wise.

That I managed to get a hold of both Andy and Alec has also got to be some kind of sign, too.

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