Bug Reports: IR v4 Beta

[Jarno Mikkola]

It's not intentional, but it's unavoidable.

Due to engine limitations, innate abilities ...

At one point, to eliminate the unfairness, there was a version of this component that affected all classes, so the behaviour for divine casters would at least be consistent.

Yes, I cut this quote... to make the first point.

To get the innate spells to avoid this whole thing, one can set their casting time to instant(Extended Header, offset 0x0012 to be = 0), which then bypasses the added casting time delay. Of course there aren't many that have this property... which has a rather large effect to the whole of the game. Depending on how you look it at.

 

And then there's the dual and multi'es on the cleric timers, one would probably need to make a whole mod to address this issue. As one option is to offer them to be immune to the opcode on the class level... which will then also remove the benefits too, from items that provide casting time reductions, like the Robe.

And in this spirit, one could just remove most armor restrictions from everyone ... except kits.

[Bartimaeus]

I still have my version of this mod, if anyone is interested. I have fixed all the bugs that I previously listed and many more (including at least some of the bugs mentioned in the previous page by Kreso - I'll look into the ones I'm not sure about), and totally removed the 1PP integration (except where appropriate and/or absolutely necessary - there's only a few cases of this) so that 1PP can successfully and cleanly installed on top of IR. The biggest problem with my mod is that I have made some of my own tweaks to items, and I'm not sure how receptive people would be to those. I have kept almost all of the original concepts for items the same, but have tweaked some of them a little, and also revised additional items that were not touched by IR (for example, the Moon Dog Figurine, the Golem Tomes, the Shakti Figurine, etc. with an eye for keeping things roughly in line with the rest of IR). There's also the problem of whether people would take kindly to linking to my own branch of the mod, and if that's the case, what route should I go with it - whether my current method (which I feel is the cleanest) by having my modified files in a zip that you MUST overwrite the original IR installation with (it is 100% dependent upon having the one of the two latest versions of IR already extracted into your Baldur's Gate folder), or whether I should whip up a bonafide weidu mod that you'd have to install BEFORE IR (so that you can still use the "Weapon Changes" etc. subcomponents) while never installing the main component of IR itself - just the subcomponents, as you please. Personally, I like the former, because it's less work, but I could do the latter if people felt that was the best option. It'd just take more time to complete for me, whereas the former is ready as is. I feel as though either way, though, I'd be infringing upon some people without proper permission, and it seems as though it's difficult to get permission from Demi, at the very least, so yeah, not sure what I should do.

Edited July 12, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Mike1072]

I'd be much happier if you could contribute those changes to the main mod repository on GitHub via pull request, so they can be evaluated and accepted easier.

 

Stuff like bugfixes can easily be approved. Tweaks and new additions may be approved if they sound good (Demi usually discusses those things in the forum in an attempt to arrive at a consensus). The 1PP changes you propose probably won't be approved - I'd rather fix the problems with 1PP customization than abandon it.

[Bartimaeus]

It's difficult to do that, for the simple reason that it was a many month effort that I spent going through literally every single item in the game, fixing bugs that I noticed (that's how I was able to find so many in that mega-post of mine) while also reverting the 1PP changes. I love 1PP: that's why I feel as though it must be removed from IR - except for a few special cases where the item doesn't make any sense without it, which is where I kept those changes. People should be able to actually install all the great parts of 1PP, not just the random bits and pieces of this wonky pseudo-integration that IR has done, which nobody wants to go through the trouble of fixing because it's understandably a huge amount of work.

 

In order to make the two compatible while still having IR have it integrated, it would have to be redone entirely. IR uses the old 1PP method, which is that all the vanilla animations are straight up overwritten, so that you cannot use the vanilla animations even if you wanted to. 1ppv4 adds new animation slots WITHOUT overwriting. The two methods are just not compatible, and that would have to all be redone. There are also all the icon mismatches, the paperdoll mismatches (IR forces all morning stars to just use the mace animation, while 1ppv4 fixes the base problem of the animation itself by giving it a new paperdoll animation and fixing the sprite animation), the coloring mismatches, etc. due to IR being based on the ultra-old version of 1pp, as well as the base animation mismatches, again, as a result of IR overwriting animations instead of simply adding new ones like 1ppv4. I think it's pretty clear that, seeing as 1ppv4 has been out for...what, 6-7 years now, that that's sadly just not going to happen.

 

...Unless...well, I suppose what you could do, if you REALLY wanted to keep 1pp integration, and update it to support more 1ppv4 stuff, is to...

 

1. Have a clean install of Baldur's Gate, with a cleared out override folder.

2. Completely cut the current installation of 1pp from IR for this specific install.

2. Install just the main component of Item Revisions.

3. Install 1ppv4 with the options that, you, the mod-creator, want to be in IR. There's currently a *lot* of features IR is missing from 1ppv4.

4. Fix the crap that's broken (shields and helmets will be the big things that you'd have to look closely at to make sure they're correct, as some will likely have incorrect animations and .bams set as a result of the way IR currently does things, whereas everything else you can probably do a much more cursory look - any bugs people will be sure to find pretty quick if you have people test it).

5. Revert anything that you didn't want 1pp to do (there's probably a couple of handful of items that you want to use specific animations/bams due to their unique history, I'm sure).

6. Repackage IR using the altered (and now hopefully 1ppv4-ized) .itm files from your override folder.

7. Add back the installation of 1pp in IR, only you would use the newer assets of 1ppv4 (...I assume you can do this, given that you were given permission to integrate an older version of 1pp - if you feel that you can't, then you're pretty much sunk here for ever fixing this short of, again, removing 1pp integration entirely).

 

That's about the "easiest" way of doing things that I can think of, and that's still a bit of work: I know, because like I said, I spent a few months of a lot of my free time doing something similar to remove 1pp entirely from IR.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

What I would like, though, is for people to have some way of using my files without stepping on other people's toes here, so that they can actually install 1ppv4 if they want. My version of the mod is done. It's not something that "maybe" "eventually" will get done: it's done already. You extract the current version of 1ppv4, and then you extract my altered files over it, and then you install it like you normally would using the settings and subcomponents that you want, same as any other IR installation, and then you install 1ppv4 after it to get its changes - if you want, that is. If people would like to use it, or just to check it out, I would like for them to be able to, because it just doesn't feel like the main version of IR is ever going to get fixed at this rate, . I can even provide a general installation order so that the installation order of 1ppv4, SR, IR, etc. is clear. Is there any way I could get permission to upload it somewhere and link it? Probably only a few people would want to use it at best, but it's better than just having it sit only on my hard drive forever only usable by me, right?

 

(e): I could also provide a changelog of sorts. It won't be complete, because I fixed and tweaked a whole lot of stuff that I just don't remember anymore, but I could at least make a list of the bigger changes that I did.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

Why don't you write it up like a hotfix/meta-mod - i.e. like the BWFixPack. Deliver your altered files with a Weidu installer that will find the 1PP and IR mods in the game directory, and overwrite whatever needs overwriting in each mod. Then the user can install IR and 1PP as they please, and your changes should be evident.

 

(That is, assuming I understood what you wrote above. And assuming you have the necessary permissions to distribute whatever files you're talking about.)

Edited July 13, 2017 by subtledoctor

[AL|EN]

It's difficult to do that, for the simple reason that it was a many month effort that I spent going through literally every single item in the game, fixing bugs that I noticed (that's how I was able to find so many in that mega-post of mine) while also reverting the 1PP changes.

I'm always advocating to use Fixpack but I know that it won't work for this case. It's only for small fixes. There was to much work done. It's to complicated and to time consuming for such huge amount of changes.

 

I don't understand why you have objections/doubts about posting months of you own work and modifications. It's you work, so?

Edited July 13, 2017 by ALIENQuake

[subtledoctor]

Yeah but what is it going to be a huge file dump out of his override folder?

 

Mods haven't worked that way since 2002.

[Bartimaeus]

No, it's not a "huge file dump out of my override folder". What I did was take the files of the IR installer, and modify them from there. That's all. Here's the file structure of "my" "mod":

 

 

 

As you can see, it's the same file structure as IR itself - that's because, as I said (a few months ago), it's not totally dissimilar to the Big Fixpack in that it has to have the original mod already extracted...it's just that, as ALIENQuake said, it's a humongous amount of changes, so it's more replace than patch. There's no way that I could realistically do it - I have 1,145 modified or new files in the item_rev\itm folder. 18 of these are .cre files, 94 of these are .eff files, 799 .itm, 24 .pro, 206 .spl, and the rest a few other file types. My items.2da (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/utx91aoync96e5f/items.2da) would be absolute nightmare to patch via that method just in of itself...seriously, compare it to the latest item.2da via WinMerge or another text compare tool, and you'll immediately see what I mean. There's a bunch of new items that were never handled (including quest items that had descriptions that didn't follow the correct format, including items like the Shamans Staff, but a bunch of others besides that that I included for completeness' sake), items that had their referenced special abilities strings changed, items that had their names slightly changed or fixed (including incorrect enchantment levels that I then had to change to match in item_content.tpa), etc.

 

As for why I have not posted the overall mod itself, it's because like I pointed out, it's dependent on the latest IR archive. As such, I'm looking for permission from somebody who could actually give me permission to do so. I just don't see any way this could ever be integrated into the main branch of IR, especially seeing as pretty much the single biggest change, the removal of 1PP stuff, there seems to be no desire to integrate at this point.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Mike1072]

You've obviously put a lot of work into this, but with all the changes jumbled together, it's an everything-or-nothing package, and we can't accept everything.

You can release this instead of integrating the changes into IR, but I won't be recommending it, and development on IR will continue without these changes.

[Bartimaeus]

That was my feeling, too, especially now knowing that you don't want to remove the 1PP integration, which is what actually sparked me into starting this entire thing to begin with. There are things that I could probably SUGGEST, but without Demi around, it's kind of a moot point, which is why I felt a separate branch entirely was best at this point. I think kreso at least fixed a lot of the stuff that I mentioned months ago in the latest version, so that's good on at least the bugfixing end.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[lynx]

binary diffing is an option, but someone would still have to sieve through it and group it to make it manageable/readable. No easy way out of this.

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah...that's why I'd prefer just to have my own branch and create a list of "general changes" and more specific "bigger" changes to give people an idea of what I've done while not necessarily bothering with the tiny tweaks and bug fixes that people probably wouldn't even notice unless I specifically pointed them out. I'm not even sure that anybody will actually want to use my files, but eh, maybe a few people will if they're desperate for being able to finally install 1PP with IR. My internet has been absolutely ruined recently (...I've been troubleshooting for roughly the last 3 hours and more besides that the last few days), so I might disappear for a couple of days here before I'm able to do that.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Salk]

If I did not have my own customized version , I would surely use Bartimaeus'. No doubt about it.

[Jarno Mikkola]

binary diffing is an option, ..

Or you could be more reasonable, and make a Diff from the two .tp2 files with WinMerge and go from there.

As anyone shouldn't mess with the install files, just the what they produce... as an effect from copying different files to replace the already used ones. Or in the case of not adding the graphics, not copying them over ... as then they just use the vanilla variety of files.