15 réponses à ce sujet

[Ishad Nha]

As Infinity Engine games are relatively well-understood, it seems to be possible to create mods for them based upon campaign worlds other than the Forgotten Realms.
You would need one set of override files for each campaign world. These would be the files that dictate class requirements, names and abilities. Also you would need such files for races. Dialog file dialog.tlk must be altered too.
You can't have more than one file in a folder with the same name, so you could only use one campaign world at a time. Files for other campaign worlds would be renamed, "2011DLdialog.tlk"&.
A program (or batch file?) could automate the renaming of the files.
This has been done to some degree with the Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures game, which was first released in 1993. There modding is incorporated directly into each "design" (mod). 
Suitable campaigns would be Dragonlance and Greyhawk. Dark Sun is based upon psionics as much as magic, the former would be tough to hack into a mod.

I am no expert on modding the Infinity Engine but as far as I know, this idea is practical.

Modifié par Ishad Nha, 25 mai 2011 - 09:35 .

[ussnorway]

Yes it is possible ... as TUTU proves but practical is a different story. Using the Infinity engine is legally iffy and the mods you want would be complete reworks i.e. hundreds of man hours invested.

[Ishad Nha]

If it works it only needs to be done once per campaign setting.
Legal aspect may need to be investigated.
TSR campaign settings frequently have obscure points in them, especially in the area of classes unique to the given campaing. Obscurities will need to be clarified.

[devSin]

It depends how different the gameplay mechanics are. Some of the rules are handled in hardcode, so you can't change them by simply swapping in different resources. You're also extremely limited in adding things like new races or classes (you can overwrite names for the existing ones, but these again are partially set up in hardcode).

[Ishad Nha]

Hard-coding is a problem with Icewind Dale 2, it has not been modded much because it is very much hard-coded.
I am not experienced in modding but I get the impression you can override a lot of things with files placed in the Override folder. I will have to experiment with this and see what can be done there.
Certain things would be impossible or impossibly difficult to mod, for example the change in the power of Krynnian Wizards according to the phases of the three moons. Ditto, Dark Sun psionics.
If the idea works, modding within a selected campaign world would act much like modding does now. You would only mod one campaign world at a time.
Names are apparently all set in dialog.tlk, I don't know how easy it is to alter this file rather than add to it.

[devSin]

The talk table is no big deal. You can browse the table with Near Infinity, and outputting and modifying it is simple with WeiDU.

There is a lot that can be done, but the race and class setup mostly lives in hardcode (actually, a lot of character creation is hobbled by a reliance on stuff in hardcode). For instance, some of the race bonuses (e.g., elves get bonus to swords and bows, but only if they're not mages) and class bonuses (e.g., paladins get +2 bonuses to all saves) are simply done entirely in hardcode. You can visually change the "elf" race, but the engine will still give the elf bonuses to anything with that race value (2), whatever you call it.

Black Isle usually took a less extensible route, so although their games (Torment and the Icewind Dale series) have the same foundation (and you can do basically the same things via modding as you can in BG/TotSC, except that most of that stuff isn't used in them), a lot of their enhancements and changes are just implemented directly in hardcode.

As far as trying to faithfully implement another campaign ruleset, I tend to think it's more work than it would be worth. You can make data changes, and you can implement some wonky stuff, but everything you do would end up being hack upon hack upon hack to try to get it to behave the way it should. You can check out some of the ideas from the DLTC (Dragonlance Total Conversion) team from nearly a decade ago if you're unswayed, but they never released anything usable that I recall.

Note that GemRB would probably give you a clean enough slate to work with and may be a better target than trying to shoehorn stuff into BG2, but I don't know that anybody has really tried to mod exclusively for it yet.

Modifié par devSin, 26 mai 2011 - 04:33 .

[Ishad Nha]

"For instance, some of the race bonuses (e.g., elves get bonus to swords and bows, but only if they're not mages) and class bonuses (e.g., paladins get +2 bonuses to all saves) are simply done entirely in hardcode."
Can this be overridden by a 2DA file in the Override folder?

Hard coding itself may not be so invincible, I found this on a Pocket Plane page:
"ToB Extender is a program written in C++ that modifies the virtual image of the EXE in memory to achieve EXE modifications, which saves hard-coding changes into the EXE file itself. It does this by the DLL injection method."
see:
modlist.pocketplane.net/index.php
PC classes should be easy enough to mod, a lot has been done here. You can have totally custom classes like the Geomantic Sorceror, who is a Sorceror with Druid abilities.
www.gibberlings3.net/geomantic/
Dragonlance TC Editor Pro has reached version 7.2, so there is a viable program. It seems there is a lack of actual authors designing Dragonlance mods.
Arcane Age of Netheril is another possible campaign setting. It was released in 1996 when TSR was in financial difficulties. The setting has a slew of vague points, you would need to read Sage Advice to get guidance here.

Modifié par Ishad Nha, 26 mai 2011 - 09:44 .

[devSin]

Ishad Nha wrote...

Can this be overridden by a 2DA file in the Override folder?

No, data is never read in from any source for these things. It is handled entirely in hardcode.

Ishad Nha wrote...

Hard coding itself may not be so invincible, I found this on a Pocket Plane page:

You can work around hardcoded limitations in this way, certainly, but this is not the simple act of maintaining different overrides like you suggest, and there are few people who have the skill and patience to do this for a game that's now a decade old.

Ishad Nha wrote...

PC classes should be easy enough to mod, a lot has been done here. You can have totally custom classes like the Geomantic Sorceror, who is a Sorceror with Druid abilities.

class kits are possible (they at least are set up entirely through 2DA tables) and quite common. I believe ToBEx expands the number of kit slots (the original game is limited to a small number, but it's primarily a display limitation), but there are limitations to the kit system that I'm not sure ToBEx even attempts to alter (the ITM resource format only allows a limited number of usability flags, for instance, and all or most are taken up by the vanilla kits).

Ishad Nha wrote...

Dragonlance TC Editor Pro has reached version 7.2, so there is a viable program. It seems there is a lack of actual authors designing Dragonlance mods.

DLTCEP was only an editor to facilitate creating the TC. But it's just a modding utility, not part of the conversion, and is related to the project in name (and author) only.

Modifié par devSin, 26 mai 2011 - 12:45 .

[Ishad Nha]

Biggest single element of a Campaign world is the PC classes, they can be made into Kits.

[Ishad Nha]

Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures handles hacking by modifying the program directly. Said program, Ckit.exe, is only around 700KB in size. A fair bit of the program has been decrypted, especially the data structures. Of course a fair bit is still not understood.
Method used: all the hacks for a given "design" (mod) are listed in a file, a Diff table. A special program, UAShell, is used to apply the hacks to Ckit.exe. Hence the program can only be hacked for one mod at a time.
I think UAShell can be used to create the Diff table itself.
Thus most things can be modded.

[Ishad Nha]

Kits can be handled automatically by a mod. A certain standard class or kit is translated into a campaign world class.
One problem is the interface for choosing a class, it is totally written for the standard SoA classes.
In the Geomantic Sorceror kit, the kit is chosen after the start of the game by talking to Aataqah the genie in the starting dungeon.

Modifié par Ishad Nha, 12 juin 2011 - 03:13 .

[Ishad Nha]

There apparently is at least one mod from another campaign world, Dragonlance: Glory of Istar. The link seems to be broken or maybe you need to be registered with Team BG? Maybe it was never finished.
http://www.dragonlancetc.com/
(Then you had Forgotten Lance mods for Ultima Online and Neverwinter Nights.)

[CoM Solaufein]

http://www.dragonlancetc.com/

Works just fine.

[Ishad Nha]

Yes, http://www.dragonlancetc.com/ does work fine.
Actual download itself is at:
http://www.teambg.or...downfile&id=124
That triggered the Error 404 routine.

[CoM Solaufein]

Okay its fixed.

[Ishad Nha]

Good, now I will have to find the time to look at it.