Help needed for a modding idea

Feather

Hey,
I've started to get interested in Baldurs Gate modding and i have some small modding ideas I'd like to do.
But I need some help to figure out some of the more complicated things and if they are possible at all:

1) How to add a Random Encounter area?
(For the first mod - combining Black Pits and the main game - i need to enter a new random area where the party will get abducted by Baeloth. But how do I add the area and make it random?)

2) Moving items into a container item?
(For the same mod i need to store the party's items and gold at the beginning of the Black pits somewhere. The solution i like the most is to give a Bag of Holding to either Baeloth or his djinn and move all the equipment of the party there - in order to return it later. Is this possible?)

3) Unusual multi-classes?
(It seems like this is hard-coded, but i'd like to do a monk/sorceror-multiclass for Rasaad that he will become after his conversion to Shar :P. I saw a mod that adds this class at gemrb, so it seems like it's not possible with the current bg:ee-engine, but might be in the future.
I read, too, that the bg:ee-developers had stuff like that on their list of unhardcouding/externalisation-stuff. So is this changed already? Can i do a multi-class like that?
Or if it's not possible yet, am i right that this could be a post-ship-possibility?)

Wisp

Feather said:

1) How to add a Random Encounter area?
(For the first mod - combining Black Pits and the main game - i need to enter a new random area where the party will get abducted by Baeloth. But how do I add the area and make it random?)

You would do this in worldmap.wmp. Each area has zero or more links to other areas, and each link can have up to five random-encounter areas. The file format is specified here.

Feather said:

2) Moving items into a container item?
(For the same mod i need to store the party's items and gold at the beginning of the Black pits somewhere. The solution i like the most is to give a Bag of Holding to either Baeloth or his djinn and move all the equipment of the party there - in order to return it later. Is this possible?)

Scripting items into stores (including container items) is not possible. The closest you'll get to stripping the party of their gear and moving it is with something like TakeItemListParty() or DropInventory()+CopyGroundPilesTo(). The former can script items into an area container but requires some work. For a working example, you can have a look at SCSII, which has a component for taking the party's items in Spellhold. The latter requires less of an initial investment, but will probably be buggy wrt. familiars and other items that should not be dropped. It will also leave the gear on the floor.

Feather

@Wisp: Ah, cool, thanks a lot. Your answer was very helpful.

So, what I understand is, that I'll have to create several .2da item lists with at max. 200 items per list and than add these items to the container per ActionOverride("container", TakeItemListParty("2da")),
do that for all the .2da lists and then remove the remaining items per DestroyAllEquipment-commands.

But in this case all items created by mods or later patches will be destroyed without being transferred, right? Or is there a way to keep them. How does the SCS2-Mod handle it. I imagine that mod is used in conjunction with other mods quite frequently. Do they really leave every mod-created item in the inventory, or is there something i'm missing?

Still, I think that option is much better than the copy-ground-piles-thingy .

Wisp

@Feather
I believe SCSII constructs the 2da files at install time, so they include any mod-added equipment already installed. This complicates the install order a bit, since such a mod would by necessity need to be installed after any mods that add equipment (lest the equipment be left with the party), but it would probably be manageable (and failure to follow the install order would not be problematic).

Feather

Okay, i'm moving deeper into the rabbit hole :P. And this leads to more and more questions - sorry and thanks in advance

Is this construction at install time a feature of Weidu?
For this I would have to wait until it is compatible with bg:ee, or is there another way to do it (by not writing an install program of my own)?

Then, I need to add containers to my map. I found out that I can use IETME and dltcep to do it for BG2-maps and I was able to do everything I would need that way, too. But I can't open the BG:EE-maps with the program. Maybe the files are packed in a way that IETME/dltcep can't handle. Is there a way to unpack these newer maps or open them somehow with the program? Or is there an alternative program I could use?

Wisp

Feather said:

Is this construction at install time a feature of Weidu?
For this I would have to wait until it is compatible with bg:ee, or is there another way to do it (by not writing an install program of my own)?

Yes, it is a WeiDU feature. It is done through a script that runs when the mod is installed (or rather, it is the script that installs the mod). The latest WeiDU beta should be reasonably functional on BGEE. There will also be another beta (v23107) coming soon which will fix a few additional issues.

Feather said:

Then, I need to add containers to my map. I found out that I can use IETME and dltcep to do it for BG2-maps and I was able to do everything I would need that way, too. But I can't open the BG:EE-maps with the program. Maybe the files are packed in a way that IETME/dltcep can't handle. Is there a way to unpack these newer maps or open them somehow with the program? Or is there an alternative program I could use?

If the latest version of DLTCEP is not yet fully compatible with BGEE, I would imagine @Avenger_teambg will eventually make it happen. But IETME is to my knowledge unmaintained (and old even by non-EE standards), so I would not rely on that.
WeiDU comes with a pre-written solution for adding a container to the ARE (and the use of WeiDU can be recommended for reasons of mod compatibility), but I don't know if you had anything else in mind as well (or, off-hand, if there is something else that needs to be done; I have not done much area editing).

CoM_Solaufein

IETME will not work due to the fact that the TIS files are different in BG:EE. We will have to rely on DLTCEP and Near Infinity whenever they get fully updated with the changes in the EE files.