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Mr. Pennyway's Cosmetic Changes

DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
edited March 2013 in General Modding
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Hello, all.

In playing around with some things in the game, I made a few discoveries.

First, that the "ordinary" mage robes (Traveler, Knave, and Adventurer) don't seem all that magical; they give minor situational bonuses to saves and AC, but these bonuses are barely useful enough to warrant an armor slot, much less require an identify spell.

That's not what this thread is about, though. :)

This thread is about an observation I made a few weeks ago, which was that if you change your character's armor, leather, and metal colors using Shadowkeeper or some other character/save editor, you only see those changes while wearing no armor at all. As soon as you put on any piece of armor, the armor you're wearing overrides what your character's natural colors are.

I don't like that.

So I did a few things. The first thing I did was remove all of the color effects from the "ordinary" mage robes listed above. Now, when you put on your adventurer's robe, the trim and straps will remain brown-ish if you haven't changed these colors for your character; and if you have, these changes will be reflected accordingly.

The second thing I did, because my first change made all of these robes identical, was to change the visual "Armor Level" for each robe. Previously all "ordinary" robes used Armor Level 3, which is the avatar with the cape and the shoulder pads. I've made the following changes:

Traveler's Robe: Now uses Armor Level 2 (the high color, no cape look)
Adventurer's Robe: Continues to use Armor Level 3 (Shoulder-guards and cape)
Knave's Robe: Now uses Armor Level 4 (cape, shoulder-guards, and hood)

The result is three distinct mage armors, all of which display the mage's natural colors for armor, leather, and metal.

~Screenshots forthcoming.~

So that's the first big thing here.

What's the Second big thing?
When I gave the Knave's Robe a hooded appearance, I realized that this left the Archmage robes looking somewhat lackluster. So I set about a much more involved process to make these robes look truly unique. Here's what I did:

I've added a color effect to each of these robes that overrides the wearer's Major and Minor clothing colors. Yes, this means that you will always look the same when wearing a given archmage robe (this has no effect on your character's feedback circle).

I also modified the existing colors to make a clearer distinction between "Good", "Neutral", and "Evil" archmage robes. Now, Good wears white and gold; Evil wears black and red and gold; and Neutral wears grey. They all continue to use the hooded appearance.

UPDATE (2013-03-06)
Attached you can find all of the above components, as well as my "uncolored" armor, helmets, and shields components. Briefly:
- All non-magical helmets and shields have had their color effects removed
- Non-magical Leather Armor (Leat01), Chain Mail (Chan01), and Plate Mail (Plat01) have had their color effects removed
- Many of the guards and soldiers running around in the game have been recolored to make better use of the uncolored armors, helmets, and shields.

It's all in the zip file, broken up into folders depending on which pieces you want. No WeiDU business here, so just grab what you want and drop it in your override folder.

SCREENSHOTS:
First, the minor robes, in order from left to right: Traveler, Adventurer, Knave. (Screenshots taken with Canderous as the PC to show a baseline of what they look like on the player's unaltered character.)
imageimageimage

Next, the Archmage robes: Good, Neutral, Evil.
imageimageimage

Finally, the armors. I have Dorn, Jaheira, and Minsc standing in a row, to show off their (new, unique) armor colors.

Leather:
image

Chain:
image

Plate:
image
Post edited by Dee on
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Comments

  • alannahsmithalannahsmith Member Posts: 143
    Beautiful! Thank you. :)
    I'm too scared to play around with that stuff and cause my game to spontaneously burst into flames.

    Keep up the great work!
  • swnmcmlxiswnmcmlxi Member Posts: 297
    "Mr. Pennyway's Cosmetic Changes" sounds like a nice British comedy from the '50s. That is, of course, totally irrelevant. The robes look wonderful. Cheers, guv!
    Flashburn
  • MykraMykra Member Posts: 252
    edited January 2013
    Ok, played around with the mod for a couple minutes. I like it, I think it will stay. The preset Archmage robes may take a little getting used too as I'm a chronic color changer, but I like the options you picked for the three.

    Now you just need to fiddle with their stats so they are worth the armor slot :P

  • ArchaicArchaic Member Posts: 924
    Awesome work @Aosaw - love it! Thank you.
  • KenzeKenze Member Posts: 27
    anyway to make this work with the TeamBG Armor pack? http://www.baldursgatemods.com/forums/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=182
  • JamesJames Member Posts: 110
    the item revisions mod makes some changes to the minor robes which makes them quite useful especially in BG2 Hope this mod works with that one
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    @Kenze
    That armor pack doesn't include mage robes, so installing them both shouldn't cause any problems.

    @James
    That might take a little more work with scripting, with which I don't have much experience. Feel free to mention these changes to @demivgrvs, though.
  • KenzeKenze Member Posts: 27
    Aosaw said:

    @Kenze
    That armor pack doesn't include mage robes, so installing them both shouldn't cause any problems.

    oh, ok my bad. when i copied the files into my override folder I already had those files in there because it asked me if i wanted to overwrite the old ones, I assumed it was overwriting the armor mod. So i guess i need to figure out which other mod it overwrote. :/
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    The files it installs are CLCK12 through CLCK17. So if a mod affects or overrides those files, installing this after that will override the changes.
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    I think that I might make three additional changes to the minor robes here, but I want to hear people's feedback first:

    1) I want to make them properly non-magical, so that they don't require identification. These robes are notoriously not powerful, and making them non-magical puts them in the realm of "armor for mages", which seems appropriate; and

    2) I want to add mage robes to the inventory of more shops, including the Candlekeep Inn, and I want to reduce their price to something that a mage can afford.

    3) I want to also add minor mage robes to several humanoid mages throughout the game, to diversify the way that enemy mages look. Only mages that would appear differently with them equipped, to maintain the existing balance as much as possible, and (perhaps) make them non-droppable as well.

    Since these aren't cosmetic changes, I likely won't post them here; but @Cuv, when we put together our joint project, I'll definitely want these changes to be part of it if people are interested in them.

    Thoughts?
    AntonzerckanAron740
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    I'd also like to alter their .bams to match their new animations, and to make them use a "brown" color scheme if possible. I don't have experience altering bams, though, so if someone wants to do that for me that would be awesome.
  • CuvCuv Member, Developer Posts: 2,535
    @Aesaw Yeah, that is doable for the color schemes. We got a whole crop of little things that can go into a pack.
  • MykraMykra Member Posts: 252
    Aosaw said:

    I think that I might make three additional changes to the minor robes here, but I want to hear people's feedback first:

    1) I want to make them properly non-magical, so that they don't require identification. These robes are notoriously not powerful, and making them non-magical puts them in the realm of "armor for mages", which seems appropriate; and

    2) I want to add mage robes to the inventory of more shops, including the Candlekeep Inn, and I want to reduce their price to something that a mage can afford.

    3) I want to also add minor mage robes to several humanoid mages throughout the game, to diversify the way that enemy mages look. Only mages that would appear differently with them equipped, to maintain the existing balance as much as possible, and (perhaps) make them non-droppable as well.

    Since these aren't cosmetic changes, I likely won't post them here; but @Cuv, when we put together our joint project, I'll definitely want these changes to be part of it if people are interested in them.

    Thoughts?

    Any chance you could add more variations of the robes at the same power level? Give a good selection/option/builds until you buy or kill for that Archmage robe? Maybe even push back the Archmage robe to end of Cloakwood/BG city.

    I like the idea of the weaker or more common robes being found in shops, with the better ones being available in the magical specialty stores. Being unidentified would also be a boon. Changing the way enemy mages look also is something I'm cool with, but don't make the robes too cool looking or I'll be miffed I can't loot it from it's corpse ;P
    Retsuyama
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    I can give it a look--a "Scholar's Robe" wouldn't go amiss, for instance--but my goal here is to just replace what's already there.
  • HooHoo Member Posts: 128
    I appreciate you making this great mod. I hope that this mod will be included in BG:EE basically with new patch. :)
  • IllustairIllustair Member Posts: 877
    Gorgeous! Should have had been like this in the first place.
  • IgnatiusIgnatius Member Posts: 624
    @Aosaw: fantastic job! would that be feasible on the various armor types as well? I am for instance looking at having white-coloured armors / splint, plate, full plate / and the only armor in the series I remember being white was that dragon scale in BG2. I could not find it with NI in BG:EE. Any ideas how a white armor could be created?

    cheers
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    The process is pretty much the same. Although actually, if you want white armor just for a specific character, it might be easier to remove the color effects (I'll post some examples later today), and then change your character's armor/metal/leather colors in Shadowkeeper to be what you want.
    Retsuyama
  • IgnatiusIgnatius Member Posts: 624
    Ok thanks, will be eagerly waiting for your knowledge. Although I thought SK did not work with BG:EE yet...
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    There's instructions on how to get Shadowkeeper to work here: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/7205/getting-shadowkeeper-to-work-with-bgee

    I use it mainly for finding specific colors, although I've since discovered that NearInfinity works better.
  • IgnatiusIgnatius Member Posts: 624
    So changing colors using NearInfinity is possible? how? which entries do control icon colors? also, are you aware of any white colored armor accessible in BG:EE via NI? is the white dragon scale in NI somewhere?
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    When you open the .itm file in Edit mode, there are a series of three "color effect" entries near the bottom--one for "armor/trimming", one for "belt/strap", and one for "leather/amulet". Double-click those entries and you can edit the colors used.

    Or you can simply remove those lines entirely, which will cause the item to use your character's colors instead. (Then you can alter the character's colors in Shadowkeeper as you like.)
  • IgnatiusIgnatius Member Posts: 624
    Hey, it worked! I CLUA'd a splint mail with Color Index 74 in Armor/Trimming - the major part of the armor is white! (although not arms and legs...).

    That's great, I will play around with it a little.
    Retsuyama
  • IgnatiusIgnatius Member Posts: 624
    Another quick question @Aosaw: I was told not to edit via NI items which exist in the default un-modded game, in order to avoid potential conflict/crashes. So what I am doing is created a copy *item_name*.ITM, editing it and then CLUA into my game. My question is: is there any risk if, at some point during the game, I further edit such *item_name*.ITM. Could it cause any crash?

    The idea is basically to provide my PC with a magical item *item_name*.ITM, with magical properties that would be further enhanced with a certain threshold (such as PC reaching a given level, or completing a certain quest, or visiting an area...). Or is it safer to create another new *enhanced_item_name*.ITM, CLUA the new item in my game and simply drop the old *item_name*.ITM somewhere?
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    I haven't encountered any problems, although I've mostly just been fiddling with color effects.

    You should probably create the new item, CLUA it in, and then discard the old one, just to be on the safe side. But @Cuv might be able to tell you more specific information.
    Ignatius
  • SirK8SirK8 Member Posts: 527
    Posting a WeiDU version of this mod with permission from @Aosaw. You'll have to create a hard link to your dialog.tlk file for WeiDU to work properly though.
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    @SirK8
    I'm relatively new to the modding "scene", but how does your WeiDU version work? Does it alter the existing .itm files, or does it just install the replacements?
  • CerevantCerevant Member Posts: 2,314
    Looks like it just installs the replacements.
  • IgnatiusIgnatius Member Posts: 624
    Another beginner's question: I'd like to give a unique name to my *item*, and a full text description as well.

    Using NI / there are 2 fields for naming an item "General Name" and "Identified name". With a StringRef attached. I assumed that I had to create a new StringRef in order not to erase exisiting item names, but I tried with the "Add" button - there was an error message and I could not save *item.ITM*.

    Same thing with description. There is "General Description" and "Identified Description". How does this work precisely?
  • SirK8SirK8 Member Posts: 527
    @Aosaw - no worries, I am completely new to modding (this is my second time putting together an installer based on files someone else had), but everything I do know now is in this post by @Wisp http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/15010/short-introduction-to-weidu-and-simple-mod-template

    Basically I am just trying out the template included in that post. All the installer does is copy files from the mod folder into the override folder. It also creates a backup folder so that it can restore anything pre-install (i.e. if I already had .itm files by those names, it would back my previous ones up). Running the setup again will uninstall the mod and restore anything that needs to be restored.

    I was inspired by @Wisp's comments about how newer mods presented on these forums are not using WeiDU (likely because of new blood like us and maybe the current usability concern, i.e. dialog.tlk hard link) even though it was pretty much the standard for mod installs on BG1/BG2, etc.

    Technically installing your mod with WeiDU right now is probably just as much work as copying the files manually into the override directory, maybe even more work if you don't already have dialog.tlk hard linked for other purposes (symbolic link won't work like it does with SK). However, the backup and uninstall is a nice feature along with keeping up with the "standard" of using WeiDU to install mods.
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