Near Infinity now has its own Wiki! You can find it here: Near Infinity Wiki
You can also find a link to the Wiki in the first post of this topic.
I will probably add more content over time. The current version should cover pretty much everything already though.
The "FAQ & Troubleshooting" section is still pretty empty right now. I'm open for suggestions. (Of course, I'm open for suggestions and opinions about the Wiki in general, as well.)
All Near Infinity releases up until now have been coded to be compatible with Java 6. Since Java 6 is very dated by now (first release came out in 2006) I'm considering dropping support for that version and updating Near Infinity's code base to be compatible with Java 8, which came out in 2014 and is still the most recent version available for all major platforms. Only very dated systems would be left out (such as pre-Windows XP or PowerPC Mac OS systems). If there are no objections I would drop support with the next release.
If you want to check whether you have Java 8 installed on your system you can run this little tool: JavaVersion.zip
Important: Near Infinity development is currently in a state of transition. Aside from upgrading the code base from Java 6 to Java 8 I am currently working on replacing an outdated API by a more powerful one internally. This development snapshot still uses the old API, but already requires Java 8 to run. It also uses a different location to store Near Infinity settings. The preferences from older NI releases will be imported automatically, but settings changed in this and future releases will not be visible in older releases (v1.36-20160214 and older) and vice versa.
This release provides "Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear" support (except for Steam and GOG users, as explained further below) and the following improvements:
Full support of LUA, MENU, PNG and TTF resource types.
"baldur.lua" can be accessed via Edit->baldur.lua or in the Game Properties (Game->Game Properties...) and pressing the "Edit..." button.
Home folder name for EE games is retrieved from "engine.lua" if available.
Savegame folders "sodsave" and "mpsodsave".
Added new effect opcodes:
344: Enchantment vs. creature type
345: Enchantment bonus
346: Save vs. school bonus
361: Cast spell on critical miss
362: Critical miss bonus
363: Movement rate check
365: Make unselectable
366: Apply spell on movement
367: Minimum base stats
Updated a number of existing opcodes.
Added support for stat values 0x115 and 0x116 in SPLPROT.2DA (used in opcodes 318, 324 and 326).
Added new fields to ARE->Spawn point, GAM, TOH and WMP->Map structures.
Important information for Steam and GOG users: Beamdog decided to offer Steam and GOG users the "Siege of Dragonspear" expansion as a DLC in the form of a single zipped file named "dlc/sod-dlc.zip". All SoD-related resources have been included in the zip archive, including an expanded dialog.tlk which is used by the game instead of the one found in "lang/xx_YY". The current Near Infinity development snapshot can not access this content. As a result the game will be detected as plain "Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition" with the original resources of the base game. I'm currently working on a solution, but it requires to rework a major portion of NI's code base. I can't estimate when it will be done.
If you need to access resources from the SoD expansion badly, you can do so by manually unpacking "dlc/sod-dlc.zip" into a separate folder somewhere on your system and renaming the file "mod.key" into "chitin.key". You can then select the game in Near Infinity. Not everything will be fully accessible though, as the archive only contains new and updated files for the expansion itself. To reduce the number of inaccessible resources you can manually export the following files from the base game into the expansion's override folder: [spoiler=File list]MSCHOOL.2DA MSECTYPE.2DA STATDESC.2DA ALIGN.IDS ALIGNMEN.IDS AREATYPE.IDS ASTYLES.IDS BOOLEAN.IDS DAMAGES.IDS DIFFLEV.IDS DIR.IDS DMGTYPE.IDS GENDER.IDS HAPPY.IDS HOTKEY.IDS JOURTYPE.IDS MFLAGS.IDS NODECODE.IDS NPC.IDS REACTION.IDS SCRLEV.IDS SEQ.IDS SHOUTIDS.IDS SLOTS.IDS SOUNDOFF.IDS SVTRIOBJ.IDS TIME.IDS TIMEODAY.IDS VEFPROJ.IDS WEATHER.IDS [/spoiler] This release is not available by NI's own update check option.
Thank you so much for this version. Now that we can read the lua files, it's indeed possible to translate the interface of the game (copying from L_en_US.LUA) and to add bring back fan made translations for BG2EE (editing BGEE.LUA, "languages = " block).
Is anyone else seeing a large CPU load from the development version of NI? After it's been running for a while, the CPU load stay constantly high - even when I'm not actively using it. Quitting and restarting NI takes care of it (i.e., CPU load goes back to normal on restart).
@AstroBryGuy There was a bug which caused high CPU load when the home folder or baldur.lua wasn't present, but it should have been fixed in the latest NI snapshot. Can you reproduce this issue?
Important: This Near Infinity release warrants a new major version number as the core of Near Infinity has been greatly revised (and redesigned to some extent). Some of these changes are breaking compatibility with older releases. For example, global Near Infinity settings are stored at a different location since the last development snapshot. Your current NI settings will be automatically imported when you start this release for the first time, so you shouldn't see any difference. Subsequent starts of this release will only affect settings for this and future releases, however. Settings changed in older releases of NI won't affect this and future releases anymore.
For the more technically inclined: The relevant registry key on Windows is now "HKCU\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\org\infinity". The filenames or preferences keys on Mac OS X and Linux systems should have changed in similar fashion.
Furthermore, Near Infinity requires Java 8 or higher to run.
Since Near Infinity's code based has been modified to a great extent you'll most likely encounter the occasional bug. Feel free to post about anything that works differently, doesn't work correctly (or not at all). Some changes are intentional, but since I don't have the time to test everything thoroughly, some bugs might still be present.
Changes:
Upgraded code base to be compatible with Java 8. NI won't start with Java 7 or older anymore.
Added full Siege of Dragonspear support.
Support of savegame folders "sodsave" and "mpsodsave" (retrieved dynamically from CAMPAIGN.2DA if available).
An internal design change breaks compatibility with older releases. As stated above it should not be visible to the user. However, changing global options in older releases won't be recognized in this and future releases anymore and vice versa.
Added support for DLCs in the form of zip archives for Enhanced Edition games. DLC content will be automatically integrated in correct search order. NI can handle multiple DLCs from all supported DLC search directories correctly. Resources from zip archives are read-only. Modified game resources are saved in the game's default override folder. Saving archived versions of the dialog.tlk doesn't work. You can decide to save it somewhere else instead.
Added list of detected DLC archives in the "Game Properties" dialog if available.
The Near Infinity Wiki can be opened from the "About Near Infinity" dialog and from a separate Help menu entry (or via shortcut "F1").
BCS syntax highlighter loads IDS symbols dynamically based on references found in ACTION.IDS and TRIGGER.IDS.
Improved DLG Tree Viewer: Added syntax highlighting and resref links to triggers and actions.
BAM Converter: Added GIF import support, which includes static and animated GIFs.
Improved effect opcode 78 (Disease) for Enhanced Edition games.
Improved effect opcode 233 (Modify proficiencies) for Enhanced Edition games.
Edit->BIFF Editor and Tools->Keyfile Cleanup have been disabled because of unsolved issues caused by the internal design change. (I don't know yet how to fix it short of writing a new BIFF Editor.)
Added option "Include extra folders" to Mass Exporter which exports resources from "Characters", "Portraits" and other extra folders. (Enabled by default.)
Mass Exporter takes "Ignore Overrides" option into account when exporting resources.
Restricted "Find selected attribute" option found in structured resources so it doesn't match fields of same name but different meaning anymore.
Fixed drawing of wall polygons in the Area Viewer that are flagged as "hovering walls".
Fixed duplicate entries in resource tree if resource of same name exists is extra folder of same name but different location.
Fixed a bug in the BAM Converter's session export and import routines if the configuration includes a "Replace colors" filter.
Fixed a bug of missing "ANYONE" entries in IDS target fields in non-Enhanced games.
Can you start Near Infinity from a text console to see if it prints any error messages? To do this, open a console or command prompt, drag and drop the NearInfinity.jar file into it and press enter to start it.
How does NI behave when you start another game first and then open BG:SoD from the menu Game->Open Game...?
Does NI start when you temporarily rename the file extension of the sod-dlc.zip to something else?
Another possibility may be insufficient memory allocation since you're using a 32-bit OS. You can find a little tool called Hide NI DOS somewhere in this post. Can you use it to start NI?
@Kerozevok I can't reproduce it on my systems. I've tested on a modmerge'd installation as well and NI loaded perfectly fine. It even worked fine on an old WinXP VM. There must be something else interfering whith NI. Have you updated the JRE to the latest version? What's the CPU usage when NI freezes while manually opening the game (you can see it in the Performance tab of the task manager, open via Ctrl+Shift+Esc)? What is the installation path of your SoD installation? Does your SoD installation use some out of the ordinary configuration, file structure or files?
@kjeron Yeah, increased loading is an unfortunate side effect of the new way how to interact with files and directories. That's the main reason why I have added a little progress bar at the start of NI. I've already spent some time reducing loading time. It's especially apparent on larger game installations or slower systems. I'll try to optimize it further in future releases. It's difficult to track down on my system since games are loading up very fast after being opened for the first time.
@argent77 Problem solved. In the lang folder, I had deleted all tlk files (except US & FR), but not the sounds folders (DE, RU, etc..), after removed them, the latest NI works.
@argent77 The good - Loading times are way back down. The bad - Searching is completely broken, both "selected attribute" matching and "CRE/ITM/SPL/STO" searches. For example, searching for selected attribute "PROFICIENCYLONGSWORD - 90" returns zero results. An item search for "sword" returns just two results, creature search for "kobold" returns zero results(in BGEE). For fun, I did a "negate result" on the "PROFICIENCYLONGSWORD - 90": it only showed .ITM files, and all of them had a proficiency of "UNKNOWN - 0", "PROFICIENCYMACE - 101", "PROFICIENCYCROSSBOW - 103", "PROFICIENCYLONGBOW - 104", "PROFICIENCYSHORTBOW - 105", or "PROFICIENCYCSLING - 107", but it was also not all items with those proficiencies.
Searching for attribute "PROFICIENCYLONGSWORD - 90" in BG:SoD returned 38 results and over 2000 hits for a negated search. Searching for "kobold" in CRE resulted in over 30 hits and "sword" in ITM resulted in over 60 hits.
Can you be more specific about your game configuration? Does the Debug Console displays anything unusual? Is the game type correctly detected? Can you manually open any resources that should have matched but were not displayed in the results list?
Comments
Opcode 233: Modify Proficiency, Parameter 2:
Proficiency (low-order word):
[List]
Adjustment Type (high-order word):
0: SET
!0: INCREMENT
Already implemented in all 3 EE's.
You can also find a link to the Wiki in the first post of this topic.
I will probably add more content over time. The current version should cover pretty much everything already though.
The "FAQ & Troubleshooting" section is still pretty empty right now. I'm open for suggestions. (Of course, I'm open for suggestions and opinions about the Wiki in general, as well.)
If you want to check whether you have Java 8 installed on your system you can run this little tool: JavaVersion.zip
New development snapshot: Near Infinity v1.37-20160331-devel
Important: Near Infinity development is currently in a state of transition. Aside from upgrading the code base from Java 6 to Java 8 I am currently working on replacing an outdated API by a more powerful one internally. This development snapshot still uses the old API, but already requires Java 8 to run. It also uses a different location to store Near Infinity settings. The preferences from older NI releases will be imported automatically, but settings changed in this and future releases will not be visible in older releases (v1.36-20160214 and older) and vice versa.This release provides "Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear" support (except for Steam and GOG users, as explained further below) and the following improvements:
Important information for Steam and GOG users:
Beamdog decided to offer Steam and GOG users the "Siege of Dragonspear" expansion as a DLC in the form of a single zipped file named "dlc/sod-dlc.zip". All SoD-related resources have been included in the zip archive, including an expanded dialog.tlk which is used by the game instead of the one found in "lang/xx_YY". The current Near Infinity development snapshot can not access this content. As a result the game will be detected as plain "Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition" with the original resources of the base game. I'm currently working on a solution, but it requires to rework a major portion of NI's code base. I can't estimate when it will be done.
If you need to access resources from the SoD expansion badly, you can do so by manually unpacking "dlc/sod-dlc.zip" into a separate folder somewhere on your system and renaming the file "mod.key" into "chitin.key". You can then select the game in Near Infinity. Not everything will be fully accessible though, as the archive only contains new and updated files for the expansion itself. To reduce the number of inaccessible resources you can manually export the following files from the base game into the expansion's override folder:
[spoiler=File list]MSCHOOL.2DA
MSECTYPE.2DA
STATDESC.2DA
ALIGN.IDS
ALIGNMEN.IDS
AREATYPE.IDS
ASTYLES.IDS
BOOLEAN.IDS
DAMAGES.IDS
DIFFLEV.IDS
DIR.IDS
DMGTYPE.IDS
GENDER.IDS
HAPPY.IDS
HOTKEY.IDS
JOURTYPE.IDS
MFLAGS.IDS
NODECODE.IDS
NPC.IDS
REACTION.IDS
SCRLEV.IDS
SEQ.IDS
SHOUTIDS.IDS
SLOTS.IDS
SOUNDOFF.IDS
SVTRIOBJ.IDS
TIME.IDS
TIMEODAY.IDS
VEFPROJ.IDS
WEATHER.IDS
[/spoiler]
This release is not available by NI's own update check option.
Major update: NearInfinity v2.0-20160406
Important: This Near Infinity release warrants a new major version number as the core of Near Infinity has been greatly revised (and redesigned to some extent). Some of these changes are breaking compatibility with older releases. For example, global Near Infinity settings are stored at a different location since the last development snapshot. Your current NI settings will be automatically imported when you start this release for the first time, so you shouldn't see any difference. Subsequent starts of this release will only affect settings for this and future releases, however. Settings changed in older releases of NI won't affect this and future releases anymore.For the more technically inclined: The relevant registry key on Windows is now "HKCU\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\org\infinity". The filenames or preferences keys on Mac OS X and Linux systems should have changed in similar fashion.
Furthermore, Near Infinity requires Java 8 or higher to run.
Since Near Infinity's code based has been modified to a great extent you'll most likely encounter the occasional bug. Feel free to post about anything that works differently, doesn't work correctly (or not at all). Some changes are intentional, but since I don't have the time to test everything thoroughly, some bugs might still be present.
Changes:
Update: NearInfinity v2.0-20160406-1
A small bugfix release which solves an issue of NI not starting when the game folder contains zip files of unsupported format.Can you start Near Infinity from a text console to see if it prints any error messages? To do this, open a console or command prompt, drag and drop the NearInfinity.jar file into it and press enter to start it.
Launched with the cmd command, there is no error message.....
Does NI start when you temporarily rename the file extension of the sod-dlc.zip to something else?
Another possibility may be insufficient memory allocation since you're using a 32-bit OS. You can find a little tool called Hide NI DOS somewhere in this post. Can you use it to start NI?
If I launch NI in the BGEE folder then "open game" > BG-SOD... NI freeeze.
Same result with "Hide NI DOS" (I have 4 gb of memory).
The sod-dlc.zip is disabled (I used the modmerge).
These new versions(v2.0-20160406 /v2.0-20160406-1) are taking noticeably(8-10x) longer to start up and switch between games.
@kjeron Yeah, increased loading is an unfortunate side effect of the new way how to interact with files and directories. That's the main reason why I have added a little progress bar at the start of NI. I've already spent some time reducing loading time. It's especially apparent on larger game installations or slower systems. I'll try to optimize it further in future releases. It's difficult to track down on my system since games are loading up very fast after being opened for the first time.
Thanks for your help.
Update: NearInfinity v2.0-20160407
Changes:Update: NearInfinity v2.0-20160408
Changes:The good - Loading times are way back down.
The bad - Searching is completely broken, both "selected attribute" matching and "CRE/ITM/SPL/STO" searches. For example, searching for selected attribute "PROFICIENCYLONGSWORD - 90" returns zero results. An item search for "sword" returns just two results, creature search for "kobold" returns zero results(in BGEE).
For fun, I did a "negate result" on the "PROFICIENCYLONGSWORD - 90": it only showed .ITM files, and all of them had a proficiency of "UNKNOWN - 0", "PROFICIENCYMACE - 101", "PROFICIENCYCROSSBOW - 103", "PROFICIENCYLONGBOW - 104", "PROFICIENCYSHORTBOW - 105", or "PROFICIENCYCSLING - 107", but it was also not all items with those proficiencies.
Searching for attribute "PROFICIENCYLONGSWORD - 90" in BG:SoD returned 38 results and over 2000 hits for a negated search. Searching for "kobold" in CRE resulted in over 30 hits and "sword" in ITM resulted in over 60 hits.
Can you be more specific about your game configuration? Does the Debug Console displays anything unusual? Is the game type correctly detected? Can you manually open any resources that should have matched but were not displayed in the results list?