Aspiring Modder looking for Help/Advice

HalfOrcBeastmaster

Okay, so people who've seen my previous posts know I've been disgruntled by the inability to change epilogues and other things from the second game (my problems with the first are smaller, and not really a big deal for me since there are mods that address most of them). If anyone knows a good tool to use for this, I'll gladly partake of it.

Before anyone says Infinity Explorer or DLIEP or whatever it is, I've tried them both. Both went terribly. I'll probably blow a gasket if I have to endure one more complaint about how the technology I'm using can't find the dialog.tlk file or the chitin.key file, so if there's a better option, I'll take it.

Anyway, it's not just epilogues; there's also the matter of dialogue involving EE characters and maybe a few non-PC interactions. I'm brainstorming these days.

I may want to get some other people involved in any potential projects - idea filtering, beta-testing, scripts, voice-acting etc. Right now, it's all up in the air, and what I reallly want is a reliable modding program that even a technological amateur like me could use without clawing at my hair.

For posterity, I'll put a few potential ideas for mods down here in the OP so I can keep track of my ideas. I'm terrible with schedules, reminders and things like that. #

* Epilogue/Character Development Expansion/Editing
* Viconia Female Friendship Mod
* Cernd Expansion/Restructuring
* Cernd, Wilson and Jaheira dialogues cribbing on druid ability to speak to animals
* Dorn/Viconia friendship/potential romance banter pack
* Neera love triangle between Dorn and Rasaad
* Anomen switches faith to Tempus Character sidequest, featuring not-dead Brawnwen; also sidequest in ToB to allow him to become CG if this takes place
* Warlord Class/Kit
* Priest kits - Tempus, Auril, Umberlee; associated Stronghold quests take place elsewhere
* Barbarian/Monk Strongholds, elsewhere in Amn
* Potential new Characters: LN Male Human Wizard Slayer, feat. alchemy set for potions to cover weakness, and CG Female Half-Orc Barbarian armed with empathetic axes

Probably others.

Feel free to ask me about any of those mods, by the way. I'm not even sure where I'm going with half of them but they make for fruitful thinking for me.


# "*" used in place of bullet points

Tresset

From what I understand Weidu is the best (and possibly only acceptable) tool to use to modify dialog.tlk since it is the safest way to do so and has the lowest risk of seriously screwing things up. Weidu is not easy to use, however, if you are unfamiliar with command line/programmer type stuff.

Tresset

Also, I would personally recommend NearInfinity as an infinity engine tool. It is not good at handling Dialog.tlk, but pretty much nothing other than weidu is.

HalfOrcBeastmaster

Tresset said:

Also, I would personally recommend NearInfinity as an infinity engine tool. It is not good at handling Dialog.tlk, but pretty much nothing other than weidu is.

Hmm, thanks for that Weidu advice. I could learn to use it, I suppose. Anyway, where are the epilogues located? I don't think they're independent files, probably scripts designed to execute after the final cinematic if certain variables are met (like having those characters in the party, romance etc) but can't seem to find them.

Tresset

The epilogues are just strings in Dialog.tlk. They would be each identified by their strref number. You can use NI to search for the epilogues but using weidu is the only safe way to edit them.

I should point out that I may have understated how complicated weidu can be to use. Learning to use weidu is learning a programming language (albeit a simple one, or so I am told) and that is not going to be easy if it is your first attempt at doing so. I am a beginner at using weidu and I find it very frustrating most of the time. Fortunately, for you anyway, I imagine changing a strref would be one of the easiest things to do with it.

FrozenDervish

Also if you are using windows as i do not know about mac or linux, but short tutorial for setting up dltcep so that error about dialog.tlk

1. Download latest DLTCEP which is 7.7
2. Go to setup
3. Name your setup
4. Set to BGEE
5. For chitin key you must go into your EE folder all the way till you get to 06677 folder and select chitin.key
6. For the effects you will find the effects you need with your dltcep folder just click on the one for the game you are playing.
7. Uncheck the "read only" box
8. Select Weidu options
9. Select the language of your game. Mine is "En_US"
10. Then save and it should work without any issue.

Hope this helps if you wish to try dltcep again.

HalfOrcBeastmaster

@FrozenDervish Hmm, I'll take it under consideration.

Wisp

Regarding Tresset's concerns about the difficulties of modding: most of your ideas are mostly/entirely about dialogue, and those mods would hence be written almost entirely in the D format (edit: also scripts, but WeiDU does not insert itself there). The D format is a simpler representation of the game's dialogue format, with a few powerful actions added on-top (powerful in the sense they take complicated tasks and reduce them to one or a few lines of D code). Your other ambitions mostly encompass kits, which largely involve items, spells and other resources you are not required to use WeiDU for (but you certainly can and depending on what you want to do, WeiDU may or may not make your life easier) and the rule files, which WeiDU allows you to modify with a couple of declarative statements.

In short, any additional difficulty posed by WeiDU in your case will be rather massively dwarfed by whatever difficulty is inherent to modding the game in the first place.