[Mod] Multi-portrait mod - BG - SoD - BG2 - IWD - WeiDU installation

BillyYank

This mod replaces the standard, one picture at a time, portrait chooser with a screen that shows 10 pictures at a time. The mod is also a part of AncientCowboy's EE UI Tweaks. I took AC's WeiDU code and edited it down to make a WeiDU script to install my mod as a standalone.

BG screenshot:

BGII screenshot:

SoD screenshot:

IWD screenshot:

Installation instructions:
Download the zip file attached to this post and unzip it into your game folder (the one with chitin.key in it).

If you don't have UI.menu in your override already, extract it with Near Infinity.

Run setup-BYMultiPort.exe and follow the instructions like any WeiDU mod.

Now, start the game and you have your new portrait chooser.

In the portrait screen, you can click on the portrait or the button underneath to choose the portrait. The smaller arrows move forward or backward one screen, while the big arrows move forward or back five screens (50 portraits). The portraits wrap around just like the standard chooser does.

This is fully functional and should be able to handle any number of portraits.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Mr2150

It looks really good... I really like the portrait layout like that. It's nice and clean, but also familiar as an album of pictures.

It looks great and I can't wait to give it a whirl.


A few comments:

- I'd be interested to learn your experience with the Inc/Dec/Get functions as they frustrated me - hence going for a different approach.

- Adding an 'enabled' line with conditions to the frames will make them only appear if a portrait is inside the frame.

- If someone has a lot of portraits, you might want to consider numbering each page, a jump to page X edit box + button, and first/last page buttons, as well, if possible. You know, something that looks like:

|< < [Page 7 of 22] > >|

- I saw from one of your other posts that you have been editing BGEE.lua to gender split the portraits, are you aware of the functionality that @Dee posted about here ?

moody_mage

Are you able to display the file name for each portrait (maybe on mouseover)?

BillyYank

@Mr2150 To page through, I'd have to get all the portraits into the array. When I tried that with 480 portraits, it took so long I thought I'd crashed the game. I might be able to put in a button that skips forward 5 pages. I'll have to test to see how much faster it is to increment without getting.
At the moment, the portrait frames are part of the background. I plan to make a more dynamic version in the future that will display a different number of portraits based on screen size, but I thought I'd keep it simple for my first attempt. There won't be any empty frames, though. The increment and decrement functions wrap around when they reach the end of the list.

@decado Right now, I don't know of a way to get the file name of a portrait. If Beamdog publishes some documentation of what functions are available for UI modding ( @Dee hint, hint), then that's something I definitely want to add.

Dee

@BillyYank if there's a way to do it in Lua, you can add the function to an M_*.lua file and reference it in UI.menu. I'm not a programmer myself so I couldn't tell you how, but anything you can do with Lua, you should be able to do here.

Mr2150

@BillyYank for the filename I've been using the name in BGEE.lua with L added to the end.

BillyYank

@Dee , then who should I hint? I'm not shy.
You see, it's not so much what I can do with Lua as what Beamdog's code has implemented and exposed. For example, we know that the functions IncCurrentPortrait(), DecCurrentPortrait() and GetCurrentPortrait() can be used, but are there other functions that exist, but haven't been used in UI.menu? Is there a GetPortraitList(), GetPortraitByIndex(index), GetPortraitCount()? I could imagine that these or similar functions do exist in the code, because they might be useful in implementing the three functions we know about. Also, we don't really know anything about even the functions we can see. We know the object returned from GetCurrentPortrait() can be used as a bitmap, but is that all there is to it? It might be an object that contains a bitmap (or two) and the filename, size, position in portrait list, etc. Most likely, this documentation already exists somewhere in your company, since it's the kind of information your programmers would need to refer to. Unfortunately, it's most likely in a "don't show this to outsiders" state, someone would have to put in the hours to get it ready for release to the modding public. So I don't expect to see it anytime soon.

@Mr2150 , but how do I know which entry in BGEE.lua corresponds to portrait I'm looking at right now? Also, my mod should work with portraits that are not registered in the BGEE.lua.

Mr2150

I just sent you some code on how I've been doing it...

I grab all the default portraits and then grab all my custom portraits (by having them registered in another M_*.lua file) and then insert both sets into a new table which is what I use for display purposes.

Depending on how you're using the Inc/Dec/Get functions you might need to play with the code but it should give you a few pointers.

Zach_BD

Generally speaking, there should be few UI functions available in lua that don't appear somewhere in UI.menu or one of the lua files. This is because our process was to only expose engine functions to lua as we needed them. That being said, if you want to dig around you can set up console output and then run
print_r(_G)
This will output the global lua state table to the console, including every lua function.

Gynsburghe

I look forward to this! The new portrait chooser is downright painful with 700... I pared it down to like a 100-150, but if your portrait is alphabetically in the middle...

BillyYank

@decado , @Mr2150 discovered that the GetCurrentPortrait function does return an object that contains the filename, so I will be putting the filenames with the pictures.

@Zach_BD , how do I set up console output?

smeagolheart

BillyYank said:

@Zach_BD , how do I set up console output?

@BillyYank

I ran siege from the command prompt, and it outputs all sorts of stuff. I did the print_r(_G) command and I think it echos all sorts of lua stuff but I can't find a way to save that info.

i tried siegeofdragonspear > log.txt and it was empty....

I also tried
C:LogMessages(1)
and
C:LogSet("log.txt")
(based on this: http://www.gemrb.org/iesdp/appendices/clua/bgee.htm)

and while the commands weren't rejected, they didn't seem to do anything - I could find no log.txt file...

AncientCowboy

@smeagolheart siegeofdragonsphere 2>log.txt from the command prompt will do the trick

Zach_BD

AncientCowboy said:

@smeagolheart siegeofdragonsphere 2>log.txt from the command prompt will do the trick

This is correct. It outputs to stderr so you need to use 2> instead of >

Also worth noting you might not see any output in your file until you exit the game.

BillyYank

Check the OP for the beta release of this mod. Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

smeagolheart

really easy to do, and don't have to mess with a extra lua file specifying all the files right? Seems great...

I'd like there to show a full size of the current selected portrait somewhere, but it's okay as is for sure.

Mr2150

@BillyYank - it looks great.

I tried it with my portrait list (around 200 portraits now) and it was fast with unregistered portraits. I think I figured out why the deselect isn't working for you.

Great job...!

Pecca

If you want, you can use the graphics from my mod for your name button. It's the "RGSTBT.BAM" and "MOS3005.PVRZ" files.

BillyYank

@smeagolheart - I thought about adding a full size preview, but decided it would take up too much real-estate.

@Mr2150 - Thanks for your advice and for testing the unregistered portraits.

@Pecca - Thank you, I'll try that out.

BillyYank

Check out the OP for version 1 of the Multi-Portrait Mod. I resized the button for the portrait labels, tweaked the positioning of some of the elements and, thanks to @Mr2150 , fixed the deselection problem.

I'm calling this done for now. My next step will be to create the graphics for BG1 and BG2. I'm going to try to be a clever little monkey and make the graphic elements match up exactly, so I can reuse the GUI code.

BillyYank

I just tested this in SOD 2.3, and it still works. The graphics for the BG II version are coming along, but I haven't had as much time to work on them as I would have liked.

BillyYank

I made some time to work on the BG II graphics tonight, so I thought I'd post a teaser.

I've already made the BAM for the half-sized arrow buttons. Now I just need to make the filename button and I can start lining things up.

BillyYank

Well, looky what I've got here:

Check out the OP for download and install instructions.

BillyYank

I updated the BGII version so it's easier to install.

psycros

I don't have an override folder..I assume if you've got a clean install of BGEE you need to create it. However, I also can't find UI.MENU anywhere in my BGEE folder tree. I've got v2.x, GoG version.

BillyYank

Download Near Infinity and extract the UI.menu into your override folder.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/30593/new-versions-of-nearinfinity-available/p1

You need to create the override folder in the install folder for your game. That's the one with the chitin.key file in it.

Also, it's probably best to run Modmerge first, I don't know if there's a separate UI.menu in the SOD DLC zip.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/50441/modmerge-merge-your-steam-gog-zip-based-dlc-into-something-weidu-nearinfinity-dltcep-can-use/p1

BillyYank

Coming soon.

It's mostly done, I just need to get everything lined up. I'll probably release it tonight or tomorrow.

BillyYank

The BG version of this mod is done. See the OP for download and installation instructions.

Screenshot:

AncientCowboy

@BillyYank - May I include this mod in EEUITweaks? Thanks.

BillyYank

Yes, that would be great.

AncientCowboy

Thanks! Planned for the next update.