Would you be willing to spend 30 minutes entering these comments into redmine then? A long rant is all fine and good sometimes, but if you actually want changes to be made in the game then having them in redmine is the way to make that much more likely to happen.
@mf2112 To me all these issues seem like deliberate changes. Stuff doesn't just accidentally happen like this. Someone sat down and did their worst intentionally. Which if baffling and at the core of my complaints, I guess. So are these actually bugs? I you say so, I will report them as such. I'm just not convinced that they'll be seen as problematic.
Portraits - the functionality still exists to have different images for the large and small portrait pictures. I utilise that functionality in my portrait picker mod.
Abilities - Only BGEE+SOD has the 3rd solution, BGEE and BG2EE have the 2nd. In BGEE+SOD, they are vertical not horizontal, and I honestly can't ever remember ever hitting the STORE button by mistake. For me, when rolling stats the two buttons I use the most are REROLL and STORE. I only hit RECALL when I am fed up rolling... So they are arranged in the order you would use them: REROLL = Used a lot STORE = Used occasionally RECALL = Used a very small number of times
Weapons - Fully agree with you here. Further, it should show the weapons you can't use in one group AFTER the weapons you can use.
Character Creation Order - Fully agree with you here. I would say that the preset order is very frustrating and I've been playing around with that order in a few mods but it makes complete sense to allow the user to go back change gender/portrait at any time. Also, if the order can't be changed but you do decide to go back then the abilities rolled should be STORED in buffer for when you get to that stage again.
PS - If it bothers you that match about the button order I can send you a very simple UI mod that changes the order of the buttons ... it literally will take 1min to do.
@mf2112 To me all these issues seem like deliberate changes. Stuff doesn't just accidentally happen like this. Someone sat down and did their worst intentionally. Which if baffling and at the core of my complaints, I guess. So are these actually bugs? I you say so, I will report them as such. I'm just not convinced that they'll be seen as problematic.
@klatu I am not sure of the motivation for the change but I find it hard to see ill intentions. Sometimes design choices get made but I don't think anyone purposefully tried to make things worse. I do know that Beamdog has been willing to change things for community member requests when asked. Like adding gui checkbox options. The things you pointed out could use improvements and I believe Beamdog is more than happy to make improvements wherever needed. Obviously not everything can be done simultaneously so having tickets clearly descriptive of what we want helps the devs prioritize.
Let's say you want to use a custom portrait for your new PC. Most likely you just saved a new BMP in your "portraits" folder for your new character. You named the files "man01M.bmp" and "man01S.bmp". Two different files for two different usages: "man01M.bmp" for the character record screen and "man01S.bmp" for the side-bar in the main game. Previously, it was possible to choose custom portraits freely for each case from a list. You would simply select "man01M" for the medium sized portrait and "man01S" for the small sized portrait from inside that list and be done.
Way too complicated, right? Luckily Beamdog fixed this. Now, the list is gone. Instead you can have to cycle through each installed custom portrait. What? You installed 500 custom portaits? You fool! Have fun cycling through at least half of those, ***hole! There no longer is a distinction between medium and small portraits. It'll simply downscale the chosen portrait for the smaller scale (you can't actually assign the smaller portrait separately). Convenient! What? You carefully cropped and resized a larger portrait to fit the smaller scale? You idiot, didn't you know Beamdog is better at this than you?!
To streamline this even further, Beamdog has implemented the following functionality™: All you have to do is choose any portrait whatsoever, start the game, export your character, exit the game, download and open and set up NearInfinity.jar, open the exported character, edit the portrait strings to point to your custom portraits, save the file, restart BG, start a new game again, import the edited character and you're ready to roll! Easy, right?! I'm impressed with how straightforward this has become!
Also, you're wrong about not being able to use separate portraits for large and small, for any set named *L.bmp and *M.bmp, choosing the "L" portrait will assign the "M" portrait to the sidebar.
@BillyYank and others: Look, as a user I appreciate mods. I love 'em (I'm a modder myself). But as a customer I have to question why some of this behaviour is so broken that it requires modding in the first place.
Also, you're wrong about not being able to use separate portraits for large and small, for any set named *L.bmp and *M.bmp, choosing the "L" portrait will assign the "M" portrait to the sidebar.
Are you sure? The way it used to work was (if my memory serves): The L portrait was reserved for ToB's ending credits (which doesn't even apply to the PC. M was completely ignored. L was used for record screen, S was used for the sidebar portrait. Also, not to be a d***, but what you describe is exactly the issue. If the sidebar portrait is simply L scaled down, then where is S? It's not used.
The sidebar portrait isn't the L scaled down if you have two separate files. If you have the following in your portraits:
FHaRg10L
FHaRg10M
Then you'll have different portraits in the character sheet and sidebar. As for the old S-sized portraits, they aren't used anymore, I assume because they're too small for modern screens.
Comments
To me all these issues seem like deliberate changes. Stuff doesn't just accidentally happen like this. Someone sat down and did their worst intentionally. Which if baffling and at the core of my complaints, I guess.
So are these actually bugs? I you say so, I will report them as such. I'm just not convinced that they'll be seen as problematic.
Portraits - the functionality still exists to have different images for the large and small portrait pictures. I utilise that functionality in my portrait picker mod.
Abilities - Only BGEE+SOD has the 3rd solution, BGEE and BG2EE have the 2nd. In BGEE+SOD, they are vertical not horizontal, and I honestly can't ever remember ever hitting the STORE button by mistake. For me, when rolling stats the two buttons I use the most are REROLL and STORE. I only hit RECALL when I am fed up rolling... So they are arranged in the order you would use them:
REROLL = Used a lot
STORE = Used occasionally
RECALL = Used a very small number of times
Weapons - Fully agree with you here. Further, it should show the weapons you can't use in one group AFTER the weapons you can use.
Character Creation Order - Fully agree with you here. I would say that the preset order is very frustrating and I've been playing around with that order in a few mods but it makes complete sense to allow the user to go back change gender/portrait at any time. Also, if the order can't be changed but you do decide to go back then the abilities rolled should be STORED in buffer for when you get to that stage again.
PS - If it bothers you that match about the button order I can send you a very simple UI mod that changes the order of the buttons ... it literally will take 1min to do.
I made a simple 10-portraits at a time mod:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/57176/mod-multi-portrait-mod-new-bg-ii-version
@Mr2150 made a more complex mod that adds filtering and searching:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/56916/mod-portrait-picker-for-bgee-sod-and-bg2ee-v2-1
Also, you're wrong about not being able to use separate portraits for large and small, for any set named *L.bmp and *M.bmp, choosing the "L" portrait will assign the "M" portrait to the sidebar.
Another thing that makes it easier is you can now list your custom portraits in a .lua file so they show up on the correct gender.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/57210/m-lua-files-and-bgee-lua
(As an aside, using EEKeeper to change a character's portrait is much easier than using NI.)
I filed the IMO most pertinent comlaints on redmine:
http://redmine.beamdog.com/issues/25220
http://redmine.beamdog.com/issues/25221
http://redmine.beamdog.com/issues/25222
http://redmine.beamdog.com/issues/25223
Look, as a user I appreciate mods. I love 'em (I'm a modder myself). But as a customer I have to question why some of this behaviour is so broken that it requires modding in the first place. Are you sure? The way it used to work was (if my memory serves): The L portrait was reserved for ToB's ending credits (which doesn't even apply to the PC. M was completely ignored. L was used for record screen, S was used for the sidebar portrait.
Also, not to be a d***, but what you describe is exactly the issue. If the sidebar portrait is simply L scaled down, then where is S? It's not used.
FHaRg10L
FHaRg10M
Then you'll have different portraits in the character sheet and sidebar. As for the old S-sized portraits, they aren't used anymore, I assume because they're too small for modern screens.