Erephine's 1PP mod is awesome
MatteoTurini
Member Posts: 105
Tonight I have installed in my BG 2 folder Erephine's 1PP mod for the first time. And it rocks.
I had not checked it out before, and it was a wonderful surprise to me: the spell animations are excellent, the paperdolls are better than the original ones, THE FLAMING SWORD IS BACK AGAIN!, the shields and armours are back to being shields and armours, and not strange metal pieces glued together anymore.
It gave me back the same sense of wonder that I had when I played BG 1 for the first time, curious about every spell effect and every new magical weapon--a sense of wonder that BG 2, though surely far superior in a lot of ways than its predecessor, had lost, for me. I find BG 2 paperdolls, for example, less refined than BG 1 ones, and in general I find the graphics much more streamlined and less fantastic. And THERE ARE NO FLAMING SWORDS, in BG 2.
Erephine made a truly wonderful mod. It alone sparked my interest in playing again BG 2 from the start, and with an excitement I had not had since a long time. I am so happy 1PP is going to be implemented in BG:EE.
I had not checked it out before, and it was a wonderful surprise to me: the spell animations are excellent, the paperdolls are better than the original ones, THE FLAMING SWORD IS BACK AGAIN!, the shields and armours are back to being shields and armours, and not strange metal pieces glued together anymore.
It gave me back the same sense of wonder that I had when I played BG 1 for the first time, curious about every spell effect and every new magical weapon--a sense of wonder that BG 2, though surely far superior in a lot of ways than its predecessor, had lost, for me. I find BG 2 paperdolls, for example, less refined than BG 1 ones, and in general I find the graphics much more streamlined and less fantastic. And THERE ARE NO FLAMING SWORDS, in BG 2.
Erephine made a truly wonderful mod. It alone sparked my interest in playing again BG 2 from the start, and with an excitement I had not had since a long time. I am so happy 1PP is going to be implemented in BG:EE.
8
Comments
So, we're hopeful.
Yes 1pp is a good mod.
Erephine also made Infinity Animations(together with Miloch), the mod that basically allows you to use BG1 character graphics(and more if you wish), in BG2. Most awesome graphical mod ever :P
So we love her :]
I assume you can't say anything about the other issue yet right? (cough bg1 character animations optional cough ), since you took the trouble to fix the dual wield crash (thanks for that)!
Oooor maybe an inclusion of infinity animations for the bg1 char sprites too?
P.S. I realise that you are very busy at the moment, so even post-ship doing stuff like that is no problem for us. The game and your priorities come first.
And, I definitely didn't want to do all that messing around with monster models and character models when I had no idea what I would have been doing.
If BG:EE can implement all the good stuff about the mod, and relieve me of practically needing an associate's degree in computer programming to enjoy it, then that is yet another reason that buying BG:EE was a good decision for me.
http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1006-1pp-v4-rc/
I agree that Erephine's work is nothing short of awesome. I'm very pleased to see all that effort rewarded by making it part of an official release.
Thats f#cking awesome!
Let's hope the devs include the BG1 ones in the data.
(can't imagine myself having to play BG:EE with the BG2 char animations :X)
I guess that I am going to have to hope for a good BG:EE and BG2:EE implementation of her work, because the mods she has posted just don't work for anybody who doesn't have very high skills in computer manipulation.
EDIT: Yup, I just downloaded her mod and attempted to install in my Gog.com/Baldur's Gate II directory. After the first fail, which said "please open in your Infinity Game directory, I moved it there. Again, fail. "Cannot find dialog.tlk" or some such.
This is a bad mod, technically speaking. It's very user-unfriendly. I'm sorry, but it is. I've tried to install it a bunch of times over the past few years, and I always get stopped with tech issues.
Perhaps BG:EE will give me the "golden ticket" I need to see what others are calling a very ingenious feat of modding.
I guess I will have to wait for BG:EE before I can see what the hype for Erephine's graphical enhancements is about.
I can, with my limited computer skills, think of at least a few reasons why this might happen: Perhaps Norton Utilities is doing one of its notorious anti-virus attacks on a harmless file. Perhaps Erephine has failed to see some nit-picker issue or the other with the gog.com version of the game. Perhaps I have some kind of write-protection active that I don't know about. Perhaps gog.com has "fatal" write-protections active on their version of the dialogue.tlk. (I know that their version is normally very mod-friendly, but not with Erephine's mod.)
Perhaps I have some background program or the other running that is not compatible with Erephine's mod. Perhaps I have mods installed on my gog.com BG2 directory already that are incompatible.
Regardless of whether one of these hypotheses is true, or not, I have consistently had technical problems every time I have tried to enjoy Erephine's work.
If BG:EE removes these obstacles toward my finally getting to see what the "Erephine hype" is all about, then I will have my decision to buy it reinforced.
I have not tried the new v4 as I don't want to reinstall the game right now as I'm in the middle of SoA, but I will after I finish my current playthrough.
Have you tried running the BG2 fixpack before installing it?
If anything, the fact that BG1 character avatars are fixed by the devs( and no longer crash the game when dual wielding), is a hopeful indication that they will include them in BG:EE as an option.
We can only hope they fullfill our request.
BTW for anyone trying to install an art mod as 1pp or Infinity animations, it's a good rule to make them one of the last installs, something like fixpack - all mods you want - art - widescreen will save you a lot of headache
I've never seen any developer confirm it, and every time someone asks we never get an answer. You can understand my concern.
I seriously want to believe it, but i'm pretty sure no one said it yet.
If anything, AndreaColombo would be the first to know i'm sure, as he is even more passionate about BG1 models than me i think
I would tag Nathan to confirm or deny, but if he wanted to answer he would have done so in the previous tag of the thread, so i take it as a no >_>
In the end, i see indications of them including the animations, the dual wield fix for example, and it's not that big of a deal, it is 40 megabytes, practically nothing.
But then again, we asked a lot, if they intended to include them, why not answer? They would just say "we intend to do it". End of the story, end of the questions, and for the "anxiety" for us.
Oh well, whatever.