[MOD] Portraits Portraits Everywhere (for BG1EE, SOD, BG2EE, IWDEE, EET)
smeagolheart
Member Posts: 7,963
by @Smeagolheart and @bob_veng
Preview
WHAT IS IT?:
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Portraits Portraits Everywhere (PPE) - core component
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The core component of this mod adds portraits to speaking NPCs in the Enhanced Edition Infinity Engine games. It can be installed on multiple platforms including Enhanced Edition Trilogy (EET), Baldur's Gate 1 Enhanced Edition including Siege of Dragonspear, Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition. The mod can add representative portraits for all 4617 speaking creatures throughout these games so that when you speak to them, these NPC characters that inhabit these rich worlds will appear a little bit more alive.
If any of the portraits are not to your satisfaction due to quality or you feel that the portrait does not match the in game NPC, feel free to post on the forums for potential inclusion in future updates. If there is a future patch to
the game, it's a good idea to reinstall this mod. Keep in mind that when installing or reinstalling this mod, NPCs on areas you've previously visited won't get portraits, but areas and NPCs you have not yet visited will get portraits.
If you start a new game, then all NPCs that should get portraits will get them.
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Category Portraits (Recommended)
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This mod has an optional Category Portraits component to assign portraits from a pool of random portraits to actors that are not assigned specific portraits by the main component. This component is highly recommended and covers beings that are genericly named. For example, human characters named "Thief" or "Mugger" will get portraits from the male or female Rogue pool, characters named "Commoner" or "Peasant" will get portraits from the commoners pool, and "Drow" will get portraits from either the male or female Drow pool. There are more than ninety pools of random portraits that range from a few portraits to over 20. There are more breakdowns for groups of Humans than there are for other races. Please note that you may get repetition in portraits if you speak to multiple characters as once a pool of portraits is exhausted, then an additional round of picks from the portrait pool will be assigned to additional NPCs.
There are two ways to install the Category Portraits component - Sequentially or Randomly. If you install the component 'Sequentially' then Portraits from the Pool are assigned in numerical order to allow for reproducible results. That means that when you speak to "Mugger" in the dark alley, he should look the same if you were to reinstall the mod. There is also a Random option to grab a random portrait from the pool so that our friend the "Mugger" might get a different portrait if this component was installed a second time. If the random option is selected then a random pick will be selected. The way the random picked works is that all possible numbers from a pool are used before a second pick of the same number is picked meaning that you should not get random picks out of a group of 5 with the same number being used until all 5 of the portraits have been picked.
This is optimized for vanilla supported games but you might get some decent results for mod added characters. For example if installed after other mods, then matches from those mods of characters specifically named "Mugger" would get portraits from the Rogue pool. Please note that how other mods name or code their creatures or whether they name their rogue characters specifically "Mugger" or one of the other matching keywords is beyond my control - results may vary. Due to the varying coding standards in mods and the vast number of potential mods available, there is little chance that this component will act perfectly for mod added NPCs but it will do the best that it is able to do. An example of where the component would not act perfectly is a a character for a mod that works for Baldur's Gate 1EE that describes a human as a Half Orc through dialogue. Mods made for Baldur's Gate 1 do not support Half Orcs because there were not a playable race and that character would appear human to the engine and would get a human portrait.
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Isandir's CHARNAME Portraits
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A beautiful portrait pack by Isandir in a style similar to vanilla BG1 and BG2 portraits.
Preview of some of the portraits:
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Replace Low Quality TOB & SOA Portraits
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This component, for Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, replaces legacy portraits included with the game for Bhaalspawn. The portraits that
are replaced are generally low quality 38x60 size and are replaced with beautiful 169x266 portraits created for the Enhanced Edition
engine.
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Edwin/Edwina
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This component, for Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, gives Edwin a female portrait once he completes the Nether scroll ritual. The portrait
was created by Syntia13 and is based on the default portrait for Edwin in Baldur's Gate 2. This is highly recommended but optional. If
you've replaced the portrait for Edwin with a custom one, you might not want to load this component.
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Ust Natha Drow NPCs
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This component, for Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, provides drow versions of vanilla NPC portraits. This is highly recommended but
optional. The code to transform the portraits was thoughtfully provided by K4thos. Most of the drow versions of NPC portraits are by
Isandir. If you've replaced your NPC companion portraits with a custom portraits, you might not want to load this component.
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Vampire NPCs
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This component, for Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, provides vampire versions of vanilla NPC portraits. This is highly recommended but
optional. If you've replaced your NPC companion portraits with a custom portraits, you might not want to load this component.
"Vampirized" NPC portraits provided by lefreut.
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CREDITS and Additional Information
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This mod is based on older mods for Baldur's Gate prior to the EE editions had mods that included small portraits for some NPCs. The pictures in these mods are lower resolution than the ones carefully selected for this mod. Some of these older mods for classic Baldur's Gate with smaller pictures that directly inspired this project are:
Gerri's BGT NPC Portraits ( https://kerzenburg.baldurs-gate.eu/downloads.php?id=69 )
BG1NPC ( http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg1npc/ )
Sources of the pictures include Neverwinter Nights portraits found online, searches for baldur's gate and IWD portraits, and as a last resort search engines were used to round out the collection.
If there are any particular portraits that need to be removed you don't wish them to be featured in this work, let me know and the pictures will be removed. If you have any suggestions for submissions or changes, please feel free to comment in the discussion forum.
This mod is distributed freely and not for any commercial purpose non-profit. This mod was not developed, supported, or endorsed by BioWare, Interplay/Black Isle, Beamdog or any other official agency. Portraits remain the copyright of their respective rights holders.
If there are any copyright issues or this statement needs revision then please contact me to let me know what to do
about it. The purpose of this mod is not to make money but to advances knowledge and progress of the arts through the addition of something new onto a great game.
Special thanks to bob_veng on the baldur's gate.com forums for assistance recoloring, adjusting, selecting and creating new portraits for this mod.
Thank you all and enjoy,
Smeagol
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Technical Details and how you can add your own portraits
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All pictures are 169x266 or greater.
The table in (mod folder)\tbl\bgee.tbl lists the creatures/actors and portrait name.
You can reference the creature name to the actor in tools such as NearInfinity.
The Portrait names in the tbl are filenames in the portrait folder.
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KNOWN ISSUES
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None at this time
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Thanks everyone you know who you are, I hope you appreciate the hard work of the artists as I do.
Additional thanks to lynx and argent77 from Gibberlings3 Forums for coding assistance.
Thank you to Mr2150, Cahir, AstroBryGuy, Thels, lefreut, swit, K4thos, Syntia13, Isandir and others for their input
and assistance on the Baldur's Gate Forums.
The mod name was suggested by Cahir.
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v1.01 21 Sept 16
- Updated 57 portraits with bob_veng
v.1.00 08 Sept 16
- Updated 42 portraits with bob_veng
- revised code for Isandir's CHARNAME Portraits component
V.0.99 03 Sept 16
- Downgraded Weidu from beta version to stable version 239
- Added additional install components
Isandir's CHARNAME Portraits
Replace Low Quality TOB & SOA Portraits
Edwin/Edwina
Ust Natha Drow NPCs
Vampire NPCs
- Modified & replaced a few portraits with bob_veng
Version History:
V0.91 20 Aug 16
- Fixed a few entries
V0.90 20 Aug 16
- Initial Release
Post edited by smeagolheart on
24
Comments
The initial release may have some minor issues, let me know and I'll address them as I'm able to. I've been working on this for a long time.
Does every NPC receive a portrait? IE, do NPCs that don't fall in any specific category receive a portrait from some kind of default set?
Let me know what ya think...
Edit: reinstalled. Everything installed fine til I tried to install this and then it borked. I don't think it likes BG:EE XD Least not the gog version.
You'll need to run modmerge before installing any mods if you own SOD. It's been tested on the Beamdog version of BG1EE/SOD and it's fine.
The problems people run commonly with installing mods on SOD are from not running modmerge prior to installing mods.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/50441/modmerge-merge-your-steam-gog-zip-based-dlc-into-something-weidu-nearinfinity-dltcep-can-use/p1
EDIT:
Try changing this line:
REQUIRE_PREDICATE GAME_IS ~bgee bg2ee iwdee eet~
to this:
REQUIRE_PREDICATE GAME_IS ~bgee bg2ee iwdee eet sod~
or downloading the mod again...
And yes I've tried only installing this mod. Same issue.
When to install in EET game, right before setup-EET_end?
It's not added to this list yet...
For me, this is a must-have mod !
This way everything related to portraits would be in one mod.
Amazing release btw. :P
About Isandir for what it's worth, Isandir explicitly has on his art page that he wants you to ask for his permission before using those portraits. I don't know if he's even around anymore as well to ask, have not seen him in what seems like a couple years. Anyway for those reasons I didn't include drow versions at first.
Do you have his permission already? I see that you submitted that file to shs...
And I had edwina and edwin included but that's already added in bg2tweaks. I could add that and forbid if that is installed by BG2tweaks.
There are missing drow portraits in that release right for like Dorn and EE NPCs right?
1 - Tried unninstalling the old mod (Minor NPC Portraits for BGEE), and then instal PPE, lost the portraits on my saves. It just shows a blank space. (didnt try on a new area, my bad ). Also, lost customizations on UI.menu (like Space bar continues conversation , lost with the mod Dragospear UI ++). Tried unistall PPE and reinstal the old mod, didnt get the portraits back ( fortunally, I made an entire game folder bkp ).
2 - Restored bkp, installed PPE on top of Minor NPC Portraits, and all seems fine. The customization on UI.menu seems to be kept.
3 - There´s a bounty hunter called Zargas Flintblade on Nashkel Mines without a portrait. I dont know if he is from a mod , though.
Again, many thanks for the hard work, hope this feedback helps.
Before starting your next run, you won't have to install minor portraits for BGEE, in fact suggest uninstalling that. Thus mod doesn't effect ui.menu, any issues there would be with weidu reinstallation of the wonderful Dragonspear ui mod.
Long story short, glad it's working carry on....
The mods overwrite each other's portraits, so it's the last mod that you installed that counts. And there are quite a few NPCs added by the NPC Project that have their own portraits, so you'd miss out on their portraits if you don't install that component.
Of course, those NPCs will have low res portraits, but there's little that can be done there without searching for the source of all those portraits, and use higher resolution versions, if they exist to begin with!
And if so, what's the proper download link?
If it does, let me me know because that is not intended behavior and there's supposed to be a check if the character has a portrait already.
@AstroBryGuy
EDIT: I checked BG1NPC's code and it appears to destructively overwrite whatever portraits are there. So if you install BG1NPC after my mod or before it, you'll end up with BG1NPCs portraits. This may have somewhat unfortunate consequences.
There appears to be 42-43 portraits for only BG1NPC mod added npcs. In those 43 I believe there are 4 overlapping portraits from PPE.
It might be best for me to just incorporate those portraits and say you should skip installing that option on BG1NPC. I'm normally hesitatant to do that because who am I to speculate on how another mod will develop.