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[v3.4] Aura, a gnome artificer NPC for BG:EE + SoD

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  • LavaDelVortelLavaDelVortel Member Posts: 2,666
    Also, when creating you simply need to practice. Do not cut yourself from your practice because there is a chance the first project won't be great. I started with Aeon, a human who has a Moonblade, so... yeah. But hey - check what happened next. My Colours of Infninity mods that got better opinions that I have ever though it would get.

    Aura is great, but it's AionZ's work. Your work will be different. Just remember what you liked in this mod, what you liked in other mods, what other things you'd enjoy yourself in the mod... and then create it. Check other mods when you wonder how something was coded. Kulyok once released Branwen BG2 NPC to show how stuff is handled. Check it out!

    Thought I would add my 2 cents, sorry for the offtopic, AionZ.
    ThacoBellRaduziel
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    I don’t mind the discussion.

    I will say however that I care infinitely more for execution over premise. You want to write a human with a moonblade? An ogre bard with 18 Charisma? Another drow? Go ahead. It can’t sound more silly than ‘weeaboo tinker gnome’ but it’ll work if you write it well. It may be harder to impress and may not be a good idea unless you really know what you’re doing, but everything has the potential to work.
    ThacoBellCaszidyRaduziel
  • rashkaerashkae Member Posts: 179
    edited January 2019
    I've been neglecting Balgur's gate for a while, but what a treat this was to find on my return. The Artificer class is a great achievement technically.  It doesn't overpower the game in any way, but adds an interesting level of utility and lots of new game mechanics to explore.

    She has lots of interaction with the world that fits right in, but doesn't force walls of text on you.

    And to top it off, finally, a Gnome who is *very* gnomish, but at the same time, not a farce.  I like the 'funny gnome' sidekick as much as as anyone, (except Grobnar, he's just annoying), but it's a horribly overused Trope.  And the new portrait is super cute too.

    Thanks much for all the ridiculous hours of work that must have gone into this.. A great addition to BG:EE

    Minor Criticism:  There was no dialogue after finishing the final fight in her questline, (at least, I'm assuming it's the final fight, BE:EE, not SoD yet.).   It seems at least a pithy comment would be appropriate.
    Edit:  Opps,,, Mizuchi had wandered off while confused.  When I finally found and killed her, the quest ended appropriately.


    When I had the Golddigger and the Idol in my Inventory, Asking Aura if she work on something for me did not include them.  Do I have to hold on to items for a length of time?

    The Autosave immediately before that final fight did not work properly.. when I tried to load it, Aura did not rejoin my party, and the opposing henchmen did not go hostile.
    Post edited by rashkae on
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    @rashkae

    Thank you!

    Aura needs a day to examine the items before they can be upgraded. An overhead message should pop up when an item is ready for upgrading, and if it isn't then it is an issue I need to look into.

    I've updated the mod with a modified autosave script that shouldn't break the quest anymore.
    GusindaRaduziel
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    edited February 2019
    A listing of what's currently set for BG2-Aura. Only stuff that's 100% confirmed.
    • Friendship with all PCs
    • Full romance with non-evil females with 12+ INT and 10+ CHA - female gnomes get a bit of extra content
    • Item Upgrades
    • Optional upgrades to the automaton using resources, from an improved weapon enchantment to magic resistance to abilities such as Golem Haste and Gas Cloud, or even a specific selection of arcane spells
    • New mage spells
    • Two SoA quests, 1 ToB quest
    • Multiple epilogues
    • A mechanical... companion (non-combatant) for the PC as a reward during a certain point, with a couple of handy functions.
    • Friendships (aka extended banters) with Aerie and Yoshimo
    • Crossmod is confirmed with all of Lava Del'Vortel's NPCs, naturally, since we are frequent collaborators
    Spoiler
    • ToB - Romance with Imoen, only if neither Aura or Imoen are in a relationship with anyone else during ToB (e.g. Imoen Romance, Kelsey and, ugh... Chloe). New epilogues included.


    Post edited by TheArtisan on
    Raduzielmegamike15ThacoBell
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    i think there should be some form of romance conflict with imoen and aura.  i know that can't really work as it's supposed to happen in tob when your romances are already set in stone but it's just a suggestion.


  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    Is it weird that I've always thought of Imoen as asexual? I always find it weird when mods give her romances.
  • Son_of_ImoenSon_of_Imoen Member Posts: 1,806
    ThacoBell said:
    Is it weird that I've always thought of Imoen as asexual? I always find it weird when mods give her romances.
    I don't think the first thing you mention is weird, I never think of Imoen as romancable. She's cute, funny, sisterlike. I do find the second thing you mention is weird, just like you do.
    ThacoBell
  • Son_of_ImoenSon_of_Imoen Member Posts: 1,806
    On-topic: my first meeting with Aura was yesterday!
    ThacoBell
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    people see her as a childhood friend romance common in alot of stories. so it's easy to see why people would want to romance her.
    Son_of_ImoenThacoBell
  • SkitiaSkitia Member Posts: 1,052
    edited February 2019
    So I've played part of this mod, but mostly been using it to help me learn NPC Modding for my own NPCs, going through the code and text and really appreciating all of the work that has been put into it. The imagined Artificer Kit is amazing, perhaps one of the best, and very fitting for a gnome or Lantan character.

    Mod Pros:
    Artificer Kit blends very well with the world, and really serves to embellish Aura.
    Muffy.
    The mod adds plenty of features to enjoy and delve into with a simple quest that doesn't command and take away the main narrative's attention.
    Easy to find location, if you didn't check where to find her, you'd probably find her naturally.
    The personality and race choices fill a neglected niche, there aren't many fine (not insane) gnome characters. 


    Con:
    The Kara-tur aspect of Aura was a hit or miss for me at times. Sometimes it felt too much like a Westerner's appreciation of Japan rather than a fantasy depiction of Kara-tur. (I may be picky here, given Kara-tur's inspiration of it.
    While excellent mechanical additions for player enjoyment, priest/artificer and illusion/artificer feel like odd choices for Aura, given the character's details. (Of course, she can be just set to artificer) 

    Bugs: In Aura's bc0aura.d file, Montaron's, Faldorn's, and Yeslick's banters will probably never or incorrectly fire, as they check Alora's state, and use AuraAlora conversation 1 for their conversation. I found this out recently when working on my own banter files and using bc0aura.d as a base.

    All in all this is a really excellent contribution to the NPC Mods. It's inspired me to slog in hours of work on my own mods to hopefully add someday soon, even if the highlight of the mod years has past. I tried previously years ago on a BG:2 mod pre-EE days but all of my computer's data was lost and I abandoned it in frustration over having to start over.




    ThacoBell
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @Skitia I appreciate having the options for Aura's class. I can never leave Imoen behind, and my charname is usually some flavor of rogue, so fitting another pure thief (even one as cool as an Artificer) is kind of a painful stretch for me.
  • rashkaerashkae Member Posts: 179
    edited February 2019
    What seems especially cool about Aura's class variants is she seems to have dialogue tailored to the variant you have installed.  I haven't replayed with an Illusionist yet, but with the Cleric/Artificer, you can ask her about magic training, and she'll say something about having always been interested, but magic tutors weren't really available, and she knows her skills are best at artificing.  But you can then get her to talk about her Spiritual training/apprenticeship with her Kara-Tur Mentor.  I expect those dialogues would be a little different if I installed the Illusionist variant?

  • SkitiaSkitia Member Posts: 1,052
    Yeah, I agree on a mechanical player playing perspective, it's very useful to have more than one class options, and I also noticed some dialogues changed base on class choice (I saw this for priest when I was studying the files, didn't see it for illusionist though). 
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    @Skitia

    Ohmygod I can't believe the banters were still bugged. I thought I sweeped it for incorrect checks already but clearly I missed quite a few. Patched.

    Thank you for the feedback. I wish I could've written a lot of the content differently in hindsight, but once I started with certain aspects I just had to finish it all the way. There's no changing it now unless I rewrite entire batches of content from scratch. The Eastern culture writing is certainly something I probably wrote earlier than I should have. It plays a lesser part in BG2 whereas Aura's Lantanese background becomes more important mostly because it has been 'resolved' in a sense but what I do write regarding her experience in Kozakura will hopefully be better.

    As for why she has that seemingly unnecessary bit of foreign fetish at all, although this isn't something you've brought up - well, it's what happens when I accept that I won't be able to write six different characters so I try to mesh pieces of different content together. If I hadn't chosen this particular direction then Aura would've been written as a chaotic good anarchist who enjoys solving problems by blowing things up instead.

    Illusionist/Artificer actually feels reasonable to me storywise as an extension of her rudimentary magical training. Priestess/Artificer I grant you is a bit of a stretch and the minor dialogue extension I wrote didn't explain it well enough, but it's a useful class that grants an extra niche so I figured people would just overlook it. Funnily enough I don't use either because I find that multi-classing handicaps the Artificer too much because of its extreme level dependency. The reason multi-classes are a thing is solely for the sake of giving her a place in more party compositions.
    Gusinda
  • FireSeraphFireSeraph Member Posts: 3
    Sorry but I'm having an installation error with this mod. I installed a previous version and it worked fine but when I'm installing the newest version, it's giving me a parsing error. What am I doing wrong here?

    Here's the error from the debug file (at least based on what I can understand)

    [Aura_BG1/scripts/baldur.baf] PARSE ERROR at line 12 column 8-36
    Near Text: )
    Type mismatch in "Allegience" argument of [Allegiance].
    Expecting type "integer".

    [Aura_BG1/scripts/baldur.baf] ERROR at line 12 column 8-36
    Near Text: )
    Parsing.Parse_error
    ERROR: parsing [Aura_BG1/scripts/baldur.baf]: Parsing.Parse_error
    Stopping installation because of error.
    Stopping installation because of error.
    Stopping installation because of error.

    ERROR Installing [Aura NPC for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition], rolling back to previous state
    Unable to Unlink [Aura_BG1/backup/0/OTHER.0]: Unix.Unix_error(1, "unlink", "Aura_BG1/backup/0/OTHER.0")
    [Aura_BG1/backup/0/UNSETSTR.0] SET_STRING uninstall info not found
    Will uninstall 704 files for [AURA_BG1/SETUP-AURA_BG1.TP2] component 0.
    Uninstalled 704 files for [AURA_BG1/SETUP-AURA_BG1.TP2] component 0.
    Unable to Unlink [Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0]: Unix.Unix_error(20, "unlink", "Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0")
    Unable to Unlink [Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0.TEXT]: Unix.Unix_error(20, "unlink", "Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0.TEXT")
    SIRENE/SETUP-SIRENE.TP2 0 0 Installed
    SIRENE/SETUP-SIRENE.TP2 0 2 Installed
    ERROR: Parsing.Parse_error
    Please make a backup of the file: SETUP-AURA_BG1.DEBUG and look for support at: Artemius_I
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    @FireSeraph

    Fixed typo.
  • FireSeraphFireSeraph Member Posts: 3
    edited February 2019
    @AionZ

    Thanks! Redownloaded the new file and it worked like a charm!

    Edit: Sorry to be the bearer of bad news again but after installing the Aura mod, the game simply crashes. I tested it 4 times, without the Aura mod, with the Sirene mod installed only, with Aura mod installed only and with both Aura and Sirene mod installed. The game only crashes with the Aura mod installed each time.

    Problem signature:
    Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
    Application Name: Baldur.exe
    Application Version: 0.1.0.0
    Application Timestamp: 5b7598b7
    Fault Module Name: Baldur.exe
    Fault Module Version: 0.1.0.0
    Fault Module Timestamp: 5b7598b7
    Exception Code: 40000015
    Exception Offset: 004651a0
    OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
    Locale ID: 1033
    Additional Information 1: 7771
    Additional Information 2: 7771af2785d72521e7ad258ad3e99d90
    Additional Information 3: c4b9
    Additional Information 4: c4b9926f54638010020421701feb2ca2
    Post edited by FireSeraph on
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    @FireSeraph

    I’m afraid I can’t reproduce and the error message doesn’t tell me anything useful. Can anyone else tell me if the newest version causes the same issue?
  • FireSeraphFireSeraph Member Posts: 3
    edited February 2019
    @AionZ I just managed to fix the issue. Turns out that I had to uninstall BGEE and delete the entire folder before reinstalling the entire game afresh. That fixed the problem and now I can install and run the game properly. It might have been some old lines of code conflicting with the new ones because I had trouble installing older versions of the Aura mod as well.
  • SkitiaSkitia Member Posts: 1,052
    I would just un-install any mods and delete the over-ride folder next time, then re-install them. I've noticed sometimes stray junk remains after an uninstall. I'm constantly uninstalling re-installing my in-progress mods and noticing that happens occasionally.

    Alternatively you could delete just the mods files from the over-ride folder that are still in there.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    FireSeraph wrote: »
    @AionZ I just managed to fix the issue. Turns out that I had to uninstall BGEE and delete the entire folder before reinstalling the entire game afresh. That fixed the problem and now I can install and run the game properly. It might have been some old lines of code conflicting with the new ones because I had trouble installing older versions of the Aura mod as well.

    Next time, if you use one of the launchers, just tell it to "verify game files". It wipe all mods and give you a fresh install in just a few minutes. You'll want to do this whenever you change what mods you have installed.
    Raduziel
  • Son_of_ImoenSon_of_Imoen Member Posts: 1,806
    edited February 2019
    You might also keep a clean install, copy the whole install folder over to another location under another name, and only mod the copied installation. So you always have a clean install to go back to (and perhaps create another setup, I myself have always got several games in parallel).
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    FireSeraph wrote: »
    @AionZ I just managed to fix the issue. Turns out that I had to uninstall BGEE and delete the entire folder before reinstalling the entire game afresh. That fixed the problem and now I can install and run the game properly. It might have been some old lines of code conflicting with the new ones because I had trouble installing older versions of the Aura mod as well.

    Next time, if you use one of the launchers, just tell it to "verify game files". It wipe all mods and give you a fresh install in just a few minutes. You'll want to do this whenever you change what mods you have installed.

    or how i do it. have a back up of both games. uninstall the game, remove the folder in the steam folder, then restore, and then you got a fresh install.
  • SkitiaSkitia Member Posts: 1,052
    Having gone through the P.I.D. section in c0auraj, I noticed a difference between Auro's SoD flirts and her BG1 flirts. BG1 doesn't check for gender, (SoD doesn't need to as it only activates with the romance variable at 1, which only females can achieve), so males get all the content females do. Given the SoD flirts and the Bg1 flirts are the same content, I'm wondering if this was intentional or an oversight.
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    @Skitia

    It's an intentional, albeit admittedly rather strange creative decision.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    megamike15 wrote: »
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    FireSeraph wrote: »
    @AionZ I just managed to fix the issue. Turns out that I had to uninstall BGEE and delete the entire folder before reinstalling the entire game afresh. That fixed the problem and now I can install and run the game properly. It might have been some old lines of code conflicting with the new ones because I had trouble installing older versions of the Aura mod as well.

    Next time, if you use one of the launchers, just tell it to "verify game files". It wipe all mods and give you a fresh install in just a few minutes. You'll want to do this whenever you change what mods you have installed.

    or how i do it. have a back up of both games. uninstall the game, remove the folder in the steam folder, then restore, and then you got a fresh install.

    That doesn't seem any faster.
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    Owing to a message I received I think it's worth mentioning that Aura-BG1 is not recognized by EET at the moment and trying to install EET with the mod installed on BG:EE will not work. Unfortunately this is something whoever manages EET needs to deal with, but it's possible to fix it locally by opening the EET/tbl/compatibility.tbl file and add the following line:
    AURA_BG1 0           //Aura NPC Mod for BG:EE
    
    I think that's all that's needed according to my memory, but I haven't tested. If there are errors do tell.
  • SkitiaSkitia Member Posts: 1,052
    edited March 2019
    There's a rare stutter bug associated solely with save files that import from BG:EE to Dragonspear with Aura's talktimer actively ticking from the last playthrough. When the timer reaches zero and she's in the starting crypt in Siege of Dragonspear, she'll stutter, as there's no valid conversation as she's already using C02Aura for her conversation file, rather than C0Aura. (This also makes the code of line switching old C0aura's dialogue to the new in her cutscene script redundant, I've no idea why or how Siege of Dragonspear auto-switches it).

    You can fix it by just having the talk variable set to a number that will never fire in the first crypt area, or add a condition of not being in a dungeon to the C02aura.baf file.

    Since Aura is using her C02Aura conversation file, player initiated dialogue is going to have the crusade brought up before it's an actual thing within the crypt when you ask for advice. Probably fixed by having the P.I.D. fire some one-liner while in the crypt for simplicity, or reducing options so it isn't available.

    Thanks a lot for the SoD portion of this work, it's been invaluable research, enjoyment and learning material. I never knew you could move a destroyed NPC, and the cutscene work is really cool, a piece of code I haven't attempted yet. (And some of the custom item work with opening containers/conversations/spell abilities/psuedo-shops is amazingly cool and complex).
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    @Skitia

    Thanks, I’ll look into fixing that.

    I wouldn’t recommend using my makeshift imitation of the SoD style banters as a base for your own mods though, as they’re a frequent cause for stutters. I’m still looking into a better way to deal with them.
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