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MegaMod 3.13: Mazzy Romance, Clara NPC, Darkside Anomen, Flying Aerie, For The Evil, & more! (DONE)

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  • masteralephmasteraleph Member Posts: 270
    Ugh, just realized that I’m going to have to decide which of Keldorn, Viconia, or Korgan not to take along for most of chapter 6 while I need the empty spot for various other folks (Mazzy and Imoen are givens at that point I think).
  • RatatoskrRatatoskr Member Posts: 711
    I should clarify since we've been discussing this, as of the next version you will actually have to take Mazzy to the Underdark in order to get the romance (or wait until TOB). We just hadn't quite gotten to coding that in yet.

    The whole point is that the friendship builds into the romance after you've traveled for some time. However, you will still be able to send Mazzy in and out of your party/have her die during combat without issues.
    Caszidy
  • masteralephmasteraleph Member Posts: 270
    Question- once Korgan/Viconia have gone through their talks and are willing to stay, can either be dropped and rejoin at high reputation? Or do they only stay at high reputation, but not join.
  • RatatoskrRatatoskr Member Posts: 711
    I think the answer is they'll join at high rep but @BCaesar could verify that better. He tested most of Viconia.
  • BCaesarBCaesar Member Posts: 452
    Question- once Korgan/Viconia have gone through their talks and are willing to stay, can either be dropped and rejoin at high reputation? Or do they only stay at high reputation, but not join.

    They should be able to be dropped and rejoin at high rep once this happens just because the change we made is to their character (there's no easy way to make it so they won't leave if Mazzy's in your party but will leave otherwise. It could probably be done, but we don't care enough.)

    In the normal game people will join you if your rep is too high or low, but then they just immediately leave after, so this will prevent the leaving. If someone's angry at you for some reason and refuses to join this won't fix that, but those cases are rare. Usually if someone's that angry they just leave forever.
    masteraleph
  • BCaesarBCaesar Member Posts: 452
    Skitia wrote: »
    PID's shouldn't break dialogue strings at all, really, if a check requires the player initiating dialogue. I can only see it breaking things if that check is missing. In fact it's usually the PID itself not firing because some other higher string is true (Perhaps from an expired timer that hasn't fired yet) and thus the PID doesn't fire.

    That said it is so easy to forget about PIDs since Baldur's Gate wasn't originally designed in a way where the player would talk to party members. I think doing the majority of content in normal NP Interjection fashion is best, though subtle reminders to the player to do a PID after big personal NPC quest moments to check their thoughts/reactions can be a nice touch.
    Ryz009 wrote: »
    I would love PIDs for Clara though but I'll live :P
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    @Skitia "PID's shouldn't break dialogue strings at all, really, if a check requires the player initiating dialogue."

    I've never had PIDs play nice with other mods. If any mod has them, I see borked dialogue elsewhere. Removing the components that has PIDs fixes it.

    Just to pipe in about PID's, PID's will not break other mods that have all their talks weighted at #-1 or below. However, there are other mods that have unweighted talks involving Mazzy (for example the Mazzy friendship) and if we add PID's for Mazzy it would break that other mod provided ours was installed before theirs (or is it after? I can't remember).

    For Clara we could include PID's without any problems because all of Clara's dialogue is from our mod.

    That being said we don't currently have plans to include PID's for anyone. We tried to make as much as possible match how the original game did things, except of course when we felt like doing something else :) .
    Ryz009
  • jasteyjastey Member Posts: 2,669
    edited June 2020
    Hi Ratatoskr and BCaesar, would you be willing to help me with Mazzy banters for my Solaufein NPC mod? I have some ready but they are flat and dull. I'd need help, and you could make them fit your Mazzy character concept, so this should be a win-win, no? o:)
    megamike15Timbo0o0o0
  • BCaesarBCaesar Member Posts: 452
    edited June 2020
    jastey wrote: »
    Hi Ratatoskr and BCaesar, would you be willing to help me with Mazzy banters for my Solaufein NPC mod? I have some ready but they are flat and dull. I'd need help, and you could make them fit your Mazzy character concept, so this should be a win-win, no? o:)

    Sure, send them over and we can see what we can do. The problem with Mazzy, that you've also discovered, is that she's often humorless and wordy so if she's talking with another sane, kind person it tends to be astoundingly boring. It works best if the person she's talking to is evil or crazy or both (unfortunately Solaufein is neither). But maybe we can come up with something.

    The only reason I can write for Mazzy at all is because we have very similar personalities (and Ratatoskr managed to grind through some of the CHARNAME-Mazzy dialogues that I had almost given up on), but if I had to do it all over again I probably would've made a Minsc or Korgan romance instead :D .

    While I'm posting here, random update: Ratatoskr has another update with a few more small parts and many bug fixes ready to go, she's just testing one last thing. We've got almost all the ToB talks done already, they're in the editing phase right now. Luckily ToB isn't that big.

    Wherever possible we've made Mazzy's dialogues and story separate from the romance (as opposed to the in-game romances where to get the extra story you have to romance the character). So almost everything involving Mazzy is viewable as long as you're Mazzy's friend; the romance talks are only the ones that required a relationship. For example we think we've figured out how to make our ToB wraith scene fit neatly as an addition into the existing wraith scene without overwriting anything else (either in game or from other mods) and that way you'll be able to see that if Mazzy's your friend and still see the romance wraith scene for someone else.
    ThacoBellCaszidy
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    That wraith scene is gonna be rough. I assume Patrick is gonna be the chosen loved one.
    Caszidy
  • RatatoskrRatatoskr Member Posts: 711
    edited June 2020
    @ThacoBell You'd think that, wouldn't you.... :smile:

    Anyway, it's true we should have another version up again soon. And there's a fair amount of bug fixes so you guys will probably want to install that one when it goes up. There's probably some other ones we've missed, but at least that should fix some of our worst issues.

    I just need to speed test some additional Clara & Anomen content to make sure it works before I post. Then it's going to be another big chunk of coding to get the TOB portion of Mazzy rounded out, plus some other super random stuff. As per usual.

    Hopefully the wraith scene actually won't be that difficult to code - the only thing making ours more complicated is that we're trying not to overwrite the other romance versions - or get overwritten by the Imoen romance in turn. The way most mods are coded, you'll only get the scene for whichever romance you installed last (I think it's last) if you have multiple romances - and as a general rule, Imoen overwrites everything.

    And @BCaesar, I wouldn't necessarily call it a grind. Just because that last SOA friendship talk is literally a third of the .tra file by itself. :wink: I think the trick to CN-Mazzy dialogue is either letting CN be the weird one, or actually going into deep philosophical discussions. But you can't necessarily do that with NPCs. I think a Cernd-Mazzy talk might actually be worse than watching the grass grow.
    CaszidyThacoBell
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    SIlver lining to a dead hard drive i suppose. New update out before I could start my run.
  • Ryz009Ryz009 Member Posts: 100
    Sweet thanks!

    Time for me to get some more silver dragon scales :P
  • CalemyrCalemyr Member Posts: 238
    edited June 2020
    Question on this: Is there any plan to get Clara voiced? Not necessarily on written dialogue, but on clicks? I find that it really kills it for me when that part's missing, such that I lost interest in her pretty quick and that's not being fair to the mod.

    Oh, one other question: Does Clara change much (statistics/buildwise) from when you first recruit her? A low level, single-class thief with mediocre to decent stats and an evil alignment is something of a hard sell given the crippling limit on party size. (This is 2nd edition, after all. Your stats are either exception or you aren't. 12 strength might mean something in 3rd+, but not here.)

    I ask because I am interested. I downloaded the mod for Mazzy, who starts solid but could use some expansion, but I am curious in what you can do with Clara, but without something mechanically interesting about her it's hard to justify including her long enough for her to shine.

    Aw, to hell with it. One last question: How serious is the Sarevok/Viconia thing? Because if that really goes somewhere, it'd be the perfect capper to a run I've been toying with for a while, the "Family" run: Charname, Charname's LI, Imoen, Kelsey, Sarevok, and now Viconia. Three Bhaalspawn and their respective lovers, working together to end the chaos started by their father. It'd only be better if Viconia could still have her change of heart if Sarevok does. Not sure who the LI would be, off hand. Possibly Sirine (who can be an ally of the party from the beginning, like Viconia). Possibly Aerie, the Badass Mother (Crom Feyr in one hand, a shield in the other, her baby in a back pack, screaming "This is going to hurt you a LOT more than it does me!").
    Post edited by Calemyr on
  • RatatoskrRatatoskr Member Posts: 711
    edited June 2020
    @Calemyr To answer your questions:

    1. We have no current plans to voice Clara. We put in a couple sounds that meshed well where we could (for death, waiting, etc), but there are no existing game sounds that work with our dialogue and creating voicing is beyond our scope at the moment. We did write all the normal selection/area sounds, but the only way to see them currently is to play the game with the subtitles on.

    2. Clara does change over time. She'll level fairly quickly at the start and shadowdancers can be good in combat with some micromanaging. She also gains different stat bonuses and special abilities from the later banters with other canon NPCs so her skills will change a bit depending on your party. With a banter accelerator and every NPC, she can actually get a bit ridiculous. She's definitely not meant to be a strength build, but if you either go the constant sneak attack route or keep her ranged, she can do decent damage and she's a great scout. Weirdly, she and my kensai mage are actually the primary melee fighters in my current game.

    3. I'm not sure how to answer the Viconia/Sarevok question. They are serious about it, but we didn't write that many talks so it's not a huge focus of the game.
  • CalemyrCalemyr Member Posts: 238
    Thanks for the quick answers.

    1. That's a pity. Even a basic voice set (select character, direct character) adds a lot to a character. I'm not talking about voiced dialogue, just to the degree the main character gets.

    2. That sounds awesome, frankly, if it works the way it sounds. She's definitely now on my list of NPCs I'd like to try, but the lack of a voiceset still pulls it further down the list than it probably deserves.

    3. That's answer enough. It was just an idea I had for a fun run and it sounded like this mod could be the perfect capstone to it, and looks like it will be.

    Either way, I fully realize both of these components are side features to the main event. I don't know if I'll ever use the romance angle of the mod for Mazzy, but I sure as Hades intend to take advantage of her having a friendship arc so I'm planning to enjoy this mod either way. I was just curious if the side shows are featuring in future runs.
  • BCaesarBCaesar Member Posts: 452
    edited June 2020
    Calemyr wrote: »
    Thanks for the quick answers.

    1. That's a pity. Even a basic voice set (select character, direct character) adds a lot to a character. I'm not talking about voiced dialogue, just to the degree the main character gets.

    2. That sounds awesome, frankly, if it works the way it sounds. She's definitely now on my list of NPCs I'd like to try, but the lack of a voiceset still pulls it further down the list than it probably deserves.

    3. That's answer enough. It was just an idea I had for a fun run and it sounded like this mod could be the perfect capstone to it, and looks like it will be.

    Either way, I fully realize both of these components are side features to the main event. I don't know if I'll ever use the romance angle of the mod for Mazzy, but I sure as Hades intend to take advantage of her having a friendship arc so I'm planning to enjoy this mod either way. I was just curious if the side shows are featuring in future runs.

    1. If someone wanted to record and send voice files for Clara, we could add them. It's just that creating them is beyond us.

    2. Ratatoskr has really gotten into the micro-management backstab thing. I did it and it works well (shadow-dancers can stealth in combat so with high stealth you just backstab and backstab and backstab until they die). Clara's ability to endlessly turn invisible has come in handy elsewhere too, especially for scouting. Some of her banters with other NPC's give her the find traps ability so she can search for traps while stealthed which is a nice combination.

    These days I tend to just keep her in the back shooting which is not really a full use of her powers. I view combat as an interruption to me playing the game rather than part of it, so I'm not the best person to ask though. (I once created an entire party of stealthed and invisible people just so I could avoid combat.)

    3. ToB isn't that long and both Viconia-Sarevok Banters have to play first so if you're without a banter accelerator it could still take up much of the game. The dialogues after the 2nd in-game banter are on a timer and I believe all happen on rest in the pocket plane. There's four talks, with two different versions of talks 3 and 4 depending on if the PC is romancing Viconia or not (like many of our things some of the talks are broken up by death and continue once the person is raised). If I try to add to any more tangents before our existing stuff is finished Ratatoskr will smite me, but I think it basically wraps up as it is though.

    4. Hah, half this mod is a sideshow to the main event, and even with regard to Mazzy probably 90% of the stuff we added for her doesn't require the romance.

    Some of the sideshows have grown quite lengthy. Clara started just as Mazzy's response to Hexxat's quest. Mazzy wanted to save Clara so we wrote that, and then it just kept going. Darkside Anomen attached itself to Clara (with an option to do it as the PC romancing Anomen as well). There's some more random stuff just waiting on coding too (A couple of the conversations in Flying Aerie are partly coded and in the mod already). Bodhi's in ToB just because I always wanted to play her and with Hexxat's code I had an idea how to make her work. At some point I'll get around adding her to SoA too (but that's near the end of the to-do list).
    CaszidyThacoBell
  • SkitiaSkitia Member Posts: 1,054
    edited June 2020
    Why not use assets from elsewhere, such as NWN, to get a voice for Clara? That is a lot easier in my opinion. You'd have to change the lines to match the voice, but you can find a personality that is closest to what you want.
    megamike15energisedcamel
  • energisedcamelenergisedcamel Member Posts: 110
    Skitia wrote: »
    Why not use assets from elsewhere, such as NWN, to get a voice for Clara? That is a lot easier in my opinion. You'd have to change the lines to match the voice, but you can find a personality that is closest to what you want.

    IWD2 also has a lot of soundsets that might work, or even DA:O, although I imagine that would be more work.

    Side note: I've always wondered why no one has converted the PC soundsets from DA:O to BG format (although I think I've seen the companion soundsets floating around somewhere). They're quite generic but have just enough personality that I'm sure they could work for a lot of different PC personality types.

    Anyway, this mod looks amazing, and I can't wait to try it out. If only we could find more people to put the same amount of time, love and dedication (and talent) in for the other under-represented NPCs (Valygar, Cernd, etc). Thanks for all your hard work so far!
  • RatatoskrRatatoskr Member Posts: 711
    The short answer for why we don't use sounds from those games is simply because we don't own them and have no desire to :-).

    But Clara does have a very specific personality that would be hard to match and that's also additional coding I'm not up for learning at the moment. My main goal right now is to just get Mazzy done. I can finally see the end in sight.
    energisedcamelThacoBell
  • BCaesarBCaesar Member Posts: 452
    Skitia wrote: »
    Why not use assets from elsewhere, such as NWN, to get a voice for Clara? That is a lot easier in my opinion. You'd have to change the lines to match the voice, but you can find a personality that is closest to what you want.

    IWD2 also has a lot of soundsets that might work, or even DA:O, although I imagine that would be more work.

    Side note: I've always wondered why no one has converted the PC soundsets from DA:O to BG format (although I think I've seen the companion soundsets floating around somewhere). They're quite generic but have just enough personality that I'm sure they could work for a lot of different PC personality types.

    Anyway, this mod looks amazing, and I can't wait to try it out. If only we could find more people to put the same amount of time, love and dedication (and talent) in for the other under-represented NPCs (Valygar, Cernd, etc). Thanks for all your hard work so far!

    Valygar actually has a fair amount of stuff for him. He's got at least two different romances (one is part of Romantic Encounters, the other is the Corthala Romantique (https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/npcs/corthala/) along with the Valygar Friendship too: http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/985-valygar-friendship-soa-tob/

    Cernd has very, very little. I think all he has is the Cernd friendship. http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1213-cernd-friendship-soa-tob/

    Off the top of my head, the characters with the least fan-made content are Cernd, Minsc, Korgan, and Jan; there are a couple of friendship mods but none of them have romances.
    energisedcamel
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    the character that currently don't have anything is jan. everyone else who did not already have a romance in the vanilla game has some form of mod at this point.
    ThacoBell
  • SkitiaSkitia Member Posts: 1,054
    Jan ends up with someone else at the end, he makes the least sense for a romance to me. Thus I would probably never touch him myself.
    ThacoBell
  • MaurvirMaurvir Member Posts: 1,090
    Skitia wrote: »
    Jan ends up with someone else at the end, he makes the least sense for a romance to me. Thus I would probably never touch him myself.

    What, you've never rolled a female gnome who really likes turnips? :lol:
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    Skitia wrote: »
    Jan ends up with someone else at the end, he makes the least sense for a romance to me. Thus I would probably never touch him myself.

    he can atlest have a friendship mod.
  • energisedcamelenergisedcamel Member Posts: 110
    You're all right, there are actually loads of mods for most of the NPCs. I'm just not sure how many of them match this one in terms of content and dedication. I find mod quality can vary greatly (which is why I sometimes shy from mixing and matching), and this one seems to be being made with a lot of love, time and work, which I hope translates to a really excellent mod :smiley:
    Ratatoskr
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    only imoen romance can be set side by side with allthingsmazzy. even then mazzy has more content.
    energisedcamelCaszidy
  • BCaesarBCaesar Member Posts: 452
    megamike15 wrote: »
    only imoen romance can be set side by side with allthingsmazzy. even then mazzy has more content.

    What we don't have are the expansive in-game cutscenes of the Imoen Romance. We've been putting off learning how to do them (and so far they haven't been needed). Ratatoskr is figuring it out now since we need one for the wraith scene.
    megamike15 wrote: »
    the character that currently don't have anything is jan. everyone else who did not already have a romance in the vanilla game has some form of mod at this point.

    Korgan, Minsc, and Cernd have romances? I can't find those. It makes sense that those four would be the last to get romances, though Edwin got a romance so anything is possible (Ratatoskr even played the whole thing).
    Skitia wrote: »
    Jan ends up with someone else at the end, he makes the least sense for a romance to me. Thus I would probably never touch him myself.

    With Lissa in the epilogue? Jan's is one of my favorite epilogues. I love Jan, it's just that writing for him is usually beyond me. The one dialogue I wrote with him and Mazzy is one of my favorites though. I'd love to do more.
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    people mis understood what i meant. most of the npcs that did not already have a romance in the vanilla game have some form of friendship or romance mod except for jan.
  • RatatoskrRatatoskr Member Posts: 711
    Just updated a very slightly different version of the mod. I didn't even bother to change the version # because I only changed one file.

    That said, if anyone doesn't feel like redownloading the mod, just download the attached folder, uninstall the mod, replace the file in the Clara/Dialogues folder and reinstall. It's only an issue in TOB.

    @BCaesar There. I'm going back to my D&D game and you can stop bugging me about it. :tongue:
    Caszidy
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