Is it possible to use a character voice and change companion portraits to those of BGEE or SOD?

Ian579

I just started playing BGEEII, and I don't quite like the male voices provided for my character. I prefer a male voice I used in BGEE and SOD. Is it possible to use that male voice in BGEEII? Apparently, the dialogue text would need to be changed, too. For example, when I selected my character in BGEE or SOD, the voice would say "How may I be of assistance?" and the dialogue box would display:

[My Character Name]: How may I be of assistance?

Also, is it possible to change my companions' portraits to those I saw in BGEE or SOD? I prefer those versions of Imoen, Jaheira, and Minsc.

ThacoBell

You should be able to copy portraits over with no problems. They should be in Documents,on PC, at least.

The voices can be added, but uh, I don't remember how I did it. Sorry. One of the voice pack threads in the general modding section has a method, but I don't recall exactly where.

sarevok57

lets start with the easy part;

the bg2 portraits of imoen, minsc and jaheira can easily be changed using ee keeper, just load up ee keeper and open up the creature files; IMOEN10, IMOEN15, IMOEN 211, JAHEIR7, JAHEI14, MINSC7, MINSC14 and select both of their portraits ( by selecting the Change Portrait button ) and change both portraits to their bg1 counterpart

*if you already have them on your team you may have to use EE keeper to change them manually as well

the sound part is going to be a little bit trickier

first, you have to find your BG1 sound folder ( which will not be in your documents, you actually have to go into the directory where your game is installed and then go the language folder and then go into the language you are using and then go to the sound folder )

if you are using steam it will look something like this;

steam/steamapps/common/Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition/lang/en_US/sounds

then you need to copy all the sound files of the sound you like ( so say for example if the sound files you are using are male6, you need to copy all of those sound files and paste them into the BG 2 sound directory ) * also note, you might have to change the name of the sound files if it shares the same name as its BG 1 counterpart, so say for example; if your sound files were male4 from bg1 and you tried to bring them over to bg2, there is already a male4 and you will have to change the name or else you are going to get sound files from bg1 and the missing bg1 files will play the original bg2 "male4" ( since bg1 is missing some of the bg2 sounds like critical hits/misses/ spell disrupted ect )

then, if you can complete that, if you want subtitles for your sound file, you have to go into the dialogue.tlk file and add the necessary strings to match which sound line goes where, which requires editing CHARSND.2da ( by placing the string reference for the correct line ) and using SNDSLOT.ids to know which number represents which sound

to be honest its kind of an arduous process to 100% do this ( transferring the sound files itself isn't too bad, but putting in the subtitles for them can be a bit of a pain as you can see )

although, if you are lucky maybe there is a mod out there already that has done this, if not, the way up above is the only way

Ian579

@ThacoBell,
Thanks for letting know that.


@sarevok57,
Thanks. I found the portrait of Imoen I saw in Siege of Dragonspear by using a saved game of Siege of Dragonspear. Please see the Change Portrait window below:



But after I clicked the two Extract buttons, I couldn't find the extracted images.

sarevok57

i believe the extracted images will be in your override folder in your game directory where you installed the game

Ian579

sarevok57 wrote: »

i believe the extracted images will be in your override folder in your game directory where you installed the game

That folder is empty unfortunately.

Gusinda

Hi @Ian579, I thought the extracted files ended up in the root folder of the game.

When ever I have changed the portraits of the in-game NPCs, I just throw the properly named portraits into the override folder (EEKeeper was used to find the right file name). As an example, this is the game I am playing at the moment (BG1EE):

In the example, all the team less the PC of course are NPCs of the game. PC (Kevin - Fighter), Yeslick, Imoen, Xan, Kivan and Coran. My head game has character interaction a bit different for some dialogue/actions...

I have replaced sounds (not for the current game) but, used this shell .

Once extracted, you can place the sounds into the 'BG2EE Game Folder\Sounds' folder, slightly rename them, then select them. You need to look at the text/sound synching though. There is another mod which allows for NPC customisation, thereby allowing you to select a new voice. It is EEUITweaks; the 'lefreut's Customize All Characters' component.

Hope that helps
Gus

Ian579

@Gusinda
Thanks for the instruction. I just checked the root folder and still could not find any extracted images. Maybe images in SOD cannot be extracted. I ended up using the BGEE version of Imoen portrait.

As for the sound, I decided to use the sound set without the substitutes because it's a bit too technical to implement the substitutes.

sarevok57

it seems to me that ee keeper doesnt extract portraits ( like its vanilla version used to ) so now the only way to get in game portraits is to use Near Infinity and then go to the BMP folder and find the portraits you want to export ( those will go to your over ride for sure ) and you can use EE keeper to quickly find the names if need be

@Gusinda loving the Hercules and Iolaus portraits i loved that show when i was a kid

ThacoBell

Seems @Gusinda has good taste in shows.

Gusinda

@Ian579, yeah sorry about that... it was NearInfinity I use to extract files and immediately thought of that.

@sarevok57, @ThacoBell, thanks. With the lockdown, I saw Herc on TV the other day (daytime time TV, who'da thunk it) so just had to... I also have team thoughts and portraits ready to go for Xena, Gabrielle, and crew. Working on a voice pack for Xena and trying work out how to get the Chakram (probably just end up using daggers) into play... Also be the first time I have used/played a Bard (Gabrielle, which Imoen has to be).

Gus