Progress report Options

[K'aeloree]

Ooooh, a monk kit? Is it possible that you could release that before the rest of the package? Because I'd *love* to try it out...

[Salk]

Hi K'aeloree!

I am sorry if I might have mislead you with the word "kit". I am just speaking actually of the monk class which becomes a "kit" for enemies.

In this mod, some enemies will lose their class (fighter) in favour of being a monk instead.

This is because it was our wish to just have different classes represented all through the game. The gameplay is then extended and improved by opposing new challenges to the player that has now to face barbarians, sorcerers, kensais, wizard slayers, berserkers, jesters, blades, skalds, avengers, totemic druids, shapeshifters, cleric of 9 different mythos (from Divine Remix), assassins, bounty hunters, swashbucklers and specialst mages. To a small extent is also possible to end up fighting against paladins (inquisitors, cavaliers, undead hunters) and rangers (archers, beastmasters and stalkers).

I do feel like all the long wait is going to be repaied by a product that should hopefully represent a real revolution.

This post has been edited by Salk: May 4 2007, 04:01 AM

[K'aeloree]

Ah, okay, and here I had thought it was some hacky new way of getting kits to work for other classes... ah well Fair enough.

[Salk]

Hello!

Little updating is in order.

Finally, after a long, long, long period (did I say long ? ) aigleborgne is back working regularly on this mod although the time he can dedicate to coding is not that much.

The monk kit has been tested and is working.

Unfortunately, there is a problem with spells and bard songs and there is no solution in sight, meaning that bards won't make use of their primary characteristic while also party buff spells (ex. Resist Fear) won't ever be used by enemies simply because it seems the engine can not do it.

A bit sad but not dramatically important. I had asked an opinion about this to David Wallace, author of the excellent SCS and he said it should be possible to implement this with a custom spell faking the effects of the bard song but it didn't seem to do the trick.

aigleborgne is now working on druids' spellbooks and soon it is time to review the very big clerical spellbooks. This is going to take some time because of the 11 clerical kits that are present in Enhanced Creature.

Once that is done, we'll see to it that Sarevok becomes a fearsome Deathbringer, like various sources imply he is! (thanks Idobek for this)

[Salk]

One other small update:

Things are proceeding well and there is little left before the Beta release now. There are to rebalance summons, give Sarevok his Deathbringer kit, allocate scripts bindings and refine some minor details. Once done that, there will be a little in-house testing before the official release.

How long does this translate to ?

I would guess before the end of June. But take it with a grain of salt. Inconveniencies are always around the corner.

[melkor_morgoth75]

Great Salk!

So ... we're speaking about possible dates, why not ask this one as well? ;-) Please, is there any chance it would be compatible with BGT, BP, ding0quest, SCS for BGT as well?

Thanks,

mm75

[Salk]

Hi Melkor!

The first version will be (Easy)TuTu only.

I myself am a BGT player so I do hope that we can release a BGT version as well but it does not depend on me. It depends on aigleborne and Ascension64. Surely it's safe to say that some time will pass between the TuTu and the BGT version.

I can say also that this mod will have a very minor compatibility with SCS. Only few SCS components should theoretically install without problems. All the others would just interfere with AI/Scripts that come with Enhanced Creatures thus making a real mess.

About Big Picture instead, it all depends on if EC's custom detectable spells won't cause incompatibility with it. aigleborgne is not a Big Picture user and frankly, seeing the serious bugs that even the latest version has, I can't say it's a strange choice.

But, what I can tell you is that there will be at least a sequel to EC. It will be Enhanced Monsters for BG2. It's still an idea in aigleborgne's mind but once EC will be stable, his modding efforts will be directed to bug corrections and this new Mod.

More to come...

[Salk]

News update:

aigleborgne is going to face a 30-hours coding project that should refine all the monsters so far created. Some are already completed (basilisks, bears, carrion crawlers) but most are not (demons are going to take a long time).

At the moment, I didn't yet get the needed documentation in order to bind scripts as I am supposed to do but I trust aigleborne to provide me that soon enough.

Keep tuned!

[Salk]

Small Update:

I and aigleborgne are hopefully going to have a chance to speak some on MSN tomorrow evening. He is more or less half way into his review of monsters and he's been correcting, fixing and modifying them since it started. A very time consuming task as well one I can not be of any help with but some small advices here and there.

Unfortunately there are some special abilities that we would have liked to add to some creatures but that because of either lack of time or, more often, technical obstacles (engine limitations or lack of know-how), will not see the light of the day.

In the first case though, it is possible that future versions might hold some surprises.

Keep tuned!

[Salk]

Update:

the ETA has not been respected due to extra time needed to work on Monsters and create a valid database/collecting informations about some special abilities.

The development is however proceeding on more or less daily basis. I and aigleborgne keep updating each other about the latest problems/solutions we happen to meet during our tests.

Unfortunately this kind of stuff takes time and I understand that this project has not delivered yet a stable Mod like we had hoped.

Nonetheless, the day of a release is getting nearer. Have faith!

[Salk]

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

I and aigleborgne have been discussing about a possible release date and we agreed to have a public version ready not sooner than the end of the year.

Sorry about postponing one more time but we had two options: release a version that would only affect monsters or wait untill the NPCs improvements (the backbone of EC) would also be ready.

For the first, it'd take more or less two months. For the whole package, at least four.

My advice was to go down the second road: enhanced creatures without NPCs enhancing would make little sense.

I have been testing some monsters and I must say everything seems to be working very fine.

The WIP is proceeding slowly but it's moving nonetheless.

Thanks!

[melkor_morgoth75]

Keep it up mates!!! I look forward to play this mod, with the lack of people working on BP, SCS for BGT for now not supported anymore, this mod seems to be real future chance of AI ...

mm75

[Salk]

SMALL UPDATE:

Progress has being slow during the whole month of August and September didn't start any better. The author is still working on Demons which are the Monsters that need the most refining. Luckily some of the coding done for those specific monsters will find use also for others. This should speed things up once this part of the work is completed.

Thanks!

[Tervadh]

Good to see there's still progress on this. Just curious - how many demons are there actually in BG1?

[Salk]

UPDATE:

After a month of silence for which I apologize, I'd write here to call the development of the mod on halt due to the author's real life commitments.

As soon as there are news about the work being resumed, I am going to inform you here.

This post has been edited by Salk: Nov 29 2007, 05:50 AM

[aigleborgne]

I've started to reinstall BGTutu with all updated mods. It takes some time...
Next step will be to resume my work on EC, see if everything is right and checking out what's left to do.

I hope to release this mod in 2 or 3 months.

[aigleborgne]

I'm interested in a new mod "Spell Revisions".
It would be great to use this mod with Enhanced Creatures.

So, I would have more spells choice for spellbooks.
But, it would require quite some work to check all scripts and spellbooks.

Maybe, I will do it on a later version (if any are release later). But my initial plan is to produce a final version asap.

[Salk]

Spells Revision is indeed a great mod and it is going to be part of my own installation.

Hopefully EC can take advantage of the many modifications done by Demivrgvs.

[aigleborgne]

Looking at my mod several years after, with fresh air and better skills

I have looked many things in my mod and I must say there will be work to redo some things.

First, I have completely re-organised EC into categorized components:

- Enhanced Creatures core component (required)

NPC changes
- Enhanced NPC
- New experience value for NPC
- Give Sarevok Deathbringer kit

Monsters changes
- Enhanced monsters

Wizard Slayer kit tweaks
- magic resistance tweak to 2% per level
- add ranged attack cumulative spell faillure
- spell faillure to 10% cumulative per hit, last 90 seconds (it was 25%, 30 seconds)

Spells fixes and tweaks
- Spell fixes
- No generic display for spells and abilities
- Double duration for charm's spells
- Temple will now have greater restoration
- Minor globe of invulnerability fix - it can be affected by dispel magic


Items fixes and tweaks
- Items fixes
- BG2 mage scrolls for spells level 1 to 5 in stores
- Tweak items' quantity in stores
- Tweak powerful items

Secondly, I have found some lazy programming codes in TP2 that can produce errors. I've changed all of them with a good and clean code.

Third, I have found out that there are others bugs here and here. I have identified some of them, but not all.

Well, to summary, I am planning 2 months to check and correct everything already done.
Then, about 2 months to finish my work. My expected realase date is end of october.

This post has been edited by aigleborgne: Jul 22 2009, 05:39 AM

[Demivrgvs]

Cool, I'm very interested on the "Enhanced monsters" component.

Even if there are 10 years of modding behind BG somehow this is an aspect of the game still left almost untouched (well, except within IA) and I think there's really a lot that can be done.