Planelike areas, Needed for Azure NPC mod Options

[balduran]

I'm making this quest and one of the characters is exiled in a pocketplane. The problem is that the only suitable areas I can think of are already in BG2.

Can anyone think of a area that would look like a pocketplane? It has to be big enough to host a serious battle involving melee fighter, one or two mages and a demonic creature + the entire party.

One more thing: there are so much tutorials on areas, but I couldn't find any that tell you how to port areas from the other Infinity game to BG2.

This post has been edited by balduran: Sep 22 2005, 09:51 AM

[Sir-Kill]

with some serious changes the troll mound (inside) might look like how you want it.

have you seen if DLTCEP can just save one game area in the override folder of another? if not checkout the community assets page for all of the ie maps.
http://www.blackwyrmlair.net/~chevar/community.html

[balduran]

The Troll Mound is a good idea. Thx

I played around with the Tileset Map editor and made a new area with FOUR pocketplanes inside it, which will be connected through portals. It took me two days to make that baby work, with countless reinstalls and test in game environment.

BTW, if you happen to make a new area, stay away from the EXTENDED NIGHT option! It crashes the game and I had to reinstall three times to find out what was wrong.

I also downloaded the bitmap of one of the dungeons from TofEE(Temple of the Elemental Evil) and made a nice .tis out of it. I guess Azure will be a very tempting mod with the two rather large new areas to explore.

But I noticed something interesting - the compressed TIZ format works twice as good as a rar at maximum compression, when you compress areas that consist of tiles from Infinity games. However, when I tried to compress the tis of the TofEE dungeon, WinRar gave a little smaller archive than Tispack. This is something that area makers should probably take into consideration.

This post has been edited by balduran: Sep 24 2005, 11:05 AM

[Sir-Kill]

I did not know that would crash but the dungeon setting is all you would need thanks for the info.

Check the ToEE maps for correct game size, they were monster sized maps and I had to cut them into bg usable sizes and I think I resized them. you can check this out by moving your CH. near a doorway to see if it fits right.

did you use DLTCEP for making the tiz? it sets it at the correct color settings.the colors are higher than 256 but lower than 16 ml. I use 32k 24 bit it seems to be close.

[balduran]

I used the EXTENDEDNIGHT setting for the pocketplane area, not for the ToEE map.

Check the ToEE maps for correct game size, they were monster sized maps and I had to cut them into bg usable sizes and I think I resized them. you can check this out by moving your CH. near a doorway to see if it fits right.

Actually, I checked the area downloads again, and I guess I have made a mistake - the dungeon I have downloaded appears to be in the donated areas, not the ToEE areas. Sorry about that one.

BTW, why are all maps from ToEE so dark? Don't they have a day-equivalents?

did you use DLTCEP for making the tiz? it sets it at the correct color settings.the colors are higher than 256 but lower than 16 ml. I use 32k 24 bit it seems to be close.

I've never used DLTCEP. Does it have other options except packing tis files?

[Sir-Kill]

Stone Wolf was making them available to me then I made them bg useable. but I have not heard from SW for a while. So if anyone has ToEE and wants to send me some more maps just pm me.

DLTCEP has every option

[balduran]

I just had an idea: Arcanum had an area editor. Would it be possible to export areas made with it?

[Sir-Kill]

nope. I have tried some pasting of screen shots but it would just be easier to use the tiles.

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Sep 26 2005, 06:01 PM

[balduran]

So they can be exported. Do I need a special editor?

[Sir-Kill]

many of the tiles are on the community assests page.
If you have the game then you can always take screenshots. I would however stay away from the avarge arcanum building not only is the angle off they are square (the walls are @ a 90d angle to eachother), which does not make for a good bg building. so that does not leave you with much as far as intresting buildings go.
you can make a fairly good interior map with them. or some of the other arcanum elements you can add into another map.

best just to use the tiles on the community assets page.
If you wanted to do anything with arcanum as far as extracting goes you would have to get the undat utility (hope you have room on your HDD), .art to .bmp, and red viewer.
but if there is something paticular that you wanted (not map related) and you did not want to go to all the trouble to undat your files and the rest I could get them for you. then you only need art to bmp.

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Sep 28 2005, 02:22 PM

[balduran]

I thing I'l stick to using Infinity game elements for the time being. If I get stuck somewhere, then I'll browse the other available options.

Although it isn't very interesting to look at the same ol' buildings over and over again when you cruise around Amn and the SC. At least I can recompile the tiles into new maps.

BTW, how do you use the DLTCEP? Just looking at the number of options available gives me a headache.

[Sir-Kill]

well igi has a setup tutorial for it
setup DLTCEP
we are mirioring Yovaneth area tutorials
DLTCEP Area Tutorial (by Yovaneth)
there probably more tuts. out there but you were not very specific on what you wanted since DLTCEP does just about everything....
also try searching a bit too

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Sep 29 2005, 12:01 PM

[balduran]

It would have been useful if it could show maps as a whole, not as sepparate tiles.
At least I couldn't find how to make it display tis files that way.

I finished the pocketplane map and the dungeon. The plane is a bit tactical - you face two challanges(battles) and the portal to the next plane (did I mention there aere four sepparate planes?) becomes active only after the last of the enemies has fallen. Then you go to the dungeon, where you get to fight some monsters plus a warior and a mage. If you bypass a few traps, you can go to a portal which teleports you at the beginning where you have to fight the plane warden or convince him to let you kill him in order to leave for good.

How does it sound?

[Sir-Kill]

it does both. either as a tis or wed.

cool what level are you going to be at when you do some plane travel? I hope high.

[balduran]

The quest which allows access to the plane triggers after an hour of play in Chapter 6. Then you need to go to the Five Flagons and then to the village I am currently making. So the level should be around 13-16 I guess, depending on classes. If you are asking about the level of the enemies - one of the challanges involves a party with 3 million XP for each member.

The village will probably be available only in SofA, although it would be a good Idea to make it accessible in ToB too. But then I'd have to put it on two different places on the map, since you cannot see the Amn map in ToB.