The work is on-going, so I'll try to keep everybody updated on the progress in here. Also, people sometimes ask questions about how this or that functions, I can't answer these questions immediately and lose track of them. When I can I'll address these issues in this thread for the benefit of everybody.

There was a question regarding the issue with the quick spell slots. After resting, the amount of available castings of a spell in a respective quick slot is reduced to zero, even though actually a char has a normal amount of castings memorized. The issue is described in here: http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/37877...e-after-resting

For now, we just have to live with it and wait for a patch.

There were a couple of reports about Remove Magic not being able to dispel an enemy's Mirror Image spell like in vanilla, where it's a guaranteed success. We did some tests and it appears to be that this is one of those bugs/features of MI that were considered normal in vanilla but were fixed on the engine level by the Beamdog. A similar case was MI protecting from ADHW. In EE, Mirror Image obeys the same mechanics as the rest of the spells. If your caster's level is higher than that of an enemy, MI will be dispelled.

So, this is what's been going on with IA lately.

Characters, kits and NPCs

The druid kit we're working on is the Avenger kit. It is given a nice set of improvements that intend to explore further its combat-oriented and ritualistic nature. Certain spells and abilities are added to allow for creative usage of the class in melee combat. There will be a whole set of specific helpers that the class can summon depending on what the situation needs. While these summons reduce some of the kit's powers while being active, they can be controlled by the player directly (in a fashion similar to Deva/Planetar) and, hopefully, create a whole new dimension to the tactical arsenal of the player. The work is still on-going and might not turn out in exactly the way I describe, but it should be interesting nonetheless.

In IA 6.2 this kit will be assigned to Jaheira. This will allow those players who prefer the half-elf's patronizing attitude to megalomania of Anomen and boring blandness of Cernd have a decent priest who actually talks and reacts to the game's events. In IAv7, Avenger will be as good a choice as Auramaster for a protagonist.

While we're on the subject of NPCs, Minsc is back, with a specific warrior kit and some performance-enhancing surgery. While he won't be as overpowered as a custom-created half-orc character, he will certainly add some flavor to the game. In the future versions, if they are to be, we'll try to explore other NPCs and bring them back to their former glory.

Items

The main focus here is to bring back the items that are currently underrepresented in the game. Main focus of IA6.2 was the spear, which is actually a decent weapon by itself and a good choice for a two-handed specialist. We've added a new item upgrade that should be comparable in terms of power to all-time favorites like Poseidon's Wrath and, incidentally, a good choice for the new Avenger

Another improvement we've made is to make scimitar a more accessible weapon. In the previous versions it was distributed in such a manner that made it completely useless, except for the Belm, perhaps. Now it's a much more sensible choice. The Water's Edge +3 was removed from its place in Underdark and randomized between certain locations that are reachable in the middle of CH2-3. The party now will be able to travel to the Underdark already having an extra option for a good slashing weapon. Another good scimitar, Yamato +4, was removed from its resting place buried deep down in WK, reachable only by high level parties, and redistributed sensibly in CH6 locations via the randomizer. The Water's Edge can now be improved to a +4 version and is a strong weapon for a party to wield. This could be done in CH6 or even in CH3, if the party is strong enough to handle certain encounters. And once the party advances to WK/ToB, it will be able to forge Spectral Brand +5 which completes the set of weapons available.

On a separate note, we've added more items that were previously available in shops only (The Sleeper, Armor of Deep Night and some others) to the randomizer as well.

Jaheira will now get an upgrade for her personal item, the Harper's Pin, as the long-term tradition of IA states.

Content and other things

We've added a completely new spell to the druid arsenal, with new animations, that can be used both by the player and the enemies. It looks nice

Numerous bugs were fixed, both from EE and vanilla game, thanks to the many reports from players and our testing team. The work on this will continue.

Our tests show that Monk is now a strong character and sensible addition to the party. The same goes for the Swashbuckler class, he's a decent thief now who can handle himself well in the IA situations. And he definitely likes the new Water's Edge

Stay tuned for more news to come. Maybe, next time I'll post some screens of the new content

Cheers,
critto

It's been more than half a year since the last progress report. As usual, real life gets in the way of things and the work slows down. We've done a nice little push in a couple of last weeks, however, and I feel confident to say that IAv6.2 will be out very soon. Meanwhile, here's a bit of info on what's been going on.

Last time, I've talked about our improvements to the Avenger class. We did change quite a few things since then and the final result turned out different, but the class is now fun and satisfying to play. Jaheira is a strong addition to the team. To celebrate the fact, we've also crafted a new surprise encounter to one of those early mundane quests that everyone tries to get out of the way as soon as possible. Of course, as all things in IA, it is not without its rewards. In the end, the player will be able to craft a nice new item which Jaheira'll love, as will, eventually, the druid protagonist of IAv7.

While on the subject of items, we did a few more tweaks here and there, all in the name of creating more variativity and improving replayability value. In the same spirit, we're bringing on board more of the in-game NPCs, making them a viable option for a party member. This feels important to me as a player who've never really loved playing with a party of multiplayer-created custom characters. The IAv6.2 will most certainly feature Aerie, Jan, Korgan and Mazzy, in addition to Jaheira and Minsc who already have proven themselves in play tests. For those who are worried about fights between party members and high reputation issues, I intend to provide a built-in optional component that'll fix these potential problems, in the spirit of the classic Weimer's ease-of-use tweaks.

Another cool thing that we are testing right at the moment is the improved Demogorgon battle. It never felt right to end the epic dungeon crawl with such an anticlimatic event. We thought to amend this flaw and provide a satisfying and challenging finale. I have had little experience with encounter design until this moment and hope that it'll turn out to be fun and in the spirit of IA's tactical challenges. Thankfully, I have expirienced players who help me to play-test and refine the new adventure, so I am not completely without assistance.

Speaking of team effort, the very same team members who help me test the new release happen to have a knack for working with IE graphics. This has allowed us to do some cool things such as adding new item icons, spell animations and so on. We're now looking into new creature animations and, if everything goes according to plan, even IAv6.2 will feature some new unique graphics, improving overall visual aestethics and reducing the percentage of reused material.

As usual, there were also minor bugs and typos found along the way. For those who play IA on top of the recently released Enhanced Edition, the Beamdog is almost ready to release the new big patch 2.0 for the game along with the new expansion. It is designed to serve as a prelude to the events of BG2 so, hopefully, there will be no problems in running IA. I am looking forward to the new release, hoping that it'll fix many nasty issues, the most notable being duplication of kit bonuses and horrible pathfinding.

One last thing to mention is that as of IAv6.2, I will distribute the mod as my own personal expansion based on the great work done by Sikret. I realize that I have taken IA in the direction that might not agree with Sikret's vision. As did Sikret, I develop the mod according to how I would've enjoyed playing it, even though I try to keep it as much in spirit of the original as possible. Therefore, I intend to publish IAv6.2 independently and ask Baronius to upload the original IAv6.0 as a separate download for those who want to play the version that Sirket had worked on.

Cheers,
critto

Apparently, the Beamdog has released the patch 2.0 for BG:EE and BG2:EE, along with the new add-on. I doubt that IAv6.1 is fully compatible with the new patch, but I'll be sure to work on compatibility for the upcoming IAv6.2.

Cheers,
critto

Having observed all the fuss about the new patch 2.0 and its successor 2.1, I have decided to postpone compatibility with BG2:EE 2.1. I feel that it is too raw to be used as a platform to build a relatively bug-free and stable mod on. Hopefully, by the time the next major version of the mod is out, Beamdog will polish the 2.x release. For now, if you want to play Improved Anvil v6.2 on BG2EE, you'll have to use the 1.3 version of the game. And, of course, it will remain compatible with ToB, although I have to admit that limitations of the vanilla engine do not permit us to make more cool stuff.

Speaking of IAv62, I have a strong feeling that we are close to finishing up our last tests. If all goes well, the 6.2 will be out in a week or two.

IAv62 will feature a brand-new readme that should make it easier for players to navigate through numerous changes that the mod applies to the game. If time permits, I would like to add a completely new section filled with various tips, strategies, advices and explanations of how and why the mod is made and what to expect from it. IA has always been controversial in the past. One reason for that is because many players may find that the content of the mod does not agree with their concept of good playing experience, and the sheer amount of it requires them to realise it the hard way. I hope that the extra information will allow them to figure out if it's going to be fun and worth exploring.

Cheers,
critto

Now that the 6.2 release is out, it wouldn't hurt to share some plans for the future of IA. During the course of our work on 6.2 we've come up with many ideas of what could be improved. This ranges from relatively small additions (new items being distributed via the randomizer and such) to rather huge undertakings.

As of the moment when this text is being written, current todo list consists of almost 200 separate records. Obviously, all of this won't fit into a single release, the work would take ages to accomplish. We'll split it into segments and work in iterations, re-assessing the situation as we progress further.

One of the larger and more fundamental tasks scheduled for near future is internal restructuring of the mod. It's being made more modular and flexible, with less of the hardcoded stuff and more of the modern approach to WeiDU scripting. Restructuring the mod and removing code duplication is rather fun and enjoyable. Removing hardcode, on the other hand, is a long and tedious process which involves working part-time on third-party utilities such as iesh that are used to aid in the process. I doubt that this will be completed 100% in the very near future for the number of precedents of interoperability between IA and other mods is almost zero due to many reasons. This fact does not persuade me to discontinue our work in that direction, however, even if it takes one small step at a time.

All this, of course, will not lead to the mod being broken down into separate components or IA suddenly becoming compatible with many of the "big" mods which is conceptually impossible. It will, however, allow for easier modding and addition of new content. If the interest will not diminish, both from players and our own, we might even have an easier time expanding IA beyond BG2 and ToB.

However, I've gotten some feedback from players after the release of 6.2 and have a better understanding now that the most expected new features are the long-awaited druid stronghold expansion and compatibility with the 2.x patch of EE. These two will be our primary focus for now. Whatever changes might tag along are going to be coincidental.

Later on, I'll talk more about various features and additions to the mod as the work progresses further.

Cheers,
critto

The work slowly continues. We're all swamped with RL stuff which affects our ability to do good progress for the druid stronghold. Right now our primary concern is writing a good story. If anyone has experience and feels like contributing, we would welcome the help!

Meanwhile, I've had a few opportunities to work on the mod which I've spent on compatibility between IA and EE 2.3, the latest available version of the game. Long story short, it installs and works but hasn't been play-tested yet. It looks like some players are interested in doing it so we might have a playtest coming up soon. If somebody wants to give it a go, just let me know

The only thing that hasn't been finished is adapting the shaman class. It has a huge potential and functions fairly well at this stage, but definitely needs an extra push to be a good choice for a party in IA. I've only had time to work a little bit on the HLAs and the primary stuff (THAC0 tables, spell and level progression, that sort of thing). The key points here are balancing the new shamanic spells and adapting the dancing feature since this is what makes the class playable. The enemy AI should be relatively good since shamans are detected as a part of the DRUID_ALL class group. Some common druidic items that grant bonus to wisdom are useless for the shaman, so this requires some extra thinking.

Then there's the whole stronghold issue. Lore-wise, Beamdog devised the class to be without a stronghold, but that's routinely ignored by IA players with the multiple strongholds mod. At the very least, we could allow shamans to have access to all the major strongholds. Or, we could go further and allow them to participate in the new expanded druid stronghold. This still remains undecided.

Regarding the rest of the compatibility stuff, I'd like to go over some of the notable features of EE that are either interesting or affected the mod in some way or another.

First, there's a huge amount of new UI features which are, in my opinion, quite fun. Characters sheets are now more comprehensive, better structured, provide full break-downs of the math of AC, THAC0, HP, and Damage. They can now be viewed by holding the Tab key while hovering the mouse over the relevant stat on the Inventory screen.

Then there's some good stuff regarding the main game screen when in combat. Greyscale on pause highlights the active char and his spell-casting animation nicely while colouring everything grey, a good feature to have in big fights with lots of enemies. The foes now have small health bars that give a good visual cue who's hurt or not.

The mage spell book and priest scroll UI screens were completely redesigned. They are more user-friendly, have scrolling and (finally!) automatically stack the same spells together in the memorised slots, ordering them by the alphabet. Very neat. One more thing that I like very much is that you can now create a whole party right in the single player mode, so no need for that multi-player nonsense anymore.

The questionable thing they did is sort savegames by date in descending order which takes some getting used to.

Now, for some things that might affect the playing experience. The Beamdog has devised new customisable AI scripts for party members but, as it always happens in IA, it would be wiser to disable the AI and take manual control of the party for maximum efficiency. There were also two new difficulty mods introduced: story mode (basically, god mode for those who want to experience the story) and legacy of bhaal (Heart of Fury-like buff up to all enemies to increase difficulty). Both are untested and not recommended to use with IA. Core rules is the way to go.

One more notable modification is that the weapon proficiencies cannot be assigned more than normally possible at that stage. To translate into plain English, no more grand mastery at the start. You can only go as high as mastery at character creation. Which is not too bad.

Cool ease-of-use features:
1) you may now equip an off-hand weapon or shield while a ranged weapon is present in a quick weapon slot.
2) you can also equip a weapon or shield in the off-hand slot regardless of what weapons are in the quick weapon slots.

Basically, that means that you can have two 1-handed weapons or 1-handed weapon and shield equipped while having a two-handed weapon and/or a ranged weapon in the other weapon slots. Less inventory fuss is always welcome for long-term players.

Beamdog has finally fixed the annoying bug when the in-game NPCs would get doubling kit bonuses, as would any character upon rejoining after being imprisoned. So the crutches I've made for 1.3 version are now removed. We'll need some playtests to be sure, but it appears to be resolved.

And, finally, some stuff regarding the backwards compatibility. The new EE engine is extended by Beamdog in ways that allow for cooler new features but, sadly, cannot be backported to the ToB version. For now I've decided to remove those newer features in favor of consistent gameplay. However, we can always go the other route and give more options to players in EE.

Some notable things are:
- poison weapon ability for assassins is reworked, the older IA version is used for now (new version will be considered when thief classes are reworked and thoroughly tested)
- the new version of Enchant Weapon spell is fun: it always to enchant any weapon that is wielded by the char to have +3 enchantment; insanely cool, but we go with the old version of EE spell for now (introducing the new version of the spell would at least require taking look at item placement since it wouldn't matter as much in the beginning)
- ioun stones do not protect from criticahl hits; this was disabled by me in EE for backward compatibility, but I am seriously considering turning it back on to nerf Riskbreakers a little bit
- a new opcode EnchantmentLevel (344) that allows for more precise control of weapon enchantments in weapons that are +x / +y against special enemy race was introduced; it is removed for compatibility and the usual IA behaviour (basically, nerf those items to always have +x enchantment, not +y) is returned

That's it for now. If you have any thoughts, questions or feedback, feel free to post on the forum in the discussion threads.

Hopefully, we'll have some opportunity to talk about the extended druid stronghold in the near future.

Cheers,
critto

It's been a long hiatus here, but we're back in business (sort of). What's been happening in these past months?

We've had a lot of play tests of 6.2 and beta 7.0 which is now EE-only and fully compatible with the version 2.3 of the game. Play tests means bug reports. Thanks to the efforts of nicoper, bulian, HTRT, SparrowJacek and other fellow players, we've amassed quite a few of them and I am steadily pushing through, fixing lots of stuff. Hopefully, it will be a fairly stable version. The EE engine is not completely bug-free yet, unfortunately. There are a couple of annoying bugs that will be fixed, hopefully, in the future by Beamdog. Who knows, maybe the upcoming release of PS:T EE will bring a new engine update as well? We'll see.

The work on the druid stronghold that has been postponed forever is now underway. We've lost a lot of material and ideas since the last time the quest had been worked on by Sikret himself, so we're designing it from the ground up. I hope it'll be an interesting, fresh experience for the players since we've decided to step away from the canonical way the things have been done in the previous years in the mod. While working on the quest we've gathered many ideas on how to turn IA's adventures into a longer, more cohesive plot line. Hopefully, this will be something we will work on in the future as we refine the mod.

Big thanks to fellow team members, SparrowJacek especially, who takes active part in all our endeavours and contributes lots of custom and adapted graphics for IA. It's really fun to have fresh content instead of recycling old ideas. EE brings a nice, fresh look to the mod despite the fact that many of those nice features are still buried under legacy ToB files copied over during the installation. Another thing to tackle in the future.

Stay tuned.

Cheers,
critto