Icewind Dale: ToEE - Total Conversion

Oh btw, regarding flags waving / water etc., it's quite possible that these will be added to the Temple+ rendering.
Likewise for the polygonal interactive hotspots/ polygons.

 

I agree that doing IWD is a much saner option. Probably easier to do by hand too.

 

Another benefit of IWD is that it is a linear adventure, so it is easy to do the conversion one chapter at a time. (BG1 is much more open-world - it has chapters too, but they tend to be tied more to plot points than to maps.)

The IWD map files are also neatly sorted by the world map areas they belong to, which correspond to game chapters as follows:

Icewind Dale Map Overview

Prologue:

AR10.. = Easthaven (17 maps -- 1 village, 16 rooms) - game.area[17] (Orc Cave is game.area[0]
AR12.. = Caravan site (2 maps -- 1 wilderness, 1 cave) - game.area[17]
AR20.. = Kuldahar Pass (7 maps -- 2 wilderness, 1 cave, 5 rooms) - game.area[1]​

Chapter 1:

AR21.. = Kuldahar (17 maps -- 1 village, 16 rooms) - game.area[3]
AR3[0-5].. = Vale of Shadows (9 maps -- 1 wilderness, 1 cave, 7 crypts) - game.area[2]
AR36.. = Temple of the Forgotten God (4 maps -- 1 wilderness, 3 floors) - game.area[4]​

Chapter 2:

AR4... = Dragon's Eye (6 maps -- 1 wilderness, 5 dungeon levels) - game.area[5]​

Chapter 3:

AR5... = The Severed Hand (22 maps -- 1 wilderness, 4 main floors, 16 side-tower floors, 1 bridge) - game.area[6]​

Chapter 4:

AR6... = Dorn's Deep (14 maps -- 1 wilderness, 1 main cave, 1 main floor, 5 side rooms, 4 side caves, 2 crypts) - game.area[7]​

Chapter 5:

AR7... = Wyrm's Tooth (6 maps -- 2 wilderness, 1 main floor, 2 side rooms, 1 large cave) - game.area[8]​

Chapter 6:

AR8... = Lower Dorn's Deep (16 maps -- 6 main caves, 5 main floors, 4 side rooms, 1 side cave) - game.area[9]
AR11.. = The "changed" village of Easthaven (8 maps -- 1 village, 7 rooms) - game.area[10]​

That's 128 maps in total for the base game.
The remaining 45 maps (AR9...) are the HoW+TotL expansion content.

EDIT - (By Allyx for reference purposes)

 

Alright, I'll try to set it up. Is this tutorial up to date?

Also, IWD maps don't have holes where water surfaces (rivers, puddles, etc.) are supposed to be.
Instead, a still image of the water is part of the background image, and then sometimes a background sprite animation for ripples/waves/caustics is overlayed on top of it. But even without that animated overlay, it looks good, so you could just do it without them for now.

Deities

All the Infinity Engine games do have a lot of references to the gods of the realms.
As in, NPC dialog and other text that mentions specific deity; temples dedicated to a god showing that god's symbol; priests whose tooltip shows "Cleric of [Deity]" and who explain their religion's tenets when you talk to them; etc.

It might be weird if the engine shows incorrect tooltips for those priests, or things like that. But I wouldn't worry too much about having different deities for player-character priests - the Infinity Engine games don't implement the Forgotten Realms rules very closely and exhaustively, themselves.

IWD, for example, only implements the following deity choices for player-character clerics:

• Priest of Helm
• Priest of Lathander
• Priest of Tyr
• Priest of Tempus

And they can all cast the same set of spells - they just get different bonus abilities. The only spell restrictions are based on alignment (for example, only neutral and evil-aligned clerics can cast "Cause Moderate Wounds").

Also, only one of these deities that are available to player characters, is also relevant to the game's story.
The deities who are most relevant to the story and lore of IWD, are:

• Tempus - god of war [chaotic]
  
• Ilmater - god of martyrdom and suffering [lawful good]
  
• Auril - goddess of frost and cold [evil]
• Eldath - goddess of peace [chaotic good]
  
• Corellon - patron god of Elves [chaotic good]

Players will encounter numerous NPCs who follow one of these five deities, and a good deal of lore about those deities is revealed through dialog, in-game books, and other means.

 

Background animations

I looked through the IWD maps to get a better idea of how they use background animations.
Here's what I found.

Consider this scene from the Orc cave in the prologue (AR1201):

The left picture is cropped directly from the static background map for that area.
The middle picture shows the positions of the three animations which are overlayed on top of this static background.
To the right is a GIF showing a screencast of the scene with the animations running like they do in-game.


Data files:

The number, types and positions of overlay animations for each area are defined in the area's ARE file.
The actual animations are stored in BAM files.
(Apparently, the WED file which contains the image tiles that make up the static background image, may also contain animated tiles directly - but this feature doesn't seem to be used in IWD1. I think it's used in BG1 though.)

A BAM file can contain multiple animation sequences, which can share some of their frames (but don't have to).
NearInfinity can export them as a sequence of BMP images.

I exported the ones used in the above example scene, and then in turn converted them to GIFs. Here's what they look like:

= the first and only sequence from FIRE_3GS.BAM (14 frames)
= the first sequence from 1201MS2.BAM (15 frames)
= the second sequence from 1201MS2.BAM (15 frames)​

Animation speed:

The game plays all animations at a speed of 15 frames per second, from what I can tell.


Examples:

Here are some more examples of how animations are used in IWD.
The left images are cropped directly from the static background maps; the right images show screencasts of the corresponding scenes with animations running.

 

...continued in separate post, due to image limit...








This actually covers a good portion of the background animations used in the game.
There are not that many different ones, they just get reused a lot.
Especially the torch/flame animations (at various sizes) - almost every dungeon and crypt has lots of torches with identical flames...


Conversion to ToEE

What do you think, what would be the best way to do these in ToEE?

I guess you could use 3D effects for torches and smoke, and simply not convert the more complex animations (like water surfaces) at all.
They do look acceptable even in the static background maps.

But if it's possible, showing all the background animations in one form or another would be cool... They do add to the captivating atmosphere of the IWD campaign.

 

Come to think of it... There should also be support for animated background meshes, a la the fire / air nodes dynamic background.
Also the ToEE particle effects system can also render images. This can be used to generate an animation by playing them in a looping sequence.

I'd keep it as a low priority though. Cover the fire effects with ToEE particle systems and only use animated sequence or whatever for a select few effects.