Icewind Dale: ToEE - Total Conversion

Hey guys, just became aware of this great effort! I am a fan of pretty much all the infinity engine games. At one time I put a lot of effort into trying to convert IWD1 to IWD2 (IWD1Tutu), but I ran into a lot of issues with creatures that could not easily be re-scripted automatically for the IWD2 engine. I'm curious if you guys are including IWD1 in the conversion mod for ToEE or if this is out of scope for you guys.

 

@Allyx - awsome news! I think most of the issues I ran into were trying to map IWD1 resources to IWD2 resources - so that may not be an issue. Some areas were a real headache and IWD1 uses the "fog of war" very precisely. When that breaks you get swarms of enemies suddenly coming at you... area scripting is bit gnarly as well IIRC. I would definitely be happy to try and help with this. Love these games!

 

Some thoughts for the long term of the ToEE mod project. (xp gain, crafting, and monster difficulty):

I finally got around to finishing the NWN2 conversion of Icewind Dale and thought to highlight a few things with 3.5. Nwn2 plays differently and has its own limited variation of 3.5 - but it does show the power creep that comes with 3.5 . After playing ToEE for a bit, I had forgotten how frustrating and unintuitive NWN2 combat is, though. I had played NWN2 on PWs before, but going back to the playstyle after ToEE was so clunky...

IMHO, ToEE combat will be much easier for a few reasons

• NWN2 uses spawn points that ultimately swarm the player. Pulling is much less surgical.
• NWN2 can strictly control crafting via availability of components (as well as money and templates).
• NWN2 time system is very short (1 hour game time = 2 min real time?), so spells end pretty quickly...especially at low levels. Mage armor lasts 2 min at first level, and you can't spend much time looking at things or in dialog.

• ToEE's combat is very controlled and precise and game time must be 1:1 ?, which mean spells last 30x longer. There are a few spells that don't carry through map changes, though.
  
• ToEE's crafting is only controlled by availability of masterwork items and money. For misc...only money.
• ToEE adds a lot of extra classes and extra spells that will trivialize much of the party issues.

However, there is a lot of back and forth in IWD and hopefully ToEE can solve this somehow. NWN2 had a teleport tool, but even so, there was still much running around. I suppose a much more complete teleport map could work for ToEE, but it would likely have an extensive menu!

The NWN2 ending gave enough experience for max. lvl 12 (no ecl), and that seemed about right. Around the point of the Severed Hand, you could tell 3.5 was starting to unbalance things and the game got progressively easier as it continued. Although the final devil fight was decent for a level 12 party fully buffed.

There was some limited crafting but the author added enough converted items (to 3.5) from the original game that it was never needed. So finding gear was very much similar to the original IWD. Of course, in 3.5 things don't stack as well (ie, many deflection ACs vs pure AC), but then 3.5 multi-classing and spells makes this a moot point.

I'll digress a moment to say that the NWN2 author's attention to most details was impressive. I finally took a good look through the maps; the author was a perfectionist or it was a labor of love. I was surprised considering how NWN2 tends to make you run by stuff to minimize spell loss and much of that wouldn't be noticed by the typical NWN2 player.

TLDR is that I'd suggest default is no crafting with an xp lvl cap goal of 10-12 . [ I also feel that ~ lvl 12 and no crafting is appropriate for 99.9% of the stuff (including Verbonc) in the current ToEE game, so...ymmv. ] I understand that some just like to craft, though.

 

About 7 years ago for Halloween, I played IWDEE which was the first time in earnest I played IWD. I soloed the game starting at level 1 on the highest difficulty as an Elf Fighter/Mage/Thief and reached the level cap of 30/30/30 before the game's end. I didn't do the expansions' content, but due to the 2e ruleset I didn't craft anything either. It was a difficult experience and I'm glad I got to enjoy the high level stuff. I wished I had access to all the Baldur's Gate II content - the extra spells, high level abilities, and so on, and I wished the IWD content was also in BG2 where it would be more used. (With mods, these are possible.)

Were I playing IWD on ToEE's engine, I still want crafting and all the conveniences of ToEE, Temple+, and so on. As for the expected end level, that assumedly requires testing.