Icewind Dale 2 - so I wonder

+1
a thousand gratitudes

 

@anatoliy
I agree that letting players choose their point buy is better. (My preferred tabletop point buy for 3.x is 32+.)

 

From my preliminary estimation IWD2 essentially is designed with power play in mind. My conclusion is based on a fact, that points distribution is linear in comparison to D&D 3.5 rules, where higher abilities costs more.

IWD2 starts from 10 and grants 16 linear points to buy. If from 8 then it's 28.

But being linear it roughly corresponds to D&D 3.5 point buy 38.

 

Hi guys!

It was some time from my last update, so here is new one.

There are many life altering things going on in my life atm, so I won't be active for some time. On some occasions, like today, I will have time and opportunity to spend some time on this hobby, which I love.

@DarkStorm has given me code which translates screen coordinates from the screen to sector coordinates. And I'm very grateful for him, as I was struggling with that for some time. Thank you @DarkStorm!!

Code:

public LocAndOffsets ScreenToTile(float screenX, float screenY)
{
    var tmpX = (int)((screenX - _xTranslation) / 2);
    var tmpY = (int)(((screenY - _yTranslation) / 2) / 0.7f);

    var unrotatedX = tmpY - tmpX;
    var unrotatedY = tmpY + tmpX;

    // Convert to tiles
    LocAndOffsets result;
    result.location.locx = unrotatedX / 20;
    result.location.locy = unrotatedY / 20;

    // Convert to offset within tile
    result.off_x = ((unrotatedX % 20) / 20.0f - 0.5f) * locXY.INCH_PER_TILE;
    result.off_y = ((unrotatedY % 20) / 20.0f - 0.5f) * locXY.INCH_PER_TILE;

    return result;
}

I will use that in libtemple project as soon as I will have capabilities for that.

 

I'm really excited to see this project! Played IWD2 to death and ToEE as well. I attempted a WeiDU conversion module IWD1 to IWD2 (IWD1Tutu) and that was kind of a disaster. The first biggest problem is translating the rule systems - all the enemies and enemy AI scripts need to be converted.

I think aside from translation of CRE, DLG, ITM etc going from IWD2 to ToEE, the really hard bit is going to be translating area and creature BCS scripts.

Having said that I'd love to help out if needed. I'm just now looking into another play through of IWD2. I'm also "beta testing" the mod "IWD2ee" which has made a lot of progress, but TBH that is effort is not quite the direction I wanted to go in... They are moving IWD2 a bit further away from DND which is not my thing. If anything I'd like to make it more like DND which I think the ToEE engine can do.

 

@Allyx - great work getting to that point! I think I got as far as the vale of shadows or something. There is one area in IWD1 just packed with bone constructs and undead. Since IWD1 greatly relies on the IE engine "fog of war", things get really wonky in IWD2. All the monsters just come at you at once...

But conversion to ToEE in general is an awesome idea. Hopefully it would be a lot easier for IWD2 than IWD1. I'm honestly a bit more interested in the IWD2 conversion.

 

What's this about an IWDII conversion? Who's doing that?

 

I just finished 2 complete play-tests of the EE beta and I felt the need to chime in that this is very inaccurate.

It is not as pure 3.5 base as is ToEE, but everything is absolutely DND. The infinity engine has limitations and it ends up being aa mix of BG spell/animation tweaks, IWD2 improvements, and new EEex functions to work around hard-coding. I was surprised at the stability, since I had played an earlier and simpler version years ago.

Even BG or the Beamdog upgrades are mixed version of DND with additions/kits that don't match the original 2nd edition.

ToEE+ has a ton of new spells/prcs/options that can completely change the game play and balance. Even warlock now.
___________________________________________

In any case, I also am excited with what @anatoliy is targeting, but this will some serious time once he gets the automation sorted. Although...he did push out some of the KoTC content very fast. I'm still sad that I was not in a position to try it out.

The Iwd2EE mod tempted me to ask @Sagenlicht to perhaps try his hand at the Spellthief class, because I really enjoyed some of the spell interpretations added to Iwd2EE... However, after some research on the 3.5 class itself, this probably would be too much effort in ToEE. It would need new code to for all these special abilities. And there are a lot of these specials.

 

Well, I mean Bull's Strength is gone and replaced by Ox's Endurance (which should be Bear's Endurance but I think the dev couldn't find a good Bear icon - fair enough!). The reasoning for this was that there are plenty of strength enhancing items in the game - but I really don't understand why you wouldn't have both.

But really, for me personally, there are just too many changes to the game itself. Back in the day I played the old game quite a lot. BG2EE really doesn't fundamentally change the base game - Beamdog fixed the engine, made some spells more DnD adherent and fixed a bunch of other stuff as well as greatly improving the UI. BG1EE is really BG1tutu with the BG2EE enhancements and a bunch of other fixes.

IWD2EE really changes the game a lot. Some of the changes I really like - experience rebalancing is great. Being able to pickup all the loot on the ground by right clicking the inventory icon is genius, the pickpocketing system is very well done. But really it is like playing a different game - what you know about optimizing your character build and item layout for IWD2 doesn't quite apply to IWD2EE. I'm not saying it's worse, it's probably better, but it is different.

 

Hi guys!

I'm still not fully working on the port, as I'm overwhelmed with other things. I plan to return to it this winter. We'll see how it will go. But from time to time I have some leisure gap, so I decided to playthrough IWD2, in any case I had to do it anyways.

IWD2 Playthrough
IWD2 Chapter 0 - Prologue is very interesting when played first time, but quite tedious for each subsequent replay. It would be nice to have ability to skip prologue in the port. Essentially give XP, gold and magic loot, and mark all dialogue and quests as done. This is present in the ToEE Co8 mods as well.

There are some harder combat parts in the Prologue, like Targos Caves boss fight, and Targos Palisade scripted Battle, but overall difficulty is quite easy. Quest rewards are heavy Diplomacy dependent. Bu if you have Diplomacy of 15 you will have all the rewards possible. If you complete ALL quests you can have enough XP to achieve LEVEL 3 before the Targos Palisade Battle.

In Chapter 1 I already played through Shaengarne River, Logging Village, Vrek Vileclaw's Cave and Shaengarne Ford. Overall easy hack and slash. Except boss fight in Shaengarne Ford at Campsite, where I had to reload once.

Thoughts so far
One of the most stunning things that I saw is NPC kill XP vs NPC Levels. For example Cabellus, goblin mage in the Prologue's Targos Palisade Battle is LEVEL 7 Wizard (!!!), has CR 2, HP: 32, and spells up to level 3 (INT 13 so max 3rd level spells). And guess what - no Fireball. Instead he has Level 3 spells: Hold Person and Protection from Arrows; Level 2: Blindness, Horror, Mirror Image and Ray of Enfeeblement; Level 1: 2x Color Spray, Chromatic Orb, Mage Armor and Larloch's Minor Drain.

ToEE and KoTC is true to CR >= Level, but IWD2 is NOT. Moreover, many times NPC has great level, but also low level potential. Why? No idea.

AI incredibly suck. Plus inherent problems of real-time combat leads to boring easy hack and slash.

I got to tell you, when we did Shattered Gates Of Slaughtergarde mod, there was Lanthurrae 5th level Cleric NPC. Oh boy she was incredibly awesome! First she summoned Celestial Black Bear near PC casters; then used Wand of Sound Burst until PC passed through two Grimlocks near her, after which she was using spells: spiritual_weapon, hold person, bestow_curse, contagion (DESEASE_BLINDNING_SICKNESS), inflict_serious_wounds and inflict_light_wounds. If she was hurt, she casted Invisibility and cured herself.

3rd Level PC had to reload several times to kill her and not have tank PC cursed.

Conclusions so far
The fact that AI in IWD2 suck does not mean that AI in ToEE port of IWD2 should suck as well. So NPC redesign and AI scripting is needed.

This saddens me a bit, as I was looking for good combat game. And moreover not to change original IWD2 NPCs and AI.

On other hand - should be quite interesting to create.

 

@anatoliy - I agree with @hammyh that you should look at what the IWD2ee team has done given the issues you brought up.

While I wasn't ready for some of the more radical changes, other changes like re-balancing CR levels, adjusting XP rewards to scale more gradually through the game and adding options to skip tedious areas (generally through dialog options) are all there and should be looked at. I think a ToEE conversion would also benefit from a more worthwhile pickpocketing experience (though I was really disappointed that "Luck Knucky" disappeared though I'm sure there was a reason for it and it was probably moved.)