Icewind Dale: ToEE - Total Conversion

allyx here is a firn tree you asked for

according to descriptions.mes

there are 3 versions and each a different size.

you can play around with their scale in proto.tab

and their rotations and postions you can edit when making you map.


if you are ok with this over writing the original swamp tree fine and done!

if you need this to be an add-on tree then you will need only hex edit this version.

for more info on that just pm me and I could tutor on how tos do that if you need to.


just fyi it installs to
data/art/meshes/scenery/foliage

 

Another issue I've run into... it's possible you'll run into a protos.tab limit. IWD2 has 1622 creature definitions (CRE files). I don't know how many BG1/2 has, but I'd imagine it has more. You may be able to cull variants, not sure yet. ToEE currently has a limit of 999 NPC protos, so that has to be dealt with one way or another. (I intend to extend it for Temple+)

That also brings up another issue - namely that it's a massive, massive amount of creatures to convert. Likewise for dialogues and dialogue scripts / triggers. IMO the sanest option for a serious TC effort is to first write conversion tools.

 

usually writing a tool to convert or parse script, dialogs , triggers
takes a bit of time to create
but in the long run it saves an extreme amount of time.

so I think I would agree with that.

 

Fine!

(The NPC's here are controllable enough. )

 

I can say that I'll definitely pursue creating the tools if no one else does so by the time I get to IWD2. But that may take a while.
Perhaps this is something @Agetian could help with?

 

Greetings, inhabitants of the ToEE plane!

A fan of the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series here.
@Allyx's thread over on the Beamdog forums got me interested in this total conversion project.
I bought ToEE on GOG.com a few year's ago as part of some bundle, and tried playing it once, but couldn't really get into it. Maybe this project will make the famed tactical combat of the ToEE engine more accessible to people like me? (Or maybe I should just give it another try now...)

In any case, I'm willing to help!

A few comments on the discussion in this thread so far:

Camera Angle

I can confirm that the Baldur's Gate games (and Icewind Dale) use a camera angle of 45°, based on my own measurements.
(I haven't measured Icewind Dale 2, but expect it is the same.)

Here's a comparison table I made, which covers three different isometric RPGs:



I also agree that 45° and 44.27° are similar enough that it makes sense to just use the BG maps in ToEE without stretching, and players will not notice anything wrong.

Side note: Based on my experiments for turning Pillars of Eternity maps into Icewind Dale maps, I found that one can bridge even a difference of 5°, by stretching the images. Areas that are mostly horizontal (e.g. outdoors grass/dirt maps), will look perfectly fine. Vertical structures that are convex (hills, walls...) will also look fine, except that they'll look taller than they're supposed to be. Only concave structures (like tables) cause problems, because you can get M.C. Escher like effects where you're seeing parts that you're not supposed to see at the new angle.

Writing conversion tools

Considering the sheer amount of data to convert, automating the process using conversion tools sound like a good idea.

But beware that even if @Sitra Achara writes a conversion tool for Icewind Dale 2, it might not work for the other Infinity Engine games without modification.

That's because before the Enhanced Editions came along, each "Infinity Engine" game actually had a slightly different engine. It seems the original developers simply copy-pasted the engine source code from one game to the next, and made changes to it each time without backporting them to the older games. Even the expansion packs made engine modifications.

So there were a total of 9 variants of the Infinity Engine, each with slightly different data formats and scripting conventions:

• 1998: [BG] Baldur's Gate
• 1999: [BG:TotSC] Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (expansion)
• 1999: [PST] Planescape: Torment
  
• 2000: [IWD] Icewind Dale
• 2000: [BG2] Baldur's Gate II
• 2001: [IWD:HoW] Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter (expansion)
• 2001: [IWD:TotL] Icewind Dale: Trials of the Luremaster (mini-expansion)
  
• 2001: [BG2:ToB] Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (expansion)
• 2002: [IWD2] Icewind Dale II

I say "were", because when Beamdog created the Enhanced Editions, it started using a single engine for them (based on the source code of the BG2:ToB engine, but with a more modern UI, cross-platform support, etc). These are the games they released so far:

• 2012: [BG:EE] Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition (includes the TotSC expansion)
• 2013: [BG2:EE] Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition (includes the ToB expansion)
  
• 2014: [IWD:EE] Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition (includes the HoW and TotL expansions)
• 2016: [BG:SoD] Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear (new expansion!)

So these are now compatible with each other, as far as data formats are concerned. Whenever Beamdog patches the engine for one of these, they also backport the change to the other ones.

The only Infinity Engine games left out (i.e. still using their own slightly incompatible engines), are PST and IWD2.

In any case, if you're serious about writing a conversion tool, I'm willing to help. I'm not a professional programmer, but I can code a little. And the NearInfinity data browser is open-source, so its source code could probably be used as a starting point.

Another useful resource might be the IESDP, a database which formally documents the Infinity Engine data file formats.

Misc

That's why I suggested doing the smaller & simpler IWD1 first, instead of going straight for BG1...

Yeah, BG1 has multiple cities and villages, with a lot of useless interiors for all the commoner's houses.

Well, almost useless... Some players like to go through them all, and rob every last gemstone or gold coin that the villagers have stored away in their cupboards... It's only small amounts of loot in each house, but I guess it adds up.

BG2, IWD1, and IWD2 have much less of that. In those games, you can usually only enter maps that have something useful in it.

 

Hi @ineth !

The IEDSP is indeed an invaluable resource.

If you want to chip in, you should get familiar with the ToEE formats, and particularly the ToEE World Builder, which is also open source. For example I've had a brief look at the CRE format at IEDSP, and it looks fairly close to the ToEE protos.tab in terms of content, though ToEE separates the inventory specification to invensource.mes in the data\rules folder.

BTW, thanks for pimping Temple+ on the BG forums @Allyx
(on that note, I'm getting a strange security warning when accessing that forum... is it just me?)