Transferring players between modules

I've been researching the possibilities of transferring player characters between modules (e.g. exporting players from a saved game and importing them to another module as starting characters) and came to a conclusion that it's very much possible to do such transfers, with the following restrictions imposed by the game engine:

1. Inventory can't be transferred directly because the starting player characters seemingly can't have linked inventories. Further research may be done in this area in order to find out if it might be possible to allocate starting inventory indirectly through the Shopmap or something like that. Anyway, even if the inventories can't be linked to the starting players, it's possible to script the inventory transition by using spare "padding" fields of player objects (e.g. all those _pad_* fields). So, inventories can be transferred, in this or that way, and how hard the procedure is will depend entirely on the game engine's limitations.

2. All other information about the character (level, classes, experience points, skills, feats, spells, and whatnot) can be transferred without a problem.

3. It's still unknown what would happen if a dead character is transferred (this will require additional experiments on my side, and such experiments will take place soon).

Right now two modders (yours truly and rufnredde) are working on a tool that would allow anyone to transfer his characters from one module (exporting them from a saved game) to another. This program will be meant for new modules, one of which is currently in active development (Keep on the Borderlands). For example, when both KotB and QotS are released, a player will be able to finish the KotB with a certain party and then import his leveled characters into QotS to continue the adventure.

Right now the development of the tool has just started but it's going well. This thread can be used for all discussion based on the topic of transferring characters between modules and a tool that is to be used for this operation.

There are plans to integrate the future tool with the ToEE Front-End, which will also mean that the next installment of ToEEFE is likely to require .NET Framework v2.0, as opposed to the current requirement of .NET v1.1. Please be ready for this, it's wise to be aware of possible upgrades that may be needed in the future. If the integration is going to take place, the ToEEFE Pro 3.80 will remain in place as a final release of the front-end that uses .NET v1.1, and the new version (likely to be named ToEEFE 4.00) will be released separately as the first version that requires .NET v2.0.

Please vote in the poll that is attached to this thread as to whether you think the new character transfer tool should be integrated with ToEEFE or not.

NOTE: Due to the fact that at the moment of writing no new modules are finished that require an operation of character transfer, the new tool and/or the updated version of the Front-End (with the character transfer feature enabled) is likely to be released only after Keep on the Borderlands is finished and released, and when the work on QotS is officially started. This is also done to prevent the abuse of the new tool and its misuse as a tool of cheating.

NOTE 2: As soon as the new tool is finished, it will be released in a private manner to a small group of select modders who will express interest in actively testing the tool and providing the necessary feedback. Whether you are eligible or not will also depend on whether you actively work on the new module(s) that are being written from scratch. Today it means that the core crew of the Keep on the Borderlands mod team are eligible to receive a copy of the tool. The final version of the list of people who will be allowed to test the character transfer utility will be determined at the release time.

Thanks in advance for showing your interest. Please let me know whether you have any suggestions. Please also let me know whether such a tool is actually interesting for and needed by the community or not, because I see that the interest in fresh modding tools has severely degraded over the last month or two, up to the point of discredit of certain tools that have been released lately. If what I'm doing is not needed in practice I can cease the development at any time because I don't want to do things that won't find their practical use.

- Agetian

 

I'd say, whatever you guys think works best (but I'm voting for option 1).

 

I'm still all in favor of this, despite the recent doubts about character levels et al expressed in other threads. To me, the main attraction of even having other modules is being able to transfer characters from one to the next. The whole idea of a 'trilogy' kind of falls apart without the same crew running through it. Otherwise they are just disjointed adventures, and might as well just be released as mods/add-ons/expansions. The whole point of the Big Picture thread was to see if this was doable and if Co8 was up to the task of at least aspiring to do it. It appears that it is doable, and initially at least there was support for doing it. Why stop now?

 

@ Gaear: There was no initial support for doing this in the game itself, the entire thing is a workaround aiming at circumventing the engine limitations which actually prevent us from transferring characters from module to module (well, not actually "prevent", but work against us in this respect anyway). However, it's very much doable, and in fact I already have a working test version of an application that can do the transferring so I can test and fine-tune the process.

@ Krunch: This way or the other it'll still need the so-much-hated-by-you .NET Framework v2.0...

 

@ Krunch: yeah, .NET v2.0 is so much faster and better than v1.1. ToEEFE is likely to go .net v2.0 either way, no matter whether it's going to come with an integrated character transfer utility or not.

@ Everyone: Okay, screenshot time. This is an interface (preliminary version) of a working character transfer tool, very early and unstable version which we (rufnredde and I) use for internal testing. Believe it or not, it actually works. Whether it works well or not is another aspect of it, but time will tell. Enjoy!

- Agetian

 

I should never'a left those saves in, I am sure some of them are corrupt. 'And...' is a great place to start though, the party are already leveled up a bit, oterwise its the very start of the module.

Sorry, butting in

 

A question for everyone: Do you think it's reasonable enough to transfer damaged characters to another module in damaged state (e.g. if a character had 20 out of 98 hit points when he was transferred, he'll have 20 out of 98 in the new module as well)? Unless someone can come up with a good reason for this, I'm making the tool transfer characters in fully healed state. Thanks in advance for any suggestions here.

- Agetian