Worthwhile Mods

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I'd steer clear of "the Darkest Day." Also known as "the Dumbest Day," TDD is an example of what NOT to do in a fan-made mod. Huge amounts of poorly throught out and poorly implemented content, horribly imbalanced magic items and kits, and more bugs than you can shake a stick at. Some people like it, I'm not one of them. There are far better mods out there that won't drop a steaming log in your hard drive.

 

Heh. TDD did have a couple of good ideas- more kits, for example, are nice after all. But on the whole, I'd agree with you Death Rabbit- TDD just ain't up their with the better mods. Or, truth be told, the reasonable ones either.

 

SoS is boring and somewhat unbalanced, just like the most of other large modifications. Tortured Souls and NEJ are often referred as not that bad, although I doubt you will be able to play it with a lot of extra mods installed.

In addition to Kulyok's NPC picks mentioned, I would suggest The Longer Road. Jon *is* a way overpowered, but rarely amusing, and the dialogs are perfect.

[ May 05, 2007, 20:44: Message edited by: Asterio ]

 

Agreed with The Longer Road. Jon has an insane number of spell slots, but the dialogue is written so well that it's worth taking him along at least once.

 

Actually, the G3 fixpack fixes a great many egregious errors which most assuredly are not addressed by Baldurdash. Also, I believe the fixpack has deprecated the used key removal component, so there shouldn't actually be any more compatibility issues with IA....unless IA is checking for it in the .tp2 and refusing to install if it is present.

 

When Sikret says "incompatible", he means he hasn't verified compatiblity personally. Various people have reported using IA and the BG2 Fixpack without problems. (The IA forum has discussion on the matter.)

 

Improved Anvil includes its own Fix/Tweakpack. So, players do not need to worry about things Baldurdash has not fixed. Moreover, the ways IA fixes and tweaks things are optimized for IA's own requirements.

The incompatibility due to the key removal component is a very old and outdated story. G3 Fixpack removed that component and that incompatibility resolved. Later the two mods were incompatible, because G3 Fixpack had a bug which would corrupt one of the game's original spells. But again the Fixpack fixed that internal bug too. We are not sure, however, whether G3 fixpack still contains other critical bugs or not.

No, IA doesn't have any such checks in its tp2. Players can install G3 Fixpack with IA if they wish; but as I have said repeatedly, such players will do so on their own risk and will not receive any technical support from me if they encounter bugs during their games. I offer technical support only to those players who use the original Baldurdash TOB Fixpack V1.12 with IA.

 

If something works for many people, it doesn't mean it will work for all. When Sikret says quality, it (also) includes that it's guaranteed to all players, and not to most players. "It works for most..." or "No one has reported a problem yet" do not belong to our dictionary.

On the other hand, if we followed such an approach ("no one reported a problem yet"), we could also say: Baldurdash + IA Fixpack functions perfectly, noone has reported that he had any problems with them. Nonetheless, Sikret keeps adding new fixes if he finds real bugs or someone reports real bugs to him.

But no need to take seriously any more what Drew or SimDing0 say about Improved Anvil, anywhere. They "seem" to know Improved Anvil's relationships (compatibility, incompatibility etc.) better than the author of IA, and constantly bring up the matter (yet it was discussed a million times earlier) -- see the "replies" after Decados' post in this thread. Because they can't accept that the author of IA and most contributors have a different approach in certain things. They try to make G3 Fixpack to be the part of every players' installation during each walkthrough, and the fact IA doesn't support it (for good reasons) is a thorn in their flesh. Otherwise why do they pester IA all the time when they don't even play it personally, and IA's players are usually satisfied?

 

OK man, cool.

 

Alright, Baronius, if you want to have a baseless dislike of a fixpack put together with the cooperation (or, at least, the extension of an invitation) of every modding community rather than participate in order to improve whatever you consider it's problems, that's your prerogative. As someone who has played both IA and NEJ with the BG2 fixpack with no problems (other than the fact that I ultimately decided that neither of the mods were really my cup of tea), I can gladly report that I encountered no bugs other than the "known" bugs. Given that I'm not the only player to make the report, I think it is a little disingenuous to report NEJ or IA to be incompatible with (at least the most recent version of) the fixpack.

 

This hypocricy is what I dislike, not the fixpack. You know it very well that the "dislike" of G3 "fixpack" is not baseless. We tried to do our best to explain it, but CamDawg said (apart from other things) that my definition of a fix is "not practical" enough. (Perhaps we could define a bat as a bird -- wouldn't it be practical?)
Furthermore, accepting an "invitation" is a free decision to my knowledge. "You're invited to contribute to our work according to our guidelines", and those won't accept this who feel that those guidelines are against the most fundemental principles of mod creation -- such as "don't make pointless cosmetic changes on the game just to increment your "Fixed_bugs" counter and to be able to promote the mod as something that includes "Baldurdash plus a few hundred more fixes". And -- which is even worse -- unwise cosmetic changes even can cause incompatibility in certain cases, but this exceeds the scope of a topic about worthwhile mods. Sikret (and others) have no time to check every released version of Fixpack for potential incompatibility risks and other errors.

 

I think there's a terminology issue here, guys.
When you release a mod, do you call it "buggy" until you absolutely prove that there are no bugs?
Now, should we call two mods "incompatible" until we absolutely prove they are compatible?

There are an awful lot of mods out there. Are you saying that Sikret has tested all 300-odd of them except the Fixpack? That seems frightfully unlikely to me. Why is the Fixpack listed as incompatible but not Mang0's Hip-Hop Mod? I'm willing to bet nobody's tested the latter with IA either.

Basically, you're actually not kidding anyone by pretending that the Fixpack is being ousted for any reason other than you simply don't like it. This is fine, whatever your reasons, but I'd like to make it perfectly clear that playing IA with the Fixpack does not blow anything up except Sikret's sense of self-worth.

 

You don't understand it. It has nothing to do with single bugs. It's the matter of principles and guidelines (and yes, which may lead to bugs as well). G3 Fixpack development often doesn't seem to be a conscious, disciplined process. Rather a desire, an urge, a mania to "identify" and "fix" more and more "bugs". At this point, you could say that all this just reflects that "I don't like it". And it would be true. But the attitude I refer to has consequences. As I've said, I won't detail here the (already existing/possible) harmful or unpleasant effects of this "urge". I've done it very many times, including a whole long post here at SP, also detailing how G3 FP's changes could be separated to different components. IIRC some optional component was added, but the main point was ignored, without any rational explanation. Fixpack is called a "community project", but it's hypocrisy, its major developers refuse all suggestions that don't fit their plans, or mislead several players who will end up reporting "guard's leather armour is too brown!" and similar "bugs". It wouldn't be bad eventually, but at least it shouldn't be promoted as a "community project" which "Blackwyrm refuses to participate".

Regardless, Sikret may have additional doubts (which he might have told already, I guess) why he doesn't support FP. Improved Anvil is a complex project, which is very sensitive to bugs, e.g. caused by G3 FP. It already had bugs, and I don't doubt that each mod has. But as Sikret also said, there is no time to check each release of G3 FP thoroughly. Unfortunately, the attitude and guidelines (and definitions etc.) of many G3 FP developers can lead to bugs and risks.

[ May 07, 2007, 00:28: Message edited by: Baronius ]

 

To those trying to decide whether or not to use the fixpack which was written by the entire modding community according to guidelines which were agreed upon by the entire modding community (at least the members that accepted the invite and participated), I would reccomend visiting their forum and deciding for yourself if their fixes are too subjective. Remember also that no one has reported any compatibility issues with the most recent versions of IA and the Fixpack. Further, if you install it after NEJ (NEJ looks for it in the .tp2 and refuses to install if it's there), there are no compatibility issues with NEJ, either.

 

G3 Fixpack was written by the entire modding community, that's news to me.

Ah, so only by those who partipicated... (a rather big subset of the "entire modding community".).

If I may summarize what you said: G3 Fixpack was developed by those who participated in its development, according to the guidelines they agreed upon. Now that's no surprise to anyone, I guess.

(And it seems it's no problem to bring up NEJ as well (at least twice) after you've hijacked this thread by commenting the official IA information (i.e. IA requires nonweidu BD). Really on-topic. And yeah, teach players how to break mods. Teach people how to deal with others' works... by the way, what's the last mod/tool you released?)

 

NEJ and IA are worthwhile mods, even if they aren't exactly my cup of tea. (In my opinion, NEJ is one of the only "big" mods that is actually worth playing.) So is the fixpack. How exactly does telling players how to take advantage of all three of these worthwhile mods without experiencing any bugs constitute telling them how to break them? And why exactly would that be off-topic in a thread about worthwhile mods? Again, for those trying to decide whether or not to use the BG2 fixpack, I'd strongly recommend visiting its forum and deciding for yourself.

About 2 years ago, but it wasn't a very big mod. All it does is assign Minsc a custom berserker kit that enables him to still function as a ranger. You can get it here at SP, if you want. For my part, I spend most of my time play-testing, not modding. Was the snarky personal attack really necessary, by the way?

 

Your instructions are often the exact opposite of the authors' instructions listed e.g. in official readme files. For more explanation, see the paragraph above.

Personal attack. Great. All I wanted to do is to remind you that maybe IA/NEJ authors are not complete newbies either. I don't question your modding/programming skills, but have you ever considered that these people have been working for a lot of time on their mods, so maybe their disclaimers are not there out of whimsy or "to build in deliberate incompatibilities with other mods" (Copyright 2006 seanas). Maybe they know what they're doing. Maybe they really want to help players avoid unexpected, weird anomalies and problems. Are you sure you've still enough experience after 2 years to override the advice of modders who have been very active, plus they know their mod in details very well? Are you sure that playtesting experience is enough? Of course you can have your own opinion, but is it morally correct to imply that these people want to mislead players because they don't like the other mod?

 

While we're on this subject, Sikret's advice of "IA should be installed after other mods without exception" really is an excellent way to ensure things get broken. Is there any chance you can get him to stop telling people this?

 

First of all, if I remember correctly, it was exactly you who said somewhere that "generally, mods that improve/change AI should be installed last [..]". In order to surely take their effect. (I don't agree with it in this form, but it's not the subject of this topic.)
Second, if you guys weren't constantly trying to offer "help" to players in how not to follow the installation instructions of certain mods to make them "compatible" with normally incompatible mods, then perhaps Sikret (and probably others) would be able to give more sophisticated installation instructions. However, authors can't do anything else than ask players to install their mod as last, to avoid problems thanks to your "help" I described above. As long as some modders try to force their favourite mods into mod configurations where normally they can't be included due to incompatibility risks, don't expect anything. With you guys constantly being more clever in mod cases than the mods' authors themselves, players will just get more confused, and won't know what to do. The best way to ensure they will encounter bugs and problems.

 

Yes, but not in this context. I've always stated that if you install two AI mods, say Quest Pack and Big Picture, you install the one you want to take precedence last OUT OF THE TWO. (I usually encourage people to put my AI in first because I typically consider it weaker than competing mods.)

BUT, his isn't to say that AI mods go last overall--tweak mods, and ultimately (beyond-any-discussion-because-it-really-is-essential) Virtue get installed last. This is in part because these are the mods that affect previously-installed mods, and partly because it's a lot less of a crisis if some creature's AI gets broken by a later mod than if a quest or game feature malfunctions.

Consider Virtue/BP. Install BP then Virtue. BP's shout scripts get overwritten, but everything works fine. Install Virtue then BP, and the entire Virtue system is broken, which pretty much destroys the game.

Yes, I'm aware that IA's content is more than just tactical changes, but really, I think it's highly unneccessary to insist it be installed last. (I understand every modder's desire to ensure their work remains intact, but this is not the best solution.) Install IA at the same time as other quest content mods.