14 replies to this topic

[sturmvogel]

What are the issues that prevented the release of the Monk portion of this mod for OS X? I'd really like to try it out as I have some issues with the standard implementation.

If I can help in any way let me know.

[CamDawg]

The monk fist progression is hardcoded into the game executable, bgmain.exe. None of us have OS X so we don't have any way to figure out how to modify the OS X executable to accomplish the same effect. The current patch may work if it's simply pointed at the correct file, but don't hold me to that.

[Gorilym]

Yeah, I was a bit disappointed about the monk remix not being installable. I'd like to help out making this OS X-compatible as well, though I suspect it would take a guru like devSin to get it right.

Edited by Gorilym, 19 September 2006 - 08:12 AM.

[sturmvogel]

Howabout a limited version of the Remix without the changes to the fist progression for the Mac? I'd like to see how vulnerable a monk is in the early game since it now appears that he can wear bracers, which is one of my main complaints for the current system. Too vulnerable in the early game and too invulnerable later on.
I can't generally afford to keep a monk off the frontlines until after I get Immy back, by which time it's generally not much of an issue.

[NiGHTMARE]

Eh? Monks can wear bracers in the unmodded game - in ToB, there's even a pair of bracers specifically aimed at the monk (Tzu-Zan's Bracers).

Edited by NiGHTMARE, 19 September 2006 - 12:54 PM.

[Lord_Jeremy]

But they can't wear armor enhancing bracers.

[sturmvogel]

Lord_Jeremy, on Sep 19 2006, 03:02 PM, said:

But they can't wear armor enhancing bracers.

Exactement, mon frère. And since I can only get my monk down to a crappy -3 in the early parts of chapter 2 I'm getting seriously abused by crappy things like kobold commandos en masse. A negative armor class should be a seriously wondrous thing, but low-level monsters can hit my monk fairly easily and generally do a lot of damage. My guy took over 50 points of damage when clearing out the sewers underneath the Copper Coronet when playing BP as the freaking commandos targeted him rather than my stone-skinned mage. That's just ludicrous, IMO. Makes it more important how many potions of extra healing the party carries than how well they're armored.
Against the trolls in De'Arnisse Keep I was popping two or three potions of extra healing every single encounter with more than one troll. Even when I managed to keep them out of the rear of the party my front-line tanks were getting seriously abused at -3 and -4 by the trolls. I mean when they average about 20 points of damage per hit against good combinations of armor and protective magic and they manage 2-3 hits against those ACs before dying against my level 9 fighter types...

But maybe that's just my own sense of how things are off-balance in D&D nowadays. But I don't recall these sorts of issues back in the days of yore when I played P'n'P. I mean I go back to the days of the three rule books and the various supplements like Blackmoor and all that. [/rant]

I know that this will never be implemented as it doesn't fit any of the published versions of the monk, but I'd prefer to see a system where he starts off with a better AC, but is slower to progress and tops out sooner.

[NiGHTMARE]

Lord_Jeremy, on Sep 20 2006, 12:02 AM, said:

But they can't wear armor enhancing bracers.

Yes, they can. The only bracers that monks can't wear in the unmodded game are the paladin's bracers and the bard's bracers.

Unless the Mac version changed this, or something.

[sturmvogel]

NiGHTMARE, on Sep 20 2006, 01:48 AM, said:

Yes, they can. The only bracers that monks can't wear in the unmodded game are the paladin's bracers and the bard's bracers.

Unless the Mac version changed this, or something.

[fires up BG and loads a saved game] I'll be damned, you can. I guess that I never noticed because they don't do anything for the monk if their AC is higher than the monk's. I guess that I focused on the fact that the AC didn't change rather than if they were greyed out.

[Gorilym]

sturmvogel, on Sep 19 2006, 08:53 PM, said:

Howabout a limited version of the Remix without the changes to the fist progression for the Mac?

Hmm, I wonder if simply commenting out / deleting the 'bgmain' & 'mfist*' related .tp2 sections would allow installation... If not, maybe for a future version you could split monk remix into subcomponents, so that if bgmain.exe is detected it will ask whether to install the 'full remix', and if it is not detected it moves on to the 'fist-less limited remix'?

[Gorilym]

I've done a little hex research on the Mac ToB executable, (don't know why it didn't occur to me to try that sooner) and the two (identical) MFIST sections were easily located. Now the question, what to do with them?

Section I
from: 005C5F00 to 005C5F40

in ASCII:

&MFIST1.&MFIST2.&MFIST3.&MFIST4.&MFIST5.&MFIST6.&MFIST7.&MFIST8.

in hex:

26 4D 46 49 53 54 31 01 26 4D 46 49 53 54 32 01
26 4D 46 49 53 54 33 01 26 4D 46 49 53 54 34 01
26 4D 46 49 53 54 35 01 26 4D 46 49 53 54 36 01
26 4D 46 49 53 54 37 01 26 4D 46 49 53 54 38 01

Section II:
from: 00B9B0E4 to 00B9B124

in ASCII:

&MFIST1.&MFIST2.&MFIST3.&MFIST4.&MFIST5.&MFIST6.&MFIST7.&MFIST8.

in hex:

26 4D 46 49 53 54 31 01 26 4D 46 49 53 54 32 01
26 4D 46 49 53 54 33 01 26 4D 46 49 53 54 34 01
26 4D 46 49 53 54 35 01 26 4D 46 49 53 54 36 01
26 4D 46 49 53 54 37 01 26 4D 46 49 53 54 38 01

I'm guessing that at least the MFIST "numbers" (31-38 currently) are to be changed. As hex editing via WeiDU confuses me, what do the equivalent sections of bgmain.exe look like when Monk Remix is done with them?

With luck, simply using different address specifics would make this work. There would be one caveat: the end user would be well advised to make a backup of the BG2 executable before installing, as the backup WeiDU makes is useless - it doesn't back up the resource fork, making the application an ornament. Thus it would probably be best to run the hex patching as a shell script on the Mac side .

Edited by Gorilym, 07 October 2006 - 08:00 AM.

[Gorilym]

Ack. That will make this... much more complicated. On the other hand, maybe the Mac port simply stores the relevant data outside of the executable. Will explore.

Edited by Gorilym, 08 October 2006 - 09:56 AM.

[CamDawg]

It's not as reliable, but you can force fist upgrades outside of the hardcoded exe. The Arcane Fist from SPC does this--the main drawback to assigning a custom fist is that it doesn't get saved, so you need to add a scripting chunk to assign the correct fist after reloading.

[Gorilym]

CamDawg, on Oct 8 2006, 08:55 PM, said:

It's not as reliable, but you can force fist upgrades outside of the hardcoded exe. The Arcane Fist from SPC does this--the main drawback to assigning a custom fist is that it doesn't get saved, so you need to add a scripting chunk to assign the correct fist after reloading.

OK, that's something to keep in mind at least. I'll have a look at that kit.

[cmorgan]

I am assuming this was resolved, because a Mac OSX version of this mod is on the downloads page - a diff of v3 for Mac and v3 for Windows shows no differences beyond the standard "extra file" .command difference.

If someone from Mac- or Linux- Land can recheck using v4, it would be cool if we could make sure Mac folks are actually able to use this correctly