[Azred]

I have it and even though I haven't played very far--just got to Friendly Arm Inn--I am enjoying the updates. It isn't quite a "we fixed and updated everything" because many weapons that should be "magic" still have an enchantment level of 0, but I haven't really gotten into checking through the items and spells yet. NearInfinity will still translate all the game files, so browsing them is easy; DLCTEP will work but because dialog.tlk isn't where it used to be all the string references are broken.

The BeamDog and BGEE forums are full of people complaining about problems getting the game to load but most of those people are using Windows7 and they are going to have to right-click > run as administrator to get BGEE to run correctly. That is stupid, of course, but then I didn't design Win7. I have it installed on two Win7 computers with no problems; on the third one--the home computer--I had to get ola32.dll (or something like that) installed but once I did the game worked just fine.

On the laptop NearInfinity still lets me do things like turning a generic multiclass mage/thief into mage/assassin or removing a limitation such as turning a gnome cleric/illusionist into cleric/mage.

I noted one interesting items that purports to be +1 but +2 at night; I don't think this is possible because the Infinity Engine doesn't check time for items (unless I am totally mistaken). However, its code references effect 318 and I don't know what that is right now; I will look into it more today.

All things considered, this was a decent investment of a mere $20. I never bothered with Tutu or many of the various mods that were put out over the years. Where this release is a significant improvement over previous mods or fixes is that the effects which were previously broken or bugged have been fixed--I look forward to correcly using "modify duration" to increase the length of time many spells last; this effect still won't work for spells like Stinking Cloud because the projectile lasts only for a preset amount of time that cannot be changed.

I have not encountered the "summon club" problem. I presume this refers to the spell Shillelagh? I'll look into it today and see what I can uncover. I suspect that it should still be fixed by Dispel Magic, which removes the shillelagh from inventory but maybe there is some other problem with how it is coded.

edit: well, I found dialog.tlk. It is in the BGEE folder then, on my computer, \data\00766\lang\en_us. Now I can try to edit DLCTEP to point there and find string references; otherwise, I will have to rely on NI only. Incidentally, the sound files are there, as well--\data\00766\lang\en_us\sounds folder--so now custom soundsets can be added. I am going to move the IWD sound sets over because I like them.

I am currently in the process of putting my own personal preference fixes back in place. Mages may now use clubs (the description says "anyone can swing a club" so why not mages?), having a "neutral" reputation makes neutral characters use their "happy" soundoff, I corrected druid xp table to match clerics, tweaked the xpcap a little so now all multiclass characters can get to about 9th level (the worst is fighter/mage/cleric who can get to only 8/9/9, made it so half-orcs have a -2 to chr rather than int, etc. Nothing major, mind you, merely personal preferences. When I finish, I'll zip my fixes to make it easier to apply them to my various computers or to hand out to people.