Wut? Dudes patch & mod Planescape: Torment

[brkl]

Apparently some people have done quite a bit to improve the nigh perfect Planescape: Torment. I'll post some of the Escapist news story here:

A series of mods for the classic RPG Planescape: Torment has been released, giving both RPG veterans and gaming newcomers a good reason to take a look at one of the finest games ever made.

Posted at Spellhold Studios, the latest versions of "Qwinn's PS:T mods" enhance and fix the game and also add significant amounts of content that was unfinished when the game originally launched, including quests, characters, items and banter.

The first mod, the Planetscape: Torment Fixpack is an update that fixes "literally hundreds of bugs and thousands of typos, thereby restoring a lot of lost and inactive content." Changes range from small errors in spelling and grammar to wholesale modifications to items like Dak'kon's Zerth blade and even entire areas like the Tenement of Thieves that cause them to function more like they were originally intended to.

The second mod, called Planescape: Torment Unfinished Business, restores the "not-quite-finished" content that shipped with the game, polishing and completing it so it can be fully integrated into game world. All-new citizens, characters, items and even complete quests that were contained in the code but not available in the final game have been brought to life in 18 different components.

Qwinn's Planescape: Torment Tweaks, the final mod in the set, adds "ease of use" tweaks to the game, including some improvements to gameplay mechanics, user-selectable settings for maximizing hit points during level-ups, a banter accelerator that lets players experience all 78 fully-voiced banters that shipped with the game (rather than the dozen or you'd normally hear), some outright cheats and more.

Actually makes me want to play again, and considering my computer situation in Scotland, I don't have that much else to play...

http://www.shsforums.net/index.php?showtopic=38180

[ThunderPeel2001]

Holy crap! I guess it's finally time to play Planescape: Torment.

[Erkki]

Yeah, I might play it as well. For some reason I can't remember, I only played it for a couple of hours and then never touched again.

[Chris]

Yeah, I might play it as well. For some reason I can't remember, I only played it for a couple of hours and then never touched again.

Same here. I just couldn't get into it when I tried. It started off really slow and I was talking to a skull, which seemed really goofy, and it just wasn't doing anything for me. Maybe I should try again.

[brkl]

I'm not a fan of the beginning (god damn it why does every RPG have to begin in a dungeon...) The game gets fantastic real quick, though. The skull is actually a pretty deep character, besides being hilarious.

[Karimi]

I was thinking of replaying it , looks like I have another reason to now. PS:T is amazing, I won't even bother to make an argument. Its just Wow.:tup:

[Wrestlevania]

I played about 7hrs of the game last year (or was it the year before?) and enjoyed what I experienced. Looking at the things which have now been polished up, I really want to get into it again.

[Karimi]

Be sure to grab the Widescreen mod and the Ghostdog ui mod. Playing this game at 1280x1024 makes me cry tears of joy.

[Wrestlevania]

That sounds wicked. I just started playing the game again this weekend, with all the mods previously listed in this thread.

I'd forgotten how rich the story telling and characterisations are...

[Karimi]

Same here. I read the a paragraph introducing some random guy in a bar a few times over. The detail and the quality of the writing is unbelievable. The story is probably the deepest of any game I've played.

"Before you is a tall silent figure. he could easily pass for a statue-although the deep furrows in his face and brow make you wonder if the sculptor was a little too eager in defining the face with the chisel.He looks well over fifty years old...but exactly how much over fifty, its hard to tell. As he slowly turns to look at you , you catch the dull sheen of copper in his eyes."

[Moosferatu]

I'm about half-way through it using the mods mentioned here. There are some great additions. Most of the quest stuff isn't major, but there are some great restored dialogs, especially with Morte. Also, the banter accelerator produces a lot more bickering between Morte and Annah, which is always enjoyable. However, the game is still far from being bug free.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I'm about half-way through it using the mods mentioned here. There are some great additions. Most of the quest stuff isn't major, but there are some great restored dialogs, especially with Morte. Also, the banter accelerator produces a lot more bickering between Morte and Annah, which is always enjoyable. However, the game is still far from being bug free.

Really? After all this time and there's still bugs? Maybe you should email the patch makers? (What bugs have you seen, btw?)

[Wrestlevania]

Be sure to grab the Widescreen mod and the Ghostdog ui mod. Playing this game at 1280x1024 makes me cry tears of joy.

I found those additional hi-res mods to download.

[Moosferatu]

Really? After all this time and there's still bugs? Maybe you should email the patch makers? (What bugs have you seen, btw?)

Well, the problems I've encountered might be a result of me running it with Wine, but I hesitate to jump to that conclusion because it seems to run so smoothly with the unfortunate exception of cutscenes. Let's see, the most irritating bug I've encountered involves Dak'kon failing to get a key dialog option after Fell takes the tattoos off my old arm. Without it I can't do a quest in the mortuary that'd give me +1 Dex. Actually, I haven't gotten any new dialog options for Dak'kon since I finished the Circle of Zerthimon, and I can't remember if I'm missing anything else. Another irritating bug is that periodically I'm unable to talk to certain characters. However, I can usually get around this by quiting and starting again, so it's likely Wine's fault.

Oh, another I just thought of. When I did the quest to get Morte back for some reason the game put Morte back in my party before I finished the quest, but without making him visible on the screen, so when I finished the quest for real I still couldn't use him. Fortunately, when I reloaded a save shortly after starting the quest (still with Morte improperly in my party) he suddenly reappeared.

Another, the Puzzled Skeleton in the Drowned Nations refused to talk to me. I don't know maybe one of the fix-packs added a new condition that I didn't know about. Not a huge deal.

[miffy495]

the Ghostdog ui mod.

You can play as Forest Whittaker?

[Karimi]

You can play as Forest Whittaker?

You're thinking of the Idi Amin mod.

[miffy495]

Ghost Dog.

[Karimi]

Ghost Dog.

I know. Was making a joke of my own.

[miffy495]

Fair enough. I suspected as much, but wasn't actually sure either way. Hard to tell sarcasm on teh internets.

Fun fact: A female friend of mine does not bother to see anything recent with James McAvoy in it because, and I quote, "I already saw his cock in Last King of Scotland. What else could he show me?"

[Karimi]

Fair enough. I suspected as much, but wasn't actually sure either way. Hard to tell sarcasm on teh internets.

Fun fact: A female friend of mine does not bother to see anything recent with James McAvoy in it because, and I quote, "I already saw his cock in Last King of Scotland. What else could he show me?"

Hehehe.

Is she attractive... ?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Creepy...

[Qwinn]

Hullo all Was doing my once-a-month or so googling around to see if I could find bug reports that no one reported to me, and came upon this thread

Moosferatu:

Another, the Puzzled Skeleton in the Drowned Nations refused to talk to me. I don't know maybe one of the fix-packs added a new condition that I didn't know about. Not a huge deal.

This is a good one. Turns out for some reason that in the vanilla game, the Puzzled Skeleton reused some variables that were supposed to be used by the Pendant of Yemeth quest. If you took an evil approach with Adozyel during the Restored PoY quest, it would indeed make the Puzzled Skeleton not talk to you. It'll be fixed in the next version.

When I did the quest to get Morte back for some reason the game put Morte back in my party before I finished the quest, but without making him visible on the screen, so when I finished the quest for real I still couldn't use him.

Hrrrm. This strikes me as something wrong with the code that is supposed to make party members automatically rejoin you when you escape after you've been mazed by the Lady. Shouldn't be happening during -that- quest. I'll check it out further and see if I can resolve the issue. (You didn't happen to get mazed in the middle of the Lothar quest, did you? Heh, that never occurred to me, will have to add a check against that, definitely.)

Let's see, the most irritating bug I've encountered involves Dak'kon failing to get a key dialog option after Fell takes the tattoos off my old arm. Without it I can't do a quest in the mortuary that'd give me +1 Dex.

Hm. It seems that in the vanilla game, not every path where you can arrive at "Talk to me after we leave this place" sets the proper variable, but if you talk to Fell with Dak'kon translating again, you should be able to get it to set (unless you have very very poor wisdom). Basically, you have to get to the point where you call Dak'kon out and say "why are you lying to me?" (this requires an easy wisdom stat check, to know that he's lying). If you pick the "Translate for me *now*" option, you do eventually get the "I will not speak of it here, talk to me elsewhere" line, but the variable isn't properly set that way.

I will make it so that it is so set in the next version. The "Why are you lying to me?" option doesn't seem to reveal any information that should unlock that option that the "Translate now" option doesn't. Besides, there's no way I can really evade the "talk to me elsewhere about it" line either way, and clearly one or the other has to be dealt with.

Another irritating bug is that periodically I'm unable to talk to certain characters. However, I can usually get around this by quiting and starting again, so it's likely Wine's fault.

This is a very old bug. I was pretty sure my accelerated banter tweak fixed it though. Did you perhaps not install that?

Please always feel free to drop by my forums and let me know about these things, my googling is only -somewhat- effective in finding stuff like this, and I can't fix it if I don't know about it

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

O wait... yeah, you mentioned in an earlier post that you -did- have the banter accelerator installed. Urk. Well. I didn't experience it even once this last playthrough. So let me reask the question - did you play through with version 3.0 forward? That's the first version where the banter accelerator turned off the engine's method of delivering banters that I suspect was the cause of the problem.

(Actually, the first Tweak Pack version that fixed it would've been Tweak Pack v.3.5, but that's the one that got released in conjunction with the Fixpack 3.0.)

If you played with my mods prior to Fixpack 3.0/Tweak Pack 3.5, then yeah, that's an old bug that I would've expected anyone to get.

Qwinn

[Moosferatu]

wow, thanks! I'm impressed.

You were right about Dak'kon. I just hadn't made him translate for me. Whoops.

As for the Morte issue, I'm not sure what was up. I hadn't been mazed. I just tried loading an old save and re-creating it, but it didn't happen again.

Yep, I'm using the most recent Tweak and Fixpack versions. I can give you at least a couple specific instances that it happened, if it helps. As far as I can remember, it happened almost exclusively between the time Annah joined and shortly after going to the Lower Ward. I had trouble talking to Annah before entering the Tenement of Thugs as well as on the screen she found my body on in the Alley of Lingering Sighs. I also had trouble talking to Dak'kon after showing my arm to Fell. I feel like there were at least a couple other instances, but I can't remember what they were any longer.

You've done fantastic work, by the way.

:tup:

[Qwinn]

Thanks for the kind words

Phew on the Dak'kon thing... maybe I shouldn't change anything then. Eh. I'll actually try it out in game and see if what I thought was possible indeed is.

On the Morte thing, I'm stumped. Looking at the code, the automatic-rejoin logic really -should- only ever run if you're entering the zone from the Lady's Maze. I'll still add code to make sure it doesn't happen if you get mazed during the Lothar kidnapping quest, but I can't figure out how it happened to you without that. Gah.

And on the inability to talk to people thing.... well, gah. I thought the banter accelerator really had fixed that. It used to happen to me all the time, but on my last run, not didn't happen even once. Bleh. I suppose it's possible it -is- Wine at fault for that, but considering it used to happen to everybody, that seems improbably coincidental. Either way, not sure how else I can attack it.

Qwinn