Utraean Peninsula remastered

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Yes very good - But I prefer to play single (SP) so:

It’s actually easy to convert the multi-player world to single-player,
allowing you to save your game in progress:

1. Use Tankviewer to extract all files from Mpworld.dsmap
2. Use a Test Editor to edit main.gas
3. Change the flag multiplayer_only from true to false
4. Save the file and use Tankcreator to compact all files into a new dsmap
5. Copy this dsmap to the maps directory
6. Start Dungeon Siege, select a single player game, and you can choose
Between Ehb and the Utraean Peninsula.

Note 1: change the extension of the file from .dsres to .dsmap
Note 2: Make one directory (TEMP1) and put inside: world (for Tankviewer) & Final File (for Tankcreator).

Ulyss I know how to switch off the multi-player-only flag, thank you very much! My concerns are the player location triggers, the mules, the companions, and the fury eye

I did a little pre-work today, just brushing up plants, and fixing a misplaced tree and a missing sign post.
I made a "revisited" release here https://github.com/foerstj/up-remaster/releases/tag/revisit-v1.0
But I think it's not worth downloading yet for playing.

Speaking of a single-player UP, what do you think?

Should the fury eye be added? If yes, where should it be hidden?
(Trial of Gallus calls it the "eye of the crystal temple")

Should mules be sold? If yes, where and how many and for how much? Should I add mules or just make the existing ones buyable? Should I add merchants or only use existing NPCs?

Should companions be added? If yes, then this is probably the biggest topic... Which companions? And where and for how much etc etc?

About this project I'm rather conservative; I don't want to create my own very special single-player map, I want to create the most straightforward UP single-player map. So about the companions I'm thinking of simply re-using the existing ones from KoE and rename them etc so as not to mess up the lore. What do you think?

I approve. This has been done before - Myros' mod. A very early one (according to its readme, before Siege Editor was available, so only text editing on files extracted by Tank Viewer). Overshadowed since by the far more ambitious LoU, which is fun, but in my opinion unbalanced (not least for requiring LoA, which means gear with strength/dexterity/intelligence requirements out of line with the original), hence spoiled.

Back to Myros mod - it replaced some of the NPCs in Elddim with clones of Ulora, Gyorn, Naidi, Gloern and Lorun (the last renamed to Pyros!) and tried (unsuccessfully? - not connected to their would-be seller?) to make the two mules in the stable purchasable. The site from which I downloaded it may be defunct now.

For variety, I dipped my toes into the water for the first time, and adapted the mod for myself to have Ulora-, Naidi-, Rusk-, Kroduk-, Phaedriel- and Andiemus-alikes (I called him Myros!- in acknowledgement), several of them with new templates. Ulora-alike, for example, I called Elia because she took the place of Elias the pig farmer near the town's guard captain. I dressed her in dungarees - the version loose at one shoulder - no armor - and gave her a pitchfork for a weapon (the proper one, not the blunt one). My Rusk-alike replaced a soldier at the southwards gate behind the inn, and my Phaedriel-alike one by the Hub station. The man in the outlying cottage to the west (Filt Orian) became my Kroduk-alike, and my Andiemus-alike was in the inn (since he had to be standing up, he replaced the woman offering customers a choice of gremal dishes to eat, whose original name, Ivona Brell, went to my Phaedriel-alike). My Naidi-alike took the name (Morelle Nein) of the vanilla towns-person that she replaced (the same placement as Myros' Naidi-alike? but the latter was given a new name).

The higher level characters could of course be spread around more towns, but my idea was to go back to Elddim for them when ready (by Hub in the later cases). As in the Myros mod itself that I adapted, this kept the changes within one actor file. I said that my Ulora-alike has no armor - this was a deliberate downgrade because she can be accepted straight away, for free, whereas the others must wait until the player has enough money.

Existing merchants are sufficient.

I forget what LoU did about the fury eye. Have it be a loot drop from killing a fury? No, better still, put it in the furthest or most out-of-the-way loot container in the Pit of Despair. Together with a beginner's knife.

Yeah Myros Mod isn't very polished - the companions apparently don't have custom talk skrits, for a start.

LoU on the other hand - I'm its greatest hater. I could write a whole forum topic about how little sense it makes. I want to play UP in single-player, not a map modded to death because the guy thought his changes would be super cool Its balancing is the least of my concerns.
(Btw LoU added the fury eye, as a drop of one of the furies.)

I thought about the Pit of Despair as well, but someone said it would be really mean to do so and I guess he's right. I resolved to put the fury eye in the crystal caverns, to keep it simple & analogous to KoE, and to fulfill the wording of "eye of the crystal temple" in the Trial of Gallus.

Great to see someone else working on the idea!
Here's my release of today. It contains the fury eye, but no companions or mules yet.
https://github.com/foerstj/up-remaster/releases/tag/sp-v0.8-no-companions

Btw you can also base your mod on my UP remastered or UP revisited, it makes editing in SE easier while still preserving the veteran & elite world levels (if you care to download my GasPy scripts).

My Myros-adaptation is that old (at least - it was on a PC that died in 2013), so I'm not exactly working on it, just passing on my thoughts.

What Myros did is worth doing again, with more polish. With Siege Editor you are not restricted to re-purposing NPC placements from vanilla UP.

You'll notice my roster was only seven party members, with only my lead character (or Ulora-alike going for her least-likely career choice) available for a combat mage. If doing it again I'd consider a Zed-alike but altered to combat magic.

Ideally, such a mod (for public release not just private use) should not depend solely on player restraint to avoid recruiting up-level party members too soon. From imperfect memory, my ill-equipped Ulora-alike was a good balance between being of some assistance, not too much, and demanding her share of loot, either as found or in gold for shopping. The cost of hiring the Stonebridge-level people forced me to decide on priorities. About Phaedriel-alike and Andiemus-alike, maybe even Kroduk-alike, I'm not so sure; maybe they could be afforded too soon. In which case mid-level recruits would be better placed in other towns. How about where their uber levels equal the Hub travel minimum there. (Adjust stats as necessary). In which case mules from Elddim, please.

PS Is original Andiemus purely a nature mage? If so I re-jigged mine to have had 80% of his experience from nature magic but 20% from combat. Or something like that. The main reason being to limit the mana cost of summoning spells to what his intelligence can afford.

My recent release of UP SP, with mule merchants added:
https://github.com/foerstj/up-remaster/releases/tag/sp-v0.9-mules-only

This was done purely on the basis of the original Logic.dsres. Later I defined custom templates for the mule merchants & compiled them into a new dsres, because I had to do it for the companions anyway.

And finally, lo and behold: the Utraean Peninsula, in single-player mode, with companions!

https://github.com/foerstj/up-remaster/releases/tag/sp-v1.0

They are analogous to those in KoE, but of course renamed, re-equipped, and given a haircut lol, so that the game lore is not messed up. They're placed in towns corresponding to KoE:
- Ulora, Gyorn, Naidi, Rusk & Zed are in Elddim (Ulora & Gyorn require money so that they can't be recruited instantly)
- Gloern is in Crystwind, as are Boryev & Rhut (for later, when you pass by again on the way to Quillrabe)
- Kroduk & Lorun are in Fallraen; Merik is at the exit of the Ancient Temple
- Phaedriel is in Meren, Andiemus in Lang
- After passing by Crystwind again, Sikra is in the Droog-occupied fortress on the way to Quillrabe
- In Quillrabe you'll find Ulfgrim, and finally in Hiroth there's Lord Bolingar.
The dsres contains the templates & talk skrits for the companions & mule merchants.

Have fun playing!

Siege Editor has always refused to work for me so I have to use hand edits which take quite a while to do, so I've been fascinated in how quickly you're doing all these edits to the map and res files. I once added a companion into the original KOE game in Stonebridge and that took a few trial and errors before I got it right, all in all it was a 2 or 3 day process but the success of having Melisandre available to hire was my first and only attempt at modding a map.

I noticed that you have "b use_node_mesh_index = true;" in your main.gas file, what's all that about then?, I could take a stab at it and say it was to do with all the edits to the corrected map files but I'm probably wrong about that.

On to the big Questions then, are you using your own scids that you've added or are you using scids that were already present in the game and you've just replaced the templates with your companions, and finally, could anyone using hand edits add characters to your map and would there be any adverse effects, as in other characters being affected by such rudimentary modding techniques?.

Hmmmm, I think that covers the basics for now.

The gang of 4 are currently on the way to some snowy town that I've forgotten the name of and there aren't any problems with the game so far, I haven't hired a mule yet so I'll do that the next time I see a mule seller.

WTF why is Siege Editor not working for you? Seriously I can't imagine doing it in text editor only. That issue is definitely worth fixing. Maybe you get it to run on some old netbook?

All new maps have a node mesh index, only for the two very old original maps the feature wasn't implemented yet. Instead of using global node mesh ids, each region has its own little node_mesh_index.gas file, and the nodes in nodes.gas reference these.
I once wrote a python script to convert a region or map to node mesh index, so I ran it on this map of course.

By the way you can see the whole progress of the different branches in the repo: https://github.com/foerstj/up-remaster

Having SE working, I added new objects for the companions instead of replacing existing ones. It's easy with SE. One click and you have a new object with a new scid, also reflected in streamer_node_content_index.gas. I want to stress once again that you need to get SE working

If you want to add your own companion without SE, I'd suggest replacing an existing character, sad about the existing character, but otherwise you'd basically have to guess a suitable x/y/z/node-guid position for the new object. Also I'd recommend making the object single-player only. Other characters should not be affected. You can use the same talk skrit that my companions all use, just have to provide the fitting conversations.

(By the way the mules have the same prices as the corresponding ones in KoE, but of course you can simply teleport back to Elddim to buy the cheap one there.)