Mines of Kalrathia Problem.

Yes... if you have a backup available, give that a try. The person who posted about it (at SN?) indicated that they just created a mod to get around the problem...

This question was also asked over at GPG - and it wasn't answered there, either...??

are u running the seefar mod? i remember a post back in siege-mods.com where sum1 complained the elevator for the mines dont work when he used the seefar mod...

Well yes I am thanks I will disable it and test to see if it corrects the problem.

By the way I love the changes you made to the camera could not live in the game without them

if it works when you disable the mod, you can turn it on again after you used the elevator...

I think Lady Femme is right... now I seem to remember that thread over at SM. :oops:

IIRC, iryan described something about the elevator trigger and the modified frustrum size in the mod... so the removal of the mod might be necessary at the time the quest trigger first activates the elevator (i.e. you'll need to use a backup save from before the elevator should have triggered).

Luck.

What? A Camera mod...I feel so left out

I think you can find a copy of the two mods (see far and the camera map fix + instructions) at the Forge:
http://herenaforge.org/tiki-index.php?page=Main

Hi, gal. glad to see you are enjoying my camera mod. as someone once said, "why would GPG want to hide the beautiful world they designed is beyond me."

firstly, do what sharkull said. if it still dont work then the savegame session might be corrupted and you have to start over.... NUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!

secondly, from my memory, i remember a workaround for the elevator problem even if you have the seefar mod installed. (this was posted on siege-mods.com) this is from memory so i could be wrong. make a second, third and fourth backup before you try this as it may not work.

1. starting at the southern desert of kaderak teleporter, fight your way past the mines of kaderak entrance to the northern desert of kaderak. take care NOT to break all 4 of the statues. you can break 1, 2 or 3 of the statues it doesnt really matter. Just dont break all 4.

2. once you reach the northern desert of kaderak teleporter, run back to the mine entrance and break the 4th statue. see if the elevator appears. NOTE: DO NOT use the teleporter to teleport back to the southern desert or to anywhere else!!!!

if it works, then yippee, you are the 2nd person to prove this workaround works. inform iryan of this topic asap as it will help him immensely in his debugging efforts.

This will also make the game more "fun" as you dont have to keep shutting the game down to remove the mod then adding it back. what are we living in? the stone age?! a game that requires you to shut it down to remove a mod is sooo primitive now. GPG should implement "hot-switching" of mods on the fly like what Valve did with Half-Life. Despite the release of the DS2TK, i feel we could do with even better mod-support. sorry, just my rant.... :?

Mod Hotswitching? We're lucky if it will even allow a game to load after a mod has been removed "Exception Detected, and I'm too dumb to ignore it, so instead I'll claim your game is corrupt and crash instead. Would you like to send a report to Microsoft and inform them of this idiocy? Please wait while I freeze your computer for 10 minutes and create an error report."

stop it lol u're cracking me up hehe

seriously speaking, ds2 looks like it wont run existing saves very well if certain content is changed/modified. they seem to want you to create a new char each time u add/remove a mod.

of course, that irritates mini-mod users, as their changes are just tweaks, a change to an existing value and shouldnt have much of an impact on how the game can or will run. e.g. changing the exp gained, improving the ridiculously underpowered and underrated reagents, making shops sell better/more stuff, bugfixes/typo error fixes etc.

IMO GPG should have just created a new engine from scratch. Since the existing DS1 engine is really outdated. GPG pushed the limits of the existing DS1 engine too hard. thats why now ppl complain of performance issues, gameplay (game-stopping) bugs esp. those bugs that are hard to pin down like the Inn bug. from the looks of it, biddle and GGM are scratching their heads hard over that inn bug lol.... The only solution for the time-being is to NOT use any henchmen/pets and play the game solo aka "Ironman Mode".

Rule#1 when it comes to making CRPGs: never use the same engine twice. Thats the reason why some CRPG sequels flop. Obsidian is making a completely new engine from scratch for NWN2 and im sure it will be good.

Little was done to improve the body meshes. its really hard to tell a male and a female apart in DS2 when they're both wearing robes lol...

Also, i've been digging around the texture files and noticed the only difference between DS1 textures and DS2 textures is that the latter just has higher resolution and higher DPI. Thats all lol...

Well everything is better now. Took out Iryan's seefar mod and the elevator reappered. The work around is also good.
Balderstrom hot swapping mods is very easy is you are using the All Saves Modification by Elys that you can get from her site
http://karamail.nerim.net/elys/forums/viewtopic.php?t=248 After installing this and running the game from the Dungeon Siege 2 All Saves start icon all your games no matter what mod you are using will work. It however should be noted if you are playing the game using Elys' Succubus Modlet you can not re-start a non-succubus game from the all saves start icon unless you first zip up the succubus game(s) Not sure why this is true but I will ask her. I also emailed Iryan to let him know about the issue.

thank you all for the help.

Lili

your welcome

Hey Lili, Go Lili, yay!

Were you using Elys's All Saves Mod when you first hit the elevator problem - 'cos I'm running..

1. Omicrom's No Rings
2. Iryan's See Far
3. Lady Femme's Camera fix
4. Elys's All Saves
5. Rezzie's Party Mod

..and I can't remember if I installed them before or after completing the Mines Of Kalrathia quest on the mercenary level..

- are you saying that I'm OK to proceed with the game as it stands, as long as I have the All Saves Mod in place, or do I still have to do some un-tanking?

To be safe, make sure you back-up your saves before trying... but from what this thread shows it looks like you may have to take the See Far mod out while the elevator is activated.

Luck.

I think I'll leave things as they are until I reach the mines for the second round...

- I've relented and reloaded DS2 again - now re-started unmodified..

- the trouble is, I'd rather have the see-far mod safely installed..

- I understand it's possible to detank the whole game and run it as a DS2.mod, would this be safer to apply it this way, or would this problem in the mines still persist?

- BTW, does anyone have a step-by-step guide to de-tanking the game, I believe it requires a suffix added to the DS2Mod icon's program path to bypass the CRC...(?)

I haven't looked at iryan's seefar mod but, AFAIK, the Kalrathia Mines problem was related to an expanded frustrum size, so if you don't change anything there, you should be OK. Things like azimuth changes (the up / down camera angle restrictions) and zoom limits should be safe. To do this you would need to make changes to:
world.ds2map\world\maps\ds2_world\main.gas (a text file)

The simplest way to get things working would be to download the DS2TK and install at least DS2Mod and Tank Viewer 2. Use Tank Viewer 2 to extract the map file into your Bits folder (by default: \My Documents\My Games\Dungeon Siege 2 Mod\Bits) preserving the directory structure (a setting within TV2 when you are extracting files).

DS2Mod is a program that comes with the DS2TK... and it is basically the game exe with some extra stuff (a console, error logging, the ability to use untanked game resources...). If you untank your files into the location indicated above (your \Bits folder), then DS2Mod will automatically use them.

If you want to retank your map files after your changes you will need to install and use SE2 (or use RTC2... not an official GPG tool).

Hope this helps.

thank you..