It’s all about the little changes and additions this fortnight. Actually, we could say that for pretty much every fortnight the Modding Digest is published. Why didn’t I think of that?

Stylised snakes and portable holes
vilkacis continues to raise eyebrows with small oddities, fixing an installation error with The Slithering Menace, now version 3.3, and introducing a Portable Hole that you can watch all your items fall into (and easily fetch out again). Check them out here and here.

I, J, K, L?
Italian has suited the spices for the NPCs Jandor and Killing Wolf, in which language they now are ostensibly skilled in uttering their short dialogues in. Have a look at these releases here. Now, what’s next that begins with the letter L?

1280 x 800 = 1024000, and 1280 x 768 = needs more brain power
Fit more into your mind by stretching the dimensional limits of the Planescape: Torment engine! The new version 0.9 of the aptly renamed PS:T Widescreen UI modification now bundles support for both 1280x768 and 1280x800 resolutions, along with other highly desirable changes, which can be seen here. Don’t miss out on this rare piece of innovation here, and grab your free set of steak knives if you call within the next 30 minutes. Now where did I put that box of steak knives?

Sexy leather and sexy chainmail
Now if this isn’t icing on the cake, then go ahead and feed your cake to the dog. Erephine has continued her amazing animation work with new cryptically coded modules HFB2 and HFB3, which obviously stands for Human Female leather armour, and Human female chainmail (sans grotesque miniskirt). What do you mean that doesn’t make sense? Go and satisfy your salacious desires here. I know you want to…

Start with the small and end with the big, and your aftertaste will last many times more, or at least until next fortnight. Catch ya then.

The Rogue Rebalancing mod is a gameplay modification for Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. This mod strives to bring the Rogue classes (Bards and Thieves) and their respective kits closer to their Pen and Paper 2E AD&D incarnations. The mod is divided into multiple components all of which can be installed separately and are completely independent of each other. In so far, Rogue Rebalancing can restore proper dual-wielding skills to Bards and Thieves, revise some of the Bard and Thief kits and their respective high level abilities, add more items useful for Rogues to the game, slightly revise the merchant treatment of stolen goods, enhance the Shadow Thief opponents which the player faces while siding with Bodhi in chapter 2 and introduce a new challenging encounter with a party of Cyric’s followers in chapter six. Some of the introduced changes will be applied immediately but, for best results, you should start a new game after installing this mod. More detailed descriptions of all mod components can be found in the documentation section of the Rogue Rebalancing website.

New in v4.0

In summary, this major release further revises the Thief and Bard HLA tables and tweaks their respective kits a bit further. Optionally, Rogue Rebalancing can now restore the proper PnP racial adjustments for thieving skills and allow Cromwell and Cespenar to upgrade some of the items which are introduced or altered by this mod. In light of these changes, the compatibility with other mods and the recommended install order for Rogue Rebalancing have changed. Please consult the revised Compatibility Guide for more details.

Relevant links

• Mod homepage
• Download locations
• Documentation
• Discussion forum
• Compatibility guide

World of Torment makes its mark
Visit Planescape this fortnight, as all the UI action is on. ghostdog has adapted the 1280x800 UI mod into a 1280x768 mod for your slightly squashed LCD TV and laptop pleasure. Get it here.

Want even more squash? Then squish in the vanished one’s 1024x768 UI pack, which you can get here.

Whichever one you take, at least you’ll experience better than the retro-splat 640x480 sure to make your stress levels heighten.

But the Forgotten Realms stays strong
If you’d rather stay in the relative safety (no evidence provided) of the Forgotten Realms, be sure to pour yourself a glass of wine and have it with some fettucinne bolognaise, as the Thalantyr Item Upgrade modification has been updated to version 3.3 in Italian language and style. Get it here.

Else, for the multi-talented Cleric/Ranger players out there, you might want to invest in bows and arrows, as Icendoan has released a rather self-intuitive modification titled Make Bows usable by Cleric Rangers. Now you can rain down destruction on your foes with not only lightning strikes and burning columns of heat, but also a flurry of arrows! Bring it on here.

Alternatively, the best of both worlds is available to anyone who has too much time on their hands, because if you do, I’d like it.

Till next time.

I’d like to give a big welcome to ghostdog and his new mod for Planescape: Torment, the 1280x800 UI mod!

The PS:T 1280x800 UI Mod is a User Interface modification which in combination with the bigg’s Widescreen Mod makes a 1280x800 widescreen resolution viable for Planescape: Torment by changing a number of things in the UI.

The Widescreen mod works extremely well in Planescape: Torment, but unfortunately when you change the resolution, almost all of the UI elements and game effects are shown in the top-left area since they were set for the original 640x480 game resolution. What this mod does is center all of these elements and enhance the UI with original game art to fit nicely with the 1280x800 resolution.

Things fixed for a widescreen resolution include many game screens including the Start menu, character creation screens, the journal, inventory, spells and stores among others, as well as a number of other components including the bottom UI bar which has been optimised for a 1280x800 resolution, tooltips and in-game messages (which now display correctly), the dialogue box, and the worldmap.

The mod is currently in beta, so if you are lucky enough to have a monitor supporting that resolution, visit the links below and try it out!

Related links:

• Download link
• Forum link
• Screenshots thread
• Website link

Tutorials, for the fun of it.
There isn’t much by way of modifications this fortnight, but you can certainly create your own! Complementing some of the tutorials written last time around, we now have tutorials on general Infinity Engine scripting (by Goran Rimén with notes by Yovaneth), coding interjections for joinable NPCs (by K’aeloree), and cutscene scripting (by Yovaneth). These tutorials will certainly get you going on your very personal NPC mod. No doubt there will be more tutorials on the way, so stay tuned to the Infinity Engine Tutorials forum.