by @Smeagolheart and @bob_veng
Preview
WHAT IS IT?:
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Portraits Portraits Everywhere (PPE) - core component
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The core component of this mod adds portraits to speaking NPCs in the Enhanced Edition Infinity Engine games. It can be installed on multiple platforms including Enhanced Edition Trilogy (EET), Baldur's Gate 1 Enhanced Edition including Siege of Dragonspear, Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition. The mod can add representative portraits for all 4617 speaking creatures throughout these games so that when you speak to them, these NPC characters that inhabit these rich worlds will appear a little bit more alive.
If any of the portraits are not to your satisfaction due to quality or you feel that the portrait does not match the in game NPC, feel free to post on the forums for potential inclusion in future updates. If there is a future patch to
the game, it's a good idea to reinstall this mod. Keep in mind that when installing or reinstalling this mod, NPCs on areas you've previously visited won't get portraits, but areas and NPCs you have not yet visited will get portraits.
If you start a new game, then all NPCs that should get portraits will get them.
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Category Portraits (Recommended)
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This mod has an optional Category Portraits component to assign portraits from a pool of random portraits to actors that are not assigned specific portraits by the main component. This component is highly recommended and covers beings that are genericly named. For example, human characters named "Thief" or "Mugger" will get portraits from the male or female Rogue pool, characters named "Commoner" or "Peasant" will get portraits from the commoners pool, and "Drow" will get portraits from either the male or female Drow pool. There are more than ninety pools of random portraits that range from a few portraits to over 20. There are more breakdowns for groups of Humans than there are for other races. Please note that you may get repetition in portraits if you speak to multiple characters as once a pool of portraits is exhausted, then an additional round of picks from the portrait pool will be assigned to additional NPCs.
There are two ways to install the Category Portraits component - Sequentially or Randomly. If you install the component 'Sequentially' then Portraits from the Pool are assigned in numerical order to allow for reproducible results. That means that when you speak to "Mugger" in the dark alley, he should look the same if you were to reinstall the mod. There is also a Random option to grab a random portrait from the pool so that our friend the "Mugger" might get a different portrait if this component was installed a second time. If the random option is selected then a random pick will be selected. The way the random picked works is that all possible numbers from a pool are used before a second pick of the same number is picked meaning that you should not get random picks out of a group of 5 with the same number being used until all 5 of the portraits have been picked.
This is optimized for vanilla supported games but you might get some decent results for mod added characters. For example if installed after other mods, then matches from those mods of characters specifically named "Mugger" would get portraits from the Rogue pool. Please note that how other mods name or code their creatures or whether they name their rogue characters specifically "Mugger" or one of the other matching keywords is beyond my control - results may vary. Due to the varying coding standards in mods and the vast number of potential mods available, there is little chance that this component will act perfectly for mod added NPCs but it will do the best that it is able to do. An example of where the component would not act perfectly is a a character for a mod that works for Baldur's Gate 1EE that describes a human as a Half Orc through dialogue. Mods made for Baldur's Gate 1 do not support Half Orcs because there were not a playable race and that character would appear human to the engine and would get a human portrait.
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Isandir's CHARNAME Portraits
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A beautiful portrait pack by Isandir in a style similar to vanilla BG1 and BG2 portraits.
Preview of some of the portraits:
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Replace Low Quality TOB & SOA Portraits
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This component, for Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, replaces legacy portraits included with the game for Bhaalspawn. The portraits that
are replaced are generally low quality 38x60 size and are replaced with beautiful 169x266 portraits created for the Enhanced Edition
engine.
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Edwin/Edwina
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This component, for Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, gives Edwin a female portrait once he completes the Nether scroll ritual. The portrait
was created by Syntia13 and is based on the default portrait for Edwin in Baldur's Gate 2. This is highly recommended but optional. If
you've replaced the portrait for Edwin with a custom one, you might not want to load this component.
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Ust Natha Drow NPCs
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This component, for Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, provides drow versions of vanilla NPC portraits. This is highly recommended but
optional. The code to transform the portraits was thoughtfully provided by K4thos. Most of the drow versions of NPC portraits are by
Isandir. If you've replaced your NPC companion portraits with a custom portraits, you might not want to load this component.
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Vampire NPCs
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This component, for Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition, provides vampire versions of vanilla NPC portraits. This is highly recommended but
optional. If you've replaced your NPC companion portraits with a custom portraits, you might not want to load this component.
"Vampirized" NPC portraits provided by lefreut.
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CREDITS and Additional Information
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This mod is based on older mods for Baldur's Gate prior to the EE editions had mods that included small portraits for some NPCs. The pictures in these mods are lower resolution than the ones carefully selected for this mod. Some of these older mods for classic Baldur's Gate with smaller pictures that directly inspired this project are:
Gerri's BGT NPC Portraits ( https://kerzenburg.baldurs-gate.eu/downloads.php?id=69 )
BG1NPC ( http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg1npc/ )
Sources of the pictures include Neverwinter Nights portraits found online, searches for baldur's gate and IWD portraits, and as a last resort search engines were used to round out the collection.
If there are any particular portraits that need to be removed you don't wish them to be featured in this work, let me know and the pictures will be removed. If you have any suggestions for submissions or changes, please feel free to comment in the discussion forum.
This mod is distributed freely and not for any commercial purpose non-profit. This mod was not developed, supported, or endorsed by BioWare, Interplay/Black Isle, Beamdog or any other official agency. Portraits remain the copyright of their respective rights holders.
If there are any copyright issues or this statement needs revision then please contact me to let me know what to do
about it. The purpose of this mod is not to make money but to advances knowledge and progress of the arts through the addition of something new onto a great game.
Special thanks to bob_veng on the baldur's gate.com forums for assistance recoloring, adjusting, selecting and creating new portraits for this mod.
Thank you all and enjoy,
Smeagol
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Technical Details and how you can add your own portraits
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All pictures are 169x266 or greater.
The table in (mod folder)\tbl\bgee.tbl lists the creatures/actors and portrait name.
You can reference the creature name to the actor in tools such as NearInfinity.
The Portrait names in the tbl are filenames in the portrait folder.
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KNOWN ISSUES
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None at this time
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Thanks everyone you know who you are, I hope you appreciate the hard work of the artists as I do.
Additional thanks to lynx and argent77 from Gibberlings3 Forums for coding assistance.
Thank you to Mr2150, Cahir, AstroBryGuy, Thels, lefreut, swit, K4thos, Syntia13, Isandir and others for their input
and assistance on the Baldur's Gate Forums.
The mod name was suggested by Cahir.
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v1.01 21 Sept 16
- Updated 57 portraits with bob_veng
v.1.00 08 Sept 16
- Updated 42 portraits with bob_veng
- revised code for Isandir's CHARNAME Portraits component
V.0.99 03 Sept 16
- Downgraded Weidu from beta version to stable version 239
- Added additional install components
Isandir's CHARNAME Portraits
Replace Low Quality TOB & SOA Portraits
Edwin/Edwina
Ust Natha Drow NPCs
Vampire NPCs
- Modified & replaced a few portraits with bob_veng
Version History:
V0.91 20 Aug 16
- Fixed a few entries
V0.90 20 Aug 16
- Initial Release
If you have any interest in modding HLAs, keep reading.
