Black Gate: enhanced NPC-portraits?

[Alexander]

Hello everybody,

It has been some years since I've played The Black Gate the last time using Exult. Now, when I discovered JD's reinterpretation of the BG-soundtrack, I installed the game again (together with Keyring, SIFixes and the Avatar-Pack). I'm not sure if I'm confusing something here, but I was quite sure that in my last playthrough I've had a mod installed that changed not only the Avatar's, but also the NPC-portraits to better looking ones in the style of Serpent Isle. Maybe I'm just spoiled from SI, but I'm really confused about that question right now.

Thank you for your help and for your wonderful work!

[Dominus]

I think only the BG Keyring and Avatar Pack add faces. Keyring adds Avatar faces and the few extra NPCs (while Avatar Pack adds only the Avatar ones). And only the Avatar faces are SI style ones.

[Alexander]

Thank you for your answer. That's strange. I absolutely can't remember the original NPC-portraits from my last playthrough. It seems I'm spoiled from SI indeed.

[Knight Captain]

There were some new Avatar faces that match the BG style. All look based on the SI Avatar Pack. Not sure what mod had them.

[Alexander]

Hey,
I somehow like the default avatar-design in Ultima VII and as it isn't in the keyring-mod anymore I replaced the "faces.vga" in the keyring/gamedat-folder with the one from Ultima VII and deleted the "avatar_data.txt". Now I can choose the original avatar face or the SI-avatar-faces in BG-style. Can this be a problem later in the mod?

[Dominus]

Yes, the mod is likely to crash when you encounter the extra NPCs as their faces are no longer there

[Alexander]

Hello Dominus,

I've tried it - I beamed myself out of Trinsic and all the way up to Lord British's castle and talked to the Keyring-guy - it didn't crash, he just hasn't a portrait.

Is there another way to get the original Avatar-portrait back in the game with the keyring-mod installed?

Thank you again for your kind help!

[Dominus]

JFYI:
it's easier to edit avatar_data.txt and replace all occurances of 297/5 with 0/0 and all 297/4 with 0/1 (that's in section defaultshape and blonde avatars
So if you selected the blonde Avatar (male or female) it's all back to normal again.

[Knight Captain]

I was looking at converting modern photos to usable faces in the SI style, and even a gradual decrease in color depth still doesn't get it right. Any ideas how that could be done?

[agentorangeguy]

KC, I've been able to do this with some success. I have a few new npcs using this style in my mod. I use Gimp. I first have my "template" which is the oval that I made blank, then I scale up or down the face in another file. I add transparency, then "trim" the extra pixels off the face by selecting by color, then changing them to something outlandish like pink, then color over those that i want to delete. Then you select by color (pink) and delete those. Once you get that face cleaned up, copy and paste it into your template. You may need to rescale it so its trial and error. Once you get it the correct size, index the file with the BG or SI palette.