Any ideas on how many man hours would you need to convert all maps?
And speaking of which, what is the process like? How much of that can be automatized? I mean if it's take a map chunk size ??x?? and put it at pos x, y and the same goes for the monsters, then yeah why not just write a couple of scripts.
No clue at the moment.
The process involves extracting the map images from IWD, I use Near Infinity for this. Some maps have doors that are meant to open and close painted onto the map itself, ToEE uses 3d door models instead so any visible remnants of these doors need to be removed.
Next the maps need to be split into 256x256 pixel chunks so ToEE can use them, so I recombine a ToEE map that is larger than the IWD map I'm working on, copy/paste the new IWD map onto the old ToEE map and split the map into chunks again, ToEE worldbuilder has this splitting/recombining utility built in.
The new map must now be readable to ToEE, so I replace the entries for an original ToEE map we won't be using with the new maps details, file name, map number etc etc, there is a long complicated post on the Co8 forum detailing how to make new maps in ToEE.
Once the map is readable by the game, I open it in World Ed and define the traversable areas of the map, where you can walk, what you can get cover from, what blocks lines of sight, what visually obscures your characters from view, map pathfinding node locations, and define what type of ground exists around the map (so walking on wooden floors sounds different to walking on snow, or dirt pathways or stone corridors etc... adding smoke that comes from chimneys, fireplaces, candles, and tourches can also be added. Icons then also need to be added to travel between different maps.
Adding monsters involves first making a protos.tab entry for the monster, or repurposing one we don't have a need for from ToEE so the new monsters stats and abilities first need to be edited in Protos.tab, Invensource.mes also needs to be edited to give the monster any starting equipment it may have. It can then be added to the map in World Ed, rotated to the desired bearing, assigned waypoints so they wander about a bit. Spellcasters need to have both the spells they can cast in their Protos, and a Strategy.tab entry that utilises the spells on their list in the correct manner, spells incorrectly entered into strategy.tab won't fire.
I also use Worldbuilder to fine tune monster loot and equipment, arrows for instance, if entered in invensource.mes, a basic stack of arrows contains 40 arrows, but when there are approx 30 archers in the prologue chapter alone, the number of arrows you can collect gets rediculously large very quickly, so I'll adjust it so they only carry a few arrows each, enough to get a few shots off before running out and switching to melee weapons and attacking in close quarters.
Dialogue files for NPC's that speak can be converted with a custom built tool written by Shiningted (KotB's author and primary modder) to get the text into a ToEE readable format, extra work for adding script hooks, and other functional parts working still have to be manually configured. Other script hooks (dying scripts, will KOS scripts etc...) have to be likewise manually coded as required.
Voiced NPC parts are relatively simple, the .mp3's are extracted like the maps are, and put into the sound/voice/##### folder, replace ##### for the script number for the desired NPC recipient and name the .mp3's to match the dialogue's line number (IE v1.mp3 for line 1, v10.mp3 for line 10 etc...).
The work in the Worldmap is already complete for all locations (even though most of those don't exist yet, the pathways between them - the red dotted paths - do exist, though some may be coded backwards currently, reversing them is easier than rewriting from scratch), Spellslinger's World Mapper and Hazelnut's Path Mapper tools were instrumental for implementing these hacks, many thanks to those guys.
The Worldmap icons are likewise done, did those at the same time as the other icon alterations.