Better Companions 1.0.0.0 — Baldur's Gate 3

[Kowe]

No other Wyll mods installed. It's weird - once I drop it in the folder, the "Wilhelmine - Visuals" doesn't appear in my list of mods in the mod manager (I'm on a Mac). No issues with any other ones files from this mod, or other mods - they all appear instantly. Tested with 1.0.0.2, 1.0.0.3, and 1.0.0.4

Okay, so some research has dug up that it is an issue with the Mod Manager.
See here and here.
Try the method in the last post of the second link. Hope it helps.

[Calumininium]

Many thanks for the updates !

I hope I will be able to see the portrait of Gaile soon !

[Kowe]

Many thanks for the updates !

I hope I will be able to see the portrait of Gaile soon !

You're welcome.

The visual overhauls of the remaining companions (Gaile, Karl, Minthara) have been updated and include working portraits now.

Currently going through a new playthrough and there are already 83 lines requiring changes in Act 1. Not considering any duplicate lines in the loca file. Voice Conversions are next after the upcoming update to localization.
Parallel to this, custom classes and the first surprise will be worked on soon.

[blankereeblankereee]

Thank you. it is a great mod

[blankereeblankereee]

hi just found this mod, Wilhelmine 1.0.0.4 work great but attack/spell voice is still male wyll! and story narative still call "him" instead of "her" is there something wrong with my mod order or this isn't updated yet?

[Do0my]

Astaria is pretty much perfect (except the campaign/battle phrases which is a universal problem for all characters here) but Minthara's voice needs another take im afraid, its very silly, especially the part where she gives a short speech to the goblins before the attack, she sounds like a gerbil.

[Kowe]

hi just found this mod, Wilhelmine 1.0.0.4 work great but attack/spell voice is still male wyll! and story narative still call "him" instead of "her" is there something wrong with my mod order or this isn't updated yet?

Yes, it hasn't been updated yet.
I am in the process of gathering more lines to add to localization. Currently in Act 3. Once this is done, Voices are next. Depending on how much work it requires, the VCs will have one or two variants. The second being with the original voices for other companions.
There is another way to access .bnk sound files so good chance the attack/spell lines get converted with the next update.

Astaria is pretty much perfect (except the campaign/battle phrases which is a universal problem for all characters here) but Minthara's voice needs another take im afraid, its very silly, especially the part where she gives a short speech to the goblins before the attack, she sounds like a gerbil.

Good to hear about Astaria.
With Minthara it is a bit tricky, since the raspy accent gets in the way. Hence, she got a higher pitch. Can't remember where it is on this forum again but there have been posts about removing such accents via additional AI tools.
Haven't taken an in-depth look at it yet but I will before the next update.

[IDoBadThings]

Just wanted to ask if there are plans to change other voice lines like Gale's. First time you meet Astarion he refers to Astarion both as that name and as "him". Depending on how immersion breaking and almost alphabet-implicative it is, I may hold off until the more obvious gaps are filled.

Could even introduce something similar to Better Romance in which any dialogue that references the character's vanilla gender is blocked as an alternative to the huge amounts of work needed to change every voice line in a clean way.

Pre-warning for anybody using Dialogue Voice Quality Restoration too, it prevented the Astaria voice files from working entirely. It also needs to be loaded AFTER No Alphabets' audio files for obvious reasons, unless you want the Astaria voice files to be redundant. I'm not entirely sure but DVQR may also be incompatible with No Alphabets?

In time. If all goes well, a version of Better Romances for Better Companions can be expected this weekend. Localization as PAKs next weekend. Voice Conversions will occur after the Localization and requires mostly only small changes.

DVQR uses the audio tracks from the game just like every Voice Conversion mod. So, yeah, it has to be loaded before so the other ones can overwrite it.

I couldn't get the Astaria voice files to work even loaded after DVQR. Don't think I put Astaria VC before DVQR at any point but I did try Astaria immediately after it or way down the load order whilst DVQR was at the top. I think my mistake was not putting it after BOTH DVQR AND No Alphabets as when I got it working I had moved it to after No Alphabets (usually last in load order to make sure it's overriding things) but had also removed DVQR and assumed DVQR was the issue not the previously loading before NoAlpha, if that makes sense

Anyway I'll try adding DVQR back in later and see if it works cos like you suggest, it should just overwrite.

That's also excellent news on the upcoming updates! You guys work so quietly in the background like ninjas with all this unexpected progression

I saw the guy who made DVQR posted this in the posts section of the DVQR mod:

Notes on compatibility: Rename the .pak files of this mod in the mods folder to something that comes alphabetically after your other voice mods such as:
zDVQR - Main.pak
zDVQR - Audio1.pak
zDVQR - Audio2.pak

The other voice mods must also be in the WEM OPUS audio codec format (before patch 5) in
order to work at the same time. If the other mod author has only made
their mod work for vanilla then it will not work with this mod.

Might the issue be the audio codec mentioned, @Kowe ?

[Kowe]

In time. If all goes well, a version of Better Romances for Better Companions can be expected this weekend. Localization as PAKs next weekend. Voice Conversions will occur after the Localization and requires mostly only small changes.

DVQR uses the audio tracks from the game just like every Voice Conversion mod. So, yeah, it has to be loaded before so the other ones can overwrite it.

I couldn't get the Astaria voice files to work even loaded after DVQR. Don't think I put Astaria VC before DVQR at any point but I did try Astaria immediately after it or way down the load order whilst DVQR was at the top. I think my mistake was not putting it after BOTH DVQR AND No Alphabets as when I got it working I had moved it to after No Alphabets (usually last in load order to make sure it's overriding things) but had also removed DVQR and assumed DVQR was the issue not the previously loading before NoAlpha, if that makes sense

Anyway I'll try adding DVQR back in later and see if it works cos like you suggest, it should just overwrite.

That's also excellent news on the upcoming updates! You guys work so quietly in the background like ninjas with all this unexpected progression

I saw the guy who made DVQR posted this in the posts section of the DVQR mod:

Notes on compatibility: Rename the .pak files of this mod in the mods folder to something that comes alphabetically after your other voice mods such as:
zDVQR - Main.pak
zDVQR - Audio1.pak
zDVQR - Audio2.pak

The other voice mods must also be in the WEM OPUS audio codec format (before patch 5) in
order to work at the same time. If the other mod author has only made
their mod work for vanilla then it will not work with this mod.

Might the issue be the audio codec mentioned, @Kowe ?

Sounds plausible, thanks for the information. Easy to convert the audio to OPUS instead of Vorbis.
Will verify if this fixes the issue in the next days. Once the current playthrough is done, since VC work is up next anyway. Only some Lower City stuff missing before it is on to the finale.
If it fixes the issue, another version of the VCs will be uploaded with the next updates.

[Crysis_Core]

Good evening, I've encountered an issue while editing the appearance of Astaria using 'Appearance Edit Enhanced.' After entering the mirror, another male head (I'm sure it's Astarion's) appeared on top of her female one.

► Show Spoiler

Can someone help me?

[jebacdrkac]

Good evening, I've encountered an issue while editing the appearance of Astaria using 'Appearance Edit Enhanced.' After entering the mirror, another male head (I'm sure it's Astarion's) appeared on top of her female one.

► Show Spoiler

Can someone help me?

Why?she looks amazing

[rusty_shackleford]

Good evening, I've encountered an issue while editing the appearance of Astaria using 'Appearance Edit Enhanced.' After entering the mirror, another male head (I'm sure it's Astarion's) appeared on top of her female one.

► Show Spoiler

Can someone help me?

@Ligrev

[Ryzer]

>"Better Companions"
> Turn nearly all companions into femoids

[Crysis_Core]

Good evening, I've encountered an issue while editing the appearance of Astaria using 'Appearance Edit Enhanced.' After entering the mirror, another male head (I'm sure it's Astarion's) appeared on top of her female one.

► Show Spoiler

Can someone help me?

Why?she looks amazing

You wont belive it if i said that both of their mouth is moving when they say their dialog. it's a nightmare inducing sight.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Good evening, I've encountered an issue while editing the appearance of Astaria using 'Appearance Edit Enhanced.' After entering the mirror, another male head (I'm sure it's Astarion's) appeared on top of her female one.

► Show Spoiler

Can someone help me?

@Kowe, @loregamer.

[jebacdrkac]

@Crysis_Core Shitty jokes aside, Appearance Edit Enhanced is a mess. I also encountered the two-headed inbred bug while playing with it, but the problem is that this happened months ago, so I can't remember exactly how I caused it. However, if my memory serves me correctly, trying to edit anything other than skin color and haircut will cause issues like this. So, you’re stuck with the base Astaria head (I assume you tried to completely change her head), which you can only slightly modify as I already mentioned.

You can only change her head if you create her from scratch, i.e., as a completely new character. However, this will most likely result in broken cutscenes later, as most of those sex-change mods use custom bodies rather than the base Body 1 & 3 (or whatever they were called).

So, either load an earlier save or remake her from scratch. I don't think there's any other fix once you reach that state.

[Crysis_Core]

@jebacdrkac Well, that's disappointing. I presume the same thing will happen to any companion who changes their body type or sex, right? like wylla or karlach?

[jebacdrkac]

@jebacdrkac Well, that's disappointing. I presume the same thing will happen to any companion who changes their body type or sex, right? like wylla or karlach?

Yeap whenever you try to change heads on sex changed npcs without completely remaking them from scratch that fuckery will happen.
I managed to find an old post to which I myself was directed to when i was dealing with fooking appearance edit mod viewtopic.php?p=67248-bg3-mod-to-replac ... ion#p67248
Apparently there is a way to switch animations between companions so I guess its possible to assign for example animation which origins npc would use with the one astarion uses in base game so to put it simply lets say your body 2 male mc would now use original astarion animation while astaria would now get origin woman body 1 animation.Maybe with mod tools now being out its easier to do shit like this, I guess you can try asking asking original poster for more info or try your luck with faggots in reddit bg3 subs/discord server without obviously mentioning this place unless if you have a kink for getting banned...if you end up making animation switch mod please share , would certainly use it if i ever decide to play bg3 again

[Kowe]

@jebacdrkac Well, that's disappointing. I presume the same thing will happen to any companion who changes their body type or sex, right? like wylla or karlach?

Just tried it on my end with Gaile. It is bugged. Still best to change a companion's appearance via a PAK.
Some Animations can easily be changed. Just gotta switch them in name, last I remember.
It gets a bit more complicated with dialogues. They utilize Timelines. Depending on the amount of Animation to be changed, it can be quite the effort.

[Crysis_Core]

I probably don't need to change anything about those three (Astaria, Wilhelmine, and Karl), I hope. I Don't want to recreate those nightmare inducing sight again.

[cabbal]

Thank you for the mod ! It's brilliant !

[Sunlite]

amazing mod, im definitely grabbing the male LaeZel. finally i can stop killing her. (and the Karlach looks like he would be a big metalhead. lol)

[Brother Michael]

Posting here to stay updated.

[Larianshill]

The mod is great, but the battle/move lines being in their original voices is really bugging me.

[Kowe]

The mod is great, but the battle/move lines being in their original voices is really bugging me.

I will upload what could be converted. Sometime next week. The P&C VCs are incomplete.
Each companion has around 800-900 sound files for those lines. There remain those stored in the .bnk files and it is difficult to access them.

With Patch 8, there aren't really any issues for visuals and localization. Mod Manager removes the localizations, but they are in the Mods folder and changes appear in-game. Will check where this issue arises from.

[OtoshiGami]

With the Jaheira's visuals download, are her body textures changed as well.

It would be good if I could remove the Younger Jahiera + Younger Jaheira body mods for that one alone.

[Kowe]

With the Jaheira's visuals download, are her body textures changed as well.

It would be good if I could remove the Younger Jahiera + Younger Jaheira body mods for that one alone.

Yes, body textures have been changed to one of the available Tav ones. ELF_H, if I remember correctly.
Just in case the question arises, her face scars are baked into her original texture. I am not proficient in cutting them out and reapplying them to a new texture yet.

Regarding the issue with localization from my previous post, it's a problem with some other mod(s).

[OtoshiGami]

With the Jaheira's visuals download, are her body textures changed as well.

It would be good if I could remove the Younger Jahiera + Younger Jaheira body mods for that one alone.

Yes, body textures have been changed to one of the available Tav ones. ELF_H, if I remember correctly.
Just in case the question arises, her face scars are baked into her original texture. I am not proficient in cutting them out and reapplying them to a new texture yet.

Regarding the issue with localization from my previous post, it's a problem with some other mod(s).

That's great to hear. I'm also using Minthara's voice but I have DQVR installed. Are they compatible with each other? So far I can't get any of the narrator's voice mods to work.

Edit: The white wizard narrator works with the reuploaded version I got the modder to make.

[Kowe]

With the Jaheira's visuals download, are her body textures changed as well.

It would be good if I could remove the Younger Jahiera + Younger Jaheira body mods for that one alone.

Yes, body textures have been changed to one of the available Tav ones. ELF_H, if I remember correctly.
Just in case the question arises, her face scars are baked into her original texture. I am not proficient in cutting them out and reapplying them to a new texture yet.

Regarding the issue with localization from my previous post, it's a problem with some other mod(s).

That's great to hear. I'm also using Minthara's voice but I have DQVR installed. Are they compatible with each other? So far I can't get any of the narrator's voice mods to work.

If DQVR is an override like the Minthara VC from this project, then no. And even if DQVR appears in the list, the Minthara VC is an override.
A workaround is to extract each PAK, override DQVR with the Minthara sound files and then repackage. All via the BG3 Multitool.
I will update the VCs to not appear under overrides in due time.

[Auld_SnawBeard]

Awesome mod! Thank you