To my great sadness I've been bored out of my skull with the game recently (arriving to BG and doing some side quests there), so after seeing a thread over at the bioware forum about modding, I gave that a little go for fun. Made a copy of Frostreaver. This seems to have gone well. Then I made two new entries in the dialog.tlk file (after making a backup of it), at the very end. One for the name of the weapon, and one for its description. The save loaded fine and I could wield it. Is this likely to cause issue at some point though, if I were to use this weapon in the actual game going forward? I won't as it's a huge upgrade on the generic +1 battle axe Kagain has, but I still wonder if it is possible to make new weapons in this fashion without severe ill effects.

I've attached two pictures from the game itself.

How, precisely, did you do this? Very important.

Opened the dialog.tlk file in NI. Went to the end and added two new entries. Copied and edited the text, then references these new ref strings in the new weapon I created. Save.

(e: I also ticked for "has text", though I'm not sure what those flags actually do.)

Is this the wrong way, or is there a safer way?

Never edit dialog.tlk with NI. Use Weidu to inject new strings safely. Replace your dialog.tlk for peace of mind.

Is there a tutorial or something similar about how one would go about doing this? I've not used Weidu apart from it being there to keep control of mods.

It was briefly mentioned in that thread you linked. Most older tutorials seem to have dead links, or are far too involved for what you need.

Okay. So the only way to do this somewhat safely is to create a new mod. Hoped that wasn't necessary. Best to drop this little experiment then I guess, so I don't mess up the whole game. Considering I've oddly been bored with the game recently, I certainly don't want to retrace my steps. Just hope I get that fire back if I manage to drag us into BG2.

Why? You're doing that by duplicating and editing. There is no difference, apart from automation and safety. You don't learn by not doing. :)

For a basic introduction to WeiDU and a simple mod template see this thread from the current WeiDU maintainer: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/15010/short-introduction-to-weidu-and-simple-mod-template/p1

Concerning more specifically your query, there are a lot of things that are hard to code in WeiDU, but luckily changing descriptions and names is not one of those. Example:

BACKUP ~your_mod_name/backup~
AUTHOR ~your name, at some forum (or your email)~
BEGIN ~Your mod name~
COPY ~your_mod_name/items/your_file.ITM~ ~override~
SAY NAME1 ~put here the general name~
SAY NAME2 ~put here the identified name~
SAY UNIDENTIFIED_DESC ~put here the general description~
SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC ~put here the identified description~

You can use the template above and just replace the portions in bold text with your actual content, e.g. the template assumes that you have stored a new item, for example created with NI, in a subfolder called "items" inside the main mod folder called "your_mod_name", so if you are using different folder names, just change the bold text accordingly.

Thanks Hickory and Ergos. That's a great template. +1 to you good sir (or madame)

I happened to do this before your post, so used the names from the other forum, but it did the trick!

Wish we had proper tags here, like on every other forum on the planet, but here is the text I used.

BACKUP ~axetest/backup~
AUTHOR ~Pangaea~

BEGIN ~Pangaea's Firefroster Mod~
COPY ~axetest/items/axetest.itm~ ~override~
SAY NAME2 ~Firefroster, Battle Axe +2~
SAY DESC ~This was the axe of Pangaea, a little known god that was worshipped by both firespitting trolls and cold-hurling mods in the acid pits of times long gone by.

STATISTICS:

Combat Ability:
+ 1 point fire damage to target
+ 1 point cold damage to target
THAC0: +2 bonus
Damage: 1D8 +2
Damage type: slashing
Weight: 7
Speed Factor: 5
Proficiency Type: Axe
Type: 1-handed
Requires: 10 Strength
Not Usable By:
Druid
Cleric
Mage
Thief~

Installed it with weinstall axetest, which worked once I remembered the right command.

Then I opened up ShadowKeeper and edited the weapon into Kagain's inventory, and it showed up in-game, with the proper description.

Of course, now it's a little tempting to create all sorts of wacky weapons and give to our little band of evil+good-doers, but that will just make the game even easier, so I better not. Cool that it's actually fairly easy to do this though. I found some documentation for weidu, and that was scary long and complex to say the least.

I've changed the colours on the weapon a bit, and after a few false starts, it looks okay. Is there a way to check things like this without going into the game though? I couldn't see a way to do it in NI.

Also, is there an overview/guide somewhere about what the various options mean? Some are more obvious than others, but is there some type of overview for us noobs?

You can see what colours you are choosing by double clicking the 'Set Colour' effect, and selecting 'Colour' in the new window -- there's a slider. But you won't know what they actually look like in-game until you get there, unfortunately. Some changes are subtle, some apparently small changes can be very jarring. It's the nature of sprites.

N.I. is a hack tool, and as such is not designed by, or for 'noobs'. Even the original author's tutorial page is woefully inadequate as a guide, not to mention outdated. Bottom line: there is no 'for dummies' guide, at least that I know of.

The IESDP site (http://gibberlings3.net/iesdp/index.htm) is full of useful information.

For example there is a list of colour gradients: http://gibberlings3.net/iesdp/appendices/colourgradients.htm

or other info like this: http://gibberlings3.net/iesdp/opcodes/bg2tob.htm#op7

Unfortunately the gradients list on IESDP is missing all the fancy new colours in the extended palette added by the mod 1PP.

Thank you, that looks very useful, even for my "bang rock against rock" beginnings :D

One of the things I wondered about was "Set colour grow pulse". The description in the opcodes link helps a bit, and it's nice to have all those colour gradients in one place without needing to flip through each one in NI.

Thought that site was another editor at first, but upon downloading the zip I see it's the whole site. Oh well :D

Apart from NI (and ShadowKeeper), are there other editors that are worth having, that may help understanding these things better? I'm not likely to start creating new characters and whatnot, but must admit it was fun to play around a little. Some of the weapons have a lot of effects, though, like for instance the Dragonslayer. Looks like it is sometimes needed to disable display strings and icons.

If you're willing to dive in, DLTCEP is a very powerful tool, though not easy to get to grips with.