Moebius Tookit is an application to help players, modders, and hopefully even developers of some of the best video games of all time, the Baldur’s Gate saga (and/or the pen and paper AD&D 2nd edition rules on which the game is based).
Given the richness, depth and complexity of the rules of these games, I ended up starting this project, which is the home of a humble personal initiative to address some issues:
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The lack of charts, specially interactive ones, of some interesting data for power gamers, new players, or just people wanting to find analyze the balance of the game (to be able to tweak or mod it for example). Some excellent tables are provided on the Baldur’s Gate wiki, but there is a lot more room to fill.
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The lack of an editor for the saved game files (like ShadowKeeper or EEKeeper) which works well on Linux, that is in a maintained state, and with a suitable license.
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The (at a times) unsatisfactory experience of using NearInfinity (extremely useful and with many features, but slow and sometimes buggy, specially on Linux).
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The interest in programming and trying new technologies that complement what I already do or have done for paid work, like trying out chart libraries or WebAssembly for redistributing the application to users, Test Driven Development, and learning about how (some) game engines work.
The application is called a "toolkit" because it contains different modules grouped together, with features a bit loosely related. It is described, together with pictures and videos on the Moebius Toolkit page.
Many parts of the application are developed as a library to ease the unit testing, and to be used with cling’s REPL. The long term plan (or, more likely, the pipe dream), is that the library could get some traction, and hopefully be able to make the library useful for other project.
Despite being a "0.x" release, the application is fairly stable, and it should not crash at all. It is unit tested as much as possible, and I’m always looking to improve the design and architechture to allow for more automated testing. There are some rough edges given that it started as a quick and dirty weekend project UI for plotting a chart and no more, so there is a bit of legacy to clean up.
Since the library contains the code for parsing the file formats to be able to provide a browser, I’ve entertained the idea of creating tools that translate the file formats, maybe like igi’s tools. I’ve also seriously considered making a simple kit mod using the library, and not relying on WeiDU at all.
The immediate plan is to add full support for reading the missing SPL, ITM and EFF file formats, and start making a very fast browser for the usual poking of the mechanics of spells and items when playing. Achieving feature parity with Near Infinity is out of scope, but growing the browser so it can be used to end up being a better EEKeeper is much more likely. Being able to browse and do tweaks to saved games is of high priority as well.
The Moebius Project is not only about an application, but also some focused articles that don’t fit elsewhere, including an extensive spell guide, and game analysis done with the Damage Calculator, or the other tools of Moebius Toolkit.
See much more at the Moebius Project website! Or find the source of the website at the Moebius Project repository.