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Qwinn's WeiDU PS:T FixPack


Qwinn

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Thank you for the offer, ScuD :D As of right now, the mod is in alpha testing (meaning, I'm testing it myself). Once I've done that, I'll be releasing version 1. It's going pretty well, and I'm still on track for that release by the end of May.

 

So there's not going to be any sort of public beta, unless you want to think of version 1 as that (whether it really qualifies as that will depend on how good a tester I am, heh). My only request is that if you -do- find bugs in version 1 when it is released, to please let me know so I can take care of it for version 2 :)

 

Qwinn

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Wait, wait - just thought I should mention, since I'm not sure I've done so here yet. The mod's release -may-... that's a -may-... be delayed a bit beyond the end of the month in order to wait for WeiDU 207 to be officially released. thebigg has kindly added some features to WeiDU upon my request, and I'd like to be able to incorporate them, but it all depends on which of us gets there sooner. I'll make the decision on whether to wait for it or not once I'm all done and I ask him how far away he is from his release. If 207 will be delayed beyond the time I finish by more than a week or two (which I don't have reason to believe will happen), I could release my mod compatible with the current version 206, but hopefully that won't be necessary.

 

Qwinn

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Qwinn, I think you're right. It's hard to claim some rights even if you are actively mantaining your work. Ideally, I think, any modder should mention in readme some expiry time, after which anyone willing is free to take over his mod.

 

Thanks, Bearwere :)

 

For the record... if after I finish this mod I pretty much disappear from the internet and don't update it for more than 3.7 years, anyone who wants to come along and pick it up again and even package it as their own work (assuming they contribute sufficient new material to make that reasonable, of course) as long as they extend me credit for my work is perfectly okay with me.

 

Qwinn

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Got a very cool announcement to make, and a question.

 

The announcement is: The Fixpack will have a customizable Banter Accelerator! You will likely get to see over 60 new fully voiced interparty banters you probably never saw before! (there's a total of 78).

 

(Why package a banter accelerator in a Fixpack rather than a separate mod? Because generally you might get to see 12, if you're lucky, of the fully voiced 78 interparty banters in the game, and you'll generally see the same 12 each time you play. If having to leave your party standing somewhere and checking to see if a banter popped up ever 2-4 hours for a couple of weeks isn't a bug, nothing is. I can't imagine that was intended anyway, not when this is where all their star voice actors get to shine).

 

I'm really excited I got that working :) All the banter stuff is handled in the engine, so I couldn't just tweak something there, I had to set up new scripts for it.

 

And this leads to my question. Is it possible to attach a script to a creature that is NOT slaved to the "AI" button? The override script, maybe? Please? Otherwise, the banter accelerator will only work with AI turned on. PS:T unfortunately lacks anything like a BALDUR.BCS script that's always running everywhere, so TNO's AI script is going to have to do unless someone can suggest something better. That said, the PS:T AI doesn't do much except make Fall-from-Grace an effective auto-healing cleric, so hopefully that won't bother people too badly.

 

And personally, I kinda like having a button that essentially tells all the NPC's to shut up :D (well, they will talk sometimes - I didn't make any attempt to shut the engine banters off - but as I said, they're rare as hell. I've totally finished all of Sigil and I've gotten 3 banters so far, all from Grace, none from Morte or Annah. 3 banters half way through the game when I'm playing slowly and testing the crap out of everything is pretty damn sad.).

 

Qwinn

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In what I have played (not much, but still), if I explored everywhere in the mortuary, I got a few pointers and a banter with Morte.

 

If you count his suspicion that a few female zombies are glancing his way.

 

Icen

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No no, that's normal, and you'll always see those. That's his little mortuary walkthrough, and they are set cutscenes. You can generally differentiate banters from cutscenes in that the cutscenes aren't fully voiced, but the banters all are.

 

What I'm referring to is actual randomly occurring interparty banters much like those in BG2, except they're all -completely- voiced. It's awesome. And in the vanilla game, they actually happen so rarely that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people didn't realize the game -had- any. It's actually got enough to easily compete with BG2 in that regard, especially when you add in how often party members chime in during dialogues with non-party NPC's and in cutscenes like the one you mentioned.

 

(Well, let me not get people -too- excited. The majority are fairly short two-liners, mostly humorous. But they -are- brilliantly voice acted... for those who don't know, the voice actors for your party include X-Files Director Skinner (Dak'kon), Sheena Easton (Annah), the voice actress who did Dynaheir in BG1 (Fall from Grace), Rob Paulsen (Arthur from The Tick, Yakko Warner, Pinky of "and the Brain" fame), and Dan Castanella aka Homer Simpson as Nordom.

 

You probably wouldn't have seen any though, since you indicate you didn't play far into it. You need two characters who actually have banters to banter, and Dak'kon isn't one of them. You won't see any till you've at least picked up Annah, a fair few hours into the game usually.

 

Qwinn

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And this leads to my question. Is it possible to attach a script to a creature that is NOT slaved to the "AI" button? The override script, maybe?
With respect to PS:T specifically, I've no clue. BG1 does not have a baldur.bcs either (a double-edged sword, since most mods just abuse and overload the crap out of it) so pretty much any party script can be disabled by having AI off, even the dplayer ones I think.

 

I would put this component in a tweak pack, but that's just me. I understand your logic, but having more banter isn't really a fix unless I'm missing something (though it might likely be a cool tweak :)).

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First, it may very well -be- a blatant bug that's making them come up so slowly... it's impossible to tell, because it's hard coded in the executable. Since we can only evaluate it by it's behavior, and considering you may see 6-10 banters out of 78 in a slow methodical game, I'd say that's pretty likely to be a bug.

 

Also, see the edit to my last post about the voice acting in this game. That is some SERIOUSLY high powered (and I'm sure expensive) voice acting, and these banters are where they get to do the vast majority of their voicing. I can't imagine that they -intended- for 80% of them to never be heard. Do you really think so?

 

Most other games, you make a Banter Accelerator tweak because some powergamers blow through and only wind up getting 80% of the banters. That's a tweak. But when you're actually -playtesting three massive mods- and the slowness that entails, and you've only heard 3 out of 78 halfway through the game... that's a bug.

 

That said, even though it is packaged with the Fixpack, it -is- a separate component from the rest of the fixes (it has to be for it to be configurable). So if you -really- don't want it for some bizarre reason, you can choose not to install it.

 

Qwinn

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First, it may very well -be- a bug that's making them come up so slowly... it's impossible to tell, because it's hard coded in the executable.
I'm kind of thinking they'd've noticed something like this during testing... PS:T must've had at least some testing, heh.

 

If what you're talking about is the same thing, BG1 also has it, represented by interact.2da and yeah, I think it's supposed to be fairly rare. Statistically you're probably not going to get all the banters even in a fairly long BG1 game. I see PS:T does have this table as well, though with more specific indicators (which would be nice if they worked in BG1/BG2 but I doubt it). Then again, PS:T only has a handful of NPCs as opposed to BG1's multitude, and if PS:T was built off the same BG1/BG2 IE engine without taking account of that, maybe it wasn't entirely intentional. At best I would call this an "OBC" (optional but cool component) if you're including it in a Fixpack. These clips are all voiced (mostly quite well) in BG also (except those that have bogus references) but it might start to annoy me if it happened more often, particularly for certain NPCs.

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"I'm kind of thinking they'd've noticed something like this during testing... PS:T must've had at least some testing, heh."

 

Heh. Hehehe.

 

It's an awesome game, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't. But... trust me... "I'm kind of thinking they'd've noticed something like this during testing" doesn't apply, heh. You could say that about several dozen massive bugs - that are absolutely, unequivocally bugs - that I've fixed so far. I've found another issue that's prevented about a hundred lines of floating text from ever appearing in game.

 

As a programmer for 20+ years, let me tell ya: "You'd think they would've caught that in testing" shouldn't -ever- be used in the defense of a bug as a feature, heheh, cause unless it's utterly catastrophic and makes the game entirely unplayable, it isn't true. Sometimes stuff gets shipped before they anticipated they'd need to, and I think that happened with PS:T.

 

And I've played BG1 lots. The NPC's, even without the BG1 NPC Project, are veritable fountains of banter in comparison, at least when you compare -available- banters with -banters that actually happen-. BG1 didn't have as many banters per toon, so they would be rarer. PS:T has a crapload, and they almost never happen.

 

Let me explain this again: There are 78 banters in game. I've had 3 party members, between them owning over 50 of those banters, and I've been playing with them in my party for about two weeks. I've heard 3 banters. That's not "rare". That's insane. That's paying your voice actors a crapload of money and never letting anyone hear 80% of what they did.

 

I'll say it again: "Most other games, you make a Banter Accelerator tweak because some powergamers blow through and only wind up getting 80% of the banters. That's a tweak. But when you're actually -playtesting three massive mods- and the slowness that entails, and you've only heard 3 out of 78 halfway through the game... that's a bug."

 

Note also that, unlike BG1, they're not totally random. They come in a prescribed order. So that dozen you -might- see? They're the only ones you'll -ever- see.

 

Qwinn

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I think it would better fit a tweakpack, too. Being voiced is not a reason for doing anything about it.

 

If what you're talking about is the same thing, BG1 also has it, represented by interact.2da and yeah, I think it's supposed to be fairly rare. Statistically you're probably not going to get all the banters even in a fairly long BG1 game. I see PS:T does have this table as well, though with more specific indicators (which would be nice if they worked in BG1/BG2 but I doubt it).

Wait, aren't we talking about BG2 style banters, which are "dialogs"? Or PST has enhanced version of BG1 style interactions?

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"Wait, aren't we talking about BG2 style banters, which are "dialogs"? Or PST has enhanced version of BG1 style interactions?"

 

Yes, we're talking about BG2 style dialogs. I'm not sure how "BG1 style" were any different - been a while since I played without TuTu, apparently.

 

And okay - I've just received some information from someone else who mods and plays this game a lot. And they've reported something that makes me REALLY think this is a bug: he's only ever gotten 5 banters, ever, in all his playthroughs, and they -all- come from Grace or Nordom. He's never seen one from Morte or Annah, and neither have I, which is particularly telling in that you have Morte and Annah for a lot longer than you have the others. The 3 I've ever seen have all been from Grace.

 

The rate at which these banters appear -might- be within the realm of the sane -if- what was happening is that Morte and Annah's banters are simply not working, but if a banter is cued to come up, it can go to them, but the banter doesn't happen and the timer (if a timer is what handles it) gets reset anyway. Therefore all you see are Grace and Nordom's banters, diluted by Morte and Annah's non-existent ones. I wouldn't be surprised if Morte is weighted to come up a lot more often too - he's got 27 banters to Grace's 15.

 

So. If a total of 40 banters from Morte and Annah simply are never happening - if theirs are in fact completely broken - would any of you -then- agree it does belong in a Fixpack?

 

Qwinn

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Yes, we're talking about BG2 style dialogs. I'm not sure how "BG1 style" were any different - been a while since I played without TuTu, apparently.

there were also non-dialogue interactions, handled by interact.2da.

 

So. If a total of 40 banters from Morte and Annah simply are never happening - if theirs are in fact completely broken - would any of you -then- agree it does belong in a Fixpack?

my last PST walthrough was long ago and I hardly remember banters and such. Anyway, it's not like you need anyone's approval to include things in fixpack, and I don't see much difference between including it in fixpack or tweakpack. I would use it either way.

have you tried forcing them by ctrl-i, btw?

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