Qwinn's WeiDU PS:T FixPack

[Qwinn]

Wow. Wait till you guys check out the Machine room in the Great Foundry. As it exists, Kel'lera and all her workers just stand in place, with the workers occasionally blurting one of three phrases. In reality, they scripted the -hell- out of all of them, but the area file controlling it all was missing. I managed to reconstruct it and fix the existing files so that it all works smoothly , and it's just plain freakin' awesome, Kel'lera talks to each of the workers and they all respond, they all go to pick up nails and tools and stuff... it's fun just to sit and watch 'em. This fix alone restores 24 lines of floating text never seen before. Can't wait till you guys see it. Cooler even than the reactivated Brothel scripting.

 

Oh, the workers in the main room of the Foundry got another 5 lines of floating text restored too. Seriously I think I have at least 100 lines of floating text restored all over the game, probably quite a bit more before I'm done. That's not counting anything restored by any previous mod I'm aware of, nor does it count all the voiced interparty banters I mentioned before.

 

Qwinn

[Bearwere]

Is that solution sufficient to satisfy your concerns, Bearwere?

yep.

[Qwinn]

Cool

 

Oh, and thisspaceforsale, thanks for the kind words - I hope so

 

Finished testing every character and area in Sigil, finally - phew. Just gotta run through modron's maze to pick up Nordom, and then on to Ravel/Curst. I'm told Curst is one of the buggiest places, though... I've already fixed some bugs I just found glancing through the game files, and of course whatever the other 3 major mods fixed, but if what I've already come across is any indication, I'm going to have a lot to fix there too. Hopefully I won't have to delay release though.

 

Qwinn

[Miloch]

Just wondering... did you fix (or at least look at) all the various checks that NI, DLTCEP and the G3 Debugging Suite produce? No idea what kind of rubbish these spit out for PS:T though.

[Qwinn]

Near Infinity checkers, yes.

 

DLTCEP, no. Never found a need for it that I couldn't accomplish with NI.

 

G3 Debugging Suite, no.

 

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Ruh roh.

 

PS:T doesn't have anything like RealGlobalTimer. The only timers you can use in game are game-time timers. That means resting will trigger a banter.

 

That must be why they hard coded the banter stuff in the engine. Too bad it doesn't work right.

 

Actually, I don't mind it working with game time... it seems normal that, over a period of 8 hours of camping, your NPC's might say a word or two to each other. But since it makes banters work in a significantly different way from what they were "intended", it puts the decision of putting it in the tweak pack versus the fixpack back into play.

 

So, what's more distant from the designer's "intent"... having Morte and Annah's banters work at all, or have it work based on game-time passing. Hmmmmmmmm.

 

At this point, due to that issue, I'm now leaning toward putting it in the Tweak Pack, but with a loud note in the Fixpack Readme mentioning it and recommending to install that tweak.

 

Qwinn

[Miloch]

Near Infinity checkers, yes.

DLTCEP, no. Never found a need for it that I couldn't accomplish with NI.

G3 Debugging Suite, no.

DLTCEP has features and reports that NI doesn't and vice versa. One isn't better than the other, despite what folks who use one tool and not the other like to say about the one they don't use .

 

G3DS checks more stuff besides, at least for BG2... not sure if it works for PS:T.

 

It sounds like the engine you're working with is more similar to BG1 than BG2, in which case you'll be screwed for a lot of stuff you want to do . You may be able to use some (possibly hackish) workarounds, like in the BG1 tutorial under "No real time timers".

[Qwinn]

Nice link! Some good stuff there.

 

It's like this, as far as capabilities... BG1 < PST < BG2. PS:T came out between them. So it has some advantages over BG1 - but it's still shy of all the stuff BG2 got.

 

Most of it isn't a big issue. In fact, this timer thing is the first thing I really wanted to do that I couldn't. As far as workarounds - yeah, it works fine as a real time counter, which is why I went a few days without realizing that it was doing game time. There's no real way I can think of to prevent resting and travelling between areas from knocking down that timer though.

 

Well. I -could- make travelling between areas of the Hive take no time at all, which would definitely make it work a lot more like a real timer. If I could find a way to fix it for resting too, it'd be worth pursuing that line of thought, but I don't know of a way to do that. (Heh - if I -could- detect when a rest happens and could inject code into it, I bet I could do an Increment Global on the timer variable to represent 8 hours, and I bet that would work too)

 

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Actually, it should be noted that PS:T seems to be able to do -some- things better than even BG2 can. For instance, I saw a thread recently where people were debating how to make a creature able to walk around randomly but not stray too far... this is easy to do in PS:T, with the NearLocation trigger that BG2 apparently doesn't have, and which is very powerful.

 

Seriously, some of the scripted areas in PS:T blow away any scripts I can remember seeing in BG2, like the Great Foundry machine room and the Brothel I mentioned earlier (although they didn't work till I fixed up some issues). I don't know if that's because the PS:T coders worked at it harder or if PS:T had more capabilities in that regard, but NearLocation is a -big- one, it's used a lot in the more complex scripts, and I can see it being a lot more painful to script without it. Maybe there's others too. Since I'm modding PS:T before ever modding BG2, I'm not sure if there's anything else I'm taking for granted that maybe no other IE game has.

 

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Huh! I finally got an Annah banter without the accelerator. I had to leave her and Morte alone in place and sleep for 8 hours... but yeah, when I woke up, there was a banter.

 

Ah well, good thing I already moved it to the tweak pack then.

 

Anyways. Progress update. Added another original component to Unfinished Business - "Restored Curst Prisoners". No longer will the awesome planar prison of Curst have, at maximum, three prisoners, all of which you sent there. This component populates the prison with 9 prisoners, all from original game files.

 

I'm in "polishing" phase. Look for release within the next day or 3.

 

Qwinn

[Guest PS:T Fan]

Huh! I finally got an Annah banter without the accelerator. I had to leave her and Morte alone in place and sleep for 8 hours... but yeah, when I woke up, there was a banter.

 

Ah well, good thing I already moved it to the tweak pack then.

 

Anyways. Progress update. Added another original component to Unfinished Business - "Restored Curst Prisoners". No longer will the awesome planar prison of Curst have, at maximum, three prisoners, all of which you sent there. This component populates the prison with 9 prisoners, all from original game files.

 

I'm in "polishing" phase. Look for release within the next day or 3.

 

Qwinn

 

You seem to indicate that banters are done in-sequence (i.e. people never get to hear the banters towards the back). I'm personally waiting on your fixes before I replay it, but as long as banters still make sense non-sequentially, perhaps a better or alternative tweak would be to randomize them? It would make replays less predictable and still give banters an element of surprise. Is that possible?

 

Thanks

[Qwinn]

I'll look into that possibility, PS:T Fan. It won't make it into the first release though. For one thing, Annah's banters toward Grace -should- be in sequential order.

 

I -am- going to delay release by hopefully just a few hours, though, cause there's a tweak I feel I -gotta- add and test. Let me know if you think this is worth the wait:

 

Without meta-gaming knowledge, most people would bring a full party with them to Ravel's Maze. When you meet Vhailor in the Curst Underground, you're pretty much required to strand someone down there forever... either you can't take Vhailor, or you have to leave one of your friends behind irrevocably.

 

This Tweak adds an option wherein you can take Vhailor without losing a party member forever. The premise is that, although you can't use the Modron Cube outside of Sigil, Nordom is still capable of transporting himself there to wait for you, so you can pick him back up once you're back in Sigil. To use this tweak, you must be in the area where you found Vhailor, you must have Vhailor in your party, Nordom must be outside of your party, and you must have the modron cube with you. If those conditions are met, talk to Nordom, and things will progress from there.

 

How's that sound? Any demand out there for it?

 

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Urf, just ran into a snag. I thought this would be easy in that something similar happens to Morte at one point in the game - except that Morte is never actually moved between areas, he's merely hidden away and returned when you get him back.

 

It's a whole different thing to move Nordom to another area though. I see reference to some action named "MoveBetweenAreas()" in the IESDP, though it's not an action in PS:T's ACTION.IDS. Might be able to add it though. Is it possible to use that or anything like it?

 

If not, well, Nordom's going to have to lose some experience then, but I'll see to it he doesn't lose any levels. I'll save versions of him at various levels, and reapply whatever upgrades you've given him when you pick him back up.

 

Qwinn

[Miloch]

I see reference to some action named "MoveBetweenAreas()" in the IESDP, though it's not an action in PS:T's ACTION.IDS. Might be able to add it though. Is it possible to use that or anything like it?

Do you have EscapeAreaMove() in PS:T? If not, see the hack in the BG1 link I posted, though it probably won't do what you want.

 

This sounds like a definite tweak to me, though. That doesn't mean it's bad, it's just not a fix. And you are doing a separate tweak/UB mod, right? Well, that gives you the liberty to work on stuff like this and not let it impede the fixpack.

[Qwinn]

Oh, this is absolutely positively a tweak. Sorry, never meant to imply otherwise. I refer to it as a tweak a few times in my post about it.

 

I do want a simultaneous release of all 3 mods though.

 

PS:T doesn't have EscapeAreaMove... it -does- have LeaveAreaLUA as an action, though, and it even seems to be used once in a script. I'll play with it. God I hope it works, would save me an insane amount of trouble.

 

Qwinn