Project image issues

[Guest guest]

I've never really tried this spell before but noticed some problems when i used it just now:

 

Firstly, there is like a 2 second delay in the game, everything freezes, when i cast it...don't know why, very annoying - basically, is this standard for this spell? It's like the game is taking it's sweet time to load up the spells on the clone or something, kinda like lag that you experience online is how i would describe it, i.e. things are happening but you'll only catch up after missing a ton of frames.

 

Secondly, about 1 second after the clone is summoned it loses some spells, e.g. edwin has 8 magic missiles and the clone will have only 6, 2 stoneskins become 0 and 2 spell immunity spells become just the 1. This does not happen straight away, i.e. after summoning, if i pause the game, the clone has ALL the spells my edwin does bar the project image just used, but then in about 1 sec of unpausing (and it's always the same spells, and in the same quantity) the above mentioned spells go away. I mean if i add them to the quickspell bar, the stoneskin icon will go away and the spell immunity will go down by 1.

 

No idea what is causing this. Only things that might fiddle with spells in my mod list would be quest pack and sword coast strategems II. More importantly, as i said, i've no idea about this spell's 'standard' behaviour having not used it till now.

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

[devSin]

The delay is more or less normal. It takes time for the engine to get a workable clone spawned in.

 

The second is likely the fact that undroppable items don't transfer to clones (meaning Edwin's amulet doesn't transfer over to the clone, leaving it with 2 fewer spells per level).

[Ardanis]

It may depend on a machine, but I'm certain I've never experienced the lag when casting Project Image or Simulacrum.

[Guest Guest_Szoreny_*]

I'm curious if the fixpack changes the number of project images one can spawn simultaneously. I've read various spell guides around the web that indicate you can spawn multiple project image clones through the use of a chain contingency. When I try to do this with Edwin some of the images loaded into the the CC invariably fail, with the game generating a

 

"You cannot complete this casting until the current casting has run out." message.

 

Depending on how i activate the contingency, sometimes I can get two images active - but not reliably, usually only one appears. I've searched through the fixpack readme as well as the tweakpack and ascension readmes, as I have those installed as well, but find no mention of project image being nerfed in this way. This forum contains a discussion about whether or not images should have access to quickslot items, but I don't see any mention of image multiplication.

 

Three (or four) images running around bombing everything to smithereens sounds like such cheesy fun I'd love to partake....

[DavidW]

It may depend on a machine, but I'm certain I've never experienced the lag when casting Project Image or Simulacrum.

 

It depends on the script length: the delay on spawning a new creature (clones included) is proportional to the length of its script. QP and SCSII both mess with the simulacrum script (SCSII quite dramatically) which will up the spawning time.

[Guest guest]

It may depend on a machine, but I'm certain I've never experienced the lag when casting Project Image or Simulacrum.

 

It depends on the script length: the delay on spawning a new creature (clones included) is proportional to the length of its script. QP and SCSII both mess with the simulacrum script (SCSII quite dramatically) which will up the spawning time.

 

This is the only thing i dislike about SCSII, i'm not sure i experienced such lag in scsI, are the scripts in that shorter?

 

Anyways, it's annoying in that my party will walk over a monster trigger and invariably i'll know there's a new spawn that just occured. Like chapter 6 when I've killed bodhi et all, but then go out from that door the shadow thief golem would break in ch2, but this triggers a new spawn of vampires that stops my game for a few seconds since i came from the other entrance earlier and didn't activate this then...that kind of thing. Is the mod going to suffer much if i keep off mages/priests but use the other goodies? I'd like a challenege, but smooth gameplay is nice too, it's just that mages/priests sounds like that's where the challenge in SCSII really lies.

 

But in saying i 'dislike' it, i readily understand it's not something that can be changed easily.

[DavidW]

It may depend on a machine, but I'm certain I've never experienced the lag when casting Project Image or Simulacrum.

 

It depends on the script length: the delay on spawning a new creature (clones included) is proportional to the length of its script. QP and SCSII both mess with the simulacrum script (SCSII quite dramatically) which will up the spawning time.

 

This is the only thing i dislike about SCSII, i'm not sure i experienced such lag in scsI, are the scripts in that shorter?

 

Anyways, it's annoying in that my party will walk over a monster trigger and invariably i'll know there's a new spawn that just occured. Like chapter 6 when I've killed bodhi et all, but then go out from that door the shadow thief golem would break in ch2, but this triggers a new spawn of vampires that stops my game for a few seconds since i came from the other entrance earlier and didn't activate this then...that kind of thing. Is the mod going to suffer much if i keep off mages/priests but use the other goodies? I'd like a challenege, but smooth gameplay is nice too, it's just that mages/priests sounds like that's where the challenge in SCSII really lies.

 

But in saying i 'dislike' it, i readily understand it's not something that can be changed easily.

 

That's the thing... there really isn't anything much I can do. (When I get around to modernising the scripts to use the latest version of my compiling language, they'll get maybe 30%-40% shorter.)

 

Compared to SCSI, they're about twice as long (at a guess). But there are lots more mages in BG2 than BG1. Ultimately it's your call - spellcaster scripts are probably the core of SCSII, on the other hand if they're driving you mad, uninstall.

 

It may also help to do things like defragment, make sure you're not running high-demand software (e.g. virus checkers) in the background, etc. User reports on the lag seem only weakly correlated to the strength of their hardware, so I suspect things like that make a big difference.

[Shaitan]

On my laptop I can't play with smarter mages/priests from SCSII. It would cause too much lags in my game so I'll have to do without untill I get a newer laptop.