Prism

[-JR-]

When Prism was crafting the statue of Ellesime in Baldur's Gate I, did he steal the emeralds to have something to look at when shaping the eyes, or did he literally use the emeralds as the eyes?

 

He claims to have finished it before he dies and begs you to "leave the sparkle in her eyes", but he still has the gems on his body when he falls. The statue itself looks to have stone eyes.

[Salk]

There is a bit of inconsistency in this because Prism stole the emeralds to become the eyes of the stateue and before dying he says that the statue is complete.

 

But then you find the emeralds on his body.

 

Personally, in this scenario, I would have removed the emeralds from the body and have them attached to the statue instead. You could have taken off the statue at a -1 reputation cost.

 

If you let Greywolf kill him, the emeralds should be taken by him while you should find them on the body if you kill Prism instead.

[-JR-]

That sounds reasonable. Does anyone have a confirming or differing opinion?

[Luridel]

I always thought that Prism intended for the PC to take the emeralds off his body and put them in the statue itself somehow, or something along those lines - in retrospect, this is probably a rather silly idea and you're most likely right.

 

Why would taking the emeralds off the statue decrease your reputation, though? They were stolen in the first place, and you could be returning them. There's also nobody around to notice you doing so, either, by that point.

[Salk]

Why would taking the emeralds off the statue decrease your reputation, though? They were stolen in the first place, and you could be returning them. There's also nobody around to notice you doing so, either, by that point.

 

In Baldur's Gate the reputation system doesn't need witnesses to shift (if you kill an innocent in the desert, you would still lose reputation). That's why SimDing0 has created "Virtue" for Baldur's Gate 2.

 

The -1 point to reputation is due because by removing the emeralds from the statue you desecrate both a piece of art and the final wish of a dying man.

[plainab]

Didn't we talk about this in the fixpack workroom?

 

It'd be a definite 'tweak' but certainly a doable idea. We can even solve the exploit in returning the emeralds to Oublek by using custom names for the left eye and the right eye... (it's the only true way to solve the exploit due to limitations in the game engine).

 

To be precise almost all of the exploit resolutions require some amount of tweaking. So why not include this one?

 

I don't care too much about flak received from those that don't like it. We can obviously justify the need to do something both in staying in line with dialog as well as preventing an exploit caused by game engine limitations.

 

What is it that is needed to make this work?

 

1) A container for the left eye and a container for the right eye

2) One gem for the left and one for the right (individual custom names so Oublek can properly identify that you have them)

3) The containers are 'locked' to simulate the need to pry the gems out of the stone -- the one further away from the scaffolding is set at a higher percentage (because it is harder to get to). The player may need to come back later after gaining more points in lock picking to get that one.

4) Some area scripting technology to assign the gems to the proper location depending upon how the scenario plays out..

 

Anything else?

 

Step 1 - 3 should be fairly easy. Step 4 will require playing around to see what can be done in the BG engine.

[Salk]

Yes, we talked about implementing that in the BG1 Fixpack Forum.

 

Ascension64 wrote also some preliminary code just following those steps you mentioned.

 

But then work on this and other stuff stopped.

[plainab]

Yes, we talked about implementing that in the BG1 Fixpack Forum.

 

Ascension64 wrote also some preliminary code just following those steps you mentioned.

 

But then work on this and other stuff stopped.

Yeah, it always came down to something about being too much of a tweak etc...

 

At this point, I'm not too worried about that. Anything done that is too much of a tweak will have it's own standalone component for players to install or not as they choose. I just want to get the mod done and officially released (with the G3 stamp of approval) for true public consumption.

 

Looks like I'm going thread diving for those old posts and code...

 

@Salk -- Have you checked out the latest release on my website? I'd like your opinion regarding the GTU. I know you spent a lot of work on that and I want to make sure that the correct adjustments are in place. I know that Miloch wasn't too happy that I put in any kind of GTU at all and devSin didn't agree with all the changes. Of course, that's what happens when the lurkers are silent and one of the project 'leaders' disappears for awhile...

[Salk]

plainab,

 

I downloaded the latest BG1 Fixpack version but I didn't really look at it, honestly.

 

And I can't really go again through the whole game text to see if there is anything that I would change because that would mean to start the job over and I can't say I look forward to it.

 

In fact, we were hoping on Flunders to check the text update out but work was interrupted. After something like 5000 lines checked, the changes were so minor that I felt rather satisfied about the quality of the work done.

[plainab]

plainab,

 

I downloaded the latest BG1 Fixpack version but I didn't really look at it, honestly.

 

And I can't really go again through the whole game text to see if there is anything that I would change because that would mean to start the job over and I can't say I look forward to it.

 

In fact, we were hoping on Flunders to check the text update out but work was interrupted. After something like 5000 lines checked, the changes were so minor that I felt rather satisfied about the quality of the work done.

If something stands out when you play the game, let me know. There is no need to go through the thing line by line again...

 

As far as Prism goes... I'm off to look for those old posts in the workroom once I'm done with this post...