Various ToB hacks

[Taimon]

is there any way to change the maximum number of party members from 6 to more than that?

No, at least not for me (with patching the game executable).

This was clearly a compile-time constant. Too many things internally depend on that number.

[Sorrow]

Any chances for modifying the Visual Range effects so that it would allow greater values and would clear fog of war when over 15?

[Taimon]

I'm not going to take requests for now, but I think this was already mentioned somewhere in this thread, so it should be on my list. Still requires some research before I can do anything though. (The maximum value is 24.)

[Jarno Mikkola]

Would you Taimon take these under your wing. They should all work... apparently Ascension64 doesn't have the time for them... for now.

[SimDing0]

In the spirit of not making any requests, here are a few BG2 executable limitations for us all to enjoy!

 

 

"I'm female and created a simulacrum, but it has a male voice."

 

"I'm attacking Irenicus but his script isn't firing so he won't die."

 

"I asked Aerie to cast a spell but instead she started a banter and the casting was interrupted."

 

"I cast a spell and now I've turned green because Detectable Spells was using a stat with an unintended side-effect."

 

"I'm clicking through the Turnabout dialogue really quickly and it doesn't make sense because when you set a variable in dialogue it doesn't immediately get updated."

[Galactygon]

"I'm female and created a simulacrum, but it has a male voice."

 

Sim: there can be a workaround by setting the gender to neither, and setting specifics to some custom value, and then patching all true sight effects to destroy that specific type as well.

 

I too have a few requests for a change.

 

I have been hoping for a long time for an externalized FIREBALL.ids (or a FIREBALL.2da), so that we could make our own explosion and cloud animations, and not have to deal with invis .cres with overlays.

 

A STATS.ids fix to handle more stats.

 

A flag in the .pro file format that allows delayed/multiple explosions react to opcode 58 [dispel].

 

A .vvc setting that prevents the .vvc from being played over creatures invisible to the party. This is hardcoded for some effects like "minor globe overlay", but not for others (spell turning, for instance).

 

This one caused some headaches for DavidW. Spells cast by traps do not crash the game if they include opcodes creature summoning or cast spell at creature or point.

 

Romance handling and imprisonment and petrification.

 

Externalizing "spell may be cast while silenced" flag, and silencing the male/female voice while the spell is being cast.

 

Fixing opcode 267, so that hardcoded strings (like "Death") aren't displayed as well.

 

Extra stat-modifying parameters that allows stuff like charisma, fire resistance, etc. to be non-cumulative with itself. Or setting certain paramaters so that strength modifiers can only increase (Strength of One) or decrease (Ray of Enfeeblement) stat values.

 

Allowing protection from weapon type to protect against specific .itm files or specific types (magical, and cold iron, and less than +2) by setting resource keys and extra bytes in parameter 2.

 

And all those power word effects can be custumized to affect creatures of certain hitpoints, or with the resource being set, to allow an .eff file to be used at certain hit points.

 

Seriously, your work will make me go broke, a lot of my stuff is centered on these shortcomings of the IE.

 

-Galactygon

[SimDing0]

"I'm female and created a simulacrum, but it has a male voice."

Sim: there can be a workaround by setting the gender to neither, and setting specifics to some custom value, and then patching all true sight effects to destroy that specific type as well.

I thought all genders except FEMALE used male casting sounds? NEITHER is silent?

 

The SPECIFICS solution will clash with anything which uses them in scripts (drow/elf battles spring to mind), no?

[Galactygon]

NEITHER is silent?

 

Yes, I am 100% certain.

 

The SPECIFICS solution will clash with anything which uses them in scripts (drow/elf battles spring to mind), no?

 

Yeah, if they cast PI or SI. With mods like SCS, it could happen.

 

-Galactygon

[Ardanis]

A STATS.ids fix to handle more stats.

How? I bet INSERT_BYTES'ing all CRE files is gonna be 70% incompatible with n00b players.

 

Romance handling and imprisonment and petrification.

Isn't it a mere scripting issue? I'm 95% sure it is.

[Galactygon]

How? I bet INSERT_BYTES'ing all CRE files is gonna be 70% incompatible with n00b players.

 

Isn't it a mere scripting issue? I'm 95% sure it is.

 

Sorry, I don't get it.

 

-Galactygon

[Ardanis]

How? I bet INSERT_BYTES'ing all CRE files is gonna be 70% incompatible with n00b players.

Unless I horribly miss something, stats are read from CRE, so there's a limit to how many it can contain. So, without expanding the file structure, it's a bit hard to squeeze more space in. For obvious reasons, doing INSERT_BYTES is only gonna work if installed the last, else it will crash the game on loading. So, a certain attention must be taken during installation.

 

Isn't it a mere scripting issue? I'm 95% sure it is.

I meant it's a matter of scripting in joining dialogs.

But now that I think of it, you've been talking about Petri/Impris not longer autokicking a party member out, right? That would sure be good, yes.

[Galactygon]

How? I bet INSERT_BYTES'ing all CRE files is gonna be 70% incompatible with n00b players.

Unless I horribly miss something, stats are read from CRE, so there's a limit to how many it can contain. So, without expanding the file structure, it's a bit hard to squeeze more space in. For obvious reasons, doing INSERT_BYTES is only gonna work if installed the last, else it will crash the game on loading. So, a certain attention must be taken during installation.

 

I still don't get this part. It could be me, or we are not thinking the same thing.

 

I meant that by removing the limit to the number of entries STATS.ids can contain, so mods like DS can add more detectable scripting states without worry for how much space they take up.

 

-Galactygon

[Ardanis]

Afaik each entry in stats.ids refers to a certain offset in CRE, therefore extending IDS alone won't help much.

[Galactygon]

Afaik each entry in stats.ids refers to a certain offset in CRE, therefore extending IDS alone won't help much.

 

That's really bad. Could you (or Tai) explain how it works?

 

-Galactygon

[SimDing0]

I don't think that's true. Aren't stats stored as effects? You're thinking of states, which are flags on the creature. There's a theoretical limit of 255 right now, since they're stored in a byte value (possibly internally when you run the game as well as in the saved creature), and of these some proportion are hardcoded to some purpose or another, and the rest are free to use in Detectable Spells. No?