Spell casting animations update.

[Andyr]

Currently this field in the SPL v1.0 section of the IESDP looks like this:

 

00 Schoolless

09 Necromancy

10 Alteration

11 Enchantment

12 Abjuration

13 Illusion

14 Conjuration

15 Invocation

16 Divination

18 Black sparks

24 Whirl

26 Whirl

32 Whirl

34 Whirl

 

So I did some messing around. This is what I came up with:

 

00 No animation

01 No animation

09 Necromancy

10 Alteration

11 Enchantment

12 Abjuration

13 Illusion

14 Conjuration

15 Invocation

16 Divination

17 White sparks

18 Black sparks

24 Whirl - Cannot confirm, NI doesn't show this option

26 White sparks

32 White sparks

34 White sparks

 

Note than 01 and 02, labelled as Unknown in NI, peform exactly the same as the option 00 marked Schoolless graphics - wise. This is why I renamed it No Animation rather than Schoolless. They may or may not cause the caster's arms to wiggle in a slightly different way, though, this was more of an observation than a rigorous test. They do work and don't crash, just don't play any visuals while casting either.

 

Similarly I'd suggest renaming the options called Whirl as White Sparks, as it is a White version of that labelled Black Sparks. Note NI wouldn't let me select 24 for no apparant reason, but I can confirm that 26, 32 and 34 are all identical. NI labels one of these Metamagic and the others Whirl, I'd suggest a more standard name.

 

Yes, I know this isn't the place to discuss NI issues.

 

I've not tested all the options but would hazard a guess that the untested options 03-08 at least would be blanks, like 00 - 02. And since I discovered 17 is also White Sparks, there may be more duplicates of that and Black Sparks somewhere too.

 

As an aside, does anyone know how to associate an animation with one of these blanks that currently isn't playing anything?

[Smoketest]

In NI, and no other editor, if you encounter a field you want to test a value for and the value isn't in a predefined list, you can right-click and select to edit as Hex, Binary, Decimal, etc. Then type in your value in the window that appears, update, save and test. That's how I was able to test the exclusion flags, and why I prefer to use NI for researching data.

 

(I recommend using the Hex option, as decimal gets broken into byte-sized chunks so word-sized values don't display correctly. This isn't a problem with hex and binary.)

[igi]

Noted.

I'll check out the missing values over the weekend (I remember doing so before, and most were either duplicates or crashes. I also remember writing this post before. So... maybe I'm just weird).