Bringing the old spell shield back.

[Guest niebezimienny]

I tried /* ignoring */ the bits of the .tp2 file that modify spell shield, but after reinstalling the spell didn't appear on my sorcerer's pick list. I then reinstalled the mod again and didn't install the component which removes 'obsolete' spells, and that worked - however, the spell is completely useless because it simply doesn't work. Is there any way to revert the spell protection removers, and spell shield, to their original (or rather, SCSII) behaviour? If I /* ignore */ spells like spell thrust, secret word, pierce magic, rrr, kww, pierce shield and spellstrike, will that help? Am I right in thinking that the reason for spell shield not working is because of the above having been somehow modified? Will I have to reinstall SCSII's spell modifications afterwards?

 

The reason for this is that apart from the obvious need for protection against spellstrike, both for me and the enemy mages, I noticed some strange behaviour on the AI's behalf once I installed SR. I just ran some tests, and not once did I see an enemy mage use any sort of spell protection remover. I consoled in a couple of liches, a demi-lich (the WK one) and pitted them up against my sorcerer, buffed with death ward, prot. from missiles, prot. from energy, spell trap (unnecessary actually, it ran out on its own), spell turning and SI:A. What they did after the initial prebuffs, contigencies and timestops was just spam breach (which bounced off of spell turning), then cast a few chaos spheres and cloudkills (which I moved out of), threw tons of flame arrows (useless due to prot. from missiles, though they did bounce back at first, wasting the spell turning - is that intended?), then melf's meteors (ditto) until they ran out. This isn't what I remember happening with just SCSII, where they would constantly pressure you with pierce shields, secret words and especially spellstrikes. That made those fights appropriately challenging - now it's a joke.

 

I read that for v4 you plan to reintroduce it, but for the time being, how would I go about fixing it for my game? BTW, since I'll have to reinstall the mods again anyway, what's the proper order of installation - scsii or sr first? Does it even make a difference? Again, I'm worried about the AI being dumb.

[Demivrgvs]

I tried /* ignoring */ the bits of the .tp2 file that modify spell shield, but after reinstalling the spell didn't appear on my sorcerer's pick list. I then reinstalled the mod again and didn't install the component which removes 'obsolete' spells, and that worked - however, the spell is completely useless because it simply doesn't work.

You have to:

- open the tp2 file and comment out the spell like this

/* COPY ~spell_rev\spwi5##\spwi519.spl~	 ~override~  // Spell Shield (disabled at level 5)
 SAY NAME1 @647	SAY UNIDENTIFIED_DESC @648 */

- open hidespl.2da (you find it within the shared folder) to edit the component which hides obsolete spells by removing the "SPWI519 1" instance from the colum you see

 

That should give you vanilla Spell Shield (which is very bugged) but the latest SCSII uses the solution I and Ardanis found back then to fix it. The only problem should be Sunfire not appearing anymore on the spell selection screen at lvl up (because of the 24 spells per lvl cap).

 

Is there any way to revert the spell protection removers, and spell shield, to their original (or rather, SCSII) behaviour? If I /* ignore */ spells like spell thrust, secret word, pierce magic, rrr, kww, pierce shield and spellstrike, will that help?

With the current hotfixes there's really no reason to not install those spells. SCSII uses pretty much the same system, but if you want them to bypass Improved Invisibility just install the relevant SCS component, it will patch SR's spells.

 

Am I right in thinking that the reason for spell shield not working is because of the above having been somehow modified? Will I have to reinstall SCSII's spell modifications afterwards?

No you're not. Spell Shield was disabled because it was bugged (and SCS wasn't using it for that reason), but it doesn't have anything to do with spell removals changes. We planned to restore it for V4 hoping David could make good use of a fixed Spell Shield, but in the end he actually got a new SCS version before us and included it by himself.

 

The reason for this is that apart from the obvious need for protection against spellstrike, both for me and the enemy mages, I noticed some strange behaviour on the AI's behalf once I installed SR. I just ran some tests, and not once did I see an enemy mage use any sort of spell protection remover. ...

If I have to guess the Detectable Spell part could be screwed by a wrong install order, causing the AI to not detect spell protections. Did you installed (or re-installed) SR after SCS? SCS must always go after SR.

 

I hope that helps, but if you need anything let me know.

[DavidW]

Yeah, that sounds like an install order problem. Demi: am I right that there's not currently any DS shipped with SR? For version 4, you might want to ship Ardanis's improved DS, and/or detect SCS and refuse to install (with a "you got your install order wrong" flag) if it's already there.

[Demivrgvs]

Yeah, that sounds like an install order problem. Demi: am I right that there's not currently any DS shipped with SR? For version 4, you might want to ship Ardanis's improved DS, and/or detect SCS and refuse to install (with a "you got your install order wrong" flag) if it's already there.

I never included DS because SR doesn't mess much with scripts and I give for granted that SCS is installed alongside SR. Would there be any benefit of adding DS within SR? Afaik, without SCS adding DS within SR wouldn't do much. Vvanilla AI would perfeorm the very same way (aka as stupid as it always did).

[DavidW]

Well,

 

(i) if someone installs SR after SCS (as in the OP's case) things wouldn't be as broken. (As I say, though, you could alternately work around this just by having SR refuse to install if SCS is installed, and/or just shrug and ignore people who don't read install instructions.

 

(ii) more importantly, when SCS installs DS it does so under the assumption that the vanilla spells are present. DS (either in the version I ship up to v21, or in Ardanis' improved version) works by looking for a named opcode for each spell and using the effect-block associated with that opcode as a template for the detectable stat/proficiency. That's robust against small changes (tweaks to duration or damage, say) but it won't cope with some of the major changes that (iirc) SR makes.

 

To give an example that comes up in SCS itself, DS applies the INSECT_PLAGUE stat to SPPR517 (Insect Plague). It does so by looking for opcode 60 (casting failure). But SCS's Insect Plague component externalises the whole payload of the spell to a new spell (to do sectype trickery). Not only is opcode 60 not present in the new version of SPPR517, there's no opcode that can be used. (The only opcode is 146, but that has duration zero). To make DS work, the new spell, SPPR517B has to be patched instead. SCS has to manually tell the DS macro to do this.

 

So: the only way SR can rely on SCS's version of DS is if SCS checks for SR and installs a different version of DS if it's detected. I'm not really willing to do this, partly because it's not ultimately my problem but mostly because it makes much more sense to do at your end - it's simpler, generalises better to other mods that rely on DS, and is guaranteed to stay up-to-date if you change any of SR. Ardanis has done a beautifully elegant update of DS (starting from my 2007 baseline, which itself was built from many earlier contributions) that would be very straightforward to include.

[Demivrgvs]

Well then, if there's some advantage in doing so (and it seems so) I'm fine adding DS into V4.