BG1 Horror spell doesn't work?

[chuft]

According to Dudleyville, Horror is SPWI205.SPL. There is no such file in my Override folder. So it's not an edit to the Horror spell itself that is causing this.

 

So I don't think it's related to Horror per se, but some more general change somewhere that allows monsters to decide to attack someone at the start of a round and negate the effects of the Horror effect (and possibly others). I don't know enough about the game code to know what kind of change would do this, but suffice to say, it does not seem related to any change to the Horror spell itself.

 

It seems the spell duration is the same because the circles are still yellow for awhile. It's just the monster behavior that ignores the Horror effect after the round in which the spell is cast (they do Panic and turn away for a moment).

[plainab]

random thoughts.......

 

i think it is in the scripting. if you were to look at most of the monsters AI scripts you'll see various blocks of shouting and responding to shouts as well as attacking. no blocks about running away when in any specific states.

 

If running ToTSC check into DavidW's Sword Coast Strategems (i believe he made a totsc version) I know he did all kinds of scripting rework on the monsters and stuff, perhaps he threw in code that will make 'em run away as you are expecting.

 

One thing you could try, just to determine whether or not the AI scripting is interfering is to wait till you are down to the last monster in a group and then cast horror on it. without others around it may just run away.

 

yet, i seem to recall monsters in general running away when panic'd without the spell ever being used... *thinks of obe's little practice session and chasing down a panic'd gibberling into the corner

[aVENGER_(RR)]

The Horror opcode works differently for enemies. See here for more details.

 

This is original game behavior. It can be circumvented via scripting to a certain degree.

[chuft]

Interesting posts. Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed this, and it isn't some weird bug unique to me.

 

Yes, enemies do run away when morale breaks naturally. That happens all the time.

 

As far as I can tell, they act no differently when Horror'd than they do normally, making the spell useless. Maybe this is an artifact of playing at low levels; enemies in melee whose actions are interrupted by a "panic moment" show no sign of it. Spell casting enemies might suffer some more obvious effect. Usually they are being interrupted by my arrows and not by Horror.

 

Versus gnolls, xvarts etc it does not make them run away and they close in for melee and stay there. I will have to try the spell again vs enemies whose actions would be obviously ruined if interrupted (like a spellcaster) to see if there is any noticeable effect. For the moment I don't plan to waste any memorization slots on this spell for general use, as it has no beneficial effect when I use it. It's too bad, because BG1 doesn't have a lot of "smart bomb" spells you can drop in the middle of a melee without hurting friends, and Sleep becomes useless as enemies become higher level.

[chuft]

Oh and do check to see if the raise dead scroll even works. I seem to remember finding out when they were added to EasyTuTu that they didn't work and that the scroll's target needed to be changed from creature to dead character... even made code & (i think offered it up) for the mod (UB perhaps) that installed the raise dead scrolls to fix this. but i don't know if it actually got implemented or not....

 

The error is on the BG & BG:ToTSC side of things, but since those scrolls aren't used in a unmodded state they don't NEED to be fixed tho I probably should just to be on the safe side

 

Just tried a Raise Dead scroll and it doesn't work. You can cast it on a dead party member portrait but nothing happens except the cleric keeps twitching in an attempt to do something. You can cast it on an object, like a dead character's cloak, but it just uses up the scroll to no effect. You can't cast it on a body (a dead party member you kicked out). So it is useless.

 

In the course of these experiments I ended up with some accidental hilarity trying to get Edwin killed, during which I learned:

 

If you cast Blindness on a Nashkel guard, he doesn't mind. This is useful later if you attack him with a ranged weapon, since he can't attack you unless you are adjacent and he doesn't move once attacked.

 

Algernon's Cloak appears to have no saving throw (!), and can be used over and over in the same day. I guess it has an obscene number of charges, I assumed it was a once-a-day kind of thing, but it isn't. It may qualify as the most powerful item in the game due to its "no saving throw" ability.

 

If you cast Web on a bunch of Nashkel guards, they don't mind. If you attack a webbed guard with a sling and do damage, nobody, including the victim and the other webbed guards, becomes hostile until the victim is killed. Even then there was one guard who never became hostile and just walked around as usual once the web wore off.

 

If you butcher enough guards, an endless series of bounty hunters starts spawning. Algernon's Cloak can be used to turn them into your own personal army, which can then be used to kill further bounty hunters. I ended up with a wall of bounty hunters protecting me from other bounty hunters in an endless ongoing battle scene fueled by newly spawning bounty hunters (I could charm with the cloak them if I needed reinforcements). I also charmed Minsc, who I had never picked up, so he was part of my army as well despite not being in the party (and he said his usual things in combat). It was quite amusing to have him off screen and not in the party, yet hear "Go for the eyes, Boo!" as he attacked some commoner down the road somewhere.

[chuft]

By the way in my current install, Amulets of Protection are their normal price, not 1 GP. So you might want to look at the Fixpack for that since I didn't use it this time.

 

Has anyone noticed that not all skeletons are created equal? Usually when fighting skeletons, they only take 1 point of damage from arrows and bullets and bolts, which is quite annoying. However, when fighting them at High Hedge, or Bassilus' skeletons, they take full damage from missile weapons.

[chuft]

Has anyone noticed that not all skeletons are created equal? Usually when fighting skeletons, they only take 1 point of damage from arrows and bullets and bolts, which is quite annoying. However, when fighting them at High Hedge, or Bassilus' skeletons, they take full damage from missile weapons.

 

I should note that, at least for the High Hedge map skeletons (not sure about Bassilus), the Sleep spell knocks them out.

 

Now this definitely is strange for undead. Are these skeletons bugged? Or is this deliberate game behavior?

 

Note these particular skeletons drop a skull when they get killed, in case you need one for Melicamp.

[plainab]

Has anyone noticed that not all skeletons are created equal? Usually when fighting skeletons, they only take 1 point of damage from arrows and bullets and bolts, which is quite annoying. However, when fighting them at High Hedge, or Bassilus' skeletons, they take full damage from missile weapons.

 

I should note that, at least for the High Hedge map skeletons (not sure about Bassilus), the Sleep spell knocks them out.

 

Now this definitely is strange for undead. Are these skeletons bugged? Or is this deliberate game behavior?

 

Note these particular skeletons drop a skull when they get killed, in case you need one for Melicamp.

this has been previously noted. in dudley, in BGT's conversion, possibly in E22's conversion. It is already included locally in the fixpack.

//SKELETS: Randomly spawning skeletons now have their correct immunities
COPY_EXISTING ~SKELETS.CRE~ ~override~
 ADD_CRE_ITEM ~RING99~ #0 #0 #0 ~UNSTEALABLE&UNDROPPABLE~ ~LRING~
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

[plainab]

Oh and do check to see if the raise dead scroll even works. I seem to remember finding out when they were added to EasyTuTu that they didn't work and that the scroll's target needed to be changed from creature to dead character... even made code & (i think offered it up) for the mod (UB perhaps) that installed the raise dead scrolls to fix this. but i don't know if it actually got implemented or not....

 

The error is on the BG & BG:ToTSC side of things, but since those scrolls aren't used in a unmodded state they don't NEED to be fixed tho I probably should just to be on the safe side

 

Just tried a Raise Dead scroll and it doesn't work. You can cast it on a dead party member portrait but nothing happens except the cleric keeps twitching in an attempt to do something. You can cast it on an object, like a dead character's cloak, but it just uses up the scroll to no effect. You can't cast it on a body (a dead party member you kicked out). So it is useless.

I knew I had a fix for this somewhere.... it got left out when going from just a bunch of thrown together fixes to testing and applying patches in a hopefully better organized method...

//~Fix Raise Dead Scroll targeting~
// Needs fixed for UB mod.
COPY_EXISTING ~scrl63.itm~ ~override~  //  <-- Not Used by Easy TuTu without TOTSC -- junk/Totsc file ?
PATCH_IF (%SOURCE_SIZE% > 0x70) BEGIN					//avoid bad files
 READ_LONG 0x64 ~abil_loc~							   //reads ability location
 WRITE_BYTE ("%abil_loc%" + 0xc) 3
END
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

in fact if you want to test this AND the code in the post above, you may...

 

Just open notepad, copy paste this and save as setup-TestStuff.tp2 in a new mod directory called TestStuff and copy any mod's setup exe file and rename to setup-TestStuff.exe

BACKUP ~TestStuff/backup~
AUTHOR ~~
ASK_EVERY_COMPONENT

BEGIN ~Test Skeleton Immunities (most notably High Hedge area)~
//SKELETS: Randomly spawning skeletons now have their correct immunities
COPY_EXISTING ~SKELETS.CRE~ ~override~
 ADD_CRE_ITEM ~RING99~ #0 #0 #0 ~UNSTEALABLE&UNDROPPABLE~ ~LRING~
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

BEGIN ~Test Raise Dead Scroll~
//~Fix Raise Dead Scroll targeting~
// Needs fixed for UB mod.
COPY_EXISTING ~scrl63.itm~ ~override~  
PATCH_IF (%SOURCE_SIZE% > 0x70) BEGIN				   
 READ_LONG 0x64 ~abil_loc~							 
 WRITE_BYTE ("%abil_loc%" + 0xc) 3
END
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

[Jarno Mikkola]

PST with the GUI mod and no DDraw emulation

You probably haven't tried the new aqrit's solution that's a WeiDU mod for the DDraw fix... it's pinned there for a reason.

[chuft]

PST with the GUI mod and no DDraw emulation

You probably haven't tried the new aqrit's solution that's a WeiDU mod for the DDraw fix... it's pinned there for a reason.

 

No, I didn't bother, because DDraw and agrit's solution have nothing to do with the constant crashes when entering small areas (in fact his mod has nothing to do with the widescreen mod in general). I talked to scient, the reverse engineer in the PST Tweaks project, about it, and he agreed the crashing in small areas was widescreen mod related and a totally different issue than D3D.

 

When I played PST at its native resolution I had no issues whatsoever and didn't need to turn off D3D. I only turned off D3D when I was using the widescreen mod, to avoid jerky movement of characters on the screen (which also happens with BG1 in widescreen, which caused me to abandon the idea immediately and go back to 640 x 480). My issues with widescreen in PST had to do with the crashes, which were intolerable.

 

In fact, now that I search for it, I had the exact same issues as this person

 

http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showtopic=22163

 

more examples here

 

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=29552

 

and I did not change resolution mid-game either.

 

My game ground to a halt when I couldn't enter the exact same area as Turambar90 (see G3 link above).

 

When I reinstalled everything without widescreen, I never had a problem.

[chuft]

in fact if you want to test this AND the code in the post above, you may...

 

I'm afraid you're way over my head here. IE modding seems rather fun, I wish I knew more about it, since I detest today's excuses for games and find myself playing older ones over and over. Maybe once I get some more time in a few months I will dip my toes in it.

 

How to people get started in IE modding anyway? Is there a primer anywhere? It must be difficult because a lot of the mods seem to either never get finished, or end up notoriously buggy. I wanted to try Dark Side of the Sword Coast but it has a reputation for bugs.

[plainab]

in fact if you want to test this AND the code in the post above, you may...

 

I'm afraid you're way over my head here. IE modding seems rather fun, I wish I knew more about it, since I detest today's excuses for games and find myself playing older ones over and over. Maybe once I get some more time in a few months I will dip my toes in it.

 

How to people get started in IE modding anyway? Is there a primer anywhere? It must be difficult because a lot of the mods seem to either never get finished, or end up notoriously buggy. I wanted to try Dark Side of the Sword Coast but it has a reputation for bugs.

i got started cause i didn't like the standard party scripts and was looking at what other people did. liked parts of it but not other stuff, so i started cobbling code together and began asking questions about why certain blocks weren't working or were behaving the way they were. Eventually, I got a script I sorta liked and started to really play the game and realized that I wanted to tweak it a bit (stackable ammo). This was shortly before tweaks for BG were introduced, so i started looking into various tutorials and reading up and seeing what other peoples mods did. I reinvented the wheel on a lot of things, but learned a lot in the process.

Took on more than I could chew tho... [fixpack, party scripts, tweaks etc for BG, IWD, BG2, EasyTuTu, and even PST (that was a fail cause it is radically different even tho it uses the same engine)] burned myself out pretty much. Been on a pretty long break and here recently I felt the need to come back. But slower. Right now, it is BG & ToTSC to do the mod work on. PST to play on occasion just to see Qwinn's work, he's got some well thought out code. it blew my mind when i first saw it. took a long long time to understand what he was doing.

 

anywho... back to the thread topic???

[Jarno Mikkola]

When I played PST at its native resolution I had no issues whatsoever and didn't need to turn off D3D. I only turned off D3D when I was using the widescreen mod, to avoid jerky movement of characters on the screen (which also happens with BG1 in widescreen, which caused me to abandon the idea immediately and go back to 640 x 480). My issues with widescreen in PST had to do with the crashes, which were intolerable.

I believe that the most common cause of the crash is loading a save game which is saved on different resolution that the one in use currently ... the other is the mod failing to create the files required to load the area... haven't seen may of those lately as the ~v2.5 should have fixed that, and the former savegame issue is fixed by having the ability to use set save game resolution maximum when you install the Widescreen mod in v3.

[chuft]

I believe that the most common cause of the crash is loading a save game which is saved on different resolution that the one in use currently ... the other is the mod failing to create the files required to load the area... haven't seen may of those lately as the ~v2.5 should have fixed that, and the former savegame issue is fixed by having the ability to use set save game resolution maximum when you install the Widescreen mod in v3.

 

I did not change resolutions, as I noted. Crashes would often happen the second time I visited a small area, so any files that needed to be created should have been created on the first visit.

 

I was using v. 3.05 of the mod and tried playing Planescape with it in June. 15 or 20 crashes a session. Reinstalled without the widescreen mod, played normal resolution, no jerkiness, no mouse trails, no crashes, played perfectly.