list of annoyances

[gojirasan]

I've been playing version 18 again. I played version 20 a bit, but got too annoyed with the fact that the option not to nerf the insect spells doesn't seem to work. I'll get back to 20 when I confirm whether insect spells can be enabled in version 18. It's possible that some of these annoyances have been fixed in version 20, but they are really annoying me at the moment. So I thought I would post them now.

 

Entering CLUAConsole:SetGlobal("DMWWDisableBuffing","GLOBAL",1) in the ctrl-space console doesn't stop mages from prebuffing with stoneskin. They are still protected by stoneskin. And they can seemingly go invisible at will, without drinking a potion or casting a spell. If they all have invisibility rings they certainly aren't available when they die.

 

Thieves *always* have invisibility potions even without the 'enemies use more potions' option. If you use something like glitterdust to reveal them, they are almost instantaneously invisible again and there is no "gulp" text to indicate they just drank another invisibility potion. Isn't glitterdust supposed to continue to reveal invisible creatures for at least a few rounds anyway? If they are hiding in shadows and not drinking potions then don't they have to at least run away to get out of sight first? Thieves also seem to start out invisible during ambushes. There is some plausibility to that since it's an ambush, but it's still kind of cheesy. They could at least wait until you show up to drink their potions. (edit) Actually it looks like glitterdust may simply not be working as intended.

 

When you cast chaos in a group with invisible thieves you can see the animation above the invisible thieves' heads. I saw at least one case where the invisible confused thief walked halfway across a map to backstab someone while in the confused state. If only confusion affected my characters like that. I could be wrong but it looks like when an enemy thief is invisible he is immune to certain area effects even if the spell animations indicate he is affected.

 

This isn't really an annoyance, but I have noticed that monsters in watcher's keep do not seem to be affected by the "Increase difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings -> Significantly increased difficulty" option. Maybe there is no way to avoid this, but it is a shame. Watchers keep is one of my favorite areas, but the level scaling there is more noticeable and annoying than in most areas. Considering the nature of what it's supposed to be, level scaling is particularly inappropriate there.

[polytope]

If you use something like glitterdust to reveal them, they are almost instantaneously invisible again and there is no "gulp" text to indicate they just drank another invisibility potion. Isn't glitterdust supposed to continue to reveal invisible creatures for at least a few rounds anyway? If they are hiding in shadows and not drinking potions then don't they have to at least run away to get out of sight first? Thieves also seem to start out invisible during ambushes. There is some plausibility to that since it's an ambush, but it's still kind of cheesy. They could at least wait until you show up to drink their potions. (edit) Actually it looks like glitterdust may simply not be working as intended.

Known issue, thieves go invisible instantly and automatically if blinded (such as by glitterdust), they are only supposed to go invisible if they don't see enemies or "detect" players (to simulate hiding in shadows) - but blindness reduces script activation range to 3 (including the Detect() and Heard() triggers).

 

I'd prefer if blinded creatures simply couldn't use stealth, a blind creature shouldn't be able to tell the difference between light and shadow anyway...

[DavidW]

I've been playing version 18 again. I played version 20 a bit, but got too annoyed with the fact that the option not to nerf the insect spells doesn't seem to work. I'll get back to 20 when I confirm whether insect spells can be enabled in version 18. It's possible that some of these annoyances have been fixed in version 20, but they are really annoying me at the moment. So I thought I would post them now.

 

I don't really support non-current versions but most of this still seems current.

 

Entering CLUAConsole:SetGlobal("DMWWDisableBuffing","GLOBAL",1) in the ctrl-space console doesn't stop mages from prebuffing with stoneskin.

 

It's not supposed to. Stoneskin isn't "prebuff", i.e. a spell autocast as soon as a fight start to simulate pre-fight casting. It's a 24-hour spell that any sane mage would cast every morning. If I didn't force-cast it, I'd just get wizards to cast it as soon as they were created, even when the player is off screen - it would come to the same thing.

 

And they can seemingly go invisible at will, without drinking a potion or casting a spell. If they all have invisibility rings they certainly aren't available when they die.

 

I've never seen this, nor had it reported. If you can give me a reproducible situation (in v20) where it occurs, I'll investigate. It's possible you're mistaken (combat is messy).

 

Thieves *always* have invisibility potions even without the 'enemies use more potions' option.

If you use something like glitterdust to reveal them, they are almost instantaneously invisible again and there is no "gulp" text to indicate they just drank another invisibility potion.

 

If you can reproduce this on v20, get back to me.

 

Isn't glitterdust supposed to continue to reveal invisible creatures for at least a few rounds anyway?

No.

 

Thieves also seem to start out invisible during ambushes. There is some plausibility to that since it's an ambush, but it's still kind of cheesy. They could at least wait until you show up to drink their potions.

Why on earth would they do something that stupid?

 

When you cast chaos in a group with invisible thieves you can see the animation above the invisible thieves' heads.

Original-game behaviour, nothing to do with SCS.

 

I saw at least one case where the invisible confused thief walked halfway across a map to backstab someone while in the confused state. If only confusion affected my characters like that. I could be wrong but it looks like when an enemy thief is invisible he is immune to certain area effects even if the spell animations indicate he is affected.

I'm 90% sure that's not correct. Confusion leads to random action - including, sometimes, randomly attacking the party.

 

This isn't really an annoyance, but I have noticed that monsters in watcher's keep do not seem to be affected by the "Increase difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings -> Significantly increased difficulty" option. Maybe there is no way to avoid this, but it is a shame. Watchers keep is one of my favorite areas, but the level scaling there is more noticeable and annoying than in most areas. Considering the nature of what it's supposed to be, level scaling is particularly inappropriate there.

Examples, please.

[gojirasan]

Thanks for the quick response, David. I wasn't really expecting you to take action on these anomalies (I won't call any of them bugs just yet). I was getting so frustrated with some of these battles that I wanted to punch my computer screen. So I thought I would post about them immediately. As I said I'm going to get back to version 20 soon. I'm actually only running version 18 to do more thorough testing with respect to the insect spells. I want to verify whether the save-for-insect-spells option is forced on in both versions. I am running vanilla with other mods, version 18, and version 20 in parallel. I think I am just going to quickly test the insect spells and then get back to 20 again and continue my playthrough with that.

 

Inicidentally, do you have any advice on bug testing SCS? What is the best way to fully test anomalies I encounter. Obviously repeatability is good, but what would you ideally like to see in a bug report that would make it as easy as possible for you to eventually fix? Believe it or not part of my motivation for playing BG2 nowadays is to help improve SCS since you are still at least somewhat actively maintaining it. To me, SCS perfects BG2 as one of the greatest CRPGs ever made. I like to help with that in any way I can.

[DavidW]

Basically, I can't really do anything about a bug unless I can reproduce it on my own system. So what I need is instructions for what I need to do so that I can see the bug. Once I've got that, I can usually fix it. If you can't give me that for some reason, I need as much detail as possible as to what happened, when it happened, and whether you can reproduce it yourself.

 

Can you quickly talk me through the insects problem - I'm not sure I'm aware of it.