use of Find Familiar by a character in MP mode

[Lemernis]

Okay, I revised the .tp2 to the following:

BACKUP ~pardasfd/backup~
AUTHOR ~Lemernis~

//README ~<filepath>.txt~
VERSION ~beta 1~

MKDIR ~%USER_DIRECTORY%/characters~
MKDIR ~%USER_DIRECTORY%/portraits~
MKDIR ~%USER_DIRECTORY%/scripts~

COMPILE ~pardasfd/pardafam.baf~
COPY_EXISTING ~pardafam.bcs~ ~%USER_DIRECTORY%/scripts/pardafam.bs~

COPY ~pardasfd/spinsfd.spl~ ~override/spinsfd.spl~
  SAY NAME1 ~Summon Fairy Dragon~
  SAY NAME2 ~Summon Fairy Dragon~

COPY ~pardasfd/char~ ~%USER_DIRECTORY%/characters~
COPY ~pardasfd/pics~ ~%USER_DIRECTORY%/portraits~

But I get a parsing error when I try to install:

 

 

WeiDU v 23600 Log

C:\Users\RogerB\Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition\Data\00766\setup-pardasfd.exe
[./chitin.key] loaded, 495088 bytes
[./chitin.key] 73 BIFFs, 35212 resources
[.\weidu.conf] loaded, 17 bytes
[lang\en_us/dialog.tlk] loaded, 4666732 bytes
[lang\en_us/dialog.tlk] 34001 string entries

[sETUP-PARDASFD.TP2] PARSE ERROR at line 7 column 1-5
Near Text: MKDIR
GLR parse error

[sETUP-PARDASFD.TP2] ERROR at line 7 column 1-5
Near Text: MKDIR
Parsing.Parse_error
ERROR: parsing [sETUP-PARDASFD.TP2]: Parsing.Parse_error
ERROR: problem parsing TP file [sETUP-PARDASFD.TP2]: Parsing.Parse_error

FATAL ERROR: Parsing.Parse_error

WeiDU Timings
load TLK 0.000
parsing .log files 0.000
loading files 0.000
Parsing TP2 files 0.031
stuff not covered elsewhere 0.047
unmarshal KEY 0.063
unmarshal TLK 0.063
TOTAL 0.203

[Jarno Mikkola]

 

Okay, I revised the .tp2 to the following:

BACKUP ~pardasfd/backup~
AUTHOR ~Lemernis~

//README ~<filepath>.txt~
VERSION ~beta 1~

MKDIR ~%USER_DIRECTORY%/characters~
MKDIR ~%USER_DIRECTORY%/portraits~
MKDIR ~%USER_DIRECTORY%/scripts~...

You for got this:

BEGIN ~Summon Fairy Dragon spell~

 

It needs to be between the VERSION tag and the MKDIR command.

And you might want to update the version tag so it represents something else than it does now aka nothing.

[Lemernis]

Hallelujah! Success at last. :-D

 

Thank you so much, Jarno and Mike!

[Lemernis]

So I'm in the process of tweaking the characters, and in particular the three priests, Dreppin, Karan, and Shistal:

 

I did some experimenting via EE Keeper: Since I'm conceiving of Dreppin as a priest of Chauntea, I gave him innate abilities of Resist Fire and Cold x1, Cure Disease x1, and Hold Animal x1. For Karan, conceived as a Priest of Oghma, I assigned innate abilities of Know Alignment x1 and Farsight x1. And for Shistal, conceived as a Priest of Denier, I assigned innate abilities of Glyph of Warding x1 (Denier's portfolio includes Runes).

 

However these spells all show up as Cleric spells rather than innates. I guess that could suffice in that these three characters can enjoy a bonus of having access to those higher level spells right from the getgo. But they will not have the additional casting of the spell(s) in the way that Yeslick, for example, gets Dispel x1 every day in addition to being able to memorize it.

 

So, I guess EE Keeper will not let me do it the 'Yeslick way'. Question then: In the same way that I modified Tiax's special ability Summon Ghast, could I do the same thing for those three clerics, and assign a script that gives them the special ability cast those spells as innate abilities? Differences here being that I would want for the script to allow the character to cast more than in some cases multiple spells, and they would be just the regular cleric spells, used as innates.

 

Also, in your opinion does it seem better aesthetically to limit the special (innate) ability to only one spell? If so, I guess for Dreppin it would be Hold Animal; for Karan it would be Far Sight; and for Shistal it would be Glyph of Warding.

 

For Karan and Shistal it would be nice to increase their lore bonus by an additional 3 points per level. How to do this?

 

Also--how would I alter the description of the class on the character record page for these three characters from just "Cleric" to "Priest of Chauntea," "Priest of Oghma," and "Priest of Denier"?

[Lemernis]

It's interesting that using EE Keeper I'm able to modify the .chr files for those three priests as follows with innates

 

Dreppin - Innate ability: Slow Poison x1 (SPIN102)

Karan - Innate ability: True Sight (cleric) x1 (SPCL732)

Shistal - Innate ability: Word of Power x1 (SPIN758)

 

i.e., I can see it in EE Keeper:

 

 

But they don't show up in-game. I tried looking at the .chr files in NI to see if i could make sense of this, but no luck.

[Jarno Mikkola]

But they don't show up in-game. I tried looking at the .chr files in NI to see if i could make sense of this, but no luck.

Did you use the characters(as in, imported into the game via the import PC in a new game), or the in game characters(.cre files) that you need to modify if you make the characters joinable via dialog or force join... ?

[Lemernis]

Using EE Keeper I opened the .chr. files (which best I can tell uses the game's characters folder) under File> Open Character File..., then created a new MP game and imported the characters into it to start. E.g., so for the above version of Karan named Karan2.chr I imported that version into a brand new MP game.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Erhm, you need to memorize teh spell, so click on the Memorisation -tab that's next to the Innate -tab and add a counter/whatever.

[Lemernis]

Thanks. Problem is that what that does with EE Keeper is assigns the spells as either cleric or wizard spells (even though in EE Keeper they are assigned from the Innate tab), and changing the value for the memorization tab from 0 to 1 gives access to all the spells of those higher levels, which isn't what I'm after.

 

However, I should think I could do the same thing that I did with Tiax's Summon Ghast special (innate) ability for Parda for these three priests. That is, I could modify Yeslick's SPIN112 and replace Dispel Magic with another desired spell. Then the player would assign those special ability spells for Dreppin, Karan, and Shistal via their respective scripts in-game.

 

I don't think I will bother with trying to change the record page screen to say "Priest of ____" for them, unless I can make a number of simple but meaningful tweaks via NI. For example, I noticed that under NI that the character's Lore value can be adjusted within a .chr file; and I tried that for Karan and Shistal whose Lore (I would argue) should be at at least 7, if not comparable with a Bard at 10 points per level (because they're scribes at Candlekeep). But when I made those changes and overwrote the files as such it didn't show up in-game when I leveled them up.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I believe there could be something off with the way you made the spell.

I always use the DLTCEP v7.6d, to make the spell.. actually I copy them from each others in there... but anyways.

 

The base spell needs to be:

In Spell type: 4-Innate

and all it's:

Extended Header: Location 4-Innate

... now if either of those are off in the custom spell, the editor could put things to wrong place and so on. If it's correctly set up, the Memorization table should add the content of the Innate, Wizard and Cleric tables to the Memorisation table, and so you should be able to add the actual amounts of those spells in the characters memorized spell book(the innate's are invisible, but are in the innate skill tab, that is the star button).

This is just based on how the Shadowkeeper did it and so take it with that grain of salt.

[Lemernis]

Not sure what is happening with EE Keeper. I'm going to try uninstalling/reinstalling it. I was able to use it to add the Barbarian Rage special ability to a Fighter/Transmuter PC that I made several months ago. Maybe something happened when I changed the location of the game? I changed the EE Keeper installation directory accordingly, but maybe something a little buggy happened when I did that?

 

Anyway, using DLTCEP I'm not quite sure how to assign a special ability to a .chr file. I can find the spell but I'm not seeing how to add it to a given character. (Sorry for my njubishness.)

 

Also, given that I'm not building NPCs but rather these are PCs to be used in MP mode, I guess I would just add custom soundsets and assign them under "customize" > "sounds." Does this tutorial really seem so bad for that purpose? Remember, they're not NPCs but rather PCs.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Anyway, using DLTCEP I'm not quite sure how to assign a special ability to a .chr file. I can find the spell but I'm not seeing how to add it to a given character.

You don't... you use the DLTCEP to make the spells and edit the .cre files, you use the weidu to "install" them into the game, and then just start the game... you can force join the already existing character to the players group with the enabled cheat keys( CTRL + Q ), and then see that they have those abilities, when you want to test them.

Then you can make the joining dialog after that. And the other things that you need*.

You can export the existing .cre files as the .chr files in NearInfinity, but that's not usually the point.

 

This is perhaps the reason why you fail at this, because you don't follow the usual procedure...

Yeah, I said "install" as usually you already have the given resources in the game, as the ones that are in the mod folder, but you still want to install the mod to make sure they work the same way.

 

Remember, they're not NPCs but rather PCs.

Then why are you using the already existing NPCs names ? You would also then need to do very harmful things like removing parts of the original game to enable the use of the Multiplayer only characters... there's no point in doing that.

 

It would be best to decide what you exactly want to make and then go do it. By the way, you can add the .bio files content to the NPCs .cre file if you want, you should do this in the weidu's .tp2 command, so they won't get lost. The custom soundsets, and names can be redefined before the player starts the game and I think you don't want to do that. Ouh and having more than single player character in the illusion fight in Candlekeep will give you a bad things... like forcing you to drop the characters from your party. There's a way to go around that ... but I would suggest that you put your consecration after that, so the characters join after it. There's a way to find out what you exactly need to do to do it this way, but I don't have those facts yet.

 

*, like how you make the characters appear in the game, etc.

As mostly in testing the characters are actually summoned via the CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("<string>") ... where the <string> is the *.cre files * .

[Lemernis]

Sorry, it's probably a little confusing what I'm up to:

 

My main goal has been achieved thanks to you, argent77, Mike1072, and lynx. The main objective was to create a mini-mod for a tactical challenge over at the BGEE forums that uses the Candlekeep characters in MP mode (fully explained here). So that has now been accomplished, for the most part. However I would still like to tweak Bendalis to give him either the Barbarian Rage or Berserk ability, and the three clerics (Dreppin, Karan, and Shistal) to give them special innate ability spells that reflect their respective deities. For Karan and Shistal I would also like to increase the number of Lore points upon level-up to 10, making them equivalent with a Bard. That seems appropriate to me for scribes of Candlekeep.

 

But anyway, these are .chr files versus .cres. So it didn't seem to me that there should be be a problems with using the same names... The file extensions are different and the files themselves are located in different areas of the game directory. But maybe the same name is causing a conflict that I didn't anticipate with EE Keeper?

 

By the way, this morning as I looked through my old collection of BG1 and BG2 soundsets, I'm not actually finding any sets that I would really want to use for any of these 18 Candlekeep characters. So I'm not going to worry about that. If I do eventually find soundsets that seem perfect for a particular character I would recommend it. But it would be up to the player to download the soundset from wherever (e.g., File Planet) and get it into their game directory.

 

The second possible goal that this MP game tactical challenge got me thinking about is attempting a mod (for single player mode) that makes the 18 characters joinable NPCs. I'm not sure if I will ever take that on... But I was thinking that such a mod would have to modify certain parts of the game in order to remove the existing NPCs that the mod is recreating as joinable (and their doppelgangers in the catacombs). Either that or modify the existing NPCs to make them adventuring classes as I have envisioned them for the MP game tactical challenge, and joinable. I'm not sure how popular the idea would be to players. So I'll wait to see if there is a favorable reaction to the MP game tactical challenge before I would consider trying to make such a mod. Earlier in the thread I was musing about what such a mod would look like, though.

 

I think that if I can find the time to try designing a full-fledged mod at this point, it would be a NPC mod for this character, for which years ago I made a feeble attempt at starting that sort of petered out.

[Jarno Mikkola]

The second possible goal that this MP game tactical challenge got me thinking about is attempting a mod (for single player mode) that makes the 18 characters joinable NPCs. I'm not sure if I will ever take that on... But I was thinking that such a mod would have to

 

-modify certain parts of the game in order to remove the existing NPCs that the mod is recreating as joinable (and their doppelgangers in the catacombs). ..

-modify the existing NPCs to make them adventuring classes as I have envisioned them for the MP game tactical challenge, and joinable.

Well, the first of those would destroy to spirit of the Candlekeep, while the second is a little harder to do, but will carry it still thorough.

So I would recommend the second whole heart-idly. That is, if you intend to use in game characters.

[Lemernis]

Okay, thanks. It would probably be the most artful way to go about it to modify the existing characters. Although then Theodon, Jessup, Bendalis, and Shistal won't be available until chapter 6. Honestly, though, I'm not sure I will ever attempt to make such a mod. Again, I'm not sure that enough players would be interested in playing it for it to be worth the effort.

 

But anyhoo... Is there a way for me to assign innate abilities to the .chr files for Bendalis, Dreppin, Karan, and Shistal using either DLTCEP or NI? I don't know why I can't seem to get EE Keeper to do this; I've done it before with other PCs using EE Keeper.

 

Oh, and also--how to increase the Lore points that the character gets upon level-up for Karan and Shistal to 10? When tried changing the Lore value in NI it didn't show up in-game.

 

Then I think this mini-mod will be complete. :-)

 

***

 

Edit: Do you think I should try renaming the .chr file names?

 

Edit: Oh wait, I tried that already with the Karan2.chr file (see image a few posts above). :-\