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Can projected images and simulacra be made to cast contingencies and sequencers?


sren

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I'm running the original BG2 with Tobex, the fixpack, and UB, and I when i try to set a contingency or a sequencer with a simulacrum or projected image, the spell selection screen has no options, and I can't even cancel out of it, I have to alt+F4! The spells show up in the clones' casting bars, but they don't seem to have a spellbook page specific to themselves.

 

This guy says he can cast from a druid's spellbook with his projected image, but only if he has one in the party:

http://www.sorcerers.net/community/threads/chain-contingency-project-image-chain-contingency-bug.21470/

 

So clearly the whole thing is pretty f'ed, and I feel that it can be called a bug. It might be easier to disable the use of such spell storage by your clones, but I have no reason to believe that they shouldn't be allowed to cast them, given that the spells show up in their bars. Does anyone know how these spells can be made to function as one would expect for images and simulacra?

 

Also, to specify, this is not about the exploit of casting three projected images from a chain contingency! It's the opposite: casting chain contingency with a project image, leading to a game ending bug every time. Although project image in these games is just an exploit anyway lol.

 

A responder in the thread below says his clones can cast these spells, but I don't know why that would be, since the mods I'm using (listed at top) don't affect this stuff at all, according to their documentations.

https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/35g8p1/the_chemistry_of_simulacrum_and_contingency/

 

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I can't help you with this, but I'm interested in everything about clones and simulacri. Nobody really knows what they are and what they can do. Try making a script that makes one join the party and see what that does.

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I can't help you with this, but I'm interested in everything about clones and simulacri. Nobody really knows what they are and what they can do. Try making a script that makes one join the party and see what that does.

 

 

TY for posting the idea, at any rate.

 

I should also ask if the people left here think this can be considered a bug, since I wouldn't want to read up on how to make something that people will see as another exploit lol. I'm running a very vanilla playthrough this time around, and I guess fixes just seem indispensable to me.

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@sren I've looked into this a little bit, and my understanding is that illusionary clones have no way to be targeted by effects or scripts. They have a creature type/'gender,' and you can target creatures of that type, but that means if two clones are present at the same time, the engine cannot distinguish between them. (Sort of.) I do know that any effects applied to the caster with permanent timing get applied to clones, so if you want to give a clone a blur effect, for example, you can do it with stuff applied to the caster for a split second. My mod does this successfully. But, I'm not sure contingencies are coded with that timing.

 

So the mysterious issue is not "how do clones work?" but rather "how do contingencies work." I assume it has to look for the right person's spellbook, and perform some script actions on it. But if clones cannot be targeted by scripts... you see the problem.

 

Honestly I don't see this as a bug, as a simple restriction: illusionary beings cannot have real contingencies. Even if it is a bug, I suspect the effort to fix it, even for the devs with the source code, is too great to be worth doing..,

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@sren I've looked into this a little bit, and my understanding is that illusionary clones have no way to be targeted by effects or scripts. They have a creature type/'gender,' and you can target creatures of that type, but that means if two clones are present at the same time, the engine cannot distinguish between them. (Sort of.) I do know that any effects applied to the caster with permanent timing get applied to clones, so if you want to give a clone a blur effect, for example, you can do it with stuff applied to the caster for a split second. My mod does this successfully. But, I'm not sure contingencies are coded with that timing.

 

So the mysterious issue is not "how do clones work?" but rather "how do contingencies work." I assume it has to look for the right person's spellbook, and perform some script actions on it. But if clones cannot be targeted by scripts... you see the problem.

 

Honestly I don't see this as a bug, as a simple restriction: illusionary beings cannot have real contingencies. Even if it is a bug, I suspect the effort to fix it, even for the devs with the source code, is too great to be worth doing..,

 

 

Well, it's hard not to see it as a bug, given that it causes a game ending lockup, and also the same illusory beings can cast real spells, with real effects, so I don't know why those spells couldn't be contained in a real spell contingency. From a PnP perspective, I know nothing about AD&D beyond what these games depict lol, so that's an angle that I could investigate.

Some guy on reddit said that the BG2EE made it so contingencies could be cast by clones, but I don't know if he knows what he's talking about.

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Clones can be killed, by spells and everything else. How is it that they can't be targeted by effects?

 

Try and see what you can do, sren. Your ignorance of pen-and-paper AD&D helps you in this case, you aren't burdened by prejudices about what is possible and what is not.

 

For example, try putting this in baldur.bcs (in Near Infinity):

 

IF

 

NextTriggerObject(Protagonist)

 

THEN

 

RESPONSE #100

 

Kill(LastAttackerOf(Protagonist))

 

END

 

Save and in the game have the clone hit the protagonist with a quarterstaff, fist or something physical. See what happens.

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Sorry, I forgot about the game-ending screen trap. Yes that is a very bad thing that needs addressing. On the other hand, if it needs addressing in the pre-EE games it will never be addressed because no one is fixing bugs for them. I haven't tested whether it happens in the EEs, so there may or may not be a bug there.

 

I appreciate what you're saying about PnP behavior, and I'm not disagreeing. I'm commenting from the perspective of what can be done in this game engine. SIMULACR.SPL gets cast on every simlacrum, and I think there's a similar .spl that affects every projected image... the Beamdog devs could simply code 206 immunity against Contingency into those spells, and now the spell would fail instantly when the clones cast it. This would "fix the bug," in that you could not get into a game-ending inescapable screen... but it would not address your desire that they be able to actually cast those spells. I fear this is the most likely result. Because I don't think there's any way to let clonescast the spells... :(

 

They MIGHT be able to cast contingencies if you replaced the vanilla spells with new ones based on opcode 232 (might have to use an invisible creature and make a dialogue-based UI for the spell). But that's way, way more work to achieve something most players don't pay attention to. I'm not sure who would want to take it on.

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Cross-post - tenmix, if you read the post, you can see that my point was not to say clones can't be scripted or targeted by some method. It was simply that the particular method the Contingency spells use to find your spellbook, does not seem to be able to target them. Two different questions.

 

That is by no means to say there aren't creative solutions to devised - I think I just gave you the first step toward one. It's just that the simple one ("let clones cast Contingency") is probably off the table.

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Sorry, I forgot about the game-ending screen trap. Yes that is a very bad thing that needs addressing. On the other hand, if it needs addressing in the pre-EE games it will never be addressed because no one is fixing bugs for them. I haven't tested whether it happens in the EEs, so there may or may not be a bug there.

 

I appreciate what you're saying about PnP behavior, and I'm not disagreeing. I'm commenting from the perspective of what can be done in this game engine. SIMULACR.SPL gets cast on every simlacrum, and I think there's a similar .spl that affects every projected image... the Beamdog devs could simply code 206 immunity against Contingency into those spells, and now the spell would fail instantly when the clones cast it. This would "fix the bug," in that you could not get into a game-ending inescapable screen... but it would not address your desire that they be able to actually cast those spells. I fear this is the most likely result. Because I don't think there's any way to let clonescast the spells... :(

 

They MIGHT be able to cast contingencies if you replaced the vanilla spells with new ones based on opcode 232 (might have to use an invisible creature and make a dialogue-based UI for the spell). But that's way, way more work to achieve something most players don't pay attention to. I'm not sure who would want to take it on.

 

Vanilla bugs could be fixed by tobex or gemrb. Does the contingency fail on EE too? If the freezing screen can be accessed in an unmodded EE game, it will be definitely considered a bug, so feel free to report it in the beamdog redmine.

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Sorry, I forgot about the game-ending screen trap. Yes that is a very bad thing that needs addressing. On the other hand, if it needs addressing in the pre-EE games it will never be addressed because no one is fixing bugs for them. I haven't tested whether it happens in the EEs, so there may or may not be a bug there.

 

I appreciate what you're saying about PnP behavior, and I'm not disagreeing. I'm commenting from the perspective of what can be done in this game engine. SIMULACR.SPL gets cast on every simlacrum, and I think there's a similar .spl that affects every projected image... the Beamdog devs could simply code 206 immunity against Contingency into those spells, and now the spell would fail instantly when the clones cast it. This would "fix the bug," in that you could not get into a game-ending inescapable screen... but it would not address your desire that they be able to actually cast those spells. I fear this is the most likely result. Because I don't think there's any way to let clonescast the spells... :(

 

They MIGHT be able to cast contingencies if you replaced the vanilla spells with new ones based on opcode 232 (might have to use an invisible creature and make a dialogue-based UI for the spell). But that's way, way more work to achieve something most players don't pay attention to. I'm not sure who would want to take it on.

Vanilla bugs could be fixed by tobex or gemrb. Does the contingency fail on EE too? If the freezing screen can be accessed in an unmodded EE game, it will be definitely considered a bug, so feel free to report it in the beamdog redmine.

 

 

Not owning EE, I don't know what the spells do, exactly...however, I know how Beamdog responded to this issue:

 

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/35125/project-images-simulacra-shouldnt-cast-these-spells

 

TLDR: they disabled the spells.

 

I messaged Galactygon, the OP from that post, and he said that opcode#234 will only work on party members, but I'm not sure he really knows, as from what I read when I searched for this, that conclusion that such is the case is pretty half-assed (these posts being on the SHS forums, if I remember correctly). Should I try asking over on SHS, too, namely the TobEx guys?

 

For me, the obvious question is: how the fuck then do enemies have contingencies set one them, lol. I don't know a thing about IE, though, so that may be entirely unrelated.

 

Temnix, I'm playing through BG1 right now, and when, in BG2, this issue actually comes to irritate me, I may be motivated to actually try to do something about it, rather than just ask experts and hope. You may have to be patient, lol, and this is if I get to BG2 at all with this toon.

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I'm pretty sure nobody is maintaining ToBEx. I don't think the G3 FixPack has been updated in years. Nobody is fixing bugs in the old engine. It's a very old game; Beamdog and the EEs are the only game in town if you're looking for official bug-fixes.

 

Of course, if you can make a mod that fixes or circumvents the problem, then by all means that's a great idea. But a separate idea.

 

As for AI contingencies, to my knowledge they don't have real contingencies, just a scripted set of spells that are applied instantaneously using opcode 232 or custom scripts, designed to appear like a contingency to the player, in order to give the appearance of some sort of parity in spellcasting capabilities. But it is just an appearance; the AI definitely does not use the actual Contingency spell for this.

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As for AI contingencies, to my knowledge they don't have real contingencies, just a scripted set of spells that are applied instantaneously using opcode 232 or custom scripts, designed to appear like a contingency to the player, in order to give the appearance of some sort of parity in spellcasting capabilities. But it is just an appearance; the AI definitely does not use the actual Contingency spell for this.

 

Yep, it's just instant casting/application, no different on technical level from regular AI spellcasting.

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Can it be done just by manually duplicating a CRE? Summon generic CRE, then an invcre that runs a script checking for appearance/items/spells of the summoner and setting variables, then makes those changes on the summoned. Effectively a "clone", but with a lot more customization.

 

So many of the opcodes are just reiterations of other, simpler opcodes, but with some of the blanks already filled in. Mislead/Project Image/Simulacrum are examples.

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I'm still not sure it would work. Easy enough to test: just add some memorized wizard spells to a dryad summon, or a genie or something, and also an innate version of Contingency (could grab my innate Contingency from the Tome & Blood mod). Cast Contingency and see what happens.

 

For me, there's only so much effort I'm willing to put into giving Contingencies to creatures that only last 90 seconds...

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