IR Revised V1.3.800 (2022 January 11th)

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, polytope said:

In my games at least if you do it the other way around it chokes, if you have 5 controlled creatures with gender = SUMMONED then you can't summon anything else no matter what the allegiance or gender field. On the other hand you can have arbitrarily many friendly but uncontrolled monsters with gender = SUMMONED, or controlled monsters with 0x20, but only if they're summoned first.

Yep, that is true, and I did not know that. I would expect the same limitation applies to oBG2. But...I think it's of pretty limited risk: Dark Swarm would not work if you already have 5 normal summonables active...but 4 or less, and all of the shadows/wraiths will come in just fine, and they won't affect the normal summoning limit once they're in. I think it's acceptable, even if less than ideal. And a player that uses either Anthology Tweaks (EE-only) or d0tweaks' (oBG2) no summoning limit has nothing to worry about in the first place.

48 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

What about celestials? What if you 1) changed all celestials to gender SUMMONED, changed summons to gender CELESTIAL, set the “celestial” summoning limit to 5, and used a different method to restrain celestials. (The limit is one, so have every such spell kill any on the battlefield before summoning the new one.)

I think (but am not positive) that the celestial summoning cap is actually hardcoded to work on the basis of opcode 67s (Creature Summoning) using one of the 4 default celestial .cre files (DEVAGOOD, DEVAEVIL, PLANGOOD, PLANEVIL). Simply renaming one of the .cre files to something else and having the HLA summon that instead will bypass the celestial summoning limit. Let me test this to make sure before I make a fool of myself...I was pretty sure that it worked that way, but it sounds really dumb, so it's better to just make certain.

Okay, yep: renamed "DEVAGOOD.cre" to "DEVAGOOF.cre", changed SPDEVA.eff to call DEVAGOOF, and was able to summon two of them. However, I did find out that there's some additional mechanic that is similar to the Dark Swarm issue with the summoning cap and the order of how you summon: if you've already summoned a creature with the "Both" gender (0x5, which is what the celestials use) and then try to summon one of the four aforementioned celestial .cre files, it will run afoul of the summon cap as well. So I had a DEVAGOOF already summoned and then tried to summon a PLANGOOD as well, and it was a no-go...but I summoned a PLANGOOD first and then a DEVAGOOF, and that did work. Weird stuff.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

I was going to say, that probably only holds for the pre-EE engine; I guess from the presence of a CELESTIAL line in the EEs’ SUMMLIMT.2da that the behavior is no longer hard-coded. 

But in fact the EE behavior is weirder and more interesting. In order to enforce the celestial summoning limit, it checks not just gender but also the animation ID. Which means 1) my idea would fail, and 2) my mod that changes planetars’ appearance may unwittingly circumvent the celestial summoning limit. 

This is all good to know - if perhaps frustrating to work around. 

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I was going to say, that probably only holds for the pre-EE engine; I guess from the presence of a CELESTIAL line in the EEs’ SUMMLIMT.2da that the behavior is no longer hard-coded. 

But in fact the EE behavior is weirder and more interesting. In order to enforce the celestial summoning limit, it checks not just gender but also the animation ID. Which means 1) my idea would fail, and 2) my mod that changes planetars’ appearance may unwittingly circumvent the celestial summoning limit. 

This is all good to know - if perhaps frustrating to work around. 

So too would SR's celestial appearance component... Definitely good to know, definitely weird and annoying.

[Nehreis]

I just tested on my EE install, I can summon a deva, a planetar and a fallen planetar at the same time (I didn't even think to try during my run).

Edited September 27, 2023 by Nehreis

[Nehreis]

Actually I can even summon two deva at the same time.

[Lord_Tansheron]

Not sure if it's a known issue... Blade of Roses (SW1H40) seems to be causing some interference with saving the game. It'll generate a lot of "You cannot save at this time" messages while equipped; you can still save if you spam it a lot or get lucky on the timing, so I assume it has something to do with some periodic effect related to the way the Sword's group bonus is generated? Dropping the sword makes the issue go away.

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, Lord_Tansheron said:

Not sure if it's a known issue... Blade of Roses (SW1H40) seems to be causing some interference with saving the game. It'll generate a lot of "You cannot save at this time" messages while equipped; you can still save if you spam it a lot or get lucky on the timing, so I assume it has something to do with some periodic effect related to the way the Sword's group bonus is generated? Dropping the sword makes the issue go away.

Oh lord, I really should've thought of that when designing that aura effect. O.K., yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same issue applied to BG1's The Whistling Sword. Basically, the normal approach is that those auras only apply every 6 seconds, which means that if another party member/summonable walks into range of the aura, there may be a whole 5 seconds where they aren't affected...so I went and made it so that it cast every second so that the effect applies pretty close to immediate of being within range of the aura. With a spell being cast every six seconds, there's a likelihood you run into being unable to save once in a while...but a quick press again should solve the issue, so no big deal. At every one second, that changes from a possible mild annoyance to a pretty major one. Thanks for reporting, I'll have to do some testing to see if speeding up the projectile used by these helps at all (IIRC, the game cannot be saved if there are any projectiles currently flying through the air, even invisible projectiles) or if I really do need to completely revert it back to every six seconds.

On 9/28/2023 at 11:53 AM, Nehreis said:

Actually I can even summon two deva at the same time.

Forgot about this: this should be fixed in the latest repository version of SRR (and has been for nearly a month now)...unless you install the alternative Celestial appearance component, in which case it most likely breaks again. I don't think there's anything I can do about that, as the summonable limit is apparently tied to celestials using their normal appearances.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Chosen]

On 10/21/2023 at 3:51 AM, Bartimaeus said:

O.K., yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same issue applied to BG1's The Whistling Sword. Basically, the normal approach is that those auras only apply every 6 seconds,...

I actually solved this issue in my game with a weird bit of hack. If I remember it right solution was activating the script with the condition (current hp< %101 of max hp) this always returns true so whistling swords effect always works and doesnt prevent saving. I think I got the idea from subtledoctor but it is possible I am misremembering. I can upload the .itm file later so you can check if it solves the issue.

EDIT: I found the comment in this thread (though since you seem to already seen it so probably wasn't worth much):

 

SW1H09_.ITM

Edited October 25, 2023 by Chosen
added file

[Bartimaeus]

11 hours ago, Chosen said:

I actually solved this issue in my game with a weird bit of hack. If I remember it right solution was activating the script with the condition (current hp< %101 of max hp) this always returns true so whistling swords effect always works and doesnt prevent saving. I think I got the idea from subtledoctor but it is possible I am misremembering. I can upload the .itm file later so you can check if it solves the issue.

EDIT: I found the comment in this thread (though since you seem to already seen it so probably wasn't worth much):

 

SW1H09_.ITM 458 B · 0 downloads

One...actually, I'm going to go straight to two here, then circle back to one, so two, that condition doesn't exist in pre-EE games. Generally speaking, if there's something that's really helpful or interesting that comes from the EEs, it's worth considering, but in this particular case where it's just a couple of swords and aura effects, I don't particularly want the implementation to vary between games. Okay, now back to one...does this actually prevent the saving issue? I'm kind of surprised, since if this works as you're describing, I would think this would cause the spell and projectile to rapid fire all the time, which is what I would've thought is the thing causing the save hold up. I guess I'll try it out and see.

Well...it allows you to skip the 272 opcode, but otherwise it's really no different. It doesn't rapid fire like I thought it would, it just casts it once per round with no ability to define whether you want it to be quicker or slower (which is the opposite of what I ideally wanted, as I wanted it to fire at least every second), and the same "cannot save" issue does apply, because it is as I thought, an issue with the projectile currently in the air. That's easy to figure out by testing with two characters: have the second character stand some feet away from the character wielding the weapon, wait for the "Resist Fear" icon to pop-up on the character who's wielding its portrait but before it pops up on the other character's, pause and try to save, and it will not let you because the invisible projectile is still flying through the air to the second character, and that prevents saving.

Edited October 25, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Chosen]

I was surprised myself, I cant say why but for me it vastly reduced the "cannot save" issue I experienced, projectile in the air prevents saving but somehow window seems shorter? I didn't properly timed it but It definitely felt better in play. At the end of the day I would say annoyance factor is high enough some other solution like totaly getting rid of range projectiles/range limits is a serious consideration,even if disappointing. Considering you may end up using the same weapon %80 of the bg1 even failing to save or unable to rest in tavern 1/6 times gets annoying quickly.

Edited October 25, 2023 by Chosen

[subtledoctor]

Which makes me wonder why you want it to fire so often. The more the projectile is in the air, the less often the player will be able to save. Why I have auras fire once per round, and use super-speedy projectiles. Or even use no projectile at all - for bard songs I set the target to party and use no projectile. The effect is instantaneous (and, possibly, map-wide). So it’s no impediment to saving. 

With other aura-style things, with a super -fast projectile, there might be an eighth of a second out of every six seconds where the player can’t save. But hitting the button on that eighth of a second is pretty rare. 

[Bartimaeus]

11 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Which makes me wonder why you want it to fire so often. The more the projectile is in the air, the less often the player will be able to save. Why I have auras fire once per round, and use super-speedy projectiles. Or even use no projectile at all - for bard songs I set the target to party and use no projectile. The effect is instantaneous (and, possibly, map-wide). So it’s no impediment to saving. 

With other aura-style things, with a super -fast projectile, there might be an eighth of a second out of every six seconds where the player can’t save. But hitting the button on that eighth of a second is pretty rare. 

See here:

On 10/20/2023 at 7:51 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Oh lord, I really should've thought of that when designing that aura effect. O.K., yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same issue applied to BG1's The Whistling Sword. Basically, the normal approach is that those auras only apply every 6 seconds, which means that if another party member/summonable walks into range of the aura, there may be a whole 5 seconds where they aren't affected...so I went and made it so that it cast every second so that the effect applies pretty close to immediate of being within range of the aura.

I initially designed it without actively considering the projectile/saving issue, in order to make it so that characters would be more or less instantly affected once they walk in range of the aura. Which it is good for, but...the saving issue is a more of an issue than that was.

11 hours ago, Chosen said:

I was surprised myself, I cant say why but for me it vastly reduced the "cannot save" issue I experienced, projectile in the air prevents saving but somehow window seems shorter? I didn't properly timed it but It definitely felt better in play. At the end of the day I would say annoyance factor is high enough some other solution like totaly getting rid of range projectiles/range limits is a serious consideration,even if disappointing. Considering you may end up using the same weapon %80 of the bg1 even failing to save or unable to rest in tavern 1/6 times gets annoying quickly.

Yes, it's way less of an issue because it casts every six seconds instead of every one second. But that's how it already was before I went and had my big, bright idea of re-designing it to be every second, so...just reverting it back to every six seconds would solve that issue anyways.

Edited October 26, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Guest Random]

@Bartimaeus

Hey, not sure if this is a right place to report this, but...

 

Anomens shield in IRR seems to have an additional "unusable by" restrictions that includes cleric kits. That works fine as Anomen is unkitted.

But then in my installation Faiths And Powers did change Anomens kit to a new one.

 

Now I have no idea how IE actually processes the usability flags, but the result that I observe is that Anomen is no longer able to use his own shield aftergetting that new kit. I've messed around a bit in NI and it seems that shield becomes usable again when I uncheck "unusable by cleric of Talos" checkbox(bruh, why even Talos? Does IE use some weird boolean logic with bitmasks which assumes that no new kits can be added? Again, I have no Idea).

So. Could you may be remove these new restrictions given that original IR item does not seem to have them?

[subtledoctor]

4 hours ago, Guest Random said:

I've messed around a bit in NI and it seems that shield becomes usable again when I uncheck "unusable by cleric of Talos" checkbox(bruh, why even Talos? Does IE use some weird boolean logic with bitmasks which assumes that no new kits can be added?)

The cleric kit usability flags are not used at all in the base game. Faiths & Powers uses them to represent armor restrictions, since the three unused kit flags line up nicely to the three different kinds of armor (leather/chain/plate).

I have no idea why Anomen's shield has a kit usability restriction. Probably a holdover from oBG2 when NPC-only items had a bunch of weird class/kit/stat restrictions in order to prevent the PC from taking and using them.

[Bartimaeus]

On 11/7/2023 at 6:45 AM, Guest Random said:

@Bartimaeus

Hey, not sure if this is a right place to report this, but...

 

Anomens shield in IRR seems to have an additional "unusable by" restrictions that includes cleric kits. That works fine as Anomen is unkitted.

But then in my installation Faiths And Powers did change Anomens kit to a new one.

 

Now I have no idea how IE actually processes the usability flags, but the result that I observe is that Anomen is no longer able to use his own shield aftergetting that new kit. I've messed around a bit in NI and it seems that shield becomes usable again when I uncheck "unusable by cleric of Talos" checkbox(bruh, why even Talos? Does IE use some weird boolean logic with bitmasks which assumes that no new kits can be added? Again, I have no Idea).

So. Could you may be remove these new restrictions given that original IR item does not seem to have them?

Thanks, fixed locally (will commit to the repository at some point in the near future).