SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[Bartimaeus]

14 hours ago, Guest FallenAngel said:

 

Tenser's: Thanks for reminding me, someone alerted me to this sometime ago and I forgot about it. Now that I've finally remembered to take a look at it, it looks like a pretty easy fix. And done.

Comet: Looks like an error carried over from SR that I never noticed, as its casting time is also 3 but the official description says "1 round" as well. Fixed the text, pretty sure it's supposed to be 3 and not a full round.

Mordenkainen's Sword: You're not kidding, there are like three different grammatical errors here...though funnily, the official description has a couple of of its own distinct errors as well. Fixed!

Sol's Searing Orb: I'm not sure if that's fixable, as the entry for damage on the orb (sorb.itm) is blank as it should be, but the first special effect it does is 5D6 fire damage, which is presumably what the inventory readout is showing. Might be just one of those things.

Thank you, the fixes have been committed to the latest repository version.

[Guest FallenAngel]

Yeah, the Sol's thing is super minor. As long as description and effect align, that's 99% right there.

Heh, even the (standard) SR description of Mordenkainen's has a mistake (dmage instead of damage), so it seems this spell is a bit cursed, if official, SR and SRR all have mistakes xD.

 

Incidentally, with how long BP2 took me with my limited leisure time, I'm considering Icewind Dale instead of the entire Bhaalspawn Saga again (which would be...a very daunting project at my current speed). Can I use SR(R) with IWD (and if so, how would that work...just leaving the IWD spells that aren't already covered alone)? I was originally planning on adding IR(R) to my next game if SR(R) performed well in the two Pits modules (which it did, to my satisfaction), but I guess for IWD that's out of the question.
Maybe Sword Coast Strategems? I hear that's all the rage and a must have mod. I didn't use it for BP, partly because I wanted to start with just SR(R), partly because I had read that BP has its own custom AI, different from vanilla (I definitely felt it went more for vulnerable party members, tried interrupting spells more, etc. ...though it's been decades, so who knows how accurate my recollection is) and partly because I didn't know how much of my old Infinity Engine skills were still there after all this time (turns out I didn't have to worry about that, beat both BPs with the default parties, without using half the earned prize money and without using any triggers/sequencers/contingencies).
I hear it just recently started becoming compatible with IWD. So maybe IWD with SR(R) + SCS, would that work?

 

[Bartimaeus]

13 hours ago, Guest FallenAngel said:

Yeah, the Sol's thing is super minor. As long as description and effect align, that's 99% right there.

Heh, even the (standard) SR description of Mordenkainen's has a mistake (dmage instead of damage), so it seems this spell is a bit cursed, if official, SR and SRR all have mistakes xD.

 

Incidentally, with how long BP2 took me with my limited leisure time, I'm considering Icewind Dale instead of the entire Bhaalspawn Saga again (which would be...a very daunting project at my current speed). Can I use SR(R) with IWD (and if so, how would that work...just leaving the IWD spells that aren't already covered alone)? I was originally planning on adding IR(R) to my next game if SR(R) performed well in the two Pits modules (which it did, to my satisfaction), but I guess for IWD that's out of the question.
Maybe Sword Coast Strategems? I hear that's all the rage and a must have mod. I didn't use it for BP, partly because I wanted to start with just SR(R), partly because I had read that BP has its own custom AI, different from vanilla (I definitely felt it went more for vulnerable party members, tried interrupting spells more, etc. ...though it's been decades, so who knows how accurate my recollection is) and partly because I didn't know how much of my old Infinity Engine skills were still there after all this time (turns out I didn't have to worry about that, beat both BPs with the default parties, without using half the earned prize money and without using any triggers/sequencers/contingencies).
I hear it just recently started becoming compatible with IWD. So maybe IWD with SR(R) + SCS, would that work?

 

I have to be honest, I have never installed SRR even once on an IWDEE game, and I am not very knowledgeable about IWD. I know there is some IWDEE compatibility code included in SR, but like, I don't know if SR's IWDEE compatibility was ever actually finished. If it was, I should probably update the readme to mention it. Let's see if installing SRR on IWDEE blows up...no, it seems to install okay. Look at that, apparently I haven't accidentally broken anything...well, for the installation anyways.

I quite like SCS, but it's not for everyone, especially some of its (optional) content changes. Yeah, recent versions of SCS support IWDEE, and installing SRR and SCS together on it seems to work (except for a harmless warning about how Horrid Wilting wasn't modified). If there are any issues in-game, no-one's ever told me, but I'm not sure how many people have ever tested it in the first place.

Edited April 9 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

I’ve been playing (base) SR on IWDEE for years, it is pretty much fine AFAIK. Haven’t done it in a while. (The 2.5 update broke modding on iOS, so I have been playing IWD inside BG2EE.) But I think it is unlikely any recent changes would have busted it. 

[private]

I have encountered yet another strange situation. In BG:EE when you turn-in quest related to werewolf island, normally you fight two werewolfs. Yet in my game, for some reason a friendly fallen planetar (!!!) joined the fight and decimated those guys. I must admit, it was kinda funny to see, but it ruined difficulty of this fight for obvious reasons.

I have reinstalled your mods to the latest version (v1.3.956), but unfortunately it is still cursed encounter for me. Maybe it is like that, because I did that without starting a new game, so it could be fixed already, but just wanted to share this abomination.

 

[Bartimaeus]

28 minutes ago, private said:

I have encountered yet another strange situation. In BG:EE when you turn-in quest related to werewolf island, normally you fight two werewolfs. Yet in my game, for some reason a friendly fallen planetar (!!!) joined the fight and decimated those guys. I must admit, it was kinda funny to see, but it ruined difficulty of this fight for obvious reasons.

I have reinstalled your mods to the latest version (v1.3.956), but unfortunately it is still cursed encounter for me. Maybe it is like that, because I did that without starting a new game, so it could be fixed already, but just wanted to share this abomination.

 

Um...huh. You don't have any other mods installed? SRR doesn't touch the non-summoned creature/dialogue/quest scripts of basically anything (certainly nothing in BG1), so I'm unsure of what mechanism could cause this. But I'll run through Werewolf Island in BG1EE later today or tomorrow with SRR installed and see if it happens for me as well.

[private]

My modlist is unchanged since last time and I do not think any of them touches this quest anyway. I suspected SRR since it happens only in fight with Mendas and only after you return from werewolf island. Immediately after fight begins, he and Baresh changes to werewolf form and Fallen Planetar is summoned, but no info WHO summoned it. It could also be related to SCS, but I have only like 3 components from it and none related to AI changes and improved encounters. It is not a big deal since it could be just issue with my installation and could be related to some other mod like you said. 

Speaking of odd things, I've also seen some strange behaviour from mages using "Dimension Jump" spell which I do not remember from vanilla. Mages like Davaeorn (Cloakwood mines lvl 4) or Andris (Ice Island lvl 1) were stuck in some strange loop, where they cast this spell to get away, come closer on foot and then cast it again and repeat this for at least a few times. It is especially noticeable when you just hide behind a corner and wait for them to come. I must admit I then played on not so up to date version v1.3.900 so fixes could already been made, but since you already at it, it would be nice if you could also check this as well.

Edited April 15 by private
spelling and adding info

[Bartimaeus]

6 hours ago, private said:

My modlist is unchanged since last time and I do not think any of them touches this quest anyway. I suspected SRR since it happens only in fight with Mendas and only after you return from werewolf island. Immediately after fight begins, he and Baresh changes to werewolf form and Fallen Planetar is summoned, but no info WHO summoned it. It could also be related to SCS, but I have only like 3 components from it and none related to AI changes and improved encounters. It is not a big deal since it could be just issue with my installation and could be related to some other mod like you said. 

Speaking of odd things, I've also seen some strange behaviour from mages using "Dimension Jump" spell which I do not remember from vanilla. Mages like Davaeorn (Cloakwood mines lvl 4) or Andris (Ice Island lvl 1) were stuck in some strange loop, where they cast this spell to get away, come closer on foot and then cast it again and repeat this for at least a few times. It is especially noticeable when you just hide behind a corner and wait for them to come. I must admit I then played on not so up to date version v1.3.900 so fixes could already been made, but since you already at it, it would be nice if you could also check this as well.

I've confirmed the issue with Baresh, the lackey. His script says that once Mendas is dead (i.e. transformed into a werewolf), cast OHWI924.spl on himself, which is a transformation spell that replaces himself with the werewolf. If you enter the room and CTRL+Y (kill) Mendas, Baresh's transformation goes off normally with no issue. Resources with the "OH" prefix (e.g. OHWI924.spl) are Beamdog-made resources - the original spell used for BG1 is actually SPWI924.spl (the same resource name as BG2's Fallen Planetar spell!), which Beamdog presumably changed in order to avoid something like this from happening. The issue is that if you instead talk to Mendas first (which is what will happen in probably 999/1000 cases because he automatically talks to you when you enter his house) Mendas' end dialogue where he turns hostile also calls to instantly cast SPWI924.spl on Baresh, which is what's creating the Fallen Planetar. So they tried to fix the possible issue, but they unfortunately missed that part...and it's probably a good thing that Mendas' dialogue casts this spell while Mendas is still momentarily neutral to the party, because I think otherwise that Fallen Planetar would probably massacre you instead of them. This is an issue that will apply to both SR and SRR. For the time being, I'm just going to edit that second transformation spell out of Mendas' dialogue, which seems to solve the issue while still letting Baresh transform as per normal.

There are a few mages in oBG1 (and BG1EE) that are scripted to cast Dimension Door/Jump without any help from SR/R, and both Davaeorn and Andris are two of them, so I think they're probably working as intended.

Thanks again. As an added bonus, when the Fallen Planetar was summoned, it immediately auto-cast Blade Barrier and I noticed that it sounded like it kept creating a noisy projectile every few seconds that would play for only a fraction of a second before cutting off - lo and behold, the projectile used for Blade Barrier/Globe of Blades had a generic magic spell sound effect attached, which as an invisible aura projectile casting every few seconds, it most definitely should not -  noise begone! So that was incidentally fixed as well, .

Edited April 16 by Bartimaeus

[private]

Yeah, I figured something is veeery wrong when I saw that planetar. My apologies for immediately suspecting SRR as a cause, but it is most extensive mod I have, so that was my natural guess. Also, it is kinda fun to see how OP those planetars are, when they appear in BG1 instead of ToB, so I was fortunate that this one was on my side.

As of "Dimension Jump", I just though that in vanilla they used predetermined spots to teleport and were not doing it that frequently, but I could also not remember correctly since it was a few years from my last playthrough. Could adjust to that, nothing gamebreaking.

Thank you for thorough investigation as always.

Edited April 16 by private
grammar

[DrAzTiK]

speaking of noisy sounds, I notice that the spell protection from missiles (level3) comes with an annoying background noise. . a bit frustrating considering that this spell is suposed to be a long lasting buff in theory . (meaning you shoud always have this spell active)

humm surely I play baldur's gate by a very byzarre way 

Edited April 17 by DrAzTiK

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, DrAzTiK said:

speaking of noisy sounds, I notice that the spell protection from missiles (level3) comes with an annoying background noise. . a bit frustrating considering that this spell is suposed to be a long lasting buff in theory . (meaning you shoud always have this spell active)

humm surely I play baldur's gate by a very byzarre way 

The low hum sound effect? That's tied to the pink cylinder graphic. Removing the pink cylinder effect (opcode 156) from the spell would work...or replacing whatever is the sound file with a blank .wav would as well.

[DrAzTiK]

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The low hum sound effect? That's tied to the pink cylinder graphic. Removing the pink cylinder effect (opcode 156) from the spell would work...or replacing whatever is the sound file with a blank .wav would as well.

The pink cylinder animation is not very sexy but as for me I need it to be aware if the buff is active or not.  I need to make more test but the hum sound looks linked to the cylinder animation.

[FixTesteR]

On 3/22/2024 at 6:24 PM, Bartimaeus said:

 

On 3/20/2024 at 6:49 PM, Guest FallenAngel said:

I could finish the module like that and there was nothing severe enough to crash the game, but it wasn't exactly a perfectly smooth experience.
Moving on to Black Pits 2, I tried just installing plain SR (again, V4.19RC4) and that finishes up with no warnings and works like a charm in game.
Since I would like the SRR version of Icelance and Vitriolic Sphere though, I'm now looking for either a way to "properly" install SRR, or to stick with SR but just overwrite those two spells with their SRR versions (I doubt it's as easy as just copy pasting those two over, but who knows?).

No, I would not recommend trying to do that - trying to transplant these mid-installation is very likely to cause more issues and inconsistencies that you would not like.

What about not-mid-installation? Requires lots of knowledge, not just c/p, overwrite?

[Bartimaeus]

7 minutes ago, FixTesteR said:

What about not-mid-installation? Requires lots of knowledge, not just c/p, overwrite?

Depends on how familiar you are with making changes to mods, I suppose. Here is the relevant section for Vitriolic Sphere from SR's spell_rev\components\main_component.tpa:

Quote

//ADD_SPELL: Vitriolic Sphere
ADD_PROJECTILE ~spell_rev\projectles\dvvtrsph.pro~
ADD_SPELL ~spell_rev\spwi4##\spwi427.spl~ 2 4 ~WIZARD_VITRIOLIC_SPHERE~  // Vitriolic Sphere (new spell)
  SAY NAME1 @877    SAY UNIDENTIFIED_DESC @878
  WRITE_SHORT 0x98 %dvvtrsph%
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\scrl6y.itm~     ~override~
  SAY NAME2 @877    SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC   @878
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvtrsph.vvc~     ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvtrsph.bam~     ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvtrtra.bam~     ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvwi427a.bam~     ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvwi427b.bam~     ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvwi427c.bam~     ~override~

Here it is for SRR:

Quote

ADD_PROJECTILE ~spell_rev\projectles\dvvtrsph.pro~
ADD_SPELL ~spell_rev\spwi4##\spwi427.spl~ 2 4 ~WIZARD_VITRIOLIC_SPHERE~  // Vitriolic Sphere (new spell)
  SAY NAME1 @877    SAY UNIDENTIFIED_DESC @878
  WRITE_SHORT 0x98 %dvvtrsph%
  SET "loop" = 4
  WHILE ("%loop%" > 0) BEGIN
    WRITE_SHORT (0x98 + 0x28 * ("%loop%" - 1) ) "%dvvtrsph%"
    SET "loop" = "%loop%" - 1
  END
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\scrl6y.itm~      ~override~  // vanilla's Protection from Acid scroll
  SAY NAME2 @877    SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC   @878
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvitsph.spl~    ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvtrsph.vvc~    ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvtrsph.bam~    ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvtrtra.bam~    ~override~

Here is how you would want it to look:

Quote

//ADD_SPELL: Vitriolic Sphere
ADD_PROJECTILE ~spell_rev\projectles\dvvtrsph.pro~
ADD_SPELL ~spell_rev\spwi4##\spwi427.spl~ 2 4 ~WIZARD_VITRIOLIC_SPHERE~  // Vitriolic Sphere (new spell)
  SAY NAME1 @877    SAY UNIDENTIFIED_DESC @878
  WRITE_SHORT 0x98 %dvvtrsph%
  SET "loop" = 4
  WHILE ("%loop%" > 0) BEGIN
    WRITE_SHORT (0x98 + 0x28 * ("%loop%" - 1) ) "%dvvtrsph%"
    SET "loop" = "%loop%" - 1
  END
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\scrl6y.itm~      ~override~  // vanilla's Protection from Acid scroll
  SAY NAME2 @877    SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC   @878
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvitsph.spl~    ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvtrsph.vvc~    ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvtrsph.bam~    ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvvtrtra.bam~    ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvwi427a.bam~     ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvwi427b.bam~     ~override~
COPY ~spell_rev\spwi4##\dvwi427c.bam~     ~override~

You'd want to include all relevant and modified files here from SRR are in the right place within your SR installation folder (i.e. SRR modifies spwi427.spl, dvvtrsph.pro, and dvvtrsph.spl, so make sure you retrieve those from the SRR package and overwrite their SR counterparts). Next, you'd want the description of the spell from SRR to replace the normal SR description in spell_rev\languages\arcane.tra:

Quote

@877=~Vitriolic Sphere~
@878=~Vitriolic Sphere
Level: 4
School: Conjuration
Range: Long
Duration: Special
Casting Time: 4
Area of Effect: Target, and anyone within 10'
Saving Throw: Breath partial

When this spell is cast, a glowing orb of emerald acid streaks towards the target and explodes, drenching everyone within a 10' radius in potent acid. Each creature in the area immediately suffers 1D4 acid damage for each level of experience of the caster, up to a maximum of 10D4 at 10th level. After the initial round, those covered in the sphere's acid continue to suffer two less dice of acid damage in the following rounds. For example, an 8th-level wizard inflicts 8D4 damage with this spell in the first round, 6D4 in the second round, 4D4 in the third round, and 2D4 in the fourth round. During each round except the first, those affected can make a save vs. breath at a -2 penalty to reduce that round's damage by half and avoid further damage in any remaining rounds.~

Doing all that, I think it'd be good to go to install SR's main component and get SRR's Vitriolic Sphere. No guarantees, though. I suppose you should also change the description to say "20" feet instead of "10" feet, as that would be the doubled notation for SR (SRR's Vitriolic Sphere explosion is the same size as a Skull Trap, whereas SR's is half that size).

[Guest FallenAngel]

I've since started Icewind Dale and decided against including SCS, since I absolutely had to have the Icewind Dale NPCs, as well as a UI mod and a spell menu mod (which in turn necessitated another mod to work), by which point I was afraid I was already reaching too many mods to keep the install (and order) stable (pobably laughable to people who run with dozens of mods, but it's only my second modded game, third if you count the two Black Pits modules seperately).
Hopefully, the mod companions (being naturally much weaker than a twinked out seld-made party), setting the difficulty to Insane and deactivating Bonus XP from difficulty will do enough to provide some challenge.
Using SR 4.19RC5 with SRR v1.3.956

From what I've noticed so far (being right at the beginning still), the party's Paladin companion has two Detect Evil abilities. Probably because BG Paladins get to cast it 4 + (once per level past 1st) times per day and IWD Paladins get to cast it once per round (so basically infinite).
The "BG" Detect Evil has no description (the description screen when right clicking is empty) and disappears after a single cast. It shows evil creatures in the log, but does not highlight them with a visual effect.
The "IWD" Detect Evil has its proper description, can be cast properly (indefinitely) and has its proper visual effect (highlighting eligible targets with a red glow).
Inspecting the Paladin with EEKeeper, his innate abilities show SPCL109 & SPCL212 as Detect Evil. Removing SPCL212 gets rid of the faulty version (even though googling tells me 212 is the IWD version...I don't know ^ ^;).

My Ranger companion on the other hand seems to have Bhaalspawn abilities for some reason. Besides the intended for IWD Charm Animal and Tracking, he's got Cure Wounds, Slow Poison, Draw Upon Holy Might and Vampiric Touch. All of which I removed with EEKeeper.

I installed the NPC mod before SR(R) as recommended in the install order, but when installing SR(R) the component for updating joinable NPC spellbooks did not install (claiming it is for BG2 engine games only), so I guess that may have something to do with it?

A minor weird thing is that the first time I started the game and cast Mage Armor on my main character, he had the Stoneskin visual on him for the duration. On subsequent starts I could not replicate this, Mage Armor now has no visual effect at all.