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SCS: spell systems


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Guest EddyCosta

Hello. I don't know if this is the best place to ask this, but i can't seem to find a better place.
So, the problem is that in the middle of combat, if someone in my party (normally is Minsc) becomes charmed, their circles go RED but they stand there still and do not attack my party back or anything.
I've read in another thread that this probably is happening because of SCS.
Is anyone experiencing this? 
If so, how do i fix it? Or what part os SCS must i unninstall or not install to avoid this issue?
Thanks in advance!

Edit: I forgot to mention that i'm playing Baldur's Gate EE, not Baldur's Gate II EE.

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@DavidW

Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility

Maybe you're already aware of this, but I fear this tweak only works for ToBEx games => according to NearInfinity, BIT24 (Can target invisible) is labeled as "Ex" (instead of "EE/Ex"), so it's probably not functional on EE games 😞...

Edited by Luke
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7 hours ago, Luke said:

@DavidW

Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility

Maybe you're already aware of this, but I fear this tweak only works for ToBEx games => according to NearInfinity, BIT24 (Can target invisible) is labeled as "Ex" (instead of "EE/Ex"), so it's probably not functional on EE games 😞...

Don't believe everything you read. It works fine on EE (try it).

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I think it sounds amazing to have enemy clerics be more defensively viable using IWD spells. But am I correct in understanding, that it is a choice of either that or using Spell Revisions?

If so I would urge you to reconsider allowing SR installs to take advantage of those IWD spells as well. The application of them sounds spectator and I would be very sad to miss out on it, but I cannot give up on SR.

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Huh. I hadn't thought of that. My typical install includes:

SR --> IWDification --> SCS

If we replace IWDification with its new SCS equivalent, it raises the question of how the SCS AI component(s) will handle things. 

Probably, hopefully, it is fine. Consider that a fair amount of spells added by SR are in fact just IWD spells. But IWDification/SCSIWDification add more IWD spells - all of them, in fact. (DavidW, does SCS include Wall if Moonlight, Mord's Force Missiles, and Giant Insect?)

So SCS focusing on use of the IWD spells should lead to a more comprehensive and satisfying result. The number of SR-only spells is probably very small. 

As for how SCS handles spells that are transformed by SR, well, if Demi and kreso did their job right, the new versions should all be useful in the same manner and circumstances. 

The biggest issue is probably the question of what happens to the "spell battle" system, how SCS AI handles Dispelling Screen, etc. 

Edited by subtledoctor
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You can have IWD spells and SR both present (install SR first, the IWD spells will not overwrite similar versions in SR). But the AI will not use IWD spells in this case.

There are two reasons for that: one conceptual, one practical.

Practical: even with the architecture improvements in SCSv32, it is quite a lot of work. I’d need spell choices, and defensive spell choices, for about ten categories of spellcaster, and I’d also need to do some serious editing of the spell trigger files. I’m not likely to prioritize this work, especially as I tend to prioritize things I’ll use myself and I don’t play with SR.

Conceptual: the whole point of SR is to do a systematic, unified revision of the whole spell system. The IWD spells, on the other hand, are modified only according to SCS’s more laissez-faire approach: i.e. leave things alone unless they’re intolerably broken or useless. So combining them - and thinking through how to write AI for that combined system - isn’t straightforward.

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@subtledoctor: yes, I include all those spells. (I have automated code for grabbing IWDEE resources: adding a spell just requires putting its IDS entry on a list and then running the code). The AI doesn’t use Wall of Moonlight (that kind of positional casting isn’t viable in the IE) but it uses the other two.

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On 10/23/2018 at 12:19 PM, DavidW said:

I ignore IWD for AI purposes if SR is installed - partly to keep the combinatorics under control, but mostly because the whole point of SR (as I understand it) is to do a systematic rebalance of the spell system, so if SR is present, I want to work in its spell system, not a hybrid.

SCS's version of the IWD spell system is installable with SR present, and is compatible on a technical level (i.e., duplicate spells are skipped, NWN area-effect spell deflection gets implemented for IWD AoE spells) but I don't make any effort to achieve conceptual compatibility.

Coming back to this, as I'm actually playing the game now.  My concern is that IWD spells add a bunch of new things that the AI can use, whereas SR actually adds fairly little.  I'm not sure how the AI re-prioritizes things for SR.  But I feel like an AI that basically ignores SR and focuses on utilizing IWD spells would still capture most of the benefits of SR (since a lot of SR involves IWD spells or outright substitutions).  And crucially, it would have things like priests using Impervious Sanctity of Mind and Entropy Shield for spell protections, which I gather won't happen with a purely SR-focused AI.

This may sound crazy, but what if I modified my weidu.log before installing the AI components, to remove mention of SR?  Theoretically SCS would detect IWD spells and tune the AI for their use, and SR spells would be used normally in place of their vanilla BG2 versions.  What could go wrong?  :jump:

No seriously: what could go wrong?  Would I be crazy to spend time doing this?

EDIT -  hmm... I guess there are things that could go wrong - accounting for the abilities of SR summons and fiends, for example... maybe this isn't a great idea.

Edited by subtledoctor
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I think this will probably cause trouble, because SCS's various spell tweaks are sensitive to whether SR is installed, and if you fool it into thinking SR isn't there when it is, some files will get corrupted.

If you want to try this, a better way (at your own risk!) would be to edit lib/always.tph.

Firstly, find the block starting at line 140, that sets the variables base_folder_spells_mage and base_folder_spells_priest. Edit the logic so that it sets them to 'iwd' even if demivrgvs=1. (That controls which lists mage and priest spells are selected from.

Secondly, find this line, at line 400:

OUTER_SPRINT ~sslvariables~ ~%sslvariables%~^~&~^~Demivrgvs=True~

Comment it out. Then SCS's AI scripts won't know about SR.

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I'll ask this here since the thread is about "spell systems."  In looking at the way spell protections and magic attacks work, I noticed that various protections use spellstates like:

  • PRO_LVL_5_MINUS
  • PRO_LVL_6_7_8
  • SPELL_PROTECTION

Can you tell me what these do?  Do they have to do with which magic attacks are used against them?  Presumably, Spell Thrust against anyone with "PRO_LVL_5_MINUS," Secret Word/Pierce Magic against anyone with "PRO_LVL_6_7_8," and Ruby Ray/Pierce Shield against anyone with "SPELL_PROTECTION" ...?

Or alternatively, does it have to with with whether an AI caster will cast normal spells against the person with each spellstate?

Or alternatively, does it help the protected person know what kind of protections they already have up, so they don't double up with redundant defenses?

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