Wheels of Prophecy updated to 8.3

[argent77]

34 minutes ago, Angel said:

EDIT: Think I found it.  Could you try with this file?  It goes in wheels/lib/

It works! The resulting script doesn't contain the vanilla content anymore.

[Angel]

1 minute ago, argent77 said:

It works! The resulting script doesn't contain the vanilla content anymore.

Yeah, it was WeiDU being anal about when it wants to do variable substitution in function parameters.  I'll quickly draft a new release, good thing it wasn't merged yet.

 

[argent77]

10 minutes ago, Angel said:

Yeah, it was WeiDU being anal about when it wants to do variable substitution in function parameters.  I'll quickly draft a new release, good thing it wasn't merged yet.

 

According to the WeiDU docs the percentage signs (%) are treated as an alternate option to double quotes and tilde signs to enclose literal strings. It doesn't help that they are also used to substitute variable content. Apparently this is commonly misunderstood by many modders and can lead to bugs that are hard to track.

[Angel]

3 hours ago, argent77 said:

According to the WeiDU docs the percentage signs (%) are treated as an alternate option to double quotes and tilde signs to enclose literal strings. It doesn't help that they are also used to substitute variable content. Apparently this is commonly misunderstood by many modders and can lead to bugs that are hard to track.

Excuse me while I go bang my head against something in frustration about this hopelessly convoluted excuse for a syntax. ^^

I did a search for any more such mistakes and fortunately found none.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Angel

[grodrigues]

Currently, not installable on my setup. It barfs right at the start with:

Copying and patching 1 file ...
ERROR: error loading [wheels/bg1_area_list.2da]
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.

ERROR Installing [The Wheels of Prophecy], rolling back to previous state
Will uninstall   1 files for [wheels/setup-wheels.tp2] component 0.
Uninstalled      1 files for [wheels/setup-wheels.tp2] component 0.
ERROR: Unix.Unix_error(Unix.ENOENT, "stat", "wheels/bg1_area_list.2da")

Any more info needed, just ask.

[AL|EN]

@grodrigues You should start with providing whells.debug file and weidu.log

[grodrigues]

Per @AL|EN request, attached is a zip with the debug and the weidu.log file. Nothing jumps out to my untrained eye in the debug -- it seems to be a simple case of WeiDU not locating the (non-existent) file.

debug-log.zip

Edited June 24, 2021 by grodrigues
words words words

[Angel]

Mm, I'm guessing this is BGT/EET specific since the error is in BG1 compatibility code - which Wheels doesn't need since it has no BG1 content whatsoever.

EDIT: Alright, think I got it.  Tested on BGT with no issues.  Release have been updated accordingly.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Angel

[grodrigues]

Can confirm that the mod now installs in EET. Testing it will have to wait though. Thanks for the speedy response.

[WanderingScholar]

@Angel

I just stumbled upon this forum. I have Ascension 2.0.23 and  Wheels 8.5 installed for BGT. Did your fixes ever make it into the official version?

I noticed your fork is no longer up. 

I dread trying to debug this mod myself, as there are still reports of major issues from what I can see. 

If you have a working fork, I'd be delighted. 

[Angel]

12 hours ago, WanderingScholar said:

@Angel

I just stumbled upon this forum. I have Ascension 2.0.23 and  Wheels 8.5 installed for BGT. Did your fixes ever make it into the official version?

I noticed your fork is no longer up. 

I dread trying to debug this mod myself, as there are still reports of major issues from what I can see. 

If you have a working fork, I'd be delighted. 

I'm not Wheels' author, that would be @DavidW.  Back then I only got permission to make one update to fix one issue, an incompatibility with the new WeiDU version, which is in 8.5 (otherwise you wouldn't have been able to install it).  I'm not touching it any further, so there was no need to keep that fork up.

I know of the Wheels/Ascension issue (kinda hard not to, it keeps popping up everywhere) but I have no idea what causes it or how to fix it.  I never could trigger it in my own non-Ascension games no matter which path I took, which leads me to think it's a bad interaction between Wheels and Ascension, not a bug specific to Wheels.

[WanderingScholar]

1 hour ago, Angel said:

I'm not Wheels' author, that would be @DavidW.  Back then I only got permission to make one update to fix one issue, an incompatibility with the new WeiDU version, which is in 8.5 (otherwise you wouldn't have been able to install it).  I'm not touching it any further, so there was no need to keep that fork up.

I know of the Wheels/Ascension issue (kinda hard not to, it keeps popping up everywhere) but I have no idea what causes it or how to fix it.  I never could trigger it in my own non-Ascension games no matter which path I took, which leads me to think it's a bad interaction between Wheels and Ascension, not a bug specific to Wheels.

Ok, thanks for clarifying. Unfortunately, I suspect it will be some time before David touches Wheels again with everything else on his plate. Until then, I'll try and see if I can provide some useful bug reports for anything I run into. I fear it will be difficult however, given the maze of dialogues, trigger, and variables that is Ascension + Wheels.

Even with just a superficial scan in Near Infinity I'm already seeing a response trigger in ABAZIGAL.DLG referencing a script that doesn't exist. 

[CrevsDaak]

The issue with not being able to end the game due to a global variable bug is not known? Damn, I thought it must have been, so I never brought it up (when I got it and googled it, people on arcanecoast.ru (I think?) seemed to have had figured it out, and so I assumed that), otherwise I would've posted about it earlier, I apologize for not checking. Specifically, the issue I refer to is the following:

a) not being able to travel to the Forest of Tethyr via the Pocket Plane after resolving the issue of Balthazar (doesn't matter how it is resolved) because dialogue with the Pocket Plane invisible creature never happens (itpplane.bcs just sends you back)

b) AFTER traveling to the Forest of Tethyr, not being able to enter the final fight with Smellyssan

Both issues are related to and caused by the fact that they check the global fin_balth_checkpoint_passed which is never set to 1, which is what gets checked. Instead, the dialogues with Balthazar et al sources of DMWWGroveRevealed, set that to 1 in order to allow the player to travel there.

The check for fin_balth_checkpoint_passed==1 in ppguy01.dlg should be removed, and let that trigger be just DMWWGrove==2, as that's set once the player has already gone and talked to the heads in the grove, and it's already there.

The check for fin_balth_checkpoint_passed==1 in itpplane.bcs should be changed for DMWWGroveRevealed==1 which is set once either Balthazar and the other two are dead, or once you talk him out of fighting you and kill the mage version of Smellyssan.

Note that DMWWGrove and DMWWGroveRevealed are both handled perfectly, and simply changing this fixes all the related bugs (the two issues listed above) completely. Attached is a small fix that patches both files in order to remove fin_balth_checkpoint_passed in favour of the other variables.

Edit: re: @Angel yes, this issue is specific to Ascension+Wheels (which is why it won't ever happen w/o Ascension). But it's entirely caused by something Wheels modifies (which is sending you back to the Grove), while also leaving that variable from Ascension in the Pocket Plane checks. Just changing those two files as I've done (though it isn't robust enough for actual deployment I think) is enough to fix this issue.

c7-fixwheels.tp2

Edited February 4, 2024 by CrevsDaak
Didn't read Angel's post well enough, hence the edit, but this is it.

[subtledoctor]

On 2/4/2024 at 2:51 PM, Angel said:

I know of the Wheels/Ascension issue (kinda hard not to, it keeps popping up everywhere) but I have no idea what causes it or how to fix it.  I never could trigger it in my own non-Ascension games no matter which path I took, which leads me to think it's a bad interaction between Wheels and Ascension

Wanna know what's crazy, in all this time I never even knew you could play Wheels without Ascension.  I always thought it was one of those Acension add-on mods. I guess now I've stopped using Ascension, I'll have to finally give Wheels a spin (ha ha) in my next install!

[Morgoth]

On 2/4/2024 at 11:17 PM, CrevsDaak said:

The issue with not being able to end the game due to a global variable bug is not known? Damn, I thought it must have been, so I never brought it up (when I got it and googled it, people on arcanecoast.ru (I think?) seemed to have had figured it out, and so I assumed that), otherwise I would've posted about it earlier, I apologize for not checking. Specifically, the issue I refer to is the following:

a) not being able to travel to the Forest of Tethyr via the Pocket Plane after resolving the issue of Balthazar (doesn't matter how it is resolved) because dialogue with the Pocket Plane invisible creature never happens (itpplane.bcs just sends you back)

b) AFTER traveling to the Forest of Tethyr, not being able to enter the final fight with Smellyssan

Both issues are related to and caused by the fact that they check the global fin_balth_checkpoint_passed which is never set to 1, which is what gets checked. Instead, the dialogues with Balthazar et al sources of DMWWGroveRevealed, set that to 1 in order to allow the player to travel there.

The check for fin_balth_checkpoint_passed==1 in ppguy01.dlg should be removed, and let that trigger be just DMWWGrove==2, as that's set once the player has already gone and talked to the heads in the grove, and it's already there.

The check for fin_balth_checkpoint_passed==1 in itpplane.bcs should be changed for DMWWGroveRevealed==1 which is set once either Balthazar and the other two are dead, or once you talk him out of fighting you and kill the mage version of Smellyssan.

Note that DMWWGrove and DMWWGroveRevealed are both handled perfectly, and simply changing this fixes all the related bugs (the two issues listed above) completely. Attached is a small fix that patches both files in order to remove fin_balth_checkpoint_passed in favour of the other variables.

Edit: re: @Angel yes, this issue is specific to Ascension+Wheels (which is why it won't ever happen w/o Ascension). But it's entirely caused by something Wheels modifies (which is sending you back to the Grove), while also leaving that variable from Ascension in the Pocket Plane checks. Just changing those two files as I've done (though it isn't robust enough for actual deployment I think) is enough to fix this issue.

c7-fixwheels.tp2 632 B · 10 downloads

This file should be bundled within the latest Wheels and a wheels updated version should be released, so people wouldn't have issue.

Hopefully, it won't harm people that only use Wheels of Prophecy but never install Ascension (like me)

Edited February 18, 2024 by Morgoth