SubtleMods: Will to Power, a 2E-inspired psionics mod

[subtledoctor]

Heh heh, the mechanics are a bit different. You don’t have 15 uses of Project Force et al. - you know Project Force, and have 15 Points for it. Each use costs 6 points. (The Energy Storm power is an HLA that costs 20 points - that’s a bug.)

Using abilities when you have fewer points than their cost - e.g. using Project Force with less than 6 PSPs - reduces your max hot points instead. That will recover though. 

[Lauriel]

How do I know how many PSPs I have or how many it uses?  There is a number by each one.  I assume that's how many points you have.  How do you know how many points a talent uses?

EDIT: It would be nice if they would somehow indicate to you that 'use this and you're gonna regret it'.

Edited February 14, 2020 by Lauriel

[Lauriel]

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

That will recover though. 

How long does it take to recover?  You'd have thought that resting for 8 hours would have helped at least some.

[subtledoctor]

  

On 2/14/2020 at 3:35 PM, Lauriel said:

How do I know how many PSPs I have or how many it uses?  There is a number by each one.  I assume that's how many points you have.  How do you know how many points a talent uses?

EDIT: It would be nice if they would somehow indicate to you that 'use this and you're gonna regret it'.

Your PSP total is the number on the front of every power.  When you press the 'cast spell' button you'll see something like "Object Reading 15, project Force 15, Mind Ward 15," etc.  That means those are the powers you know (that's what you have available to use) and you have 15 Psionic Strength Points to fuel them.

Devotions cost 6 points, sciences cost 10 points, HLAs cost 20 points. 

Basically, I hijacked the innate ability system.  Innate abilities can have different number of "instances" - usually, how many times per day you can cast them.  And they can be put under the 'cast spell' button.  Here, every time you use a power, it removes all of your powers; and calculates how many PSPs you have left.  Say you have 9 PSPs left - it would give you 9 instances of every innate ability corresponding to the powers you know.  Use a power, and it will remove all your powers, deduct 6 points, do the calculation, and then give you 3 instances of every power.  This way, the number of "instances" of each ability always gives you a visual indicator of your current point total.  And this is all done exclusively via spell effects - there is no scripting involved at all.  (I know it's a bit different from how you are used to interpreting that number... but still, it's a point system with a clear visual indicator of your point total.  AFAIK there is no other mod for these games that achieves that.)

I would like to give a visual indicator of "whoa, your PSP total is low, if you use this ability it's going to hurt you!"  But I'm not sure how.  The easiest and most obvious way is to change the icon.  I was toying with making icons that are tinged red, to show that using this power is going to hurt.  It totally works... it just doesn't look very good.  It's very much on the to-do list, I'm just considering how to do it.

 

On 2/14/2020 at 3:44 PM, Lauriel said:

How long does it take to recover?  You'd have thought that resting for 8 hours would have helped at least some.

If you use an ability and it reduces your hit points, they recover at a rate of 1 per 3 rounds (18 seconds).  If you use Project Force to get out of trouble, you might go from 8/8 hit points to 2/2 hit points... 12 seconds later that will be 3/3, 24 seconds later it will be 4/4, etc. 

I don't recall how this system interacts with sleeping - I think they should all recover, since the recovery system is a spell with delayed effects and I thought that uses in-game time for calculating. 

If you got an HLA power via a bug and used it when you didn't have enough PSPs or hit points, it might have short-circuited something.  You aren't meant to get such powers at low levels...

Edited April 9, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Lauriel]

4 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

If you got an HLA power via a bug and used it when you didn't have enough PSPs or hit points, it might have short-circuited something.  You aren't meant to get such powers at low levels...

I don't think the one that IDs stuff is an HLA, is it?  I had 3 points left.  Tried to ID.  Went from 8 HPs to 2.  Still had 3 PSPs.  Ow.  Now I go back and resting did recover HPs.  I possibly might have not let have enough time to do whatever.  But this time was fine.  No panic.

So all I need to do is memorize which abilities are in each camp so I can know how many PSPs each uses so I don't end up killing myself.

Which abilities I have from day to day seems to change as well.  That's rather disconcerting.  I just never know 'who' I'm going to be when I wake up.

[subtledoctor]

33 minutes ago, Lauriel said:

 I had 3 points left.  Tried to ID.  Went from 8 HPs to 2.  Still had 3 PSPs.  Ow.  Now I go back and resting did recover HPs.

Ah - yes, this is exactly how it should work. 

33 minutes ago, Lauriel said:

So all I need to do is memorize which abilities are in each camp so I can know how many PSPs each uses so I don't end up killing myself.

I guess yeah. If you’re unsure, you can right-click the power, and the description will note how many points each one costs. 

Also, the devotiins on the left side all cost 6 points; sciences will appear to the right of them, which means you will see the discipline colors repeat. That’s when you know you’re getting into more expensive powers. 

33 minutes ago, Lauriel said:

Which abilities I have from day to day seems to change as well.  That's rather disconcerting.  I just never know 'who' I'm going to be when I wake up.

Uh, that’s not good...

[subtledoctor]

Here’s a question: should I change the color scheme? 

Right now the icon colors vary by discipline:

Telepathy = magenta

Telekinesis = blue

Pyrokinesis = orange-red

Biokinesis = green

Clairsentience = gray

Metapsionics = teal

It may not be necessary to have them all be different. We could instead differentiate by power level, which would give you a visual indicator of the cost.  Something like:

devotions costing PSPs = green

sciences costing PSP = blue

HLAs costing PSPs = violet

devotions cost HPs = orange

sciences costing HPs = red

HLAs costing HPs = magenta

That way you if you see red, it means be careful. 

Only problem is you’ll tend to know a lot of devotions, so you’ll end up having to differentiate between a bunch of icons of the same color. As it is now, you know when you’re looking at a telekinesis power, vs. a pyrokinesis power, etc. 

[Lauriel]

11 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Only problem is you’ll tend to know a lot of devotions, so you’ll end up having to differentiate between a bunch of icons of the same color. As it is now, you know when you’re looking at a telekinesis power, vs. a pyrokinesis power, etc. 

I'm not sure how helpful it is to know which is telekinesis and which is pyrokinesis.  I think coloration on spells now distinguishes between aggressive (red), buff  (blue), neither (white).  That helps when you're trying to sort scrolls into different containers, but that's about it.  I pretty much know a fireball isn't a buff when casting it and since they're listed alphabetically, having the colors isn't all that helpful in a spell list. The Psi stuff won't have scrolls.  I'm all for the 'Danger Will Robinson!' colors.  

[Lauriel]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Quote

Which abilities I have from day to day seems to change as well.  That's rather disconcerting.  I just never know 'who' I'm going to be when I wake up.

Uh, that’s not good...

I wasn't particularly keen on it, either.   EDIT: I dunno - maybe it'll change too.  I couldn't save the game at first, now I can.  I didn't regain HPs at first, now I do.  But no matter what, there is definitely something hinky in Psi town.

EDIT EDIT: I possibly should redo my EET installation.  I just added it after my normal mods because I have a back up of my normal installation so when I totally trash my game while trying to code my mod, I can start fresh easily.  I maybe should put it in fairly early in the build.

Edited February 14, 2020 by Lauriel

[subtledoctor]

Install it like right before CDTweaks.

The “can’t save the game” thing might be unrelated. That happens to me in Candlekeep sometimes. Usually waiting a bit or doing a couple area transitions fixes it. 

[Lauriel]

29 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Install it like right before CDTweaks.

Will do!  EDIT: That is...will do later.  Reinstalling CDTweaks is enough of a PITA that it motivates me to wait for the pretty colors you're contemplating putting in. EDIT EDIT: or get off my duff and learn how to use the config files...  I'm normally too much in a hurry to just 'get 'er done!' to figure them out.  EDIT EDIT EDIT: Well, that config file is certainly underwhelming and an utter waste of time.  Whatever...  I'll redo the install this evening when I get tired of struggling with my mod.

Edited February 15, 2020 by Lauriel

[Lauriel]

53 minutes ago, Lauriel said:

Will do!  EDIT: That is...will do later.  Reinstalling CDTweaks is enough of a PITA that it motivates me to wait for the pretty colors you're contemplating putting in. EDIT EDIT: or get off my duff and learn how to use the config files...  I'm normally too much in a hurry to just 'get 'er done!' to figure them out.  EDIT EDIT EDIT: Well, that config file is certainly underwhelming and an utter waste of time.  Whatever...  I'll redo the install this evening when I get tired of struggling with my mod.

I forgot for a moment that I'm a big fat cheater.  I'm redoing the tp2 to fit my fancy and will reinstall your mod as soon as I'm done.

[subtledoctor]

45 minutes ago, Lauriel said:

I forgot for a moment that I'm a big fat cheater.  I'm redoing the tp2 to fit my fancy and will reinstall your mod as soon as I'm done.

I do that too with CDTweaks.  I comment out a ton of stuff.

The icons will take some time - not sure I'll have any free this weekend.  Lots of fiddly messing with the 'hue' slider in Near Infinity BAM Editor.  And there are 55 of them.  And now I'll need to make two different versions of each, so 110.  So don't hold your breath.  BUT once they are done, it will be easy to switch out the whole set, and if necessary switch them back if we don't like them.  (In fact I could even, maybe, put both sets in the mod and make it an install option for the player. But I probably won't do that.)  And, it should be quite simple to make a little hotfix mod and add the new icons to a game in progress.  So you can start now, and then at some point you can upgrade to the new icons when they are ready.

[Lauriel]

1 minute ago, subtledoctor said:

BUT once they are done, it will be easy to switch out the whole set, and if necessary switch them back if we don't like them.  (In fact I could even, maybe, put both sets in the mod and make it an install option for the player. But I probably won't do that.)  And, it should be quite simple to make a little hotfix mod and add the new icons to a game in progress.  So you can start now, and then at some point you can upgrade to the new icons when they are ready.

Ok, cool.  I'll let you know how things go.

[subtledoctor]

Damn, I just realized a problem with changing the hue of powers' icons: the Clairsentience icons are taken from divination spells, and they have no color.  So changing the 'hue' slider does nothing.