StrongestOfMale: checks for Sex or Gender?

[jastey]

Sharteel in BG1 picks the "StrongestOfMale" of the group for her challenge. If this turns out to be Grey the Dog, the whole incident gets kind of rediculous.

So @Acifer had a brilliant idea: what if I tagg Grey as something else than "male". I mean, we all know he's male. I just want the game to ignore it if it's picking a "man" from the group.

So, what would I have to change in the cre-file: sex, or gender, or both?

And what would I change it to? Extra1-10, Other, ...

And what other unforeseen or unwanted consequences this could have?

[Jarno Mikkola]

Sound files, but then you probably reassign them from defaults... you don't want to set his gender to be summon (6 or 20)... or summoned demon(9) but that about it. Familiars are mostly set to be 4's, so. ... and yes, you and I are talking about the Near Infinity bit fields..

[Ardanis]

One player in SoD changed their PC's gender to neither and got locked in a cutscene mode (waking up in Ducal Palace after dealing with Korlash) because the script only had triggers for MALE and FEMALE. Can't remember if it got fixed.

I made a point to script everything in binary manner (i.e. !FEMALE and FEMALE) to avoid unforeseen holes like that, but it's possible other scripters/modders have been less cautious - as the game lock with edited gender made evident - and you could theoretically run into similar issue. Chances for it to happen to a joinable are fairly slim though, I think.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Ardanis

[jastey]

Thanks for the heads up!

In case someone knows what sex and gender are for and why they are two different slots in the cre file (we are talking 1998 here) I'd be interested.

[Jarno Mikkola]

21 minutes ago, jastey said:

Thanks for the heads up!

In case someone knows what sex and gender are for and why they are two different slots in the cre file (we are talking 1998 here) I'd be interested.

Well, if you look at Edwin & Edwina, you can see that if you have a male gendered person like Ardanis, you can just add an -a to their name and have them change their gender to a Female, Ardanisa.

Yes, the edwina_in_hell spell changes Edwin's gender, not sex.

[CamDawg]

Back in the early days of Fixpack, devSin pointed out that sex does nothing in game and gender only determines casting sounds. Scripting and effects can target by  sex and gender, though, such as death spells and dispels targeting genders summoned and illusionary, respectively.

[jastey]

Thanks for your answers!

I changed both gender and sex to "OTHER" for the current version, and will see whether it leads to any problems.