BG2EE banter issue

[Guest Kage]

Hello everybody.

My first post here. I have been a huge fan of Baldurs Gate series ever since its release those ages ago.. 
And I always considered BG to be the best game(s) I ever played!!!

I started replaying BG2EE again, and as always, Ioved every moment of it... Until recently that is,
as I seem to have this most annoying "bug" with banter now. I am in chapter 4 now, some 25 days in the game.
Banter of my NPCs was very rare from the start, but now, there is basically no banter. Except for love talks, romance works normally. Worst is, that I can't even force the banter with the console. Whenever I press CTRL+I, NPCs just look at each other, as if they wanna start a conversation, but nothing happens.. I managed to bring up few banters with the console (like 5), but now there is nothing. Last time I checked, I kept getting a same line from Jaheira (something about wind/weather) all over again and again when I forced the banter with the console.

I installed only BGtweaks (cdtweaks) and banterpack, than started a new game. I even had Jan in the party for the first time, as I heard that he has a ton of banter, love the guy, but even his banter was really rare from the begining. I had some good banters from the start of the game, but It was still less than 15 of them, and most of those were from the banter pack. For me, no banter is pretty much game breaking issue. Thing is, that last time I played BG2EE, I think I had a same problem, which made me to give up on playing the game. But that is like 5
years ago, on a totally different laptop.

I have been enjoying my time in the Forgotten Realms so much, as I always did, but this issue ruins it all for me.

I have much less time for gaming nowadays, being a father means having less time to be a kid yourself I guess:)
So if I do spent my free time playing BG again, I want it to be the game I always loved so much.. I cannot imagine playing the game with silent NPCs (even Jan!!!)....

I searched the web for a solution to this problem, but with no luck.. I really hope that there is somebody who cold help me with this issue, I would appeciate it so, sooo much..

I could give you my save file, but I don't know how to do it on this forum..
Thank you for reading this post...

[Guest Kage]

Forgot to mention, that I don't use any of the new EE NPCs. All of my NPCs are pure vanilla. Minsc, Keldorn, Jaheira, Jan and Aerie..

[Lightbringer]

Sounds somewhat similar to a problem I had with a mod NPC -- the infamous stutter bug. She would keep attempting to initiate conversation every round, but fail to actually do so. Likewise, this NPC had no PIDs at first, but developed some later. On investigating this (kudos to the person who wrote that stutter debug script), I learned much about what triggers banters and other dialogue -- scripts and dialogue trees.

The fact that no NPC is bantering makes me think there's some larger issue at work than a simple script conflict. Some trigger is not being met on a whole-game level. If you had more time (and I sympathize with fatherhood!) I'd suggest getting Near Infinity and Shadowkeeper, and start exploring the global variables and game scripts.

Hopefully one of the experienced modders will have more useful insight and a simple solution.

To help them out, find a file in your game directory called weidu.log.  Open it in a text editor and copy its contents to a post here on the forum (using spoiler tags, if you can). The solution might lie in whatever options you chose in CDTweaks or the banter pack.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Lightbringer

[Guest Kage]

Thank you very much for your reply Lightbringer! Really appreciate it..

As I have no experience with Near Infinity and Shadowkeeper, it would take me ages to find out what is wrong in the game scripts.. If ever really..

Anyways, here is what is in my weidu.log:

// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #20 // Change Imoen's Avatar to Mage: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #60 // Weapon Animation Tweaks: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #90 // Disable Portrait Icons Added by Equipped Items: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #100 // Commoners Use Drab Colors: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #110 // Icon Improvements: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #130 // Force All Dialogue to Pause Game: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #140 // Fix Boo's Squeak: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #170 // Unique Icons: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #182 // Unique Containers -> Unique icons and names: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #200 // Remove Blur Effect from Items, e.g. Cloack of Displacement: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // Separate Resist Fire/Cold Icon into Separate Icons (Angel): v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1010 // More Interjections: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1020 // Alter HP Triggers for NPC Wounded Dialogues: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1040 // Improved Athkatlan City Guard: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1080 // Add Bags of Holding: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1101 // Do Not Reveal City Maps When Entering Area: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1120 // Stores Sell Higher Stacks of Items: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1161 // Multiple Strongholds (Baldurdash) -> Keep Class Restrictions: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1180 // Female Edwina: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1220 // Allow Cromwell to Upgrade Watcher's Keep Items: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1230 // Allow Cespenar to Use Cromwell Recipes: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2020 // Two-Handed Bastard Swords: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Two-Handed Katanas: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2035 // Two-Handed Axes: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2040 // Universal Clubs: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2060 // Weapon Styles for All: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2090 // Change Experience Point Cap -> Remove Experience Cap: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Wear Multiple Protection Items -> P&P Restrictions: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2160 // Alter Weapon Proficiency System -> Rebalanced Weapon Proficiencies: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2192 // Limit Ability of Storekeepers to Identify Items -> Hybrid of Both Methods: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2200 // Multi-Class Grandmastery (Weimer): v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2210 // Change Grandmastery Bonuses -> True Grandmastery (Baldurdash): v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2220 // Change Magically Created Weapons to Zero Weight: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2240 // Un-Nerfed THAC0 Table: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2250 // Un-Nerfed Sorcerer Spell Progression Table: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2261 // Alter Mage Spell Progression Table -> PnP Table: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2271 // Alter Bard Spell Progression Table -> PnP Table: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2281 // Alter Cleric Spell Progression Table -> PnP Table: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2294 // Alter Druid Spell and Level Progression Tables -> Use Cleric Level Progression Changes With PnP Druid/Cleric Spell Table: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2353 // Alter Multiclass Restrictions -> Allow non-humans access to a multiclasses only if they can access the single-classes: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2440 // Everyone Gets Bonus APR from Specialization: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2450 // Enforce PnP Proficiency Rules on Dual-Classed Characters: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2500 // Exceptional Strength Weight Limit Changes: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3121 // Happy Patch (Party NPCs do not complain about reputation) -> NPCs Can Be Angry About Reputation but Never Leave (Salk): v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3125 // Neutral Characters Make Happy Comments at Mid-Range Reputation: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3264 // Recoverable ammunition -> 25% chance to recover after a successful hit, vs. enemies only: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3274 // Recoverable throwing weapons -> 25% chance to recover after a successful hit, vs. enemies only: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3290 // Personalize automatic save names -> Use scheme: 000000000-Protagonist-Save-Name: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3340 // Increase party movement speed outside combat -> By 50 percent: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4100 // Change Korgan to Neutral Evil: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Allow Arcane Spellcasting in Heavy Armor: v9
~BANTERPACK/SETUP-BANTERPACK.TP2~ #0 #0 // Pocket Plane Banter Pack for BG2: Shadows of Amn: v16
~BANTERPACK/SETUP-BANTERPACK.TP2~ #0 #1 // Install SOA Banter Accelerator script? (Increases the frequency of interparty banter): v16
~BANTERPACK/SETUP-BANTERPACK.TP2~ #0 #2 // Pocket Plane Banter Pack for BG2: Throne of Bhaal: v16
~BANTERPACK/SETUP-BANTERPACK.TP2~ #0 #3 // Install TOB Banter Accelerator script? (Increases the frequency of interparty banter): v16
 

I would be so glad if some of you exerienced modders would help me out with this problem.. It is a damn shame that I ran into this bug again, seems like 

I'm destined not to enjoy this gem of a game anymore.. :)

 

Anyway, thank you Lightbringer... 

 

 

[Guest TheFreeOne]

Hi all. I have the same problem with a pure vanila unmodded Bgee on Android. I am trying for days to solve this and to understand how the game works for this. I even found this same poor desperate guy posting this same thread at least on 3 locations, beamdog forums reddit and here. Come on boy, I`m a father too and nowadays I really understood how market works. These games are huge and messy even in coding, but those who put their hands on them surely are NOT there for true passion and simulate a good banter system is not in their minds, they even didn`t response your thread. Worst nostalgia trick of my life, buying these Enharsed Editions for a mere zoom feature and Android compatibility. It was better when fans and true passionate were losing whole years trying to get the game always better, and they made it surely better then these editions.

By the way. Trying to have some more banter since they were almost absent apart a very little selection always the same, I downloaded the banter override file (or you can try the Banter Acceleration Mod in the forums) and learned how to change values for banter random tries, but it seems that my party likes to look at themselves all the time and after all the only banters i get are the ones already seen for now. I also found the bg1 vanilla banter guide so to be sure I`m not expecting too much, even knowing the first game is not so full of banters and pretty incomplete piece of art. When I changed values to ridiculous ones to see how the system works, I first had a lot of good banters for a few seconds, then stop, and a lot of glaze staring like always without any more bantering. I am suspecting that the game contains other values inside coding that prevents too much banters in sequence, or in the same area, or whateve other reason limits banters so the simple override of banttimg.2da doesn`t suffice. If anyone ever solved this or even if it`s not a bug but someone understood how this works, we will always be Very grateful and wish to give mymoney to them instead of beamdog.

[Lightbringer]

(Edit: The below reply won't really do much for unmodded vanilla BG:EE. This is primarily for modding issues. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try.)

Do you find your party members periodically stopping and facing you or each other, like they're about to say something, but they never do? If so you may be experiencing an issue with a banter script failing to fully execute. In its worse incarnation, it's called the "stutter bug" and can make the game unplayable.

In the stutter bug, the conditions exist for a script to fire, but the script fails to complete. The same conditions still exist, so the script fires again. Same non-completion. The effect is an npc who stops every round to speak, but never does. They look like they are stutter-walking. Even if you are not experiencing the stutter bug, it still could be a script issue.

I experienced the stutter bug with a mod NPC who I had modded additionally. I (naturally) didn't anticipate the full consequences of my tinkering and caused some script shenanigans. In order to investigate and solve the issue I discovered, I used the tool and discussions here:

http://www.shsforums.net/topic/33937-how-to-gather-clues-when-debugging-stuttering/

This isn't a quick and simple solution, and requires a little bit of modding knowledge, use of Near Infinity, and general game-file-surgery. I don't know if it will solve things for either of you, but it might be a place to start. As always, be sure to back up your files before messing with them. Consider this like editing your windows registry. Powerful and useful, but potentially disastrous if you're careless or work without backups.

The general idea is to create a small mod yourself that causes the game to display what script is firing when and what block within the script. You then play the game and record the output when you observe the anomalous behavior (stuttering, turning to talk but remaining silent, etc). Then you know exactly where to look within the game's scripts to find the problem.

This will tell you where the problem is. Discerning what the problem is -- and how to solve it -- is another matter entirely.

As before, hopefully someone else here might have a more direct solution, but this is what I did for my similar-sounding problem.

Edited May 5, 2020 by Lightbringer

[Guest TheFreeOne]

Thanks really a lot Lightbringer, this is really appreciated. Sincerely I don't have anymore the possibility of entangling myself into this kind of accurate and deep study of one of my favorite games ever, being now adult and very occupied. But hope is never to get down and maybe in the months, or even years, I will find some time to spend on it.

Since you seem quite expert in the game, allow me one question: to get the best rpg experience, so primarily banters, story, good old ad&d rules, bug fixes, characters and such good material both from vanilla games and from mods, which version of the whole saga is better, enhanced editions, bgt, tutu, or others I did not stumble upon? I am totally uninterested in ultra "Powa of the powa of the powa [x2] of the Great Sword" (cit.), so when I looked happy into the list of Tweak Anthology having read of a lot of bugs and poor design being corrected, I fell into sarcasm when I found just tweaks to make the game less realistic, more focused into gaming and Powa and evil acts (acts that I sometimes do in game, but never feel that people around should pardon me or be so stupid to let me steal everything they own, and then blame game creators for "poor design" or such) and not very much of a rpg enhancement. Having nearly no time to spend in games, it is not good to search and try every mod, and it is nearly impossible without spoilering much of vanilla content I still didn't found (and that's a lot, from what I catched).

Thanks in advance.

[Lightbringer]

I'm no expert, but I've been around a little bit. 

The thread linked below has perhaps the discussion you're looking for. Start at the beginning. He has particular requirements that you may find useful, and they seem in line with yours. Pros and cons are extensively discussed.  I contributed some of my personal experience in a few of the quest mods for BG1, having just finished a 120 hour heavily modded BG1 leg of EET.

As for the tweak mods, the nice thing is that you can pick and choose however you wish. Some are more power hungry, others are simple things like don't display helmets. If you don't want to spend a ton of time, perhaps assume that the game rules work as intended, and use tweaks that sound good to you by their description. If you skip the tweak packs, you'll still get a game that works just fine. 

Personally, I'm a fan of the EE versions. It's not just the zooming, but the interface and some of the other niceties. Honestly what completely sold me was when I discovered that I could finally dual wield while having a bow equipped -- no longer having to go into the inventory to switch all the time. The real value of the EE games is under the hood. They are thoroughly coded for modding ease. This means that more high quality mods will be available that can do more interesting things.

The new join-able NPCs didn't really interest me, so I don't consider them a mark for or against. I thoroughly enjoyed Siege of Dragonspear, for reasons too extensive to delineate here, and I now consider it an essential part of the saga.  I believe I am in the minority in that view, in the interest of full disclosure.

I was a long time TuTu player who was skeptical of the value of the EEs (after all, I reasoned, I had accomplished it all through modding with TuTu already). I was wrong. Furthermore, EET is EE only. I was sold on the idea of EET when I stumbled upon a google search image of the EET map and saw everything from IWD to BG2-ToB, plus all the mega-mods, all one one, glorious spread. The IWD components are still being worked on, but we all have faith that K4thos will deliver, eventually.

Check out Cahir's thread, and you'll probably find some of the things you're looking for.

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by Lightbringer

[Guest TheFreeOne]

Your responses really light me up, Lightbringer, and I really hope I could find the time to make at least this bit of research with your suggestions. I really hope that EEs are better than I feel, time will tell because I`m stuck with Android for a long while.

Returning on topic, I think I just discovered something important to understand how banters work, just playing the game, vanilla unmodded bgee, with only two little tweaks, 60fps and banttimg.2da set to FREQUENCY 150, PROBABILITY 50, REPLAYDELAY 150 and SPECIALPROBABILITY 25. Maybe i will further increase those probabilities.
Now as i previously stated, it seemed to me that some AI npc behaviour was making the banters behave NOT in a plain simple manner, and now my experience is:
Lots of banters happen when you start the game, than they tend to decrease in time play, just restart game.
I was having always the same banters between the same pair of people, Ajantis and Kivan, while Kagain and Minsc were trying repeatedly to banter charname. Until I got the idea that they were bantering the NEAREST character and tried switching them. Banters changed in a few seconds! Kagain insulted Kivan, then I put him near Minsc and insult changed. Ajantis and Dynaheir started compliment in a way I NEVER heard of, while usually exploring maps my Dynaheir always compliments the Lawful Stupid (cit.) guy with always the same compliment. Then Ajantis who was far from Kagain happened to Special insult him, with character portrait dialogue and all, so probably Special interactions do not care abaout nearest character. After this explosion of good bantering and party interactions, everything quickly calmed down and in a few minutes it all become the usual staring and siĺent party. This could make the game quite playable and enjoyable to me, not minding restarting every quarter or half hour if I want to listen some chit chat. I suppose that long term modders probably already know all of this interesting scripting details, but I was not able to find them when I needed them so I hope this will help someone, especially the guy who started this topic.

Three in the morning, this game is ruining my real life again..... back to sleep

[Lightbringer]

Fascinating observations.

There is a known consequence of speeding up banters:  you get a burst of them early on, then folks run out of things to say, and you wind up with a quiet game.

Another situation where that can appear is in a heavily content-modded game. The length of the game (often particularly the latter parts) is extended considerably, and the otherwise well-portioned pace of banters runs out of steam. This is because such a mod setup turns (say) a 100 hour game into a 120 hour game. If you have 100 hours worth of spaced out banters, then you'll have silence for the final 20 hours. Just example numbers, I don't know what the real figures would be.

Glad to hear you're enjoying yourself!

[Guest TheFreeOne]

On 5/11/2020 at 9:55 AM, Lightbringer said:

There is a known consequence of speeding up banters:  you get a burst of them early on, then folks run out of things to say, and you wind up with a quiet game.

This is completely unexpected for me, especially for most bantering, from general to special. I would understand it for unique bantering, full span relations, even if I still disagree with it because I don't have time to play the game hundreds times to discover everything, I totally agree with different playthroughs with different stories/quests for different alignment/class/race/gender/whatever HUGE character difference, but for npcs I'm my party, just.....why..?

Honestly, what I really never understood is: WHY THA HELL there is not just a simple option to personalize bantering frequency, exactly like there is one for response to command or selection? I dislike EEs mostly because I expected the Very Least was an Advanced Options panel with all the old, ultra bugged - incomplete - not well merged, different parts of code and game behaviour, polished, and made easier to play, to load, to mod, to understand. If not for this, what's the purpose of Enhancing when with old mods we already had everything?

Probably the enhancing work is going to pass completely invisible to the average user like I am. Once upon a time I had time to fight with game bugs and complicated mod tweaking. Now I got none. Your previous post is very precious for this. I hope they will understand this and in future patch try not to give new content, but to give Visible content, like Enhanced access to game options.

[Lightbringer]

There are 2 different kinds of banters. Some are situational and require a trigger like finding a particular quest, or entering a specific map, or defeating a particular foe. These are largely unaffected by speeding up tweaks and will all occur when the requirements are met -- from flooding the Cloakwood Mines to finding Sarevok's Journal, and from emerging from Chateau Irenicus into Athkatla to defeating Firkraag. Sometimes these appear as interjections -- an existing dialogue occurs and the NPC adds their comment to the mix.

The second kind is timed. These are the ones you can speed up, via various tweaks. There are a set number of them, varying between the Bioware banters, NPC Project banters, and mod NPCs. Some NPCs may have only a few, others may have dozens. If you have, say, 10 banters, having one banter occur every minute will have you run out in about 10 minutes. If you have one banter occur every hour, it'll take 10 hours to see them all.

There are a few blended types, like requiring staying at an inn, but only if you're in a romance, and it's been at least an hour since the last banter -- but those are infrequent and highly mod-dependent. The vast majority will be of the above two types.