Back for another playthrough

[Caedwyr]

Next thing to comment on:

Grey ( @jastey) has his gender listed as "other" on the character screen.  Also, his level up screen allows me to put points into all the various weapon styles.  I suspect that this is an interaction with @subtledoctor's scale of balance component and the Grey companion mod.  It may be related somewhat to how the Wolfhound Kit is set up.

 

Also for Grey, a few typo and phrasing corrections from the dialogue I've seen so far.

Quote

@3    = ~And... Imoen. I have a slight suspicion... But it doesn't matter.~
@6    = ~We were ambushed!~
@9    = ~It must be a powerful foe, if he was able to kill Gorion. I can't believe it!~

 

Edited July 21, 2020 by Caedwyr

[jastey]

40 minutes ago, Caedwyr said:

Grey ( @jastey) has his gender listed as "other" on the character screen

That was the only solution I could think of so SharTeel doesn't chose Grey as strongest male to fight her. Other solutions welcome.

Concerning the pips I need to check, but originally he should only have knifes, hammers, and two weapon style available, I think.

Hull's portrait: there is nothing I can do on BG1RE's side, I'm afraid.

The "childhood friend" uses normal ingame scripts I guess, so if those make gim quaff a portion there is not much I can do (other than remove the potion from his inventory.)

Thanks for the infos!

[Caedwyr]

16 minutes ago, jastey said:

That was the only solution I could think of so SharTeel doesn't chose Grey as strongest male to fight her. Other solutions welcome.

Concerning the pips I need to check, but originally he should only have knifes, hammers, and two weapon style available, I think.

Hull's portrait: there is nothing I can do on BG1RE's side, I'm afraid.

The "childhood friend" uses normal ingame scripts I guess, so if those make gim quaff a portion there is not much I can do (other than remove the potion from his inventory.)

Thanks for the infos!

Does/can SharTeel also check the race field?  I guess the other question is if the "other" is a default gender string or if it is something you add.  Right now it stands out slightly because it is all lower case while all the other gender fields on characters start with a capital letter.

If you added the text "other", then you could change that field so it says "Male dog" or just "Dog".

Separate from all that, there's some potential for some cross-mod banter between Grey and Haiss.  I'm expecting a lot from their discussions!

Edited July 21, 2020 by Caedwyr

[Caedwyr]

More issues.

When I got Grey, I tried out the SCS added innate that lets me change the kit/class of an NPC.  However, I ended up cancelling out without selecting any new kit.  After saving, exiting, and reloading I do no longer have the kit selection innate available on Grey or on any of the other NPCs I have gotten since (Imoen, Xzar, Montaron).  They all have had two innates that let them select a weapon/style proficiency and the thief characters (Imoen, Montaron) both have several innates that let them add +5% to one or more thief skills.  I'm not sure how many of these selections are because I have the "Use ToB style NPCs" option from the Tweaks Anthology and how many are related to SCS.

@CamDawg, @DavidW.

Party AI is turned on (SCS Ease of Use).

[subtledoctor]

3 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

Keldorn: Normal Stride: Keldorn

I’ve been getting similar in my game. It was Aerie for a while. I have since recruited Aerie and she is fine, and does not have the Quickstride or Normal Stride abilities. Now I routinely get the Normal Stride message about “Ammale” and “Joaen.” Seems harmless, but I can’t make heads or tails of why the message pops up.

[Caedwyr]

I don't get the message every time I load the game either.  It seems harmless, though it'd be nice to track down the cause.

[DavidW]

If you have innates that let you select a weapon proficiency, I think you must have another mod installed that's trying to do something similar to SCS's NPC customisation and management component (I'm not sure which). That will almost certainly lead to compatibility problems.

[Caedwyr]

I just checked the readme of Scales of Balance and realize that this is because of
 

Quote

Weapon Proficiency Overhaul (WPO): Overall Overhaul

This component makes serious changes and it has been rather hard to get various game mechanisms to work with it, especially dual-classing and NPCs. To catch them up, joinable NPCs will have several innate abilities that allow you to choose more proficiencies for them.

Compatibility: this component is generally not compatible with stuff like the weapon proficiency changes in Tweaks Anthology. Choose one proficiency system mod and stick with it.

It looks like I should probably choose one or the other.

I think there may also be a conflict with the Tweaks Anthology ToB Style NPCs, which results in being allowed to choose a lot more weapon proficiencies than I should be allowed.  On further consideration, I realize that ToB style NPCs is going to result in a lot of extra proficiencies, since it sets the NPC level to 0 and allows the player to level the character up, but WPO may not take this into account.  My install order has ToB Style NPCs install first for what it is worth.

Edited July 21, 2020 by Caedwyr

[Caedwyr]

Another bug report:

Vienxay in my game is fine when she joins my party, however I am using the ToB NPC option in the Tweaks Anthology and once I level her up so she is 1/1 thief/mage in her class levels she changes to have 0/1 HP.  I'm guessing that there's an interaction that isn't working well between these mods.

I'm thinking I might want to remove ToB NPCs since it seems to be involved in a lot of issues and I already have enough mods that are interacting with the leveling process.

[jastey]

3 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

I guess the other question is if the "other" is a default gender string or if it is something you add.  Right now it stands out slightly because it is all lower case while all the other gender fields on characters start with a capital letter.

If you added the text "other", then you could change that field so it says "Male dog" or just "Dog".

It's a gender choice given by the Engine. Female is 2 , Male is 1, Other is 3 and then there's also Neither, Illusionary, Summoned, and some more. It's original lines from the game, no idea why they are not spelled consistently.

3 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

Does/can SharTeel also check the race field?

In BGT it's just an transaction using StrongestOfMale. Of course I could change that and add a check so that is not Grey, but then I wouldn't know how to check for the second strongest male. Also, by setting his gender I do not run into similar problems in the future.

 

[jastey]

5 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

Also for Grey, a few typo and phrasing corrections

Thanks, integrated locally.

 

[Caedwyr]

Another thing related to the Vienxay only having 1 HP upon joining.  Jaheira only had 4 hp when she joined the party (although Khalid had 17 I think.)  With 17 constitution, I think what is happening is that some of the NPCs are not getting their level 1 HP and are instead only getting their bonus HP based on their constitution.  I'm wondering if this is an interaction between

Scales of Balance - Hit Dice Overhaul - Revised HP progression Closer to Average

and

Tweaks Anthology - ToB Style NPCs

Strangely enough Helga, Montaron, and Xzar all had normal HP totals (Xzar actually had 7 HP which is higher than I remember)

 

[DavidW]

9 hours ago, jastey said:

That was the only solution I could think of so SharTeel doesn't chose Grey as strongest male to fight her. Other solutions welcome.

At the start of Shar-Teel’s dialog, cast a spell that sets Grey’s gender to ‘Other’. At the end of it, cast another spell that resets it to ‘male’.

[CamDawg]

7 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

I just checked the readme of Scales of Balance and realize that this is because of
 

It looks like I should probably choose one or the other.

I think there may also be a conflict with the Tweaks Anthology ToB Style NPCs, which results in being allowed to choose a lot more weapon proficiencies than I should be allowed.  On further consideration, I realize that ToB style NPCs is going to result in a lot of extra proficiencies, since it sets the NPC level to 0 and allows the player to level the character up, but WPO may not take this into account.  My install order has ToB Style NPCs install first for what it is worth.

ToB-style NPCs just takes the lowest-level *existing* creature files and copies it over the other, higher-level versions. These 'new' higher-level creature files are then adjusted to keep their old set of known spells, inventory, and XP totals. It doesn't mess with pips on either end.

[subtledoctor]

11 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

Grey ... level up screen allows me to put points into all the various weapon styles.

Yeah, this is probably because he has a fighter kit.  @jastey if you tell me the kit name (as in, "ADD_KIT ~_________~), I can carve out an exception and set styles to zero, or whatever you want.  (I probably need to do this for Wilson, too.)

31 minutes ago, CamDawg said:

ToB-style NPCs just takes the lowest-level *existing* creature files and copies it over the other, higher-level versions. These 'new' higher-level creature files are then adjusted to keep their old set of known spells, inventory, and XP totals. It doesn't mess with pips on either end.

Agree.  I'm playing with SoB and CDTweaks TOB-Style NPCs right now and they are working fine.

5 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

I'm wondering if this is an interaction between Scales of Balance - Hit Dice Overhaul - Revised HP progression Closer to Average and Tweaks Anthology - ToB Style NPCs

I don't think so?  Scales of Balance actually gives a few more HPs to each static NPC file:

  LPF ADD_CRE_EFFECT INT_VAR opcode=17 target=1 timing=1 power=1 paramater1=4 parameter2=0 END
  LPF ADD_CRE_EFFECT INT_VAR opcode=18 target=1 timing=9 power=1 paramater1=4 parameter2=0 END

Admittedly the method is primitive (it uses the old and  "PATCH_IF biography > 0 && biography < 2147483647" to identify joinable people) but... unless I'm missing an issue, the above will give everyone 4 extra HPs.  So nobody should have 0/1, that should become 4/5 with SoB.

9 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

I tried out the SCS added innate that lets me change the kit/class of an NPC.  However, I ended up cancelling out without selecting any new kit.  After saving, exiting, and reloading ... other NPCs ... all have had two innates that let them select a weapon/style proficiency

This is from Scales of Balance, and is intentional.  The Proficiency Overhaul allows you to have two more proficiencies at level one compared to the base game.  This is easy to fix when generating a character - I just increase the values in PROFS.2da.  But for joinable NPCs, they are static .CRE files with their proficiencies set according to the vanilla game.  Rather than arbitrarily decide myself that Shar-Teel should have an extra proficiency in halberds, or something like that, I give them two innate abilities that will allow the player to choose. NOTE: the yellow-tinged innates only allow you to choose a base proficiency - not advance from proficiency to specialization.  So you should use those immediately, before using any other methods (similar green-tinged innates or the level-up screen) to advance your proficiencies.

8 hours ago, DavidW said:

If you have innates that let you select a weapon proficiency, I think you must have another mod installed that's trying to do something similar to SCS's NPC customisation and management component (I'm not sure which). That will almost certainly lead to compatibility problems.

Not necessarily.  I use extra innates, rather than some more in-depth system, in order to use a light touch.  This way they are purely additive, and the worst thing that happens is the player might get a couple extra proficiencies - not the end of the world.  (And as I described, this only lets you be proficient in a couple extra weapons - not specialized or better - so the overall impact on gameplay should be fairly small.)

This works in concert with my own NPC customization mod, NPC_EE.  But you can address it fairly easily in SCS.  I've never used the SCS customization component, but I assume is is triggered by an ability?  I.e. there is a .SPL used to trigger a dialogue, or something like that?  In that case you can add something like this:

PATCH_FOR_EACH letter IN ~a~ ~b~ ~c~ ~d~ ~e~ ~f~ ~g~ ~h~ ~i~ ~j~ ~k~ ~l~ ~m~ ~n~ ~o~ ~p~ BEGIN
  LPF ADD_SPELL_EFFECT INT_VAR opcode = 172 target = 1 timing = 9 STR_VAR resource = EVAL ~d5pr0f%letter%~ END
  LPF ADD_SPELL_EFFECT INT_VAR opcode = 172 target = 1 timing = 9 STR_VAR resource = EVAL ~d5prof%letter%~ END
END

That way, when you trigger the SCS customization, it will eliminate all Scales of Balance-based bonus proficiencies, and the NPC will use the SCS system to get proficiencies.*  Whereas, if the NPC does not use the SCS system, they will retain those two innate abilities from SoB in order to comport with the modified PROFS.2da.

* (I assume the SCS system reads PROFS.2da and gives NPCs proficiencies accordingly.  If on the other hand SCS assumes the vanilla proficiency system, then this can all be ignored and SoB's bonus proficiencies should be left intact to be added on top of the SCS changes.)

8 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

I just checked the readme of Scales of Balance and realize that this is because of [SoB vs. CDTweaks]. It looks like I should probably choose one or the other.

That compatibility warning is about a couple specific CDTweaks components - there is one that makes the proficiency system mimic the old BG1 system (large swords, small swords, blunt weapons, missile weapons, etc.) and another that mimics the old vanilla IWD system.  Those particular components of CDTweaks should not be used with SoB's proficiency overhaul, since they are all making ground-up design changes to how weapons are grouped.  But any other CDTweaks components (e.g. TOB-Style NPCs) should be totally compatible.

Edited July 21, 2020 by subtledoctor