The 2.6 patch is kind of bad news for me

[temnix]

Not that I expect to suffer particularly from Beamdog's insistence on changing trivia that can nonetheless break mods instead of moving forward to add new features, but there are some properties of this 2.6 patch that threaten to blow my boat out of the water.

1) 32-bit systems are no longer supported. Who came up with that idea? Couldn't they make that optional? Heck, I make my mods on a 32-bit machine. Why shouldn't I be able to play on one? The main problem is that most players will naturally think an update an all-around must-have and download it without thinking, and I'm going to have to make my spells, for example, work on 2.6. But how am I supposed to do that without getting mysel a new computer or forcing others to do the same?

2) Pillar spells. Apparently Pillar effects now work differently, so the animation BAMs probably also must be remade. Well, I took a hell of a pain to make my improved Call Lightning under an old system, redrawing and stacking those images:

It's not just that it may be extra work to remake the BAMs, it may not even be possible, for all I know. I'd like an explanation how Pillar works now from someone who knows.

3) "Hit Dice | Spells affecting creatures based on their hit dice now work as expected." What does that mean? And also:

4) "Movement Effects | Movement effects from spells such as Entangle now relate properly with stacking or counteracting effects from spells or the environment." That's welcome by itself, but on what level is the change? The Movement rate bonus effect?

5) "Raise Dead & Resurrection | Raise Dead and Resurrection type spells can no longer be cast on living targets, only dead targets." How did they do that? Is this something about the Dead actor target type? Because I have an army of the dead on the back shelf waiting to be animated, and if I can't raise them after two years, they'll drag me under.

All in all, this is just annoying and potentially disruptive. I really wonder how I'm going to tell players "this is only for version 2.5," when all of them are going to be running 2.6. That's probably an immediate no-go.

[Daeros_Trollkiller]

That's a nice call lightning animation!  It should still work in 2.6.  The pillars I have in SoDtoBG2 Item Upgrade work fine after the update.

 

I haven't played 2.6 much at all, but here's what I suspect, or am able to see using IE, on the rest:

1.  64-bit only going forward: this decision was likely made so they wouldn't have to maintain two client types.   Less overhead.  And I can't say that I blame them, the Athlon 64 and core2 duo's came out in the very early 2000's.

2. Should still work.  Did you create your own projectiles or just replace the BAMs in existing?  If its the former, it should be fine.  From what I can see, all they did was replace the multi-sequence BAMs with a single sequence version.

3.  I'm sure all they did here was add dice thrown/maximum and dice size/minimum level values to existing spells that were supposed to have them but didn't so that they will work as intended.

4.  I have to imagine this means that movement values are calculated instead of absolutes, so if a character with +2 movement bonus gets hit with a slow, they still move faster than a character without the bonus.  Just guessing on this one, haven't done any comparative analysis yet

5.   This one is easy, pull it up in IE:  They added in an effect using opcode 324 - it checks to see if the creature targeted is dead.

 

I think you might be pleasantly surprised once you start working with 2.6 more.  I *totally* understand where you are coming from though.  I've spent the last 11 months working on a HUGE update to SoD2BG2IU, and I was really worried about how much I would have to go back and fix, or if I would have to do something similar, have a 2.5-only version for awhile.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Daeros_Trollkiller

[temnix]

kjeron has already explained to me about the Pillar. The rest looks like nothing to worry about. If the changes hadn't been phrased in such a grandeloquent manner, it would be more obvious that Beamdog has simply tightened up their own spells and animations rather than done anything to the mechanics - like, expanded what they could accomplish. I was too alarmed. 2.6 looks like nothing at all. But it's better to be disappointed than ruined.