Made another biggish BG2 install

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

except when he returned to his place in the party, the Symbol of Amaunator had disappeared from his inventory!

I think items marked as quest items will automatically be moved to the rest of the party's inventory when booted, but if your inventory was full, may have been dropped on the ground wherever you booted him instead?

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

I know from having played Lava's Innershade mod that Beamdog has hard-coded the EE game to make it impossible to harm a creature with a child animation

It's borderline unconstitutional that I can't chunk children anymore. Literally unplayable - thanks, Beamdog.

[kjeron]

8 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

It's borderline unconstitutional that I can't chunk children anymore. Literally unplayable - thanks, Beamdog.

Don't worry, it's just a line in the animation's INI file, nothing hardcoded.

[ambient]
false_color=1
invulnerable=1  // <-- switch to 0 for all your massacring needs
list_type=0
path_smooth=0
resref=NBOYH

[subtledoctor]

That change probably ought to be done by those mods, then...

Anyway, looks like I can load a save from back inside Firkraag's illusionary demiplane thing. That's not too far back. Though, TBH, if it means I have to go through Porthpentyrch again, I might have to cast Improved Haste and skip this FFT stage... it's a bit of a slog.

[Guest jimmy]

6 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I think items marked as quest items will automatically be moved to the rest of the party's inventory when booted, but if your inventory was full, may have been dropped on the ground wherever you booted him instead?

It's borderline unconstitutional that I can't chunk children anymore. Literally unplayable - thanks, Beamdog.

...but, just... why? *sigh* well, at least they didn't go any further than that. I'm pretty sure the plot impicitly involved the death of children, because they die in wars too and the plot still involves big armies and towns and cities under seige etc. 

[jastey]

9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

It's borderline unconstitutional that I can't chunk children anymore. Literally unplayable - thanks, Beamdog.

Wait, what? This makes an evil path of bg1re's "Necromancer's trouble" unfeasible.

[jastey]

9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

It's borderline unconstitutional that I can't chunk children anymore. Literally unplayable - thanks, Beamdog.

I think they should broaden this - women shouldn't be killable, either, as well as... hmm, halflings! And cats!!

[Bartimaeus]

19 minutes ago, jastey said:

I think they should broaden this - women shouldn't be killable, either, as well as... hmm, halflings! And cats!!

I think at a certain stage in our lives, we all come to realize that violence is kind of inherently uncool, which is why I will be making a mod that enables the invulnerability flag for not just children, but for everyone, so that we can all live in our righteous, post-violence fantasy world. It's simply the right thing to do.

Alternatively, Beamdog should introduce a flag that forces an animation to always chunk when it's killed, because that would be even more simply the right-er thing to do for the children.

[The Artisan]

Does that invulnerability line even work? I see it's there in the .ini and yet (yes, I'm a horrible person)

Edited October 28, 2021 by Artemius I

[Guest Jimmy]

A logical follow-up question to the invulnerable children thing is how old do people have to get before all sympathy is lost for them? 

[Bartimaeus]

5 minutes ago, Guest Jimmy said:

A logical follow-up question to the invulnerable children thing is how old do people have to get before all sympathy is lost for them? 

When children become 'adults', in that sense, is probably something better suited to a "serious discussion" thread than here, given the number of different sociological and cultural components...as well as how it's changed throughout the ages for different groups of people in different places. Right now in the Western world, I'd probably place it around 21, but it's by no means a concrete rule...in a more medieval-ish, violent setting like Baldur's Gate 1/2, I'd probably place it more at like 16-17.

[jastey]

I apologize for derailing the topic. I just can't wrap my head around such a change in a fantasy computer / console game.

[Guest Graion@Work]

This change isn't really new in nature though. The possibility of killing a child for some reason triggers a lot of the content review boards (like ESRB, etc). The early Fallouts outright hid the children in Europe and a lot of other games just outright sidestep the possibility via not featuring them (like the Mafia game series). I think even original Warcraft 3 prevented this with the Arthas culling mission where children ended up replaced with adult people to escape from the razed buildings.

See also https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HideYourChildren

[Thacobell]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

When children become 'adults', in that sense, is probably something better suited to a "serious discussion" thread than here, given the number of different sociological and cultural components...as well as how it's changed throughout the ages for different groups of people in different places. Right now in the Western world, I'd probably place it around 21, but it's by no means a concrete rule...in a more medieval-ish, violent setting like Baldur's Gate 1/2, I'd probably place it more at like 16-17.

When their animation changes

[InKal]

9 hours ago, jastey said:

I think they should broaden this - women shouldn't be killable, either, as well as... hmm, halflings! And cats!!

you wouldn't hurt a gnome, would ya?

[subtledoctor]

9 hours ago, Artemius I said:

Does that invulnerability line even work? I see it's there in the .ini and yet

Well, I couldn't progress in Lava's Innershade mod until I changed the animation of one of the dream enemies, so either that line works or it's something else. I gather it has to do with the jurisdiction in which a copy of the game was sold? So maybe it's okay in your area.

3 hours ago, Thacobell said:

When their animation changes

I've changed my animation to "dad bod" so I guess I am chunkable.

...

Meantime, I could reload from an earlier save, in the Windspear Hills. I did that, "freed" Ceinwen from the Cowled Wizards, "liberated" Isra's equipment that she stole from me, and moved toward eliminating the nest of vampires in Bodhi's lair.  Nothing too difficult - as expected, Tanova the caster was a challenge while everything else fell pretty quickly. Talked to Aran, big 50K XP reward for everyone, and great, 4 people level up.  I head to the Copper Coronet and click my 'prepare spells' buttons so I can take advantage of the new spell slots, and then I realize I forgot to cast my Sequencers and Contingencies beforehand. No problem right, the entrance to the Copper Coronet is an autosave point, I'll just load that up and set my contingencies before resting.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

My savegames are still being corrupted. I load the save and the app crashes. Which means I need to do all of that stuff over again. And also, that this might need to become a no-reload game.

I can't figure out what is happening that crashes the app upon loading a save. I think changing that child vampire's animation is actually unrelated, just a case of coincidental timing. I can make savegames, so I can export them and inspect them in NI... but I don't know what to look for. I have 1400 variables set, and each spellcaster has between 800 and 2200 effects applied to them, which sounds like a lot but I'm pretty sure those numbers aren't really different from the safe saves. Here's what I've done between the safe savegame and a savegame that crashes:

• Let Isra back into the party (which I think advances her quest a bit) and then let her go again
• Sold some items to Ribald
• Forged some items with Cromwell - some from the vanilla game and some from the Item Upgrade mod
• Met with Ceinwen Ravenhair and got the hollow sword from her, which advances the Fishing For Trouble quest a bit and spawns the child vampire
• Purchased some items from the Temple of Lathander, which means entering the Temple District and potentially spawning Ajantis & co.

...I think that's it. Before doing that stuff I can load saves; after, the game crashes. I haven't tested to narrow it down any more than that, because I'm not made of time. But man is this frustrating. I'm not into no-reload runs. I like to be able to load a save if I forget to cast Contingency before resting. If anyone has any ideas about what I should look for in NI, please brainstorm away!