SubtleMods: Magic Battles Revised - streamlined rules for mage duels

[subtledoctor]

6 hours ago, morpheus562 said:

Major Globe of Invulnerability personally threw a wonderful wrench in my AI scripts, more so than any new spell from other spell mods before and after it, as it blocks all spells of level 5 and below. Namely, this impacts Breach which is the only way for many games to take down PfMW and the like. I'm personally not familiar with this mod and how it alters spell combat, but it is definitely something to consider.

There is a reason Demivrgvs was considering adding Major GOI to Spell Revisions, but ultimately decided not to...

At any rate that's fine for our purposes. This mod includes elements of my old "breachier breach" concept which allows Breach specifically to bypass GOI-style spell level protections (so it can affect liches and rakshasa without needing SCS-style whitelists), but still by blocked by and interact normally with spell deflections. So with MBR, Breach will work against targets with Major GOI active.

(I'm not actually sure that's a good thing - it's something not accounted for specifically, and in general this mod wants you to remove spell protections before removing combat protections. But, to the extent your scripts are designed to cast Breach at people with Major GOI, then using MBR will "fix" them in the presence of MiH, in that their scripted tactics will actually be effective.)

[morpheus562]

3 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

There is a reason Demivrgvs was considering adding Major GOI to Spell Revisions, but ultimately decided not to...

At any rate that's fine for our purposes. This mod includes elements of my old "breachier breach" concept which allows Breach specifically to bypass GOI-style spell level protections (so it can affect liches and rakshasa without needing SCS-style whitelists), but still by blocked by and interact normally with spell deflections. So with MBR, Breach will work against targets with Major GOI active.

(I'm not actually sure that's a good thing - it's something not accounted for specifically, and in general this mod wants you to remove spell protections before removing combat protections. But, to the extent your scripts are designed to cast Breach at people with Major GOI, then using MBR will "fix" them in the presence of MiH, in that their scripted tactics will actually be effective.)

Work was done so my scripts check for and do NOT cast Breach if Major GOI is active. That needs to be taken down first by a level 6 or higher spell since it will block breach.

[subtledoctor]

Had an idea: I was thinking about Inquisitors' Dispel Magic.  In the vanilla game it is a simple and reliable way to turn enemy mages into sad unprotected lumps. Which is ultimately unsatisfying - yes the special paladin should be able to defeat the  evil wizard, but the paladin is supposed to strive to do so. It' shouldn't be easy.

MBR's  "mini-Breach" Dispel Magic is great for this - it lets the paladin chip away at a wizard's protections. It works more slowly, and so keeps things interesting. The problem with MBR's version is that it is blocked by spell protections, and a competent evil  wizard should have spell protections up, and a paladin has no way to take down spell protections.

So... what if the Inquisitor's version of Dispel could bypass spell protections? It solves the spell protection problem, but it's still slower and therefore more dramatic than the old cheesy way. Yes?

[Endarire]

Did you just answer your own question?

[Quester]

Sounds reasonable.

[subtledoctor]

18 hours ago, Endarire said:

Did you just answer your own question?

Fair enough!

[subtledoctor]

Whoops, what do you know, the existing version of SPCL231.spl already works this way!  I guess I'll just... leave this alone, then.

[Chosen]

I noticed shield of the archons spell text isn't changed by MBR and looked at the mod files with NearInfinity, I think there is bug preventing its installation since sppr701 seems unchanged. This is a new EET installion with IWDfication -SRR -SCS -MBR setup. Somehow dwsw618 got new description for shield of the archons(but not correct effects). I don't think this is a new bug ,my old 1.4 install had the same problem just haven't noticed then.

WeiDU.log

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, Chosen said:

I noticed shield of the archons spell text isn't changed by MBR and looked at the mod files with NearInfinity, I think there is bug preventing its installation

Good catch, just a small typo causing this, fixed in version 1.7.1.

[Relay]

Are you still planning to keep this mod compatible with Spell Revisions? I noticed the code to modify the visual's for dispelling screen is no longer present. I also saw the SAY NAME for most of the magic attack's were still commented out incase you forgot that

This mod is criminally underrated here, I have no interest in playing without this system installed anymore.

[NdranC]

A couple issues I've noticed while testing:

1. The setting to customize the level of Spell Thrust is not working correctly when selecting levels other than 1 or 3. For example, if I set it to level 2, the spell created spwi227.spl is still set to spell level 1 and it doesn't show up in the list for sorcerers for example. Manually setting the spell level to 2 fixed the issue. The description is not getting updated at all by the mod as well which would be nice.

2. As mentioned by the previous poster, Dispelling Screen has a very tiny animation for the buff spturni2.bam which I assume it's the zero out hardcoded animations bit of the code but nothing is replacing it.

3. Spell descriptions reference spells that are not installed or lies about certain interactions. For example, when using SRR Breach mentions that it can work on Fire Shield and Acid Sheath but in testing this doesn't  seem to be the case.

4. Spell descriptions are formatted for the old games and doesn't account of EE style descriptions. Which would also be nice.

5. According to the description of the mod, the mod doesn't change the animations for Minor Globe and Globe as to be able to differentiate them at a glance. Is there a reason for this omission?

Edited June 2, 2023 by NdranC

[subtledoctor]

On 6/2/2023 at 7:30 PM, NdranC said:

Spell descriptions reference spells that are not installed or lies about certain interactions. For example, when using SRR Breach mentions that it can work on Fire Shield and Acid Sheath but in testing this doesn't  seem to be the case.

The description is probably borrowed from an install with certain mods installed, like SCS. But, understand, there is no reasonable way to make sure this is correct. You might install various mods that alter the behavior of this spell, and there’s no way to know what the effects are or to have the spell description respond to it. The spell description is just a static body of text. I don’t like the idea of specifying the list of Breachable spells, for just this reason. That list has almost always been incorrect in my games, when I installed spell mods + SCS. I think it would be better to just say “this spell removes all spells in the Combat Protections category.” But I’ve had this discussion before and many people disagreed with me. So… I guess give the people what they want. 

On 6/2/2023 at 7:30 PM, NdranC said:

As mentioned by the previous poster, Dispelling Screen has a very tiny animation for the buff spturni2.bam which I assume it's the zero out hardcoded animations bit of the code but nothing is replacing it.

DS has an animation in my game, with this mod installed… 

On 6/2/2023 at 7:30 PM, NdranC said:

Spell descriptions are formatted for the old games and doesn't account of EE style descriptions.

I generally model spell descriptions on the Spell Revisions style since 1) I think it is superior, and 2) even with formatting differences, the SR style gets the relevant info across with clarity. In my game with a bunch of mods there is no way things will ever my totally uniform; so being clear and informative is top priority. 

On 6/2/2023 at 7:30 PM, NdranC said:

According to the description of the mod, the mod doesn't change the animations for Minor Globe and Globe as to be able to differentiate them at a glance. Is there a reason for this omission?

I don’t follow. I don’t think these have ever been different. Am I wrong? 

[NdranC]

32 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

The description is probably borrowed from an install with certain mods installed, like SCS. But, understand, there is no reasonable way to make sure this is correct. You might install various mods that alter the behavior of this spell, and there’s no way to know what the effects are or to have the spell description respond to it. The spell description is just a static body of text. I don’t like the idea of specifying the list of Breachable spells, for just this reason. That list has almost always been incorrect in my games, when I installed spell mods + SCS. I think it would be better to just say “this spell removes all spells in the Combat Protections category.” But I’ve had this discussion before and many people disagreed with me. So… I guess give the people what they want. 

Understandable I actually agree with you. I would rather a description that is vague to avoid the risk of outright lying. With some many mods making so many changes it's hard to track if something is behaving correctly or it's a bug specially when the description doesn't help.

34 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

DS has an animation in my game, with this mod installed… 

I'm using the lastest EET and IRR  + SRR. Checking the spell in nearinfinity it says the visual effect attached is spturni2 which when opened is really really tiny as to make it functionally invisible in game. Reading the code I think this is the fault of the "zero out hardcoded animations" but I don't see it being replaced by anything else. The previous mod you helped make https://github.com/Gibberlings3/Better-Spell-Visuals does work correctly and has the proper disk animation that is brown and faded. Looking in your data folder that animation is there as diskBlue but I guess it's not being used? I'm not sure I'm not too familiar with weidu.

42 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

I generally model spell descriptions on the Spell Revisions style since 1) I think it is superior, and 2) even with formatting differences, the SR style gets the relevant info across with clarity. In my game with a bunch of mods there is no way things will ever my totally uniform; so being clear and informative is top priority. 

It's just nice for consistency sake but obviously you don't have to support it if you don't want to. I use SRR which does support it but if its a common trend among spell mods maybe I should force to use the old bg style.

44 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

I don’t follow. I don’t think these have ever been different. Am I wrong? 

I meant you have the different bams from working on Better Spell Visuals.

Both of which are slightly different than the default vanilla one

I'm not necessarily saying you should use one or the other but I was wondering if there was a reason as to why you didn't attempt to make Minor Globe and Globe distinguishable at a glance from each other.

[NdranC]

On 6/2/2023 at 7:30 PM, NdranC said:

1. The setting to customize the level of Spell Thrust is not working correctly when selecting levels other than 1 or 3. For example, if I set it to level 2, the spell created spwi227.spl is still set to spell level 1 and it doesn't show up in the list for sorcerers for example. Manually setting the spell level to 2 fixed the issue. The description is not getting updated at all by the mod as well which would be nice.

I think I found the issue.

// also, change spell thrust to a different level

ACTION_IF (st_lvl != 3) AND (st_lvl > 0) AND (st_lvl < 10) BEGIN

  OUTER_SET st_known_level = (st_lvl - 1)

  OUTER_SPRINT stkl ~#%st_known_level%~

// this might be installed late, so need to check for L1Cantrips, and add the op261 stuff here

  COPY_EXISTING ~spwi321.spl~ ~override~
  ADD_SPELL ~override/spwi321.spl~ 2 %st_lvl% WIZARD_SPELL_THRUST
    SAY NAME1 @123211
	SAY UNIDENTIFIED_DESC @12321
	WRITE_LONG 0x34 1
  LAF RES_NUM_OF_SPELL_NAME
	STR_VAR spell_name = ~WIZARD_SPELL_THRUST~
	RET spell_res
  END
  ACTION_IF FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~scrl6j.itm~ THEN BEGIN

This is part of the MBR.tpa file. The "WRITE_LONG 0x34 1" is always setting the spell to level 1 regardless of the %st_lvl% variable. Changing this to "WRITE_LONG 0x34 %st_lvl%" fixed the issue for me. This is why it was only working when set to 3 (it would skip this patch) or 1 since it was forcing the level to 1 already.

Mind you, I'm not very knowledgeable with weidu so I might be missing something else.

Edited June 6, 2023 by NdranC

[NdranC]

On 6/5/2023 at 2:37 PM, subtledoctor said:

DS has an animation in my game, with this mod installed… 

On 6/5/2023 at 2:37 PM, subtledoctor said:

I don’t follow. I don’t think these have ever been different. Am I wrong?

I managed to fix both of these issues from myself by borrowing some code you wrote for the Better Spell Visuals mod.

/*
15) add discblue vvc aand bam (renamed) to k1#scre
*/
COPY ~%MOD_FOLDER%/data/bam-vvc/discblue.bam~ ~override/dkdscblu.bam~
COPY ~%MOD_FOLDER%/data/bam-vvc/discblue.vvc~ ~override/dkdscblu.vvc~
  WRITE_ASCII 0x08 ~dkdscblu~ #8

COPY_EXISTING ~k1#scre.spl~ ~override~
  LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 142 opcode = 215 parameter1 = 0 parameter2 = 1 resist_dispel = 2 STR_VAR resource = ~dkdscblu~ END

/*
16) overwrite minorglb vvc and bam in MGOI
*/
COPY ~%MOD_FOLDER%/data/bam-vvc/minorglb.bam~ ~override~
COPY ~%MOD_FOLDER%/data/bam-vvc/minorglb.vvc~ ~override~

/*
17) add myglobep vvc and bam (renamed) in GOI
*/
COPY ~%MOD_FOLDER%/data/bam-vvc/myglobep.bam~ ~override/dkglobep.bam~
COPY ~%MOD_FOLDER%/data/bam-vvc/myglobep.vvc~ ~override/dkglobep.vvc~
  WRITE_ASCII 0x08 ~dkglobep~ #8

COPY_EXISTING ~spwi602.spl~ ~override~
			  ~dwsw602.spl~ ~override~
			  ~staf12b.spl~ ~override~
  LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 155 opcode = 215 parameter1 = 0 parameter2 = 1 resist_dispel = 2 STR_VAR resource = ~dkglobep~ END
IF_EXISTS BUT_ONLY

Adding this to MBR.tpa both fixed Dispelling Screen and added a different enough animation to Minor Globe of Invulnerability vs Globe of Invulnerability. It's not perfect because I find the animation too dark but might be better than nothing.

Edited June 7, 2023 by NdranC