[Bug report] EE content bugs

[subtledoctor]

Ouch. 

[Almateria]

Hi Cam,

Please make Resurrection work as Heal when cast on live party members. 2.6 """"fixed"""" this long-standing game mechanic for literally no reason

Love,
Syl

[jmerry]

That change was intentional and discussed during the 2.6 beta. It's not a bug. Allowing resurrection spells to heal the living (Resurrection, Mass Raise Dead, Rod of Resurrection) is fine as a tweak, but not fixpack material.

I have a component for it in my tweak mod. And it's one of the few components I didn't install for my current (unmodded except for my own tweaks) run.

[Sam.]

7 hours ago, jmerry said:

That change was intentional and discussed during the 2.6 beta.

Do you mind providing a link to that discussion?  I'm interested in the reasoning behind that decision.

[jacklhoward]

I was unable to get the orc vs troll waylay upon exiting coast way forest the first time as it is described here. https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Orc_vs._Troll_Waylay

Upon exiting the second time it works though.

I have v2.660 SoD.

Another trivial matter is that the rewards from freeing petrified statues in the woods due west at coast way crossing are weird. Some of them give a single magical arrow. While a guide online says the reward are a staff and potions.https://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgate/walkthrough/sod-coastwaycrossing.php

 

[jmerry]

On 5/26/2022 at 10:28 AM, CamDawg said:

As a followup, I used my code from Tweaks to compare a creatures listed hit dice vs. their theoretical maximum HP to try and identify other creatures which have artificially low HD. You'd expect at least some creatures (e.g. bosses) to have higher, illegal HP, but even with that caveat... of the ~4700 creature files in BG2EE, I had ~1600 hits for investigation.

You know, if we're going there on creature stat harmonization ... hit points are just one indicator. And you're right, there are a lot of them. I built a quick pseudo-mod to collect data on all creatures and output it as tab-delimited text (fake 2DA). That way I can import it into a spreadsheet and see patterns more easily.

Just going through the first three hundred or so BGEE creatures (sorted by class and levels), I've already spotted a bunch of obvious errors. And a bunch of creatures whose stats are such a hash that I have no idea what's right. For example, all 47 CREs with class Fighter and levels 1/2/1 have their wand and paralyzation saves switched. Five of them should be level 4 fighters, and five more have extra HP and THAC0 without the level 3-4 saves.

Then you get cases like the Cult Enforcer (the one you actually fight). He's a level 15/15 fighter/mage ... with 30 HP, no spells, THAC0 20, and an 8/6/8/10/8 save array that doesn't match anything. There's just nothing there to say what level he should be, other than not what he is.

Or there are poorly executed respecs like Farluck of the Merry Fools. THAC0, saves, HP, and spell memorization fit a level 4/5 mage/thief. He's a level 5 fighter, with armor and a generic ranged attack script.

If anyone else feels like looking through that stuff ... here's my code.

credata.zip

[jacklhoward]

When you are in the albino wyrm cabe in area bd5100 from SoD, if you exit too quickly the dialogues by companions won't trigger. And if you go to the spot for putting down the explosive the dialogues for the eyrm cave will trigger belatedly in place of the dialogue prompt that lets you put down the explosive.

 

V2.660

Edited June 6, 2022 by jacklhoward

[Guest Morgoth]

4) Better troll handling: -> see here: https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/31947-troll-handling-in-ee/?tab=comments#comment-287636

5) Fix the following bug: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1032904/#Comment_1032904

6) Add back Catmull-Rom Bicubic method. Some informations: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/74624/should-beamdog-implement-catmull-rom-bicubic-esrgan-shading

7) Restore old runehammer icon: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/82548/old-runehammer-bam-file#latest and correct Enrage icon: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/82479/enrage-is-using-the-berserk-ability-icon-again

Revenant Animation Fix:In the Enhanced Editions revenants make use of the zombie animation even though a dedicated revenant animation already exists within the game files. Revenant animation should be assigned to revenant creatures and its dedicated soundset restored (it would otherwise use the ghoul soundset.)
Note: Andrea C. should be credited for the discovery: http://www.shsforums.net/topic/61094-acs-miscellaneous-tweaks/

[DavidW]

On 5/24/2022 at 12:22 PM, CamDawg said:

This is a standard BG quest that's written with an assumption that the player takes specific actions, in a specific sequence, and breaks immediately or goes nonsensical otherwise. Perdue has a few entry points into his dialogue (listed by weight):

1. (never talked before) The normal intro where he asks about gnolls. Only specifically identifying them as gnolls and being careful not to insult him (at least not too much) "officially" gets you his quest and the variable set. There's literally only one path here.
2. (charmed) One line about him being insecure.
3. (accepted quest, but no sword) One line about hurrying up and getting his sword.
4. (has sword) One line of thanks and he explicitly says he's giving you 50 gold: "Hmph. Figured maybe he'd eaten it by now. I hope you ran 'im through once or twice to get it, at least. Now take your 50 gold and be gone." How much gold you actually receive is tied to a variable that only gets set in the initial dialogue if you threaded it successfully, so it's basically 50 or 0.
5. (always true) Stop bothering me.

So the quest reward branch (4) text assumes 50 gold, which is problematic. Unless you successfully threaded the initial dialogue, he gives you nothing as @hook71 notes. (The option to get 75 gold is actually in a disabled branch of the dialogue, so it's either 50 or nothing. He also only has 50 gold on him, which would be another roadblock.) The quest reward branch also assumes you know what he's talking about even if you never properly accepted his quest (e.g. all of the 'wrong' paths).

The upshot of this is that there's no clean fix here. I'd only suggest one change: turning in the sword always yields 50 gold. This is not out of line with other BG quests (e.g. the "wait, this was a quest?" quest) and, while I don't like the assumption that you know what he's talking about, we can't fix that without writing new dialogue or making big structural changes in the dialogue.

Do it in the Calling?

[DavidW]

On 5/26/2022 at 1:28 PM, CamDawg said:

As a followup, I used my code from Tweaks to compare a creatures listed hit dice vs. their theoretical maximum HP to try and identify other creatures which have artificially low HD. You'd expect at least some creatures (e.g. bosses) to have higher, illegal HP, but even with that caveat... of the ~4700 creature files in BG2EE, I had ~1600 hits for investigation.

From experience with SCS: this is a can of worms. At least in oBG2, it's fairly clear that the developers started off with a bunch of creature stats imported faithfully from AD&D, but then built a large fraction of creatures by ad hoc copy-paste-and-tweak from the existing creatures, with little or no attention paid to any overall logic. Beyond the most egregious cases, I'd probably recommend leaving well alone - I think finding any stable consistent definition of 'fix' will be difficult.

[CamDawg]

40 minutes ago, DavidW said:

Do it in the Calling?

Heh. A mod to cleanup all of the BG quests in this fashion would be substantial.

36 minutes ago, DavidW said:

From experience with SCS: this is a can of worms. At least in oBG2, it's fairly clear that the developers started off with a bunch of creature stats imported faithfully from AD&D, but then built a large fraction of creatures by ad hoc copy-paste-and-tweak from the existing creatures, with little or no attention paid to any overall logic. Beyond the most egregious cases, I'd probably recommend leaving well alone - I think finding any stable consistent definition of 'fix' will be difficult.

Also, this. I was hoping my scan would turn up a couple of egregious cases that I could go "look what I found", fix it, and move on. Let's stay the course and cherry-pick the obvious/egregious cases and leave the rest to the inevitable Creature Revisions mod, and its even more inevitable rival/successor, Creature Revisions Revised.

1 hour ago, Guest Morgoth said:

4) Better troll handling: -> see here: https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/31947-troll-handling-in-ee/?tab=comments#comment-287636

5) Fix the following bug: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1032904/#Comment_1032904

6) Add back Catmull-Rom Bicubic method. Some informations: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/74624/should-beamdog-implement-catmull-rom-bicubic-esrgan-shading

7) Restore old runehammer icon: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/82548/old-runehammer-bam-file#latest and correct Enrage icon: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/82479/enrage-is-using-the-berserk-ability-icon-again

Revenant Animation Fix:In the Enhanced Editions revenants make use of the zombie animation even though a dedicated revenant animation already exists within the game files. Revenant animation should be assigned to revenant creatures and its dedicated soundset restored (it would otherwise use the ghoul soundset.)
Note: Andrea C. should be credited for the discovery: http://www.shsforums.net/topic/61094-acs-miscellaneous-tweaks/

#8 is already done, the Enrage icon from #7 is done and Runehammer change is intended, #5 and #6 are some of those hardcoded things we can't fix. #4 is already working well--the conditional check is hardcoded to once/round.

[jmerry]

Right, some egregious cases. Or rather, simple cases where it's a mostly coherent stat line with just one piece that's off.

Here's one I noticed in my current playthrough: sahuagin. There are two basic stat lines for the sahuagin in their city; 19 HP/175 XP and 81 HP/3000 XP. Both of them are level 2. The 3000 XP ones should be level 10, as they have base THAC0 11 and the saves of a level 9-10 fighter.

CREs to change to level 10, all using clones of that 81 HP setup: SAHANGU, SAHCAPT0, SAHCAPT1, SAHAMB01, SAHAMB02, SAHRAMB4, SAHRAMB5, SAHRAR01, SAHRGR01, SAHRGR02, SAHRGR03, SAHRNT01, SAHPRI02, SAHAMB04, SAHAMB05, SAHGRD01, SAHGRD02, SAHGRD03, SAHRYL01

[DavidW]

On 6/5/2022 at 1:01 AM, jmerry said:

Then you get cases like the Cult Enforcer (the one you actually fight). He's a level 15/15 fighter/mage ... with 30 HP, no spells, THAC0 20, and an 8/6/8/10/8 save array that doesn't match anything. There's just nothing there to say what level he should be, other than not what he is.

Just noticed this example... this is why I came across this issue lots in SCS. My mage code runs into the Cult Enforcer, thinks, 'oooh, a 15th level fighter/mage', and hands out appropriate spells and scripting. But of course if the level isn't reliable, you can end up with some bizarrely over/underpowered creatures. Later versions are a bit more assiduous at choosing sensible levels.

 

3 hours ago, CamDawg said:

Let's stay the course and cherry-pick the obvious/egregious cases and leave the rest to the inevitable Creature Revisions mod, and its even more inevitable rival/successor, Creature Revisions Revised.

Come to think of it, you might want to look at 'stratagems/initial/bg1fix.tph', in SCS. It's my old list of fixes to BG1 files (going back to 2007) and it fixes a bunch of oddCRE file assignments (though of course SCS could work with a laxer standard for 'is it a bug?').

[Graion Dilach]

TBH, that same bottom disclaimer can also apply to EET's "BGEE fixpack" @ https://github.com/Gibberlings3/EET/blob/master/EET/lib/bgee_fixpack.tph. Especially considering that some of the references bitrot away due to a G3 update and I suspect the Aec'Letec changes are outside Fixpack scope (but I haven't looked at those changes is detail yet).

[Angel]

19 hours ago, CamDawg said:

Also, this. I was hoping my scan would turn up a couple of egregious cases that I could go "look what I found", fix it, and move on. Let's stay the course and cherry-pick the obvious/egregious cases and leave the rest to the inevitable Creature Revisions mod, and its even more inevitable rival/successor, Creature Revisions Revised.

*whistles innocently while nudging MiH Encounters & Quests out of sight under the bed*