Neera oddness when kicked

[RobinHood70]

Using the "Send BioWare NPCs to an Inn" option, I asked Neera to leave immediately after obtaining her. Instead of heading to the Friendly Arm Inn, like the normal dialogue scripts would have her do, she just does a LeaveParty() and that's it. What I think is happening after that is that her BCS takes over, making her do an EscapeArea(). That effectively removes her from the game permanently since you can't interact with her while she's escaping the area and she has nowhere specific to go to.

You can seemingly work around the problem by removing her while you're in the Friendly Arm, in which case the BCS condition falls through and she doesn't try to escape the area.

 

[RobinHood70]

The specific BCS section that I believe is causing the trouble is:
 

IF
	!IfValidForPartyDialog("NEERA")  // Neera
	Global("NEERA_START","GLOBAL",1)
	Global("NEERAPARTY","GLOBAL",0)
	!AreaCheck("AR2301")  // Friendly Arm Inn, ground floor (Bentley Mirrorshade, Khalid, Jaheira)
	!AreaCheck("OH2010")  // Neera - Adoy's Enclave, interior
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetDialog("NEERAP")
		EscapeArea()
END

Edited April 23, 2022 by RobinHood70

[jmerry]

The Beamdog NPCs already go back to their base spots when dismissed and not immediately re-recruited; this component doesn't touch them.

[RobinHood70]

It does in some way because when I install that component, leaving everything else untouched, the actions for Neera's dialogue (below) lose the last line that sends her to the Friendly Arm. Same goes for the dialogue where she's already in the Friendly Arm, where she loses the MoveToPoint instruction.
SetGlobal("KickedOut","LOCALS",1)
SetGlobal("NEERAPARTY","GLOBAL",0)
LeaveParty()
EscapeAreaMove("AR2301",755,390,SW)

[RobinHood70]

I just looked at the Weidu script and the problem seems to arise from cdtweaks\dlg\depart_ee.d where the first two lines replace the EscapeArea/MoveToPoint lines with nothing. I'm not sure what the intent of that is, but it doesn't seem to be working right because Neera is definitely not in the Friendly Arm after being dismissed, nor does she stay on the map where she's dismissed. Also, NI confirms that in the save file, she's not assigned to *any* map.

Edited April 23, 2022 by RobinHood70

[jmerry]

OK. I've only actually played with this component in v9, and it was changed in v10. "inns_nonbg.tpa" didn't even exist in v9. Instead, it was "wait_at_inns.tpa" in the "dw_components" folder, which didn't do anything to Neera. The new "inns_nonbg.tpa" is very similar to the old "wait_at_inns.tpa", but it includes Neera (and the other Beamdog NPCs) when the old version didn't. Clearly it's trying to standardize the system those NPCs use to the one used for other NPCs, and doing it wrong.

Short version: Beamdog NPCs were unaffected in v9. v10 tries to correct this omission, but doesn't get it right.

[Trouveur80]

I can confirm it.

With Tweaks Anthology V8, Beamdog NPC were unaffected by the component.

With V14 I did read in the readme that now they should be affected too. I tried an EET game and when I kicked out Neera she said something about friendship and disappeared.

[CamDawg]

Neera has some additional scripting I missed. Basically, if she's out of the party and not in Adoy's Enclave or the first floor of the FAI, she leaves forever--this will be disabled in the next version.

[RobinHood70]

There appears to be a similar issue with Rasaad, who always leaves no matter what. I think Dorn was more like Neera, where he'd stay at the FAI if released there, but I'm a little fuzzy on details. I didn't actually look at the scripting for either, so there might be some other workaround for one or both that I didn't stumble across.

[CamDawg]

Yep, Rasaad has similar scripting. Baeloth and Dorn both seem to be fine.