Assasins no longer initiate conversation

[Guest the_sextein]

I have about 30 mods installed and some of them are very large so I did some testing and basically installed everything other than SCS and the assassin characters will walk up to your character and initiate dialog.  Once SCS is installed they just stand there with no reaction unless you force speak to them.  This didn't happen with release 34.  The assassin characters that normally walk up to you and talk like the one in the red sheaf bar, still work.  It's the assassin's that stay where they are and initiate dialog from a distance that have stopped working.

[jmerry]

Yes, this one's the fault of SCS. A one-line change in v35 which needs to be reverted, because the new version looks for a file in a place it isn't; this results in a number of characters getting blank scripts when they should initiate conversation as soon as they see a PC.

The change is in line 3 of genai/deployment.tph. v34 version:

LAF ssl_to_bcs STR_VAR script=dw#shdlg location=~genai/ssl~ END

v35 version:

LAF ssl_to_bcs STR_VAR script=dw#shdlg location=~ssl~ END

This change needs to be reverted. Not the whole file, because there's another change elsewhere in it. For quick-fix convenience, here's a fixed version of the file.

Edit: attachment removed, diagnosis incorrect. See @Angel's posts below.

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by jmerry

[Trouveur80]

Encountered notably with Tarnesh, which let me pass without problem ;-).

[DavidW]

Yes, this looks like the right diagnosis. I'm slightly surprised the component actually installed (that change is an annoying side effect of a general library shift between v34 and v35). Will fix for 35.2.

[Angel]

I tried this solution on BG1EE.  It doesn't seem to work as intended.

ssl_core error: supposed ssl file dw#shdlg.ssl not present at STRATAGEMS/genai/genai/ssl

 

[Angel]

I analyzed the situation for Neira.  The Smarter General AI component sets two new scripts on her, dw#shdlg and dw1melge.  However, Smarter Priests strips both of these off and only leaves her with only with new script dw#pr30.  The Smarter Mages component does a similar thing with Tarnesh.

The reason is that both these components run the strip_scs_script function, which removes all scripts starting with "dw#" (instead of just scripts starting with dw#pr and dw#mg which seems to have been the intend).

Here is my suggested hotfix.  I'm not 100% sure this is correct, but it seems to do the trick for Neira and Tarnesh, they properly initiate dialog again.  I also fix an oversight that would not get WTASIGHT and others properly matched.

diff --git a/stratagems/lib/stratagems_shared.tph b/stratagems/lib/stratagems_sh
ared.tph
index 8da75bf..d165b59 100644
--- a/stratagems/lib/stratagems_shared.tph
+++ b/stratagems/lib/stratagems_shared.tph
@@ -4,12 +4,13 @@ BEGIN
   PATCH_IF "%arguments%" STRING_COMPARE_CASE no_change BEGIN
    FOR (i=0x248;i<0x270;i+=8) BEGIN
       READ_ASCII i checkfull
+      TO_LOWER checkfull
       READ_ASCII i check4 (4)
       TO_LOWER check4
       READ_ASCII i check5 (5)
       TO_LOWER check5
       PATCH_MATCH ~%check4%~ WITH  // caster
-         "dw#.*" dw1r dw2r dw3r dw1m dw2m dw3m BEGIN
+         dw1r dw2r dw3r dw1m dw2m dw3m BEGIN
             WRITE_ASCII i ~~ (8)
          END
          DEFAULT
@@ -609,4 +610,4 @@ BEGIN
                         SPRINT warning "SCS's '%parent%' function has encountered a file it doesn't know how to patch, %file% (probably the file was broken by a previous mod). The error message was '%ERROR_MESSAGE%'. SCS has skipped it and continued with installation, but this may cause instabilities."
        PATCH_WARN "%warning%"
        LPF warning STR_VAR warning END
-END
\ No newline at end of file
+END           

 

stratagems_shared.tph

[Guest the_sextein]

Angel's fix worked for me.  I'm about to start a new run through the series so I will keep an eye out for any instances where characters might have a problem.

[DavidW]

This looks the right idea. (PATCH_MATCH doesn't actually care about case, so my TO_LOWERs are already unnecessary and the new one isn't needed either.)

Fixed locally, in any case; will be in 35.2.