Atweaks and SCS - any particular issue I should be aware of?

[Morgoth]

Readme for Atweaks here: https://avenger981.github.io/doc/readme_atweaks.html#faq

I'm not sure, but wasn't there some sort of issue with Fiendish gating component from Atweaks, so if you had it with SCS, the demons would start fighting each other?

Also, DavidW, do you recommend to install PNPFiends, undead, mephits, fey, elementals, increase the elemental hit dice for prince (all component from PnP tweaks in the readme)

 

[Connelly]

The fiends component is broken in general for a SCS installation, and in particular it will make Aec Letec in BG1 and EET immortal.

I know Totor115 has a version they're updating, but I'm only 50% sure of fixed problems.

[Isewein]

@TotoR : Could you weigh in on whether your version is, to your knowledge, compatible with SCS, which components are not and/or which components may be entirely obsolete on EE (such as the Mislead bard song)? I couldn't find any up-to-date documentation on Github. Thanks for keeping the mod alive!

Edited March 8 by Isewein

[TotoR]

@Isewein

I have tested together SCS (all components but Elemental update) and my version of aTweak and they should be compatible but testing with SCS is tedious and you can miss things easily. I would say, for overlapping component, choose one or the other and not both.

for EE it should be working but as I don't use EE, you never know. For your info, not so long ago, I have understood that aTweak (PnP fiends) was breaking EE version of Aec'Letec. it should not be anymore.

Edited March 15 by TotoR

[Guest Dr_Niide]

I don't install fiends component from atweaks anymore, but what I do install almost always is the revised elementals component, and both scs and atweaks tend to mess up the scripts of the different elementals, so you end up with no green circle for both foes and allies elementals, but not all of them, which is a bit weird. Looking at the files with Near Infinity, elementals summoned by wizards have a RIDRING.ITM which removes the green circle under their feet. This circle reappears after the mental combat, either green or red, but with scs installed, the circle never appears. For this to work, you need to remove scs scripts from all the elementals CRE files that are summoned by wizards, and let RR#EWIZS.BCS as the first script.

This is the very first issue I have encountered, which happens even without the revised elementals from scs installed. But that doesn't solve everything, because for some reason, enemy elementals summoned by hostile wizards have no red circle at all, so you can't target them, which is very annoying. Setting the global variable RR#NOEMC to 1 to remove mental combat doesn't solve the problem either: hostile elementals just attack you with no selection circle. So I've decided to remove mental combat, and also to remove RIDRING.ITM from all elementals that equip it. And this does work, but it's a bit unsatisfying for me because I like mental combat, it distinguishes from clerics/druids, but...

The second important issue is if you install atweaks after scs (with its revised elementals component installed), atweaks reverts the changes that scs makes to some spells, like the elemental tier that is summoned by the druids levels 6 and 7 spells, and changes Elemental Swarm HLA back to Elemental Summoning, so no Water Elemental. Elementals also lose its combat resistancies given by scs (earth elementals 50% resistance to slashing, piercing and missile damage, -25% to crushing, fire elementals being 50% weak to cold...)

There are more minor issues because there are a lot of CRE files for the same type of elemental (for example, some elementals are referenced to animations that don't have any INI file, like ELEMENTAL_EARTH_IWD - 0xE24B, that makes impossible to summon them), so my recommendation is to install one or the other, but no both. If you install the one from scs, you're fine, but if you install atweaks' one, you will have to remove RIDRING.ITM from every CRE file and also remove scs scripts. If you do this by hand (as me xD) it takes some while. If you install both components as you like the new flavor that scs introduces to the spells, you're going to check file by file that everything is OK, and revert the spells changes that atweaks introduced.

[TotoR]

If I may,

5 hours ago, Guest Dr_Niide said:

if you install atweaks' one, you will have to remove RIDRING.ITM from every CRE file and also remove scs scripts.

The latest official version of aTweak (v4.53) is not compatible with the latest version of SCS. As you said, some SCS scripts are not removed, which causes problems. So don't use them together.

5 hours ago, Guest Dr_Niide said:

enemy elementals summoned by hostile wizards have no red circle at all

This is a very old problem with the RR#EWIZS.BCS script: the RIDRING.ITM is not removed if the cre is already hostile. If you delete the following line in the script, it will work as expected:

Quote

IF
    Allegiance(LastSummonerOf(Myself),ENEMY)
    !Allegiance(Myself,ENEMY)
THEN
    RESPONSE #100
        SetInterrupt(FALSE)
        SetGlobal("Elementalcontrol","LOCALS",1)
        Enemy()
        DestroyItem("RIDRING") // selection circle removal ring
        ChangeAIScript("",OVERRIDE) // clear the slot previously used by this script
        SetInterrupt(TRUE)
END

 

5 hours ago, Guest Dr_Niide said:

The second important issue is if you install atweaks after scs (with its revised elementals component installed), atweaks reverts the changes that scs makes to some spells

5 hours ago, Guest Dr_Niide said:

There are more minor issues because there are a lot of CRE files for the same type of elemental (for example, some elementals are referenced to animations that don't have any INI file, like ELEMENTAL_EARTH_IWD - 0xE24B, that makes impossible to summon them), so my recommendation is to install one or the other, but no both

I second you here, both mods overlapping each other. You can't achieve compatibility as you expect. aTweak try to stay true to PnP and SCS use is own way. Like you said, use one or the other but not both it will lead to issues at best...

[subtledoctor]

Sorry to belabor this, but which SCS component is the problem? Is it between aTweaks PnP Elementals/PnP Fiends and SCS General AI? Or is it to fo with the more specialized SCS componebts like “Smarter Fiends” etc.? 

SCS has a lot of components so it is worth being specific.

[TotoR]

Ok, to be more precise, for Dr_Niide it's related to the incompatibility between PnP elemental and SCS General AI + aTweaks scripting issues.

In the current official version of aTweak, for each component that updates the script (PnP fiend, PnP undead, PnP mephits, PnP fey, PnP elemental), the SCS "General AI" script won't be removed as expected; although aTweak scripts are generally "above" SCS scripts, bugs like Dr_Niide's might happen.

For combinaison of components that directly change the same aspect of the game (such as PnP fiends (aTweaks) and smarter fiends (SCS)), it could be worse and summoning spells could be broken.

[Dr_Niide]

I was finnaly able to sign up, goddamn Chrome didn't show me the captcha image!

Just a sample of the mess that elemental-related components are (scs and atweaks) and how scripts get mixed up. These are some examples tested in BGII EE with no other mods.

Conjure Earth elemental (spwi622.spl). 60% regular Earth elemental (EarE), 35% Greater EarE, 5% Elder EarE. 3 different effects (use EFF file):

    - speart1.eff summons elearsu2.cre (regular EarE)
    - speart2.eff summons elearsu3.cre (gEarE, although is labeled Earth Elemental)
    - speart3.eff summons elearsu4.cre (eEarE, labeled as Earth Elemental)

All 3 are driven by wizelsu2.bcs (override) which starts mental combat, and a generic script bdsum00.bcs.

a) With SCS IWD spells, tweaks and Revised Elementals component (no AI component of any kind):

EFF files and CRE files are the same, scs upgrades as expected all 3 EarE and labels them correctly. All 3 receive Spike Stones (SS) as well. Override script changes to dw-earel.bcs, which removes mental combat and allows EarE to use SS, although in many combats I've never seen an EarE casting SS (maybe the script isn't working as expected?).

b) With SCS IWD spells, tweaks and Revised Elementals component AND Smarter General AI component installed:

EarE get another override script (dw#sumei.bcs) while dw-earel.bcs goes into class script. The generic bdsum00.bcs is changed by dw2mcge.bcs. Override scripts states (my knowledge of script language is almost zero) that dw#summe.bcs must be used as a class script. Again, no SS, just plain, simple physical attacks.

c) With P&P aTweaks (no scs at all):

•     elearsu2.cre is wrong, as it refers to an animation file that doesn't exist (ELEMENTAL_EARTH_IWD - 0xE24B).
•     elearsu3.cre and 4 are fine.
•     Additional to this, aTweaks changes the outcome of spwi622.spl: Always summons a regular EarE, and there are an additional 35% possibilities to summon a gEarE as well and a 5% chance to summon an eEarE.

All 3 EarE get the powers and statistics they are supposed to get.

The scripts change: rr#ewizs.bcs is the override one, that enables mental combat through ridring.itm. rr#eear.bcs is the class script and bdsum00.bcs is default script. In battle they behave as expected, using their powers (Elemental Concealment, Earthquake...).

d) SCS IWD + elementals + P&P aTweaks (a + c)

No big changes, as aTweaks overrides scs, so in practice is the same outcome as c).

Just note that aTweaks overrides the spell changes made by scs, so no Elemental Swarm and no Water Elemental.

e) SCS IWD + elementals + AI + P&P aTweaks (b + c)

Is more or less as d) and c), rr#ewizs.bcs is in override position, dw-earel.bcs in the class script (no SS spell, so this script is useless), rr#eear.bcs in race script and generic dw2mc2ge.bcs in default position. Tested a few times, elementals seem to behave as PnP, but no EarE due to the wrong animation resource.

This is an example of how both mods are expected to behave (more or less).

 

Elemental Summoning HLA (sppr723.spl):

• 22% swafire1.eff (swafir01.cre - Greater Fire Elemental [gFirE]) x2
• 23% swaeare1.eff (swaear01.cre - gEarE) x2
• 24% swaaire1.eff (swaair01.cre - Greater Air Elemental [gAirE]) x2
• 10% sumzaam.eff (elemzaam.cre - Zaaman Rul, Elemental Prince of Fire)
• 10% sumchan.eff (elemchan.cre - Chan, Elemental Prince of Air)
• 11% sumsunn.eff (elemsunn.cre - Elemental Prince of Earth)

Elementals have the generic script bdsum00.bcs and are controlled by default because there isn't mental combat here. Elemental Princes have their own script: elemzaam.bcs, elemchan.bcs and elemsunn.bcs. These scripts are just there to display the text "Who calls whoever, Prince of whatever".

a) SCS IWD + Elementals.

Spell is changed to Elemental Swarm:

• 100% spair2.eff (elairsu3.cre - gAirE) -- dw-airel.bcs --> it works as expected.
• 100% speart2p.eff (elearpr2.cre - gEarE) -- dw-earel.bcs --> maybe bugged? Never use SS.
• 100% spfir2p.eff (elfirpr2.cre - gFirE) -- dw-firel.bcs --> it works as expected
• 100% dw#wat2.eff (dw#wate3.cre - Greater Water Elemental [gWatE]) -- dw-wtrel.bcs --> same as SS, never seen using Smashing Wave.

b) SCS IWD + Elementals + AI.

Same eff and cre files. dw#sumei.bcs overrides class script with dw#summe, so now elementals just attack, no use of special habilities (this seems like a bug to me). And sometimes, elementals get stuck between enemies or a wall trying to chase an enemy instead of attacking the ones next to him (or her?).

c) P&P aTweaks

aTweaks changes mechanics:

• 90% to cast rr#eswg.spl, which uses 3 eff files: swaaire1.eff (swaair01.cre - gAirE), swaeare1.eff (swaear01.cre - gEarE) and swafire1.eff (swafir01.cre - gFirE)
• 10% to cast rr#eswe.spl, which uses 3 eff files: swaaire2.eff (swaair02.cre - Elder AirE [eAirE]), swaeare2.eff (swaear02.cre - eEarE) and swafire2.eff (swafir02.cre - Elder FirE [eFirE]).

Every elemental is scripted correctly (rr#eair.bcs, rr#eear.bcs, rr#efir.bcs)

d) SCS IWD + elementals + P&P aTweaks (a + c)

The spell works as per aTweaks and it summons the same cre files as c), but scs scripts (dw-xxxel.bcs) are in override position, and aTweaks scripts (rr#exxx.bcs) go down to class script. But this leads to no major issues as far as I know because elementals do use their special habilities.

e) SCS IWD + elementals + AI + P&P aTweaks (b + c)

This is when things broke. Spell is the same as c) and d), but none of the three elementals have a selection circle under their feet. There is no mental combat here, and no ridring.itm either, so I don't know what's causing this issue. These are the scripts:

• Override: dw#sumei.bcs (this changes the class script to dw#summe.bcs)
• Class: dw-airel.bcs, dw#earel.bcs, dw#firel.bcs
• Race: rr#eair.bcs, rr#eear.bcs, rr#efir.bcs -- aTweaks scripts
• General: none
• Default: dw2mc2ge.bcs

With these combination of scripts, elementals just attack in melee, no special habilities, so I guess that something is happening with scs scripts when the general AI component is installed.

Sorry for the long post, I wanted to be as much specific as I could. These are just some examples, one can track every spell that summons elementals and see what's going on. The mess with scs scripts also happen when you summon an Elemental Prince: without the general AI installed, they behave as expected, using their special habilities and displaying its unique text on screen ("Who calls..."), even with P&P aTweaks, but with the general AI component installed, they just attack the nearest enemy and no text is displayed.

 

Edited March 14 by Dr_Niide

[Prof Errata]

Well, you have already made a good work thereon every two, now is it possible, if you could, to specify exactly what are the aTweaks v453 components fully incompatible with SCS ? Because this mod has a lot of options. Thank you by advance.

[Dr_Niide]

I was referring exclusively to P&P Elementals, but scs has its own issues as well. P&P fiends, I don't know, many many years without installing this component. P&P undead are great, works reasonably well, P&P Mephits it's ok, P&P fey it's ok too, tough battles with sirines in BG1, but funny. P&P color spray works well, although never tested deeply. P&P dimension door not recommendable, I don't install this component, ever.

BTW, I install the version of aTweks in which TotoR is working with.

Edited March 15 by Dr_Niide

[subtledoctor]

For whatever it’s worth, I just fought Aec in my current game. I have Spell Revisions, SCS General AI but not Smarter Fiends, and aTweaks PnP Fiends but not Fiendish Gating… and Aec went down just fin. 

SR may have affected the combination, though. 

[DavidW]

Just to clarify: it’s not currently a goal of mine to support aTweaks with SCS. Compatibility with mods that install after SCS is very complicated and usually requires active maintenance of the post-SCS mod to allow for SCS’s own evolution. Many years ago I was persuaded to work actively with aTweak’s author to facilitate mutual compatibilty, but that lapsed long ago. My official advice now is that people should either use SCS or aTweaks.

[TotoR]

@Dr_Niide, thank you for this sample. I will try to answer most issues.

On 3/14/2024 at 11:52 AM, Dr_Niide said:

d) SCS IWD + elementals + P&P aTweaks (a + c)

No big changes, as aTweaks overrides scs, so in practice is the same outcome as c).

Just note that aTweaks overrides the spell changes made by scs, so no Elemental Swarm and no Water Elemental.

This is the intended behaviour; aTweaks overwrites modifications made by other mods for reasons of consistency and because it would be too complex to do otherwise.

On 3/14/2024 at 11:52 AM, Dr_Niide said:

e) SCS IWD + elementals + AI + P&P aTweaks (b + c)

Is more or less as d) and c), rr#ewizs.bcs is in override position, dw-earel.bcs in the class script (no SS spell, so this script is useless), rr#eear.bcs in race script and generic dw2mc2ge.bcs in default position. Tested a few times, elementals seem to behave as PnP, but no EarE due to the wrong animation resource.

This is not intended, but you should not use both: revised elementary and the P&P elementary. however, I have fix this and it should mostly work. The wrong animation resource has been fixed. you can also fixed it with Nearinfinity by changing "ELEMENTAL_EARTH_IWD" by "ELEMENTAL_EARTH" for ELEARSU2 and ELEARPR

On 3/14/2024 at 11:52 AM, Dr_Niide said:

e) SCS IWD + elementals + AI + P&P aTweaks (b + c)

This is how the "dw#sumei" script works. This has been fixed and aTweaks should now work as expected. If you don't want to reinstall aTweaks, simply use Nearinfinity to remove dw#sumei.bcs and "dw-xxxx.bcs" from these creatures.

On 3/16/2024 at 2:57 PM, subtledoctor said:

SR may have affected the combination, though. 

Maybe true.
I think that EE change the way this battle is processed and aTweaks break that; it does not break the fight I think.

On 3/21/2024 at 5:45 PM, DavidW said:

My official advice now is that people should either use SCS or aTweaks

This is very true for PnP tweaks such as: PnP fiend, PnP undead, PnP mephits, PnP fey and PnP elemental installed with most SCS AIs that update the same aspect of the game (smarter Fiends, revised Elementals...). But for the other tweaks, there should be no problem using them together.

Edited March 22 by TotoR

[Trouveur80]

9 hours ago, TotoR said:

This is very true for PnP tweaks such as: PnP fiend, PnP undead, PnP mephits, PnP fey and PnP elemental installed with most SCS AIs that update the same aspect of the game (smarter Fiends, revised Elementals...). But for the other tweaks, there should be no problem using them together.

Indeed, I always install some aTweaks components before SCS without issues :

~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #102 // Change Spiritual Hammer into a ranged force weapon: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #103 // Allow Dispel/Remove Magic to take down Globes of Invulnerability: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #104 // PnP Color Spray: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #125 // Rangers' Animal Empathy improves with experience: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #201 // Instant casting for warrior innates: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #202 // Revised Bhaalpowers -> Enhance the Bhaalpowers and standardize their casting time: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #203 // Make druidic shapeshifting uninterruptable: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #204 // Prevent Mislead clones from singing Bard songs: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #205 // Prevent Project Image and Simulacrum clones from using quickslot items: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #211 // Make Death Ward protect against Vorpal Hits: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #210 // Restore the Dispel Magic vulnerability to Nishruu and Hakeashars: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #212 // Make alignment detection spells more accurate: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #217 // Bard songs break invisibility -> All Bard songs break invisibility: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #262 // Altered XP rewards from locks, traps and scrolls -> No XP rewards from locks, traps and scrolls: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #310 // Distinctive creature coloring: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #315 // Distinctive creature soundsets: v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #500 // Slightly expanded storage capacity for containers -> Use the recommended storage capacity value (999): v4.53
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #999 // BG2-style icons for aTweaks content: v4.53