DavidW

No, we need to find out what the problem is and fix it. (It could even be a WEIDU function error, after all.) Do you have a reproducible case where you can get WEIDU to throw an error?

What's wrong with #bonecir.spl? Looking in NI, it looks okay. I ask partly because # was the prefix I used in IWD-in-BG2, so that spell probably came into IWDEE directly from my converter. And it's auto-built, so if there's something wrong with it there might be a broader issue with some function I use - although those libraries have been revised lots since then.

Creature damage is one of "the mechanical effects of the difficulty slider". You can turn it off.

Among the "options" in (my current local version of) stratagems.ini are - Put_Labels_in_Workspace (changes SCS's default approach to where marker files are stored; optimistically, has no effect on in-game performance; pessimistically, prevents install) - Debug_Variable (if set to 1 or 2, displays pages of meaningless text; if set to 3 or 4, will FAIL the install after getting part-way through) - God_Does_Not_Play_Dice (if set to 1, disables all randomness so that you get the same result on each install) - force_tra_rebuild (if set to 1, significantly slows install time with no effect on in-game results) - disable_ssl (if set to 1, no scripts will be built, which will make most of the game nonfunctional) I think the player can live without having those options presented to them. Over and above that, there are other options that I actively think most people shouldn't use. I don't want people choosing them without really knowing what they're doing. Making sure they actually have looked at SCS's readme is a good way to check for that. A line or two of GUI text isn't. (And the very fact of an option being presented to end users in a GUI installer carries some implication that choosing the option is supported.)

... so in light of Ardaniss post, I should revisit this: why do you want to edit stratagems.ini anyway?

Whats the advantage of doing this over just disabling the mechanical effects of the difficulty slider, either through the gameplay screen in EE or via ToBeX?

Neither is intentional, though both are fairly annoyingly difficult to sort out; still, Ill have a look.

I agree with Ardanis; you absolutely dont want to have an autoinstaller algorithmically read the ini and present the options to end users. Several of SCSs ini options will definitely crash the game and only exist for my own modding/testing purposes. Others are for options I really dont recommend and dont want people to touch but put in to support a few vocal people. Others still just externalise choices for my own convenience. I actively want SCSs ini invisible to people who didnt come across it through detailed reading of the Readme.

Works great for me. Even better: wrap the variable assignments up as a macro. Then in the .tp2 file INCLUDE the file and LAM the macro. And, for ultimate safety, use a modder prefix in all of the variables. If your mod's own internal data needs a modder prefix, your design has some serious problems with encapsulation...

Icon design is outside my skill set.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

Kjeron's trick is very nice. I should play with REPLACE_EVALUATE more often. The use of the function isn't quite right, because of how RET_ARRAY works. (It works correctly! - this isn't a WEIDU bug.) If you do LAF GetIniKeyValue STR_VAR filename="%configuration-default%" RET_ARRAY ini_content END ACTION_IF FILE_EXISTS ~%configuration%~ THEN BEGIN LAF GetIniKeyValue STR_VAR filename="%configuration%" RET_ARRAY ini_content END END then the second call of GetIniKeyValue will return a new ini_content that replaces the old one. So if there is a key present in configuration-default but not in configuration, it won't be returned at all. You need to do either LAF GetIniKeyValue STR_VAR filename="%configuration-default%" RET_ARRAY ini_content END ACTION_IF FILE_EXISTS ~%configuration%~ THEN BEGIN LAF GetIniKeyValue STR_VAR filename="%configuration%" RET_ARRAY ini_content_extra=ini_content END ACTION_PHP_EACH ini_content_extra AS key=>value BEGIN OUTER_SPRINT $ini_content("%key%") "%value%" END END or LAF GetIniKeyValue STR_VAR filename="%configuration-default%" RET_ARRAY ini_content END ACTION_PHP_EACH ini_content AS key=>value BEGIN OUTER_SPRINT "%key%" "%value%" END ACTION_IF FILE_EXISTS ~%configuration%~ THEN BEGIN LAF GetIniKeyValue STR_VAR filename="%configuration%" RET_ARRAY ini_content END ACTION_PHP_EACH ini_content AS key=>value BEGIN OUTER_SPRINT "%key%" "%value%" END END depending on whether you want your ini data in an array or (as in Alien's original use case) a variety of variables. (I prefer the former to avoid having to worry about namespace clashes, but that's a matter of taste.)

You can do that, but you will have to copy it somewhere and strip out the comments. (Also, elegance is in the eye of the beholder; I prefer a more rigid separation of code and data, where I can get it.)

It worked, thanks. Ice golem animation was also problem and I fixed it. Just as a point of interest on the issue of what you can feed to the parser (and because from time to time I try to tempt people into trying out SCS's scripting languages) the following is legal patch syntax in SCS: MAKE_PATCH clone_ability_inline=>"number_to_add=>15 ability_min_level=>entry_index+5" patch_effect_inline=>"match=>~ability_min_level>1~ duration=>~if duration=0 then 0 else (if duration=18 then ability_min_level*6 else (ability_min_level*6 - 1))~" END LAF edit_spell STR_VAR spell=CIRCLE_OF_BONES edits=patch_data END (It changes Circle of Bones from having a fixed 3-round duration to having a 1-round-per-level duration.)

OK: (1) it's a function, so you don't put the particular ini filename in the function *definition*, you put it in the function *call*. (2) A function can't return an open-ended list of variables; it can return an associative array where each key is the variable name and its value is the variable, but you'll have to set the variables outside the function environment. Here's some sample code that does these things (assuming the function has been defined somewhere): LAF read_in_ini STR_VAR ini="INItest/configuration-default" RET_ARRAY ini_content END ACTION_PHP_EACH ini_content AS key=>value BEGIN OUTER_SPRINT "%key%" "%value%" END PRINT "%timer11%" PRINT "%timer12%" PRINT "%timer13%"

I haven't checked it, but probably this: DEFINE_ACTION_FUNCTION read_in_ini STR_VAR filename="" RET_ARRAY ini_contents BEGIN COPY - "%filename%.ini" "%override%" // COPY - means no actual changes to the file REPLACE_TEXTUALLY ";.*" "" REPLACE_TEXTUALLY "#.*" "" REPLACE_TEXTUALLY "=" " " READ_2DA_ENTRIES_NOW ini_entries 2 FOR (i=0;i<ini_entries;i+=1) BEGIN READ_2DA_ENTRY_FORMER ini_entries i 0 key READ_2DA_ENTRY_FORMER ini_entries i 1 value SPRINT $ini_contents("%key%") "%value%" END END

Like I say, SCS doesn’t modify the vanilla game here, though it’s always possible EE 2.5 has changed something.

SI: Abjuration protects from Dispel Magic (that's mostly what it's for).

SCS doesn't alter anything here as far as I recall, but the effectiveness of that strategy is quite delicately dependent on the order in which the engine applies the sequencer components, and I don't know what controls that.

… and this is fixed in v7 of Wheels of Prophecy, just released (the SCS-side fix to the bone fiend will be fixed in the next SCS release).

… aaaand they are. Terrific, thanks.

OK, I'm confused. I want to change some of the text in the UI. As an illustration (this isn't my actual use case), suppose I wanted to change the description of the difficulty slider from "Difficulty" to "SCS settings". In vanilla BG2, that's fairly straightforward: that string is hardcoded to dialog.tlk string 11314, so you just use STRING_SET to change that string. (I did that lots in IWD-in-BG2.) For EE I thought this would be easier, because so many engine strings are (apparently!) externalised to ENGINEST.2DA. For instance, in that file we find STRREF_GUI_MIXED_DIFFICULTY_DIFFICULTY 11314 Changing that to a new strref ought to do it? ... no. The in-game string doesn't change at all, whatever I set the enginest.2da entry to. OK, thought I, let's go back to the old method and change the 11314 string with STRING_SET. That's less elegant, but ought to work fine. ... no. And this is really peculiar, because the engine is displaying a string even though that string *no longer exists in dialog.tlk*. (And yes, I checked to make sure it wasn't duplicated under a different strref.) At this point, I'm really very confused. It's possible I'm doing something completely stupid and not noticing it, but if not, the game is storing text somewhere other than dialog.tlk. My best guess is that at the time the game is initially installed and you choose the language, it reads enginest.2da and dumps all the strings into some kind of hardcoded store, for speed. But despite a fair amount of digging, I can't find any sign of that store. ... any ideas? Any insight from someone who knows the innards of the EE engine? By now, I'm as much interested in the abstract puzzle as in the implications for the small task I was trying to do.

Yes. More precisely: SCS alters the AI of anything using a vanilla-game script (where "vanilla game" means "pre-EE game"). So for instance, if a mod adds a mage who uses the vanilla-game MAGE20 script, or a monster that uses the vanilla-game WTASIGHT script, SCS will replace that with its own AI (and rewrite the creature's spells, HLAs, proficiencies, and class abilities in the process). But if a mod introduce creatures with their own custom scripting, SCS will leave it alone. So for instance, SCS has virtually no effect on Black Pits, because almost everything there has its own custom scripts. That's all intended behavior. SCS replaces the default-game AI. So if a mod is using the default-game AI, its creatures get changed to use SCS AI. If it's using its own AI, they don't get changed.

Do your own research. (Everything in SCS uses my modded prefix, so it shouldn't be difficult.)

It should work, there’s actually a fairly powerful parser built into SCS’s patch interface. If it doesn’t, try If a then 1 else (if b then 2 else 3) But I doubt you need to.