DavidW

The number will depend on the user’s specific install choices.

Use WEIDU’s STRING_SET function instead of AT_NOW.

An accusation of making straw-man arguments is an accusation of intellectual dishonesty. 

I've separated off the recent part of the discussion to this thread. Anyone who wants to contribute further to the discussion of lich immunities in the context of SCS is welcome to do so. If they can manage to do so without accusing me of intellectual dishonesty they are more likely to contribute constructively to SCS.

I've broken this unpleasant thread off from the lich immunities discussion, which was actually useful and which I want to be able to consult later. I've leave it unlocked in keeping with general G3 moderation policy.

I don't want to discuss this at any length, but neither cultural differences nor the vagaries of internet communication affect the basic point that once someone starts accusing you of intellectual dishonesty, there is little remaining point in trying to constructively engage with them.

1 hour ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

If so, could you --change-log the file ? So we can try to trace, or at least know where the problem comes from.

I don't think there's any need. Entropy Shield (assuming, I think correctly, that NiziNizi is using SCS's version of the IWD spells) is from SCS itself, so this is an internal SCS issue, not a compatibility problem. (One I thought I'd addressed, indeed.)

@NiziNizi: noted, thanks. 

@Nachti: I have no idea, I'm afraid. It could be next weekend, it could be months. (The 'fiends don't attack' issue is severe enough I'll try to find a window to address it soonish, though.)

It adjusts the game's default 'bear' scripts so that the bear gets a speed boost if it goes hostile. It also gives a direct speed boost to any creature with the 'bear' animation but no bear script. And it does some slightly hacky things to handle shapeshifting more smoothly.

In each case, though, I'm using the 'set speed' version of opcode 126. So if some other mod uses 'set speed' there won't be a hypersonic bear problem. There might be if another mod used the 'increment speed' version of 126 though.

Thanks, that’s great. Will look when I get a chance.

11 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Pierce Shield: I am usually pretty hesitant to majorly nerf something that the base mod hasn't. I'm usually pretty gung-ho for anything between "major buff" and "minor nerf", but major nerfs have a tendency of annoying people that expect things to work a certain way.

I can get SCS mages to use it more- that’s often a good way to convince people something is overpowered

I didn’t know that. Interesting.

I do have plans for expanding WoP but they’re probably not short-term, unfortunately.

10 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

I mean, I never said any of these things.  If that doesn't make them straw-man arguments, then define them however you like.   I think they are nonsense because they do not represent what I said. 

The nature of a discussion of something contentious is that the person you're talking to draws what seem to them to be consequences of what you've said, but that seem problematic. And you can respond to that by saying that the consequences aren't after all problematic, or by arguing that they're not actually consequences. 

So, for instance: you write a post that offers two ways forward, both of which involve modding the game (one much more drastically than the other) in response to what you call a consistency problem; when pushed as to why there is a problem at all, you repeatedly stress the fact that players' and wikis' descriptions of the lich are at variance with the way the game works. So I concluded, in good faith, that what you're saying seems to imply that player misconceptions are a reason for modding the game, and expressed considerable surprise (but did not 'scoff'). That still seems a reasonable inference to me, but at any rate there's nothing wrong or insulting about drawing it. If it's not what you meant to imply, it's open to you to explain why. And so on.

But to call something a 'straw man argument' is to say that is an intentional misrepresentation of someone's argument: that is, it's to accuse the person you're talking to of bad faith. And to call something 'nonsense', especially in the absence of any actual argument, doesn't seem to have any purpose other than to insult. 

So I don't see any way to interpret what you have been saying in these last two posts as a deliberate attempt to be hurtful and to accuse me of bad faith. That being the case I've no interest in responding to your reopening of the discussion; frankly I've no longer any interest in engaging with you otherwise on this site, given that you think I'm willing to intentionally misrepresent the person I'm talking to. Life is too short, and there are too many modders to have interesting discussions with who aren't going to intentionally insult me and who seem willing to assume that I'm not arguing in bad faith.

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

Personal question. I would imagine it's your preference to play without SR (IR?). Is there a particular reason besides probably being more accustomed to vanilla? Or are the changes made by SR not to your taste?

I like some but not others, and I like the vanilla system enough (especially with SCS's own tweaks) not to feel the pull of modifying it.

(And there's a bit of back-and-forth between playing and modding: it would reduce SCS's audience for it to focus on SR, so it's convenient for me to stay connected with the vanilla system.)

2 minutes ago, Nachti said:

Or integrate the good parts into SCS.

There are some nice features of aTweaks that I wished I'd done myself; I didn't borrow them out of courtesy to another mod but I might reconsider that now it's been so longer abandoned. (aTweaks is released under a Creative Commons license, which simplifies borrowing.)

That said, the central idea of aTweaks fiends is to do a faithful reconstruction of 2nd edition AD&D fiends. That's not and never will be an SCS goal - my fiends are a hybrid of 2e and 3e fiends.

10 minutes ago, NdranC said:

I'm not sure how SCS works but I would imagine the AI would have to be changed to account for a drastic change to this spell.

It would probably be ok, actually. SCS's AI tries to put its defenses back up in a layered way, prioritizing Pro/MW and Mantle-type spells, then spell turning and improved invisibility (with a bit of randomness sprinkled over the top, and some effort made to mix offensive and defensive spells. NPC mages won't panic if you cast an uber-spell that drops multiple defenses. 

12 minutes ago, NdranC said:

Is the SCS AI more "fleshed out" to work with Vanilla Spells compared to SR? I would imagine one has more work and testing than the other.

In theory, SCS handles both equally well. I did a fairly thorough pass through the system as of v32 to catch and allow for SR (as of about v4beta18 - I'm not likely to do it again until the distant time when there's an official v4). In practice, the vanilla support is probably better fleshed out - that's what I did my playtesting with, and that's the system I know better.

14 minutes ago, NdranC said:

Does SCS or SR or both fix that old bug that made casters interrupt their spells even if they took no damage from having over 100% in the corresponding elemental resistance?

SCS fixes it. (So do BGEE and IWDEE, though not BG2EE - I think it will get fixed there by the 2.6 patch.)

3 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Are you kidding? Your failure to consider your own rudeness is only equalled by your failure to consider others’ viewpoints. I don’t go around antagonizing people; I only give back what is given to me. (This started because I had the temerity to say “I sympathize with people who think differently from me and I’m willing to consider their point of view as not unreasonable under the circumstances.”)

I've just reread our entire conversation. I don't see a single point where I've been rude to you. And I have considered others viewpoints, at length, and explained at length why I disagree with them. (Except Jarno's observation about Breach being a L1-5 spell but not blocked, which I acknowledged and said I'd address.) But to call something "nonsense" (without explanation, moreover) is insulting under any interpretation, and to call something a straw-man argument, with its presupposition of bad faith, is worse if anything.

On 8/18/2020 at 8:06 AM, subtledoctor said:

Not engaging anymore nonsense straw man arguments

I'd hitherto thought this was an interesting if sometimes frustrating conversation. I'm sorry you decided to conclude it with rudeness.

EDIT 8/20/2020: broken off from this thread.

Noted.

The problem with aTweaks is that it wants to be installed after SCS, but it's not being maintained. I can usually manage compatibility with mods that are installed before SCS via SCS code, but not ones that are after - aTweaks is making assumptions about SCS code structure that are badly out of date.

The hardcopy manual I have for SoA (UK version of the game, bought in 2000) is 139 pages, so plausibly that's the one that got digitized for the GoG release.

4 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

By not using an advanced enemy AI that cheats by knowing where your characters are, even when invisible, after they have been alerted.

Endarire is discussing creatures that will attack and follow you after the initial full invisibility has been lost. Any AI I’ve ever seen will do that, including the vanilla-game AI.

Also:

3 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Bioware shipped the game with a ~250-page manual

I'm curious about this. I bought SoA on release, and I'm looking at the manual now; it's about 140 pages. Was there a later rerelease version or something?

3 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Reach for your fainting couch if you must; I remain unconvinced. Bioware shipped the game with a ~250-page manual, much of which was taken straight from the PnP literature. A lot of stuff, in the manual and in the game text itself, was actually straight-up incorrect - and still is. Is it fine? Is the game fun in spite of that? Sure. I think I expressed that numerous times now. But is it  good? Should that be what a game company aspires to do?

There is a huge difference between 'make sure the manual is correct' and 'make sure you document every deviation from an entirely different manual, for a game in a different medium.' I for one am really relieved that they didn't waste time on the latter. They weren't sitting around drinking California cabernets instead of documenting lich abilities; they were coding something else. There is literally no feature* of BG2 that I would be willing to cut in order to provide in-game lore for lich immunities.

3 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

FWIW Bioware by its actions more or less agreed with me, because in ToB they started using the formerly useless in-game texts to document deviations from monsters’ traditional stats.

I'm not 100% sure what you're referring to. But

(i) this is really implausible on its face. ToB released in September 2001, the year after 3rd edition D&D was released. Does it really seem likely that a video game company would put significant resources (doubly significant given ToB had a severe wordcount limit) into catering to that tiny slice of their player base who were intimately familiar with an already-obsolete PnP system?

(ii) My best guess is that you're thinking of bookee.itm, 'Elminster's Ecologies', which notes Marilith use of Protection from Magic Weapons (to be sure, not something from PnP so far as I know). But that book does not list all deviations from PnP in ToB (it doesn't list Baalor use of Implosion, for instance), and it also lists several creatures which are faithful renditions of PnP (the Fire Troll is from Dragon Magazine 199; the Dense Pudding is from the second Undermountain boxed set; I don't have the product the Magic Golem came from but I think it's faithful.) It's pretty obvious that the reason for Elminster's Ecology is the same as the reason for scattering Wands of Magic Striking and barrels full of nonmagical weapons around Watcher's Keep: it's there to stop casual players getting frustrated by apparently-indestructible monsters on the critical path. It doesn't have anything to do with PnP fidelity.

* I suppose, on reflection, that if they'd cut Bondari or the chinchilla Bhaalspawn in favor of a lore entry on liches, I'd be in favor. But then, if they'd cut Bondari or the chinchilla Bhaalspawn in favor of more time with those California cabernets, that would be fine too.

5 hours ago, CamDawg said:

Earlier today I was out in the paddock and the sky went dark and a chill wind blew across the lands--I suddenly broke out in goose pimples and started sweating.

Now I know why.

I hope your weekends aren't booked up.