DavidW

Also @Nathan82: I can't immediately see what could be causing that problem with Breach's description. If you want me to debug it I need you to:

- uninstall SCS

- find the description of Breach just before you do so, and post it

- reinstall SCS and see if the problem is still there

@Nathan82: could you find the "stats.ids" file in your override directory and post it or its contents? (This is with reference to the earlier crash bug.)

Those 'possible missing evaluate buffer' WARNINGs are (I think) happening because some mod in your install stack has the MODDER flag left on in its tp2. Those aren't warnings that are supposed to show up in live use of a released mod, but I think if a MODDER flag is set in one mod's tp2 it can propagate to the installation of other mods too.

As to whether they're something to worry about: Probably not. My experience of that particular MODDER setting is that it generates lots of false positives, and most importantly, doesn't really know about the AUTO_EVAL_STRINGS setting. If you've got mods that use AUTO_EVAL_STRINGS, particularly if they also use lots of functions (e.g., SCS) then there'll be huge numbers of false positives, and you shouldn't worry about them. 

@polytope: yes, clearly something wrong there, thanks.

22 hours ago, CamDawg said:

Charm does as well.

I'm less concerned by that. Charm actually ought to end your adventure, whereas as Ludwig says, Maze on a solo character is just a time-out. (Also, Charm gives a saving throw.)

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Almost certainly an SCS issue, though as to how that specific outcome came to be is likely more than strictly its fault.

Yes, SCS's 'give antimagic spells accurate descriptions' code is clearly going mad for some reason. I'll see if I can work out why. It must be some compatibility issue - it's patched fine on my version. (I do install checks on BGT when I do a major new release, though I don't do much in-game testing of non-EE installs any more.)

Do you mind doing a change-log on scrl07.itm for me?

Great, thanks for this. A few specific comments:

- I probably don't want to start down the rabbit-hole of level-dependent scaling. I'm not a great fan of it in a game like BG2, even if I can see the point of it in the situation you're describing. 

- Davaeorn should still be teleporting. Did he not do it in any of your tries? If so, something may be wrong.

- The end-of-chapter-6 battle has been waiting for an upgrade for ages, after I deprecated my first stab at it. To be honest I couldn't think of anything very interesting... but that was years ago. I should come back to it sometime.

- I'm not sure what to do about the chessboard; I'll consider your suggestion. 

- I'm a little torn about the Coronation battle. Liia is a 16th level invoker (and Belt is a 19th level fighter), so of course with sensible spell choices and AI, they way outshine the party. The obvious thing to do would be to lower their levels, particularly, Liia's... but the designers didn't choose those levels (and Liia's specialisation) randomly. They're taken from the AD&D 2nd edition 'Forgotten Realms Adventures' sourcebook entry on Baldur's Gate. It feels like vandalism to erase that!

The best I can say is 'possibly'. Without looking at the atweaks code it's difficult to know. If you can reliably reproduce the crash, try uninstalling one or other of SCS and atweaks and seeing if it still happens.

I’ll put it on the to-do list.

5 hours ago, InKal said:

Timestop plus Summon Dark/Planetar near the most squishy Jan, Aerie or Viccy (always) is a dick move to be honest, I would kinda complain.

Please hold. We are experiencing exceptionally long delays due to the suspension of the flow of time in your vicinity. Your complaint is important to us. One of our Dark Planetar operatives will be with you as soon as normal time flow resumes.

2 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

5 hours ago, Hoverdawg said:

with one of SCS's components you can easily make anyone (like Valygar) into any class, including Archer.

No you can't

Yes you can.

Yes, that looks like an SCS error. I’ll take a look when I have a chance.

6 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Hmm, I wonder, if you knew the reason why the original Liches used the projected images ? The reason was that the liches were "immune to invisibility". Or rather, in game terms,  they didn't have the spells memorized. At all. In technical terms, the spell is lower than 5th level spell, so following that, they were supposed to be immune to them via their ring -item. When it wasn't refined to be just against hostile effects.

You have a remarkable talent for making up claims about the game and speaking them with authority. Lots of liches in the unmodded game, including lich01, have Improved Invisibility memorized, and pretty much every lich script in the unmodded game casts protective spells of 5th level or lower. And the opcode in the lich protective ring is the same one used in Minor Globe of Invulnerability, which the designers obviously knew did not protect against your own spells.

I don't see much point engaging further with someone who is just making stuff up.

No news, sorry - it requires me to have a sustained window of time to check it out, and they turn up unreliably. I'll let you know.

47 minutes ago, Jazira said:

@Splicer_777, SCS is not a mod i would recommend for a first playthrough, the difficulty of the vanilla spell system is sometime frustrating enough for reasons already mentioned without buffing mages.

I basically agree (and the mod readme agrees) - though since the difficulty slider was introduced, I think a new player could play on Basic without too much trouble and ramp the difficulty up as and when they wanted to.

1 hour ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

That's a nice theory... but, you seem to have the habbit of adding Spell Immunity: Division to that... or other similar like effects.

Then take it down with Pierce Shield, Warding Whip or similar.

1 hour ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

And what's worse is that the projected images etc also happen to protect themselves, with the same 4 minor spell combo. (invisibility, spell protection, spell invulnerability, weapon invulnerability). 

I don't know how long it's been since I used projected images in SCS, but it must be at least five years. (They're too much hassle.) And even when I did, they didn't get Spell Triggers or similar, so you can kill them before they get their defenses up. There is limited value in engaging with you if you're just making stuff up about the mod.

1 hour ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

And did we ever talk about the ecology of REQUIRING a 6th level spell to dispel a 4th level one, or better yet a 2nd and 3rd one ?

Tell it to Bioware, or to Gary Gygax. Fixing oddities and imbalances in the vanilla spell system isn't SCS's remit, except insofar as I think I have to tweak it to make spell combat viable.

1 hour ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

people happen to sometimes play games with their prefered NPCs, which in this game exclude the wizard somewhat.

It is unsurprising that in a game based on the AD&D rule system, different party mixes are going to find things variably difficult. SCS is, yes, a lot harder if you don't have at least a couple of wizards in the party. That's just the nature of the rule system. To a large extent it's true in the vanilla game too. (That said, it's been solo-no-reloaded by people playing melee classes, so it's clearly not impossible even then.)

1 hour ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

PS, the Player Character, just like in BG1 is supposed to be a warrior of a kind... not a mage.

Nonsense. The game is obviously and explicitly designed to be played by whatever PC class you like. If that wasn't obvious enough from the explicit way the game is presented, the presence of content specifically written for each character class should drive the point home.

Don't worry about it, you were fine.

You have a very melee-focussed party, which is challenging in SCS - Aerie is your only wizard, and her multiclassing starts to impose a painful restriction on spell numbers by ToB. You probably want to be using her wizard spells mostly for countering enemy spells.

If you're playing SCS on its hardest setting, though, and it's your first playthrough of BG2, I can see why you're finding it hard work. I normally assume people playing at that difficulty have played the game multiple times before. 

24 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

You have at your usage, Protection from Magical Weapons. That alone is not a big deal... but combine that with Spell protections and invisibility and it becomes a headache to take care off, or to find away around it. Or a waiting game. Or a constant fight againts the improbable... as you can remove it with Dispel Magic, but the enemy is always higher level than the player is, even with 1.5 multiplier with their paladin levels, so there. Your suggestion of taking care of that, is: What ?

The basic logic is the same as it's been for over a decade, and isn't far from the implied logic in the vanilla game:

- spells like Ruby Ray, Warding Whip etc to drop spell protections

- True Seeing, Oracle or a thief's Detect Illusion to remove improved invisibility

- Breach to remove PMW

(Or else bypass with area effect spells, depending on what other defenses are in play and what level you are.)

Wizards have multi-layered protections and you have to do multiple things to drop them. It's totally fine not to like that style of play, but I'm unlikely to alter it now, when SCS has been using roughly this format for 10+ years and remains pretty popular. (Of course, if you turn the difficulty of the mage component down to Basic, it gets simpler.)

22 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Well, thing is, you have build the enemies so that the player has no chance against them... the spells have counters, but the fact is, the player has to counter ALL of them, and to that, they have no answer... unless they somehow pop up themselves to be 4 level 20 mages. Aka, the problem you create is that they have too many defenses and those have no single counter... unless we use the 9th level spell that gets rid of very many of them.

That doesn't match my experience or that of quite a lot of people who have given feedback. But sure, if it's your experience, probably don't play SCS or else play on a lower difficulty setting.

No need to be sorry! I don't mind at all (and I'm really glad you're interested in the code), I just wanted to flag that I wasn't always going to respond. I'll probably go back through this thread next time I do a proper update of the library (thouh I'm a bit cautious modifying the existing code too much even when it seems logical, because it's being used all over SCS and you never know when surprise problems will turn up.)

Thanks for the feedback.

Pretty much every protective spell in the BG2 ruleset has a counter - Ruby Ray of Reversal for Spell Turning, True Seeing for Improved Invisibility, etc. sounds as if you haven’t tried to use any of them - that’s entirely up to you, the move-and-countermove aspect of the spell system isn’t for everyone, but if so you probably shouldn’t use tactical mods in that spell system (or should turn the difficulty way down, at least for the mage components).

I’m not sure what ‘way too long’ means really, but I’m pretty sure the mod is up-front about install times in the readme. (But I’ll check.) There is an unavoidable trade off between install time and complexity/responsiveness to other mods.

I’m not going to engage with the technical bug reports for the reason Jastey gives (though I’d be interested in specific examples of the text bugs if you have some).

31 minutes ago, Luke said:

Another initialization issue: clone_template doesn't make use of the variable "tv". Is that intended?

I'm asking because you set it when launching clone_store and clone_creature...

I think I’m going to use this question to say that I’m probably not going to answer much more, unless it’s an actual bug or it catches my interest for some reason. It’s too time-consuming and goes against my ‘this is as-is, I don’t support it’ intention.

46 minutes ago, Luke said:

Me too, otherwise the SSL compiler would complain... It's simply little weird notation to me... I'd write: scsroot=stratagems&tutu_var=%tutu_var%, but whatever...

But I don’t want the string ‘scsroot’ replaced by ‘stratagems’. I want the string ‘%scsroot%’ replaced.

My experience from various adventures optimizing SCS scripts (all of this is from memory and from some while ago):

- I think OR() blocks evaluate from bottom to top, stopping when they reach a valid condition; I also think they're relatively slow; avoid them if possible. 

- Checking globals is very quick. If there is a global in your check, check it first.

- Scripts are evaluated 30 times per second. If you are doing something complicated that doesn't need to be checked 30 times per second, see if you can slow it down. E.g., use a Delay(), or set a timer to reset every six seconds and put !GlobalTimerNotExpired at the start of your block.

- most importantly, don't worry about it unless you are doing something very complicated indeed. The BG2 engine evaluates scripts very fast; the BGEE engine even more so. SCS scripts are often 10,000 lines long or more, and even so I quite rarely have to worry about optimisation. In normal circumstances, don't worry about this preemptively - wait till you see actual slowdowns.