Pecca

46 minutes ago, lefreut said:

Hello,

I have made a change to fix this error. But you will still get too big spell icons in mage and priest books. I have made a merge request on Pecca github repo to make it fully compatible with LeUI.

Merged and released, thanks.

On 9/8/2022 at 5:48 PM, subtledoctor said:

Yes. Three problems with that:

1. HLAs come every level and we want combat skills to be limited to one every 2-3 levels.
2. The HLA screen can only show a limited number of abilities... I think? I know it can scroll now, but  I think it is still limited to 24 entries. I have >30 combat skills to choose from. Not every class/kit will have access to all, but when you add ~8 actual HLAs it's just too limiting.
3. IIRC the "minimum level" for HLAs does not actually work - it is only for the vanilla HLA spells added to multiclasses, to prevent someone who cannot cast 9th-level spells from getting a 10th-level spell  they don't have any slots for. My recollection is that normal HLAs on single-class characters, the min_level field is simply ignored.

I have sort of solved #1 - I've figured out how to give HLAs every 2nd or 3rd level. But even there, that means you would continue gaining HLAs that slowly even at epic levels - I don't think you can change the rate of aqcuisition. And #2 and #3 are still problems. I think any workarounds would be at least as difficult and clunky as using proficiencies or dialogues.

To state it very briefly, I've considered five ways to achieve this sort of thing:

1. Feats via Kjeron's spell-learning UI
2. Repurposing the HLA system
3. Pure dialogue system
4. Pure proficiency system (with feat chaining/dependency, see the Skills and Abilities mod for an example)
5. Hybrid proficiency + dialogues

Basically I'm leaning toward #3 or #5 as the ideal solution. A pure dialogue system has by far the most flexibility, but it also involves major complexity and makes it quite difficult to modify. Might & Guile actually used to use this for a while, until it switched over to Kjeron's UI mod. Now I can modify every kit's feat selection from a single .2da table. If I had lots of free time it might be interesting to write a function that could accept a bunch of arbitrary conditions and stitch together a dialogue automatically. That could have lots of uses, for things both small and large (including possibly rewriting the entire HLA system) and it could similarly be controlled from a fairly simple table or something.

#5 is fairly straightforward: you have proficiencies, and you have skills with feat-chaining where  it makes sense - e.g. the Swashbuckler could put five pips into the Dodge skill, and get five successive AC bonuses; thieves could put multiple pips into the Backstab skill, and get successive backstab bonuses. Simple. This system only gets clunky when you spend pips to get optional skills. Like, there will be a 'Combat Postures' skill (maybe need a new name for that) which will let you choose from Leadership (like a bard aura), Grappling (chance to Hold target when attacking), Parrying (chance to block one attack each round by damage type), Missile Snaring (block one missile attack each round), Dirty Fighting (chance to apply a random debuff to the target) and Spell Evasion (IWD Evasion). These are equal alternatives for what kind of tactics you want to employ, so it doesn't make sense to chain them. Instead the game will give you an innate ability for each point you spend on this proficiency, and you can use that ability to open a dialogue and learn a combat posture. It's a bit clunky for the player, but not that bad... and the dialogue itself only needs six options and no conditions aside from class/kit, so it will be very simple to make or modify on my end.

So this is what I'm looking at. ~10 actual weapon proficiencies, ~10 fighting styles and individual skills with chained benefits, and ~5 skill groups containing about 5 skills apiece. So potentially 45 actual combat skills, which range from learning once to investing up to 5 pips in.

UI modding might offer a relatively easy solution to otherwise difficult problem. For example, you could have a new button inside level-up screen that would be enabled by level condition. It would open HLA window with table filtered by a variable exposed to the UI (index, keyword...), so it would show your skills and the original HLA window would get them filtered out.

You might also enable some respec, or alternative redistribution of pips and things like that...

On 8/30/2022 at 4:28 AM, bob_veng said:

I think it just means "make the image rather small"

Okay, thanks. I think the images are rather small by default, so that should not be a problem.

17 hours ago, Isewein said:

A lot of these older materials used to be downloadable for free on the WotC web page, so I highly doubt anyone would mind the use of the illustrations - the FR Wiki uses many in their articles, for instance. You could always downscale them to make sure it falls under fair use? Great idea for a mod, by the way! I always liked that feature of the journal in Ps:T.

What exactly means "downscale them to make sure it falls under fair use" ?

Interesting, thanks for the insight. I have no desire to deal with copyright issues, so I'm just going to drop the idea of using images from that sourcebook.

Well I took the image from the monster manual linked above, which was suggested to be okay. But as I said I wasn't sure. So is it okay to use images from those sources or only texts? Isn't it the same?

A little preview to put a shape to the idea...

I thought about that before, but I'm not sure about licence terms.

Yeah, I have no expectations really, but it never hurts to ask.

The version in my own UI mod will be limited to scope of Ranger's favourite enemies or similar like that.

Well, the UI part is pretty much done. What is needed is content work: creating descriptions, extracting combat information from game files and perhaps drawing pictures.

Hi, I have had this idea for a while about making bestiary for EE games. It's rather simple lua code, residing in message box, checking for "creature: Death" string, then checking against a "bestiary" lua table and then making a journal user note with a unique prefix. In journal, another category would be created, filtering journal notes by that prefix, and upon expanding, displaying information from lua table.
Additionaly, entries can be edited by subsequent "creature: Death" strings of the same creature, thus counting number of kills and displaying additional information after some threshold.
I have a working sample code and I plan to make a limited version of this in my upcoming UI mod, since I don't have time and resources to make a full version. But I wonder if enough volunteers liked this idea, we could make a full version containing all noteworthy creatures of BG and IWD games, with descriptions, some gradually uncovering combat information and some pictures.