Wisp

I have a pretty comprehensive list of inns now. But I'm unsure of how urban is urban enough for you. Unfortunately the inns range from being located in Athkatla/Baldur's Gate to being located in the middle of nowhere, with more intermediate cases like Ulgoth's Beard (village), The Friendly Arm and Candlekeep (fortified communities that could qualify as urban-ish all on their own).

Since the whole purpose of this is to have something simple and useful, the line will simply have to be drawn somewhere, probably excluding some of the mod-added inns.

Aside from degree of urban-ness, there is also Saradush. Should that be included, even though the city is under siege and you have fire and whatnot raining down upon you that very moment?

Wisp, is the current code in this thread the same as what you are planning to use?

Sort of. The general idea's the same, but details are different. And when WeiDU 228 is out I'll move over to the TP2 action. But if you are thinking of mirroring the code in Aran, there's no need. I plan on publishing a .tpa file, that'll do all the work of adding the area type and flagging areas, which you'll be able to just include in your mod.

Yeah, that'd be me. Earlier versions of the mod did not give human-Abazigal the items it gave to dragon-Abazigal. Later versions do, but it looks like I overlooked making them undroppable on human-Abazigal. Will fix.

At a minimum, I would love to be able to have something that matches what we were originally discussing, which is best described as CITY_INN - mod-added and vanilla inns where the character can leave and walk about nondescript village or city streets, visit a garden, dance, drink, and/or expect to end the thing with the movie that has the bed in it.

Yeah, I, too, think a label for inns in cities and towns would be the most useful incarnation of an inn area type. If you want every possible place where you can rent a room, I don't think there are many enough to make it difficult to OR an AreaType check with a few AreaChecks (with the whole trigger being generated by TP2).

Or, if there turns out to be a reason for adding an area type for non-inn resting places, that can be dealt with when the need arises.

Were those actually unique or did some mod append 200 times the same sec type?

From what I could tell they were all unique, but most of them seemed hard to justify, so I hope there was some sort of mistake involved.

Anyway, if no one objects to me doing the work I figure I'll (eventually) post FL_INN and FL_STRONGHOLD as stand-alone resources, complete with code for tagging areas and all that, so you can just include it in your mod if you want to use it.

However, as I said, the current definition of FL_INN is pretty much any area where you can probably rent a bed, except ar2100. But the exact definition doesn't really matter to me (I only need something that can be expressed in a single sentence with a minimum of ambiguity), so if anyone needs something more well-defined (e.g. only proper inns in populated towns) now is the time to speak up.

That's true. Okay, so CD_INN (?) and FL_STRONGHOLD it is.

CD_INN etc. were examples. I don't think that pillaging Cam's or Nythrun's namespace without their consent is a good idea.

Yes, so, since I, to my knowledge, staked the first claim in this virgin territory I decree that the area type for inns be known as FL_INN and the area type for strongholds be known as FL_STRONGHOLD to all who don't mind cooperating and sharing.

There are like 12 used SecTypes in vanilla BG2 (out of 254 or whatever the limit is before WRITE_BYTE fails), but just the other day I saw a msectype.2da that contained well over 200 unique SecTypes, so...

Wisp, does that cover what you need for your restrictions?

Yeah, I only need a flag for inns and one for strongholds.

The more modders are used to seeing prefix, the better. Many prominent and well-coded NPCs still don't fully prefix their files, and that's a bigger potential compatibility risk than some modder deciding to use ADD_AREA_TYPE without first checking the reservation thread linked to by the command description.

That's true. Okay, so CD_INN (?) and FL_STRONGHOLD it is.

If we want this to be cooperative, while avoiding redundancy, maybe an effort should be made to avoid prefixes altogether?

You would want to avoid having a situation where non-prefixed labels would clash, anyway.

By using an ADD_AREA_FLAG tp2 command that finds an unused bit in areaflag.ids?

Be my guest. A standardised way of adding rows to areatype.ids would be good if adding area types becomes more common.

But to that end, I think the area IDS numeric values should be fixed rather than dynamically determined. It's not like you're going to run out of values, even if people want to throw in some bizarre flags.

There's only (at best) 8 free flags on standard BG2, so space *is* at a premium.

And you already have at least one irresponsible person (me) wanting to use one of those flags to tag a handful of areas. Besides, where would the list of fixed values be stored? Who would administrate it?

Much like Miloch, I should add that the mod-added areas are inns in the sense there's a creature in the area whose dialogue file references a store that includes rooms in its services. They may not necessarily be located in a populated town, or be inns in a conventional sense.

By comparison, the standard BG/1BG2 areas have withstood slightly more scrutiny and do not include e.g. the Underdark (AR2100), since that area is mostly not an inn.

You should probably use something like this for adding the IDS entry:

OUTER_SET CD_INN = IDS_OF_SYMBOL (areatype CD_INN)
ACTION_IF CD_INN < 0 BEGIN //if the label CD_INN does not exist
 OUTER_FOR (power=8;power<16;++power) BEGIN 
OUTER_SET CD_INN = 2 ** power
ACTION_IF !FILE_CONTAINS_EVALUATED (areatype.ids "^[ %TAB%]*%CD_INN%") BEGIN
  APPEND areatype.ids "%CD_INN% CD_INN"
  OUTER_SET power = 16
END
 END //maybe there should be something in here for the eventuality all flags have already been taken by non-CD_INN labels?
END

and then write the value to the area with

WRITE_SHORT 0x48 THIS BOR CD_INN

As a side note, you may want to grab the inns information from Fishing For Trouble (Y's cool new lots-of-areas mod)

Oh, yeah, you're right.

or is READ_SHORT the wrong read?

It isn't wrong, but to check on the value you need to use BAND, since multiple area flags can be set

E.g.:

PATCH_IF (innarea BAND CD_INN) != 0 BEGIN //area is already an inn

But it's probably not necessary to check if the area's already been flagged. There's no harm in writing the value multiple times, and the redundancy is filtered out by BUT_ONLY.

But I don't know how many of those mega mods are for BG2. I think most of them are for BG1/BGT, so if you are only concerned with inns accessible from BG2 you can probably slim the list down quite a bit.

Well, the way I currently use bit 9 is not very conductive to a standardised system (since I don't bother with areatype.ids). It's also not using bit 9 as CD_INN, but more like CD_INN_OR_STRONGHOLD.

If you guys want a way to detect inns with CD_INN (first unused bit in areatype.ids) I'll happily follow suit and use an analogous label for detecting strongholds.

The code in aTweaks is in aTweaks/LIB/c115.tpa, which also includes a list of most, or possibly all, inn areas in BG1 and BG2, both standard and mod-added.

The AreaType field is a word. I use AreaType(512) for detecting inn and stronghold areas in aTweaks. Prior to that I had some nice BWP people run scans for used values in the upper range. Aside from one area in Darkest Day (case of randomness, I'm pretty sure) [1] no areas seem to use high values.

You can also use AddAreaType(512) etc.

[1]And now, aTweaks, of course. But I don't stake any particular claims on bit 9.

How about an option to not have items randomized to the guarded compound, the mystery area in sewers of the temple district, and the twisted rune?

You can relatively easily make changes like this yourself.

I've been meaning to post a detailed explanation for how to customise Item Randomiser, but I keep getting side-tracked. I'll see if I can't get it done sometime (before v7, at the very least ).

One that was particuarly strange was the reward from Aldeth Sashenstar for defeating the dopplegangers - he tells you he is going to give you his family sword(usually the bastard sword +4 vs shapeshifters I believe) but then he ends up giving you a ring?

That one is fixed by the latest hotfix.

If you notice anything else, please mention it.

I'll redirect some of the loot towards his chests. You can remove the gem with e.g. Shadow Keeper.

Thanks. Will fix.

Oops, I forgot to include the fixed .tra file. Will upload an updated hotfix momentarily. Hum, or not. Version 6.2 includes @1393 et al. so I can only assume something has gone awry on your end. Try re-extracting everything. And make sure you really do have v6.2. @1393 was added in 6.2, so if you're still on 6.1 you'd get this problem.

I have a feeling the same issue can be true for Tolgerias, as I didn't give him Valygar body but killed him in the planar sphere and he only had a couple scrolls.

Can reproduce. I'll update the hotfix as soon as I'm able.

Could you email me any mod files you've customised, and the debug file, as well?

Thank you. I'll try to look into it without too much delay.

The dao in Trademeet doesn't drop any item if killed ( while in vanilla you can refuse to do the quest, kill the dijnni and still get rashad's talon ); giving him the rakshasa head works.

That's a consequence of another fix (people give you the correct item) but I suppose I can reverse it in this particular case, since mr. genie doesn't carry any other items.

I have a feeling the same issue can be true for Tolgerias, as I didn't give him Valygar body but killed him in the planar sphere and he only had a couple scrolls.

Can you post your weidu.log? And if you could upload the files "override/fl#randomseed.2da" and "override/fl#removeditems.2da" that would be great (assuming they exist, of course).

Perhaps this could be changed to something more generic, like "Spellbook" or something.

 

[...]

 

Also, one of the PC responses (#32191) in Minister Lloyd's dialogue (UHMAY01.DLG, state 38) refers to the Umar Hills quest reward as "leather", regardless of what item's actually being given.

Thank you. These issues should be fixed in version 6.2.

Hmm, depends on how much you'd want to list, but it doesn't seem too much, might be there's a load of +1 thingies around i dont readily recognize as 'old' treasure though. Here's what i came along thats not yet randomized btw: (Several are quest related of course, like the Baldur Helm that pops up in Degrodel's quest.)

Thank you.

I'll see what I can do. It'd probably be all right so long as I make it clear the list is not comprehensive.

There's also a few locations that could use a magic reward that dont have any yet, like the fight in the Flaming Fist compound upon return to Baldurs Gate. If you'd like more ideas for that too, i can also keep a little list of treasureless (but interesting) encounters.

There should be a random item in the FF compound. But I'll gladly listen to suggestions. There's no such thing as too many locations.

Hey there, many thanks for the tool, im having loads of fun with it.

I'm glad you are enjoying the mod.

Not really a big issue, but it seems the spoiler list is a bit dated or has a few errors. In tutu there's a few items not listed that seem to be randomized, like the Heavy crossbow of accuracy. (same goes for those stacks of large shields you talk about, i found lots more than two).

It should be up to date. I rebuilt it from scratch for v5. But I did fix a typo involving the Heavy Crossbow of Accuracy in v5 and it seems that was after I built the spoilers document (consequently it says a Light Crossbow +1 is taken from Dabron instead). Will fix. Thanks.

The next version, or version 6.1 plus hotfix, will also be accurate with regards to the Large Shields, but quantitatively accounting for all items is difficult, since the exact numbers vary.

Have you got a new version somewhere, or do you just want me to keep an eye out and hint for other little mistakes?

Feel free to mention anything you think may be inaccurate. But at this point the spoilers document is mainly a list of which items are randomised, where they are taken from and where you can find them, rather than one that is also a quantitatively accurate representation of how many items are randomised.

It might also be interesting to include a little list of items that arent (yet able to be) randomized (like the helm & cloak of balduran, ring of free action, Taugosz' full plate, etc)

I don't know if it would be so little. I'll think about it, but I suspect it'd be a lot of work, especially in maintaining it and keeping it up to date.