Bartimaeus

Master version *should* be safe to use, I intend for it to be, but as I don't test every single last minor commit that I do, it is inherently more prone to having a rare error or two. There are only a few changes from SR V1.3.100 (which I released but have not updated the thread for because I need to compile patch notes first) and the master, which is restored hold animations for hold spells, BG1 temples getting their party-targetable Dispel Magic spells (replacing Remove Magic) restored, and a very minor compatibility fix with SCS regarding Death Knights that could cause non-fatal errors. @NdranC: The summoning animation is just that - an animation. It would probably help to tell you how Banishment works. All Banishment does is slay by gender: creatures with the "summoned (6)" or "summoned [no limit] (20 or 0x14)" genders are slain instantly, while creatures with the "summoned demon (9)" genders get a saving throw. Unless you think rando spiders and such are currently set to be a fiend, the saving throw appearing is simply a minor bug (that I already corrected in the latest version), and they wouldn't have been banished regardless of whether or not they saved, because their gender is probably set incorrectly to something else. Thing is, I've already checked all of my creatures to make sure they have the correct gender summoned, and they do...but I would not be surprised to see if another mod was resetting some of them.

1. When I create a sorcerer in a ToB (...in ToBEx) game, one of my spell selections is automatically taken up by Contingency (even though I didn't select it in character creation, and it's not even an option), so I have a Contingency in both my spellbook as well as in my innates. 2. Additionally, I have two casts of Spell Trigger, Contingency, etc. available in my innates, even after resting. 3. If I instead create a BG1 character and level them up to epic-leveled, I correctly only have 1 casting of those spells in my innates, but the Contingency in my main spellbook appears again. 4. Interestingly, I decided to go level by level, and the Contingency-in-spellbook issue does not occur at level 12 (when a mage gets access to 6th level spells) as you might expect, but instead seems to be added at level 14 instead. 5. It occurred to me that it might not be a Sorcerer-centric problem, so I leveled up an Invoker to level 12 as well...and then 13, and 14, and bam, Contingency was suddenly in my spellbook. As a test, I tried only having ToBEx, BG2 Fixpack, and literally just the SCS-make-Contingencies/Triggers-innates component and nothing else, and yep, it still happens.

Okay, 255 is a lot. I'd be pretty surprised to see if there are enough BG mods currently in existence to use up all of that. For some reason, I thought the limit was much smaller, like maybe 30 or something. And yeah, with sectype removal, there's only a few frames where it disappears, which is extremely unlikely to affect any rolls and also very difficult to see since I make it so the portrait icon doesn't get dispelled with it.

I tested it out, and it has more or less the same exact issue - a duration of 6 is too short and there are blips of it expiring (can see the AC go down if you're in an unpaused inventory and the portrait icon disappears as well), while 7 creates blips of double protection. It does seem a little more consistent than the at frequency effect at the very least, because it isn't swapping off two different cycles where it's almost immediately recast vs. almost an entire second of being off, but the fundamental issues unfortunately remain. Right now, I'm just giving its own sectype and having it constantly dispel the AC bonus (but not the portrait icon, which lasts 1 second longer) via sectype removal and then reapply it every round, which seems to be the most consistent option across all games right now. ...By the way, uh, is there any real risk of running out of sectypes in ToBEx/EE games? I've added a handful between IRR and SRR and I'm not sure if that'll ever be a problem or not - I'm not sure what the limit is. And using a sectype for just one crappy shield effect would be pretty dumb if the limit isn't very high.

Possible? I'm sure. By me? No chance. Sounds like an absolute nightmare to design and test for fringe use. The good news is something like that can be done completely independent of the SR installer and it would make no difference because it's a total patch job - but that still means needing to find someone to code it up.

I actually increased Defensive Harmony to 20' in SRR a few weeks ago, as I was annoyed with the small AoE/short duration bad combo as well. I'm pretty happy with 10', 20', and 30'...alternatively expressed as 5', 10', and 15' if you go by the EE's listings - a 30' radius in SR or SRR a la Fireball is actually listed as 15' in the EEs, which means a vanilla 15' would be a 7.5' in that notation, I guess. But I am pretty ready to throw all 5's straight into the garbage can...the biggest balance concerns if you're changing them to 10' would be Hold Person/Monster/Animal/Undead, and Flame Strike, I think. Flame Strike is probably not worth worrying about as it's not all that strong compared to arcane options at a similar level, but 10' might be a little much for the Hold spells.

I would imagine the reluctance to use/memorize AoE spells like Fireball and Skull Trap is because of those spells blowing in their own/their allies' faces, especially because if the player sees them targeting a character, they can simply move that character forward towards the caster and get them to blow themselves up. I recall that SCS is a bit more cavalier about using more target-friendly AoE spells like Horrid Wilting later.

There are - or should be - two 219 opcode effects at the end of the item properties, one targeting undead, one targeting monsters (aka "unnatural creatures"). As far as I can see, it looks like they have correct targeting, timing, and probability, and therefore should be working. What makes you think it isn't? I've actually despised the Shield of Falling Stars since forever - but I've never really had a good way to deal with it, so I've kind of just left it alone. I've always thought 5' radii are too small and too finicky to use, and that non-stackable auras are just a bad idea - and now having actually sat down and screwed around with both, it's only reinforced those feelings even more. On the other hand, I still don't have a way to really solve either. 10' is probably too big for this effect, and I really hate tweener radius sizes...but maybe I could make an exception just this one time and use 7.5. Although...given what I've tested with 5', it also raises a question of whether a few spells in SR should really be using 5' as well...

Most of them are covered up by the fact that they're either not stackable (extend duration by 1 and there's no longer an issue), or it's difficult to notice that it's just a little bit off for a second or less (can also extend by 1 and just have that momentary blip of a double bonus that's unlikely to change any rolls). Bonus AC doesn't have either of those factors going for it, so it's difficult to hide. Stationary spells like Ice Storm have the same exact problem, too - the timing of the "per round" effect is a little bit off, so effects have to be set to a duration of 7 instead of 6, and that creates small little windows of double-applied effects as well. Haven't seen anyone come up with any solutions for that, either, since it's simply hardcoded behavior, .

Sadly, doesn't fully work either, though it's closer. There's just a small delay between dispelling and reapplying, so if you're looking at your AC with the game unpaused, you'll see it blip back to normal for like 0.2 seconds. Might be better, though.

So, from my testing, it seems like the problem is unfixable. For whatever reason, the "aura" effect (opcode 272 "apply effect [at frequency]") seems to have a timing inconsistency. The first instance of the aura will be applied, then the second instance is applied like 0.1 seconds after the first one has ended (so close to but not quite seamless), and then the third instance is applied about a full second after the second instance has ended (big delay, not at all seamless), and then the second and third instances will be alternating thereafter, creating an inconsistent aura. There's nothing I can think of to fix this - the very base effect, which is hardcoded, simply has timing consistency issues. What I might be able to do, though, is have the aura last a second longer (7 instead of 6 - already the current behavior, as inconsistent as it is), and then have it dispel/replace the original instance of the aura so they aren't applying at the same time. I'm not one hundred percent sure if this will create other inconsistencies, though.

To be honest, I might not be able to completely fix it, but just get close. Auras are basically a spell being silently cast over and over at a given frequency - for this shield, it's once per round, or every 6 seconds of game-time. You don't want the effects to stack in some cases (e.g. AC bonuses), but you also don't want the effects to disappear before the next cast (this shield applies a Shield icon to let you know that it's in effect, but imagine if every single round, it would disappear and then reappear after a half second - this happens if you try to make it so there's no overlap, because it takes time for the invisible spell and its invisible projectile to travel, too, even if it's a very small amount). Like I said, auras are finicky. An AC bonus is especially troublesome because AC bonuses stack and are also very visible to the player on the inventory and character screens, so you're likely to see the aura act a little inconsistently no matter what I do - if it were something like...immunity to level drain, I could just set the effect to last, say, 7 or 8 seconds instead of 6 seconds, and nobody would ever notice that it's actually a little longer than it should be in order to make it seem clean and consistent. Don't have that luxury with an AC bonus, so you can only do the best you can with it.

Supposedly, biffing has absolutely no effect for EE games, or at least that's what I've heard from other posters. It'd be neat if you could try it out and see if it has an effect anyways, though.

Can someone explain to me how a 5' radius (or...whatever 42 units is) is not large enough for characters THIS close to be affected? The dwarf in the middle has the shield equipped, and literally none of the other characters have the buff applied while standing that close. I can at least get it to work if someone is standing directly in front of him, but that's pretty much the only place. That's not really usable. Okay, now I increased it to 10' (85 units). There must be some sort of weird directional crap going on, because the character on the far left of the screen is affected, but the character up top, who is at roughly half the distance as the left character, is not. The projectile must just be being cast at like...the very, very front-most point of the character for the disparity to be that great. How annoying. Anyways, the effect: aura-like effects are pretty finicky, and coincidentally, I've been struggling to get a different sort of aura effect to work consistently. I'll circle back to this once I figure out exactly how to make it as consistent as possible.

Hey, I'm not the one trying to pick apart someone else's statements here. All I'm saying is that 1pp was very literally installed, via the weidu installer, on top of the EE builds. Whether or not those modified resources were then integrated into rebuilt data .bifs afterwards is a different matter entirely, but unless someone else can offer some kind of other reasonable explanation as to how the exact same weidu installer patching bugs (and note that I'm saying patching bugs, not even just COPY-ing/overriding bugs) appear on EE resources that would appear if you actually used the installer on a vanilla game, it sure seems like 1pp was straight up installed on the EE builds at some point or another. A small subset of those changes must have been reverted (e.g. the last official version of 1pp deletes the Boomerang dagger icon by overriding it with Dagger of Venom's with no replacement for no apparent reason, switches Albruin's and Daystar's graphics for no apparent reason, deletes the Harbinger icon by overriding it with no replacement for no apparent reason, etc.), but those are some of the more obvious bugs - some of the more difficult to notice ones that'd be difficult to accidentally replicate from the weidu installer still remain.

All very excellent information, thanks! Very limited experience with Near Infinity's .bam editor, so I'm probably not the ideal person to be writing tutorials for it, . Been stuck in the dinosaur days with DLTCEP's bam editor, which is much, much less convenient on a number of fronts. @NdranC The difference between Globe and Spell Deflection is that the globe effect [opcode 155] was modified for the EE games to allow the graphical effect to be specified. I'm also not sure what, if anything, this effect otherwise does, because the actual invulnerability to spell levels effect is in the specified opcode 102 effects. Might be a scripting thing - but either way, you have easy options to introduce a different graphical effect. The spell deflection graphical effect, on the other hand, does not have its own effect - it is hardcoded to the spell deflection opcode itself, which is opcode 201, and as far as I can see, does not allow a specification for a custom graphic. There may still be a way to do it - there is an "animation removal" opcode (305) that may be of use (I've never used it myself, but I've heard other people mention it), and you could also null out the original hardcoded animation entirely and then simply play your own additional animation on top. The danger with the latter approach is that it would remove the animation game-wide, so any spell or ability that you don't specifically patch to then play the correct animation will simply be invisible entirely, which would obviously be a terrible situation for you. @Hold graphical effect: I already re-enabled this graphical effect for hold effects in the latest repository. I didn't think it was necessary for fear (and confusion already has its own overhead graphical effect). If you want to install them without having to redo your entire install, you can copy the related .effs and .spls from the latest repository and just fix the strings (name and description) for the base .spl in Near Infinity. Hold Person (SPPR208), Hold Person or Animal (SPPR305), Hold Person (SPWI306), Hold Monster (SPWI507), Halt Undead (SPCL742), Halt Undead (SPWI324) and their subeffects and subspells are what you'd be looking for.

Anti-magics like Secret Word: No, there isn't. I wish there was, that'd be great, but as far as I know, when a sectype is dispelled (e.g. a spell protection like Globe of Invulnerability), it's always hardcoded to display the same dispel message every time, regardless of what the spell is or what it was dispelled by. Graphics: Okay, so it's a bit complicated, but here we go. For Globe of Invulnerability (I do not believe the Spell Deflections can be modified, so I would not suggest doing so at this time - with some hackery, it might be possible, but I wouldn't recommend it due to the game-wide problems it'd create): Original tutorial that you may skip in favor of the new tutorial below it because I discovered Near Infinity has its own tinting tools but which may nevertheless be useful if you ever actually need to fully export a .bam: New tutorial (if you need pictures/more info, let me know - I'm not sure how good you are at figuring out things on your own/how much you need explained): 1. Near Infinity. You can probably figure out how to get Near Infinity working on your own. 2. On the left side, there is a file browser which lists stuff like "2DA", "ARE', "BAM" - these are file types. The graphic is called "minorglb.bam" under the "BAM"s section, so look for it under that section (I suggest opening the section, then clicking on a file within it, then typing "minor" to shortcut to it). There wasn't a good way to figure out what the graphic is called since the graphic is hardcoded, and I just happened to find it by searching for "MINOR" and seeing it. 3. After selecting the MINORGLB.BAM, you should see the globe graphic pop up on the right side at this point after a moment. Click "Edit BAM" in the bottom right. 4. In the new window, there's a post-processing tab in the top right, select that. 5. Under filters, select "Color: Hue/Saturation/Lightness" and then click "Add". 6. Play around with the sliders until you find something that you like. Try some of the other filters like saturation, brightness, contrast, etc. if it doesn't look quite right/too bright/too dark/etc. 7. Hit "save output file" in the bottom right once you think you've got how you want it to look. 8. Save it somewhere nice. If you get this far, I can then explain how to get it in-game.

Okay, I'm poking around in Near Infinity, I found the resource (MINORGLB.bam), and I want to export it in .pngs. I see an export option, but the only two options are for as the "original" bam or as a "decompressed" bam, both of which are still overall .bams. ...Maybe I need to update Near Infinity? (e): Yep, that was it. Okay, so figured that out...and poking around some more, it looks like there's a much more convenient-than-DLTCEP option of adding images to a .bam creator, neat.

I finally got around to trying this - same result, fighter starts with 11 base HP, mage started with 2, thief with 5, etc. I can only assume that one of my other mods is causing some sort of funkiness, but I guess I'll just have to live with setting the base HP to be correct at the start of every BG game. At least it's not CDTweaks' fault.

There are a lot of very smart people in this world who have the general expertise and intuition to allow them to make stunningly accurate assumptions with very limited or virtually no information/evidence to base those assumptions on. However, those same very smart people would come across as total fools to everyone else if they, say, became completely full of themselves and started constantly making unwise or flat-out incorrect assumptions on situations where they do not have either the necessary expertise or the intuition to do it correctly (or at least correctly enough to provide value to others). Though people might start assuming such a person is stupid, it doesn't actually necessarily mean they are - but it does mean they'll continue to be thought to be until they wisen up and learn to stop constantly opening their mouths about things they don't know enough about. Knowing when you don't know enough to confidently speak about something, and keeping in mind that there's always more to learn from others are two very valuable skills. This message, obviously, is not directed at you, DavidW.

I'm, uh, aware, but nevertheless, it's pretty easy to tell that it was installed on top, as a few of the bugs from the original installer continue to live on in the latest EE versions (one example off the top of my head: the last version of the 1pp installer forgets to actually set the 1bull04 projectile for bull04.itm, which you can coincidentally see in the latest version of BG1:EE is also very coincidentally not set - however, I'm happy to report that at some point, someone noticed that it wasn't set in BG2:EE, and so it is now set in that game...but I guess they forgot to do the same for BG1EE; another example would be that shld02 in BG2EE, which is also shld02a in BG1:EE, never got its original colors cleared before new ones were added to it, so you can see in both games that it has double and incorrectly set colors).

The saving throw text is a bug, but not in the way you might expect, that I recently fixed - essentially, you could cast Banishment on any type of creature, summonable or not, and they would roll a saving throw die. You can test this on any group of random enemies and see that a couple of them will probably display "saved vs. spell" message. Of course, if they're not a summonable, then even if they fail the saving throw, nothing would actually happen - this is what's happening here, those creatures are not marked as summonables. Why that would be...I'm not entirely certain. Possibly an SCS interaction, but if you could provide your weidu.log, that'll make looking into it easier. I'll get back to you on the graphical editing stuff. @ptifab Okay, thanks, will look into it - I've always used DLTCEP for importing/exporting, but I will admit that is quite difficult, clunky, and outright mystical to use, so I'm hopeful NI is a bit better in that regard.

I do use AHK to automate some stuff...buuut I never thought of using something that records input and makes it repeatable on the fly. (e): And I see what you mean by Photoshop's Automation. Neat. What tool do you use to change from .bmps to a .bam so quickly?

For the sake of knowing how to do it, I took a crack at it. It took an hour, and the result is borderline unusable. Good job, me. Graphical stuff sucks - it's difficult to see how something will turn out until you actually see it in-game, but the process of getting it in-game is the most labor-intensive part, so making small tweaks is a huge amount of work (I'd say it was 15 minutes actually doing the graphical work, 45 minutes putting it all back together, so I'm not terribly interested in trying to fix it, haha). https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/i9g5x069bhcqwel/DAiKegSfM8.mp4

The former at least, but the second to a degree as well. Additionally, I believe Globes' and Deflections' graphics are hardcoded to their effects in at least non-EE games, which makes them...problematic to change for those games. It's possibly more modular in EE games.