Salk

 

Demi cast Raise Dead on self...

 

Sorry if I disappeared again, time to wrap things up! Thankfully Mike is still around (I love you man ) and I think I can dedicate 1-2 hours per day to modding for quite a few weeks before I have to get back to work.

 

I'll try to read all the posts I missed and start to understand where I have to start. Brb

Nice! Hi demi!

 

We need Resurrection here...

One simple question: to remove the night-time purple/blue patches should I choose option 2?

Sorry to interrupt your discussion here, but is it possible please to give a date for the release of SRv4 ? It’s because I wish to see what an well-known horrible gnomish turnip-seller will do with these new spells in a near future…Summon Umber Hulks and Basilisks, whaow !

The various ETAs here have not historically been a success. You are better off not knowing...

I am not even sure I understand why you wanted to make the spell innate.

How did you reason?

I will have to see if changing Find Familiar to Innate messes up compatibility with my own WTP Familiars and I am not thrilled at the idea that the mod will be further developed only for EE game but happy to see a new release and kreso's revised SCS.

I am working on the next version and I have already introduced Empowerment for thief and warrior class familiars (a boost to AC and STs for the first and AC, THAC0 and HPs for the latter, if master and familiar are close) and Spell bounce for the mage class (chance for the familiar to mirror the effects of personal protective spells, if master and familiar are close).

The Quasit, Dust Mephit and Spider are also now immune to Critical Hits, to make them less fragile in combat.

Initially I had removed those immunities that the familiars had in the original game (IMMCLOUD.ITM) because rather arbitrary: Level Drain, Petrification and Sleep but I am considering putting those back, especially because I am unsure whether a level drain susceptible familiar might cause problems.

Thoughts?

Bartimaeus,

I have gone through a number of your reports and fixed myself those that were real easy (text inconsistencies, missing saves, etc.). We'll just have to wait for Demi to return to have a proper new Beta...

Hello Mike1072!

I understand that minimod is messy and it probably needs someone that knows better but at least it seemed to make things look better for me so I left it there for anyone to try (not that I think anyone has ever done it...). But the icon changes have to do with appearance... The idea was to restore the BG1 look for BG1 items when possible...

Bartimaeus,

if I am not mistaken it seems that the "Contagious" ability of the Spear of Withering has a 100% probability, rather than the 15% of the description?

Also about your "Sling of Seeking +1" report: I do see a correct To Hit bonus of 7 in the item properties.

Instead about the Spider's Boots of Stealth: Demi restored the original boots properties (I think) without reverting the item description. Personally, I instead kept the new description and lore and reintroduced the Web Immunity.

The most urgent correction would be just this and Arbane's Sword. The fact that the Hastening effect is completely missing and replaced with a similar special ability (Haste) cannot be overlooked.

Bartimaeus,

I reported the troubles with IR a long time ago the first time but things did not change since then.

I have worked my own remedy and if you are playing BGT you may want to give it a try.

By the way, great stuff with your feedback. If you have made your own fixes, would you mind sharing?

Thanks!

If I may suggest another mod of mine (see signature), you might find it is a nice way to limit the number of reloads.

Anyway, I will for sure implement the immunity to critical hits for the fighter class familiars, as you suggested.

The other suggestion I do like is the share spell feat for specific spells but I do not know whether or not I am capable of coding it myself.

What instead won't surely happen is to revert the Familiars to the original ones for BG2/ToB or the removing of the nagging (which is, in my opinion, a key point).

But as I said, I will return to this eventually!

Hello Siebenfinger!

Excellent feedback, as usual. And a few good suggestions, too. I did know, creating this modification, that it needed thorough testing through BG2/ToB, something that I have not truly done myself, just because, like you said, player and NPCs/Monsters become demigods. To strike a good balance between plausible survival skills for the familiars and the new familiar mechanics that would suit the enemies on steroids was going to be real hard.

Especially if you use SCS' tactical challenges. I hate reloading (in fact, I play without it myself) but if you really make the game very challenging for yourself then it is pretty much normal that your familiar is not going to survive. There is only so much that I can do to not make the familiar itself ridiculously overpowered.

As I said though, there are a few good ideas there. And more might come to me as well once I return to it, which is not going to happen in the very near future though.

Oh and I love the details!

So thanks again!

Hello Siebenfinger!

Thanks for the great feedback.

I will take a better look at each of your reports when I will be back to IE modding.

At the moment, my focus is elsewhere.

Siebenfinger,

I have a new version of the mod ready with a few changes you might like:

• The familiar will no longer refuse to move to the backpack if the mage or the familiar itself has lost considerable health (50% for the latter; 70% (BG1), 55% (BG2) and 40% (TOB) for the first) - in every other condition the familiar will stay and fight. This is necessary considering that I do not want to completely eliminate the risk to have the familiar involved in battle and also to properly value the special ability of rabbits and ferrets (burrow) which keep them safe in fights
• Hoping that qwerty1234567's testing of CombatCounterLT(1) proves to be reliable, now there should no longer be any nagging in battle
• I am using a hacky workaround to the problem of the familiar turning hostile and leaving because of unintentional friendly fire: the script won't fire when there is a battle going on, the familiar will still take damage normally

The familiar should still return automatically to the backpack if its health sinks to 25% or lower, provided the Mage is not too far.

About the first change, I am open to suggestions. I have considered allowing for the familiar to accept being confined to the backpack in case of death of other party members, the presence of a number of particularly tough enemies or based on the game's difficulty setting but in the end I opted for the simplest solution.

Thank you for your suggestion, qwerty1234567.

I must say that I never had any problems myself but adding an extra check won't do any damage, hopefully.

Thanks for the extra feedback.

I am actually working to try and meet your demands because it is obvious that this modification must also be functional in BG2 and ToB and you are also the only one that bothered giving me a detailed feedback about how the experience with WTP Familiars has been.

I might have something ready for testing in a couple of days or so.

The nagging should most definitely not happen during combat. I am using !ActuallyInCombat() as trigger and it should just stop the nagging script from activating but I did learn that the engine (which I am still very unfamiliar with and always will be) has its own quirks and I cannot guarantee that there are no glitches.

And about the friendly fire, I would like to check with more expert modders whether or not there is a way to make sure the Familiar's breaking script does not fire in case of damage made by AoE spells. I was hoping that AttackedBy would not return true in case of damage from AoE spells but I suppose it is not so.

At this moment, I created new dialogue lines to use for when the player requests that the Familiar moves to the backpack during a battle.

I will have to do some testing.

Hello!

Your concern is noted and I will give some thought to your suggestions.

First of all though... Do you know what version of the mod you played?

About the nagging... I built this modification with the idea of making it hard for the player to keep the familiar in the backpack because of two reasons:

1) The original spell is just a cheap exploit to get some free HPs

2) A Familiar wouldn't want to spend its natural life stuffed into a backpack

On the other hand, I also do not want my solution to cause the familiar to risk its life each time there is a fight. In this sense though, the BG 2 part of the game does not help because of how the power of enemies scaled (and it does not surprise me that you do not seem to mention any issue for the whole first part of the game, which I know much better). I do not know what difficulty level you play at and I do not know whether or not you use AI enhancing modifications but this modification is built on the assumption you play at the Core difficulty and with a full party. Playing solo, at higher difficulty level and perhaps with SCS slapped on top of all of it and hoping that the familiar can make it through is asking for too much. In that kind of context it is normal that the familiar dies each time.

Said that, I have not tested it extensively on SoA/ToB, especially because I am much less fond of the sequel, so I believe you might have fair remarks.

What I can say is this: the familiar is scripted to return to the backpack automatically when its life is threatened. Did you notice such behavior even in those cases when the familiar refuses to return to the backpack?

The nagging mechanic is built in such a way that the familiar will feel mistreated if confined to the backpack for too long too many times. It will eventually leave. And it already works the way you suggested. After 8 hours (iirc) from being let out, the familiar will accept to return to the backpack. During combat, the nagging dialogue should *not* happen at all! If that is what happens then it is a bug which I need to remedy.

About the friendly fire... I will take a look at the script because I would rather avoid friendly AoE spells causing the familiar to leave the party and that is what you told me it happens, right? I am going to have to investigate and see if I can find a way to stop this from happening.

Hello Siebenfinger.

Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it.

I also understand the criticisms although I'd say the vanilla familiars are less effective in fights than the WTP familiars. Before the player could just conveniently keep them in the backpack at all times to leech free HPs with no risk.

One of the goals of this modification was to avoid that. The familiar is supposed to be protected and cared for, it is supposed to be weakish at later stages of the game when the party and the enemy are often demigods.

Said that, I am sure the balancing can be refined and I would love to receive more feedback from other players as well.

Version 1.65 is out. It fixes the bug with the missing level up dialogue option at level 12.

Hello!

Well spotted! There is indeed a typo (actually more than one) in the code and the level up routine would not work from 11 -> 12. I tested the mod but I did not test each single level up possibility. I will release a new version very soon.

And honestly, I never thought of working on an Animal Companion mod (although I quite like the idea) because revising the Find Familiar spell was the last project I wanted to work on before retiring from modding. I am very glad you enjoyed it and I am sorry about the inconveniences it caused you. Unfortunately there has been a certain amount of copy pasting that have resulted in a few typos here and there. I thought I had got them all but it was not the case.

And yes, option 7 is introduced by my modification. I thought it was a nice option to have the familiar follow automatically (it will not do it during combat though).

If you talked to the familiar in the BG1 part of the game, you might have enjoyed quite a number of new lines I made for them (option 5). The ones for the evil aligned familiars are by far the funniest.

timechef,

I have tested version 1.6 on my local BGT install. I created 4 Sorcerers (NG, NE, LN, CN) and leveled them up (from Level 1 to Level 2) and the level up option in the dialogue is indeed there (It's the first: "Show me what you learned.").

I am sorry about the inconvenience, timechef.

I will test it today. In the meantime, can you tell me what familiar it is that you use? I took a quick look at my code and I could not find a problem with it. I will install the game and see if everything runs correctly on my side. I can hardly think there is some other modification that messes things up but one never knows.

Hello noctem93!

I do not own a copy of BG2 EE so porting it to EE (which in theory should not be very complicated) is not something I see doing myself in the near future (EasyTuTu compatibility is also missing).

If someone volunteered to do the porting, I'd be more than happy to offer assistance.

Hello timechef!

The familiar levels up via dialogue. Once your sorcerer gains a level, speak to the familiar and a new dialogue option should appear. If not, then there is something wrong (of course it would be frustrating to recast the spell each time! One of the goals of this mod is to try and establish some sort of attachment to the familiar you summon and I am sorry I never got around to make it possible to name them).

The current version is 1.6 which fixes and improves on quite a number of things though.

Version 1.6 is available.

Change log:

Great!