Angel
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Posts posted by Angel
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Strongly related to this, a tweak I have pondered on for some time was to implement a chance for spell failure if a spell is cast (e.g. from a scroll) by a caster that is too low in level, as P&P says should happen.
Yes, doing this for every level-dependent spell would be a massive undertaking, and I see how it could cause some issues down the line. I am half tempted to at least do it for damage-dealing spells in my own Fixes mod though.
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3 hours ago, jmerry said:
Incidentally, there's some support for dread wolves having troll-like regeneration. There's a variant that shows up in SoD (BDWOLFDR) that uses essentially the same mechanics as trolls. Some slight differences; the min-HP and regeneration items are merged, and the resistance-modifying effects while the wolf is down are externalized to another item.
It's P&P accurate. 2e Monster Compendium, Annual Volume One:
QuoteDuring combat, a dread wolf regenerates like a troll, regaining 3 hp per round after the first combat round. Only acid, fire, or total dismemberment will inflict permanent damage. It is immune to charm, hold and cold-based spells...
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3 minutes ago, DavidW said:
As an addendum to this: it is a bit dangerous to add minhp items to a core creature, because you can't control what happens to its scripting environment: if another mod overwrites, or even strips all the scripts to use the creature as a template, it's game-breaking, since the minhp item sticks around.
I suggest that you get the script itself to add the minhp item. Then if the script is removed, everything fails gracefully.
That is sound advice, thank you. I'll do that if I can't think of a better way.
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3 minutes ago, DavidW said:
Yeah, this is SCS's fault. It didn't occur to me that Dread Wolves (which are fairly generic creatures in the unmodded game) would have scripts added to them - especially scripts that do something essential - so I'm not careful in altering them.
The Wolf of Ulcaster, and some of the wolves summoned by high-level vampires (which are clones of the generic dread wolf), have an extra script just placed into script_override, which is blank in vanilla but which gets filled by the remove-minhp1 item in MiH. SCS ought to be inserting more delicately. Fixed locally (will be in v35); in the meantime, the workaround is to install (at least that component of) MiH after SCS.
There might be minor residual issues even with my local fix, because ideally a regenerate script ought to be in the override slot, whereas SCS v35 will displace it down one slot if it is installed after MiH. I would be surprised if this causes any significant issues though.
Thank you David, for the confirmation of the issue and the workaround/fix.
From my end, I'm trying to come up with a better solution for this. Trollish regeneration has always been an issue even in vanilla BG2, I remember seeing plenty of reports about it. But several people have also stated they like my dread wolf behavior, so I don't want to change it too radically.
Perhaps it would be better to apply the minhp1 effect through a spell with a finite duration instead of an item, that should at least pretend immortality issues down the line. But it does make the scripting a whole lot trickier. I'm going to have to think long and hard on this one.
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4 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:
I honestly hate the 1hp item as well. I would do something like fast regen + damage resistance, and have hits from fire or acid attacks temporarily disrupt one or both (via op326, not script).
I fully agree that the situation is far from ideal, but with the limitations I have in both the engine and my available time and patience, this is currently the best I can do.
6 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:Also I would make sure there is a non-magical way to inflict fire or acid damage, which there is in PnP & IWD but not really in BG.
Try installing my Item Pack.
7 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:However, that is not a knock on this mod. BG2 adopted this weird scripted-resuscitation convention, you are just following the convention.
That, and I simply don't have any better. At least this is a mechanic BG veterans should be familiar with. I'm pretty certain that had I implemented it any other way (damage resistance did cross my mind) I would now be swamped with people complaining about "unkillable dread wolves" as well. There is just no pleasing all the people all the time.
11 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:What’s needed here is to figure out why some other mod is having this interaction. Which may not be clear. I had a similar problem, unkillable trolls in IWD, when using Spell Revisions “Dispel Magic Fix.” Why those interact, I don’t know.
Agreed, and I might be inclined to help if there it weren't brought to me in a "How dare you f*** up SCS arglebargle!!" way. Instead I just got multiple copies of "X doesn't work, fix it now!" with no usable info whatsoever and I was somehow expected to derive the issue from there, followed up by demands to change my mod because it didn't suit the complainer's tastes. I get enough of that kind of BS in my day job already, I don't need them in my free time as well. It's things like this that make me regret ever publishing E&Q to begin with.
17 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:If you are using vanilla game’s troll scripts and some other mod is hijacking them, perhaps you could inure your dread wolves by switching them to a custom version of the script. I dunno, just brainstorming.
It's already a custom script, mh#reg1x.bcs. The problem seems to be that SCS clones dread wolves but in doing so somehow removes or deactivates my script. Which I literally cannot do a thing about and isn't really up to me to debug to begin with.
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Not until I can reproduce it. Which I can't. In all six times I have played all the way from BG1 through Siege and BG2 to ToB.
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What part of "Those are not mine." is too hard to understand? I literally cannot do anything about other mods screwing things up that I didn't even install.
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If you know a better way to implement regeneration, please do share. Otherwise stop making "it doesn't work!!" reports that give me absolutely *nothing* I can do anything with.
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There is literally nothing I can do if another mod installed after mine messes up the scripting.
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I do absolutely nothing with either the Ulcaster encounter (that would be Sword Coast Stratagems) or dread wolves in Sendai's lair (which I haven't even seen, ever). Most likely this is some bad mod interaction.
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On 9/28/2023 at 5:11 AM, morpheus562 said:
I believe that's MiH - EQ doing that, but I haven't had an opportunity to confirm. @Angel do you know if it's something caused by MiH as I don't do anything to touch elementals.
No, that's not one of mine. I don't currently do anything with the Planar Prison specifically or elementals in general and have never seen this before.
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22 minutes ago, Connelly said:
Hi, quick question about the Bhaalspawn powers component in Fixes. Is it an alternative for those not using Ascension, or does it attempt different fixes/changes?
That mod is unfinished and hasn't been released yet, but you are welcome to play with it if you like. My restorations may clash with other mods though, especially UB and ARP, possibly Ascension too.
Anyway, to answer your question, the Bhaalspawn powers are the same in Ascension, UB and MiH F&R, they are based in files already in the game. However, I plan to add one more thing that these other two mods don't offer; the ability to choose which power you get after each trial. This is not currently the case though.
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On 7/18/2023 at 11:28 AM, zaedalus said:
The challenges in this mod compliment the challenges added from these other mods, and it gives a very solid difficulty curve throughout the game which I enjoyed a lot.
I also enjoy fighting 'hordes', especially when it comes to undead, so I'm glad you're not afraid to add lots of powerful enemies to dungeons and boss fights where they make sense. It gives a very different feel from other challenges and fights. I also got great use out of some of the extra spells and some of the extra items are great at giving me more options without feeling like I need to collect the limited set of items in the game to optimise my party around them.Yes, I found that numbers are the best ways to challenge powerful parties. So my main way of making battles more challenging is adding more enemies. This was also designed to complement SCS, which only does so in very limited cases. When I design items, I tend to look for niches where the base game leaves a gap so that my items complement the base game instead of overshadowing it.
On 7/18/2023 at 11:28 AM, zaedalus said:I will also note that from my playthroughs, the Yaga-Shura fight does not seem to be bugged or incompatible with ascension. I recall it was mentioned in the readme that it might be incompatible but I've played it a few times (it's my favourite fight in the game) and no bug has occurred. This COULD be something to do with my mod setup somehow miraculously fixing it, but I don't have any other mods that change this fight.
My main concern here was that too many enemies might spawn, not so much that my scripting interferes with other mods.
On 7/18/2023 at 11:28 AM, zaedalus said:With your spell mod, I tried out your undead component (I forgot the name of it) which separated the undead spells. This was really strong in BG1, but the spells didn't scale like the original animate dead spell did. I think this could do with some change, especially if you have challenge encounters, or any other challenge mods. As much as I absolutely love the idea of having different kinds of undead to summon, if the spell doesn't scale with level, then it basically becomes pointless once you hit SoA. This ultimately means for clerics, level 3 spells are gonna have wasted spell slots since animate dead was probably the strongest spell at that level due to it's scaling and the rest are either situational or mediocre. I also felt like the higher level spell version (doom legion?) for the skeleton warriors wasn't even as strong as the original skeleton warriors (although this could be psychological), meaning I'm taking up higher level slots for something that isn't as strong anyway. There's two ways I can think of to improve this component (I know it's still a work in progress and you may have already thought of these, but I'll give my two cents anyway).
Revised Animate Dead? Yes, that component has not had a whole lot of testing, you're the first person playing with it. At least, that I heard back from. I may have to do a lot more work here. Doom Legion summons three skeleton warriors that are level 9 fighters with 90% magic resistance, basically the same stats as most enemy skeleton warriors.
On 7/18/2023 at 11:28 AM, zaedalus said:First, you could make each individual undead spell scale in some way. This sounds like tedious work and the result might not be very 'elegant', at least to me but I'm not a modder so I wouldn't know.
Yes, the way that table-based monster summoning works is a bit convoluted. It's supposed to scale, but I'm not sure exactly how the calculations work.
On 7/18/2023 at 11:28 AM, zaedalus said:Second, you could remove having multiple spells altogether and reduce it to a single spell. This spell would be something like spell immunity, where selecting it would give you a menu, except based on your level. The menu would then have a selection of which undead you can summon and would expand over time. Again, I'm unsure how easy this is to do, but I know that atweaks (or PnP tweaks?) uses a menu for demon summoning spells in order to increase the summon variety.
I really enjoy the idea of being a really powerful necromancer who has mastery of all these different types of undead, but because I'm a filthy powergamer I need better incentive to use these spells in SoA :P.I really should give this component a bit more attention. I just have a hard time justifying my usually all-good party conjuring undead horrors at all. ^^
On 7/18/2023 at 11:28 AM, zaedalus said:All in all, fun mod with great ideas and I really enjoyed it. There's simply too many components to comment on all of them, but it's very hard to find any that stand out as poor to me.
Thanks, it's nice to hear others enjoy my meddling. It's what motivates me to keep doing this stuff.
On 8/22/2023 at 9:54 PM, Miltoph Carter said:Hello Angel and thank you for your wonderful work! Whenever you are going to release your next version of spellpack please take care of, aura of vitality, druids cannot memorize it.
Mm, this may be an issue with there not being enough open seventh level spell ids in spell.ids. A whole bunch of them are taken by HLAs, leaving only 17 slots for new level 7 priest spells. Do you have other mods installed that introduce new level 7 cleric spells?
On 9/1/2023 at 10:37 PM, herien_0 said:I can't seem to complete the "Zombie Infestation quest. I have two entries for the quest, one showing that it's been completed.
Mm, I don't know what half of the mods on your list to, so I'm a bit at a loss here. The quest should be cleared in Wenrics' dialog, if I recall right, and I don't change that much other than the number of zombies to kill.
On 9/3/2023 at 11:31 AM, dunehunter said:Some items seem to be too powerful, for example from EEKeeper I found a belt called Adriyana's Garter, which gives +5 Armor Class, another cloak that gives +3 AC. This is way more powerful than original items.
The garter is a Throne of Bhaal item, not available until after clearing castle Saradush. It's also limited to wizards. There is no objective standard to what is "overpowered", but I don't think it is more powerful than other items available at that point, there are at least three shields that also give a +5 AC bonus.
As for the cloak, it gives +3 AC but only +1 saves, so it compares quite well to the Cloak of Protection +2 which is a standard game item, sacrificing one point in saves for one point of AC. Note that it also has the same itemexlc.2da restrictions as the CoP +2.
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On 8/12/2023 at 10:00 PM, Roberciiik said:
I've tested a new scroll component on BGT, and it seems that there is a bug for "original" version of the spell: two Skeleton Warriors are neutral after summoning (blue circles) and should be party aligned (green circles).
I think I fixed it, and I applied some further polishing and fixed another minor bug I found. (Skeleton Guard was the wrong level in Revised.)
Could you try it from my github before I make a new pull request?
https://github.com/AngelGryph/NTotSC -
13 hours ago, Telcontar said:
One quick question, if I may ask here, so as not to open a completely new topic just for the sake of it.
What do I need and how, to use, to open the catacombs in the druid grove, in the wood of the dead area to the north of the Northern Citadel?
Two items, a ring and a dagger. Once you have both in your inventory you should be able to enter.
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6 hours ago, Roberciiik said:
Do you plan to look at this before releasing a new version of NTotSC?
It should be a fairly easy fix. Either I fix skelwasu.cre on BGT, or I make the summoned monster custom. I'm inclined towards the latter.
6 hours ago, jastey said:That would be great. (I will not release a version with a known bug, if possible.)
I'll work on it as soon as I have some time. Or if someone else wants to fix it with the information above, feel free. ^^
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11 hours ago, Roberciiik said:
I've tested a new scroll component on BGT, and it seems that there is a bug for "original" version of the spell: two Skeleton Warriors are neutral after summoning (blue circles) and should be party aligned (green circles).
Looks like there is a difference in the definition of skelwasu.cre between oBG2 and BGEE.
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Revisions done, and everything seems to work as intended on my unmodded BGEE installation. Pull request created.
On 8/7/2023 at 9:13 AM, Endarire said:Does this mean that the spell description's casting time should be changed to account for skeleton guard's true casting time?
Yes, I updated the descriptions too.
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15 hours ago, Endarire said:
Skeleton guard's icon last I checked was simply a reused animate dead. Since skeleton guard animates 2 skeleton warriors, what say you to making the icon 2 skeletons, such as 2 skeletons standing back-to-back?
I wish I could, but my artist skills are virtually non-existent, a fact that plagues me in my own spell mod as well. Unless someone like @Lava steps up, there isn't much I can do here.
15 hours ago, Endarire said:If the skeleton warriors' stats are the same as the SR version of animate skeleton warrior, what say you to also including their stats in the spell description?
It was skelwa02, the same skeleton warriors as encountered in the Undercity and Durlag's Tower, which are level 9 fighters with 18/00 str and 90% MR. In the fix I changed it to the more appropriate skelwasu (already present in both BGT and BGEE), but their stats are virtually identical. And yes, both descriptions need updating too, neither reflects what the spell actually does very well and the listed casting time is impossible in the engine constraints.
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On 7/26/2023 at 6:51 AM, Endarire said:
Skeleton Guard
-Learning the spell as a wizard then casting it did nothing. The casting animation played and no units were summoned/animated.Alright, I found the issue here too. It was another targeting issue; opcode 67 (Creature Summoning) expects an object target, not a point, so setting it to 2 does not work with an area target. It only uses the target to determine the EA of the summoned creature anyway, the actual location where it pops up is controlled by parameter2. Setting it to 1 (Self) and setting parameter to 2 (at point, EA matches target) fixed the problem.
20 hours ago, jastey said:Yes, I don't mind leaving the spells in as they are now, but anything where the player would need to decide to a limit of mod/components they can install in total I would prefer in an optional extra component, if it makes sense.
My suggestion is the following: I will move the spells to an optional component and give a choice of original, i.e. just the spells as they currently are with only the bugs ironed out, and revised where the spells are made more appropriate for a BG1 game.
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2 hours ago, jastey said:
If you or someone else wants to make the spells available for sorcerers feel free, but I'd suggest putting it into an own optional.component.
Sure, I can do this. The spells seem completely out of place and they have nothing to do with any of the quests, so moving them to an optional component entirely makes perfect sense.
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On 7/26/2023 at 6:51 AM, Endarire said:
Fiery Cloud
-Scroll says it's a level 7 spell. It counts in all regards in-game as a level 8 spell.Typo in setup-ee.tra. It has the correct level (8) in setup.tra. Corrected locally. The spell is basically a nerfed Incendiary Cloud.
On 7/26/2023 at 6:51 AM, Endarire said:-Using this scroll in-game from the hotbar/quickbar produces no spell effect.
Classic targeting error. When using opcode 148 (Cast Spell at Point), the Target field should be set to 1 (Self). Corrected locally.
On 7/26/2023 at 6:51 AM, Endarire said:-The scroll icon and spell icon on the cast list differ.
Mm, looks like the spell borrows an icon from Finger of Death. But amusingly, the spell book uses the BG2 icon while the casting bar uses the IWD1 icon. I'm no good with icons, but I'll see if I can come up with something more consistent.
On 7/26/2023 at 6:51 AM, Endarire said:-A Sorcerer can't learn this spell when leveling, though that may be intentional.
This is an artifact from the fact that this was originally a mod for oBG1 where sorcerers did not exist. The spell is not actually added with ADD_SPELL and thus gets no ID in spell.ids and no slot in the spwiXXX namespace, and is thus not detected by the sorcerer spell selection screen. Fixing this would require some major changes to the install code, so I'll have to check with @jastey if this is desired.
On 7/26/2023 at 6:51 AM, Endarire said:Skeleton Guard
-Learning the spell as a wizard then casting it did nothing. The casting animation played and no units were summoned/animated.Hm, the spell looks alright at first glance. I'll have to do some more poking at this one.
On 7/26/2023 at 6:51 AM, Endarire said:-Using this scroll in-game from the hotbar/quickbar produces no spell effect.
Illegal value for parameter2 of opcode 148 (Cast Spell at Point). Corrected locally.
On 7/26/2023 at 6:51 AM, Endarire said:-A Sorcerer can't learn this spell when leveling, though that may be intentional.
See above.
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On 7/26/2023 at 6:51 AM, Endarire said:
Greetings, all! This bug report is based on the latest master branch as of this writing. (The latest change I found was June 2, 2023.) I used this version since it was the newest.
My tests are based on a new EET install. I tested the scrolls by consoling them in as well as buying them from Sorcerous Sundries. The results were the same.
Fiery Cloud
-Scroll says it's a level 7 spell. It counts in all regards in-game as a level 8 spell.[...]
Skeleton Guard
-Learning the spell as a wizard then casting it did nothing. The casting animation played and no units were summoned/animated.
[...]
Mm, I never poked at these (mostly because I consider the inclusion of such high level spells in BG1 a bit silly), but now my interest is piqued. I'll see what I can do.
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1 hour ago, jmerry said:
The mess of PDIALOG.2DA is mostly cosmetic, but it doesn't have the BG1 NPCs; it looks like a ton of mod NPCs were added onto the BG2 list, and the BG1/SoD list was never merged in. Because EET doesn't do that at all; it creates a new BGDIALOG file to cover the BG1 and SoD campaigns, and updates the CAMPAIGN.2DA file to refer to it.
SCS fails to take this into account; it only looks at PDIALOG.2DA when defining its cre_is_PC function, and thus misses BG1-only NPCs in EET games. This is a failure to build for EET compatibility. (The offending function is defined in the SFO library, as part of lib_cre.tpa.
As is typical for @DavidW the code for this is behind several abstraction layers, but the array script_name_pdialog that CRE_is_PC uses does get filled with both the contents of PDIALOG.2DA and any additional tables defined in CAMPAIGN.2DA. The relevant code is in read_in_PCs in sfo/general/lib_macro.tpa which in turn is called from lib/always.tph.
My new "Made in Heaven" mods
in General Mod Discussion
Posted · Edited by Angel
Very brave of you to play around with a mod I have not even officially released yet! I guess it is time for more... experiments. The pain will only be passing, you should survive the process.
Silliness aside, this one seems to be specific to BGEE, I can't reproduce it on BG2EE. I'm trying to figure out if I did something stupid or it's just iwdification not taking a changed situation into account.
EDIT: Found the issue. The divine spells component tries to force new icons for the HLAs CLERIC_ELEMENTAL_SWARM, CLERIC_GREATER_ELEMENTAL_SWARM, CLERIC_SUMMON_DEVA, CLERIC_SUMMON_FALLEN_DEVA. However, these do not exist in BGEE, so the spell restoration component of MiH F&R clears the unused references from spell.ids. This causes Iwdification to trip on this part.
EDIT 2: As a workaround, you can disable recycle_unused_idsnames in the mih_fr.ini file.