temnix

I thought at first this was an appeal to steal some items that already exist in the games... steal them and do what with them? Maybe just out of malice... Anyway, I had a look at the list, and, if you were to drop everything but the item descriptions, that might inspire some modders. There is no need to explain a "design philosophy." Everyone already has got a "design philosophy," it shows in the things he makes. And what players want, what players expect, even if accurate - what is it to you? It's not like you can argue in an acceptance of your ideas. You simply make what you want, and if that's predictable and comforting, you will find more acceptance, if it is original and eye-opening, less. You will find yourself in the spectrum somewhere, like it or not, and all these presentations and prevarications are like a long disclaimer. That said, imaginary items remind me of similar inventories in AD&D resources like the Tome of Magic and the Complete Wizard's Handbook (if I'm not mistaken, that one had this kind of section). I remember the dragon slippers - you put them on and begin to look like a young green dragon... The difference between Pen&Paper and IE modding, of course, is that in a tabletop game an item is created the moment it is imagined, but here it needs to find an expression in code. That's one thing; but every item, no matter its properties, also needs a unique appearance. That means at least two custom pictures, one for the item icon and the other for the description page. The item icon consists of two frames, one with a shadow for when the item is picked up, and it is better if this one is a little larger than the dropped frame. A third picture, for a ground icon, should also be made if the item is very unusual. The item may also be consigned to a new category for the purposes of equipping. For example, if you are making a broad, soft hat, you don't want to make your item a Helmet, because it will be accompanied by clanging metallic sounds on pick-up and drop-down. Instead you want to find or record more appropriate, softer, textile sounds for both motions and put the item into a new, rarely used type, changing the type's entry in ITEMTYPE.2DA and assigning it to the head slot, or adding a new item type; as far as I know, this (re)assignment is only available in the Enhanced Editions, so you might have to produce a poorer, fork version for a "classic" installation. (Anything that goes into the head slot, in particular, protects from critical hits, and if you don't want your soft hat to do that, you will have to tick the appropriate box, "Toggle critical hits," in item properties. It is a flag that only works in ToBEx or the EEs, however, so there is another condition for your installation file, another fork. All such differences must be mentioned in the item description as well.) This all sounds petty and beside the point, but quality of execution requires that you think of all these: types, special properties, pictures, sounds, and other graphics that will be played in special effects and sounds to be used there. You understand, then, that really memorable items can't be very numerous. I'm not going to touch here on item descriptions very much. Write something interesting there, better than "This sword flares with fire when it hits" or "Adventurers found this long ago, no one knows where," all right? There are way too many lousy "stories" like that in Baldur's Gate 2. Another circumstance to consider, and really a big one, is where and how you are going to make the items available. Plunking them in stores is boring, the best equipment should be won, not bought. Accordingly, you need to think about what chests, containers, whose inventories to add these items to, replacing something already there, perhaps, and the balance of the operation. Power balance, cash balance. Any new items equals store sales. In truth, new items are best suited to new areas and adventures just being populated... A few places are more appropriate for additions than others. I tend to put scrolls with new spells in the inventories of wizards on the Ice Island in BG1, and usually I combine these gifts with booster spells for the carriers, giving them +1 to Armor Class, a few extra hit points, increasing their level and so on, to offset the extra finds. Provided you have all that in hand, you can move on to the last thing, or the first thing, if you are coming from the opposite direction, whether the item's suggested powers can actually work? And if they can, do those powers make much difference? Some items from your list are impossible. For example, staves of energy substitution. There is no way to alter the type of damage a spell does in this engine. Items that give bonuses while held in the inventory? Impossible as well, only equipped items can do that (there is an exceptional, unwieldy and risky workaround involving the main script, BALDUR.BCS, but you don't want to go there unless this item is really special). Et cetera. Some of the effects you would like can be welded onto rings, amulets and so on, though, including bonuses to specialization. Besides the impossibility in many cases, there are already items that give bonuses like you suggest. There are items that cast Identify, for instance, which is an easily available power even in the first BG, if you have a wizard in the party other than Edwin. Buying identification at 100 gp a pop is one of the few restraints on the party purse's ballooning early on. The party will still swim in gold within a couple of chapters, but not SO soon, at least. You add simple identification, and what is the result? Even more useless money in the characters' pockets, even fewer goals, even less to do. Does this encourage imagination, open new activities to the party, encourage players to approach the games from a different angle, write new stories? Hardly. Likewise, there are items that give Intelligence and Wisdom bonuses. Why not instead try to come up with a way to make those stats more relevant? Then players would want to boost them without prodding. Intelligence in particular is an underdog. It is not used for anything except spell memorization. Other games, like Arcanum, Fallout, reward being smart (Arcanum plays out in an altogether different way if the character's Int is low), but in this line-up - nada. And as to how you could make Intelligence relevant, here is one possibility: make it an experience-gatherer. In brief, characters project an aura onto neutral and hostile creatures that brings back a few points of experience from each, helping out the whole party, in proportion to the character's Int. This aura could, perhaps, work even better for bards and give them a reason to mingle with crowds. So there is a way to make Intelligence a hot stat, though I won't claim it is a terribly interesting one. But it is entirely doable. I suggest you try to think of new and engaging uses for (in this case) items and narrow down the list to what can be done at all, then to what is worth doing, and then commit to making the finalists read, look and sound impressive. Even so, I wouldn't expect much reaction on these half-dead boards. But if you, at least, resolve to make the things instead of just throwing up confetti... and again, confetti are enough for a make-belief game, for tabletop play, only not for cold, hard and old code... then you might rouse such technical experise as sometimes crops up here, and get a little help, and with tons and tons of hard work all your own end up making something worth noticing.

It's like this: I'm finishing up an update for "Adventurer's Miscellany," and after that I'm very tempted to quit immediately. There are all reasons to go and none to stay, other than my own stubborness. I'm loathe to let "Continuum" go to waste, because I put so much effort into it, and it's mostly finished as well, but the remaining part is not simple. Tell me, would you finish forging a magic sword if you knew it would be thrown in a rusty chest forever soon after? Well, there is something to be said for denial. As for "The Demon and the Dragon," I overreached there. The "demon" part about Ust Natha got so involved and I wrote and rewrote so many things, work on that scale should be done by a company. Testing is not enough, I would need people to work with hand-in-hand on the writing, the visuals, the music... The thing is grand but unfinished like the second Death Star in "Return of Jedi." I can neither release it nor finish it. The "dragon" part makes the shadow dragon encounter and fight more interesting, and there are some extras, and it's done. I can cut it out and post it as a small stand-alone mod. There is nothing particularly meant for evil characters there, though.

It was very sudden, and they were terribly groggy. That was certainly part of the reason the whole nasty business was thrust upon them. The gang had been sleeping into their fourth hour, oblivious to the world; they had been through plenty. The recent meanderings of the Blues (the name had been haggled and warrior wizard thief'd over by last week, and everyone agreed to put on coats of the nice uniform color, though Kagain the dwarf had had to be bribed) had charted a ziggurat over this, southern, part of the Sword Coast. They had cut unrelenting straight lines of exploitation southeast to a dusty, forsaken alley of tholos tombs and sun-beaten barrens, not frequented even by the dead, from there west, to a lush pine forest where livid-faced midgets had tried to charge them on the back of a grizzled she-bear, then north to a lighthouse encrusted with brine, ringed with wolves, and after that enormously east again, to the great Firewine bridge. That had been a sight to see. And then they had turned west once more... The Blues had gone after gold and glory, in that order, more or less. The purpose of their leader had been less clear-cut. And now they were sprawled in their boots on the excellent springy beds of the Jovial Juggler, an inn in Beregost. Had all gone to plan, after waking they would have had rich meals and fabulous smokes in the dining hall, their boots would have been shined under the tables and then, after some more light recuperation, the leader would have unrolled the map and thrust a finger at a point still abstract and full of promise. Instead they were brought out in nightmares. For example, Montaron, the halfling thief, dreamed that the lady cook of the Juggler was preparing her famous six-piece omelette, the Farewell, tossing it up and down, winking, and the smoke of the stove was becoming thicker and thicker and starting to clog up his throat. Suddenly he saw that it was Fzoul Chembryl. Then he was rattled awake, and a big voice from the day world roared into his ears: "Fire! The inn's on fire!" The others were wading in or tumbling down in states of undress and distress. The hall was littered with overturned furniture. Smoke was billowing from the back room, where the kitchen was or had been. There was already a crowd chocking up the entrance, and a few lodgers getting trampled. Some sort of captainy type was appealing for calm from the stairs, one arm extended in an oratorial gesture over the bobbing heads while the other supported the bed-quilt over which sat his breastplate. The bartender who had woken the halfling had already trotted on, his haunches a-jiggle. He did not make any more sense but moaned and crashed into things. "Get some water!" yelled Branwen, the cleric, from behind a pillar. "Where from? Smash a window, Monty," said Xzar, completely naked and therefore at ease. The halfling grabbed a stool and swung, but a lean figure interposed itself between him and the target. It was bluer than the rest of them, which triggered something little by little in Montaron's spinning brain. "Oh," he said. It was the leader. "I don't know if there is any water, but we can smash the wine and beer barrels," he spoke. "Come on!" Ushering them along like a mother goose with broad azure wings, he drove the three others through the billowing cloud. A loud knock greeted them behind the counter, and the face of Kagain, already a little sooty and scowling, peeked out. He had dislodged one of the beer barrels and started it along the floor, toes or no toes. "Come on!" he yelled. Branwen chased after it. Being the tallest and strong enough, Xzar bent his naked back for the second and with a giggle slowly carried it to the kitchen. "Where's Garrick?" asked the leader. "Who cares? I need me something to open them blasted barrels, and my sword's upstairs," said Montaron. "There should be something here, for troublemakers." The leader searched behind the counter and produced a small sword. "Go stab Xzar. Not too deeply, though. Kagain, do you need help with that?" "I'm fine," grumbled the dwarf as he dragged the next barrel all by himself. "Make yourself useful!" "Wait, wait," said the leader. "There is Westgate ruby wine in that one. You don't want to pour that out to extinguish a little fire." Kagain stared suspiciously. "I don't, too. But how do you reckon it's little?" "There's no heat, only a lot of smoke. It's just a few scoops of coal that got on a hot grill, I bet. But I'm surprised you were the first in line to try to save this place." "Don't be. I own five per cent of it." With these words the dwarf grabbed a smaller keg, checked it for a spigot and, so armed and primed, flip-flopped away. Branwen slowly rolled back the first, biggest barrel. She was bent low over it, and the leader politely averted his eyes. "By Tempus," he said. "Ahem! Let me get the other end." Between the five of them and at the price of two barrels and a keg, the fire was soon suppressed. It had indeed been rather modest as yet, and had even started in coal, only it had begun directly in the great crate of it that stood conveniently in the back, next to the meat spits, where the cook could reach inside at her convenience. "I wonder," said Xzar. "Where is that cook? The woman?" demanded the leader. He was rather out of it from all of the hauling, breaking and irrigating. The room smelled like a giant's pissoir. "And where on earth is Garrick!?" "He's in the back. I mean, in the front," said Branwen. "Don't you hear?" They strained, and clear though uneven music, just a strumming, no words, veered through, between and over the last hanging little clouds of smoke and vapor and their own strained and malodorous breath (four out of eight hours slept) and caught them right in their hearts through the valves left half-ajar by labor. Which is not to say that it necessarily did much there. Nonetheless, Kagain asked: "What the hell is he on about there?" "He calmed down the crowd," explained Branwen. "He and that man... warrior... in the blanket." "Paladin," mumbled Montaron. "Of course, it only worked because we killed the smoke on this end." "Yes, yes," said Xzar. "I believe I can move this conversation forward, friends. The woman cook you were looking for is there." The leader took a huge step forward and crouched. There indeed she lay, that smallish, very stooped woman of sixty or more, usually flushed and enlivened by the small fires under her control but now pale, very pale. He sought a pulse. "Dead?" asked Branwen. "Heh. It's not Fzoul this time, anyway," said Montaron. Xzar clapped him on the back. "Are you still asleep, Monty? You are talking in your sleep, then." "Mmm. For the gods' sake, wizard, put on some pants. Or anything!" "Well, is she?" insisted Branwen. "No," said the leader finally. "And I see no burns. But she has inhaled a lot of smoke. She must have been trying to put it out herself. We could simply risk taking her outside, in the clean air, and hope for the best..." "Just the thing," said Kagain. "I can cure her," said Branwen. "You haven't rested, and I know you need that to pray for your powers," said the leader. "Her best chance is at the temple outside the town, I think. The Song of the Morning." "Not a very good chance, if I'm supposed to haul her there," said Montaron. "Common sense returns to you, chum," said Xzar. "Stick to it. In any case, I concur. I'd much rather go back on my pillows." "Wimps... She's a pretty good cook for this place," said Kagain. "I'm up for a little trip, if we don't have to pay for the cure. Anyhow, we probably won't. The guv, Ormlyr, he's the sort of guy to help pro bono. I voted for him every time when I still lived here." "Enough talk. Take her out now, anyway," commanded the leader. Branwen and the dwarf picked up the body and carried the unconscious woman to the lobby. They found it in greater disarray than before. A few windows had been smashed, after all, in their absence, and a sour-faced man sat on the floor, clutching his ear. But the door was open and free, the crowd had all filtered out. Garrick, the bard, looked triumphant and vain as he ran the strings of his small traveler's harp to and fro in tousy arpeggios. His long legs dangled from an armchair installed in a stretch of clear air from one of the broken panes and the exit. "Good work!" he exclaimed with a smile and brandished the instrument. "And look - no panic! We had a very orderly evacuation, Bjornin and I. He was the one who helped out here... Where did he go? Anyway, who's that?" "A victim, maybe," said the leader, following behind this small procession. The fact that their heads were all uncovered made it look even more funeral-like. They carried the woman some paces outside of the entrance, beyond the cobblestones of the street, and put her down on the green grass. The crowd that had disappeared from the inside of the inn was here in excessive quorum, and the rest of the town was rushing in to help put out the fire or offer praise to those who had put out the fire, depending on the freshness of their news. On the spot all were instantly but inaccurately updated. "That Kagain tried to steal a barrel of wine or something," said one woman. "I saw it through the smoke." "Bjornin couldn't stand the smell of this bunch," said another. "Them paladins have a way to sniff out the evil. That's why he rushed out just now. This bunch, they've been down south in Nashkel, spying, I bet. It's not them who put out that fire, I tell you." But when the cook had been laid on the grass, and it was confirmed that she was alive, opinions began to realign, sure memories were consigned to oblivion, and then Xzar, immaculately dressed and smiling, stepped onto the scene, and the leader of the Blues smoothed down his hair and made a speech... It is true, he said, that his group's reputation has not been entirely positive, but now it was time for mistrust to become understanding and acceptance. Et cetera. Smoke had stopped coming out of the inn's door completely, and his last words were drowned in an ovation. "All right, all right," mumbled Kagain and threw around little glance darts from under his eyebrows. "We are about to take her to the Song of the Morning," concluded the leader. "There we will ask that she be cured." After this there was a pause, a gentle pause, and as pauses imply a resumption, this time the people did not hesitate to bring up the other end. "Here is to buy Erna the cure!" shouted a rough voice, and a gold piece fell next to the body. "Yes, here is for the clerics!" cried another, and more gold followed. "Get her back on her feet!" All together they scooped up several hundred, not that they counted on the spot, of course. So the cook was lifted again, and put on a stretcher, and the gang quickly made itself decent, or something like it, and out and away they embarked, as though on a great quest (the temple’s minarets rose not half a mile from the door of the inn, and the towners could follow just as well, but it was awesome and intimidating enough). Branwen kept next to the stretcher and checked the pulse every now and then. Garrick strummed a little valorous ditty timed to the rhythm of their feet. "We may spoil their shops with treasure, but still we are a having an easy time in this town," said the leader half to himself, "easier than we deserve, considering a thing or two we have done." Xzar, who was walking next to him, guffawed. "Yet we were truly heroic this time. My back still hurts from the weight of that barrel. I had to wonder, had we been on the other side in this incident, had we been the villains, how would we have gone about destroying the inn?" "Destroying?" echoed the leader. "But it was a simple accident. I daresay, I made the best of it." "Possibly. It could all go downhill from there. But really, if you were, theoretically, a little old ant and for some reason wanted to destroy this big, sturdy rubber tree plant, how would you do it? Arson? Mind you, that place has no attic heaped with straw, no cellar with inflammable mineral gases rising out of it. And the doors to the attics and cellars that do exist are all well-locked. Ask Montaron. So, if I lived in that same inn myself to boot, how could I burn it down? I think," he went on, "I would start a fire in some place already expected to make a little smoke, and I would give it a little time to gather strength, and meanwhile I would make myself unpresentable and join the others in innocent confusion and panic." "Well..." said the leader. Xzar interrupted: "You were all on the lawn nursing, and I found this on the bottom of the coal box." He reached inside his robe and took out a small, open lamp, the sort usually filled with fish oil, now reeking of beer. "It was practically drowned, you know. But before, tucked between coals, burning slowly, steadily... Still, I don't pretend to know who it was." The leader stopped in his tracks. "I know who it was." "Speak, master starfish!" "The breastplate. Of course..." mumbled the leader. "Why should anyone put on a breastplate and not the rest of armor? What use could it serve, except to make you look ridiculous and unready - unless that was point! And we have had an easy time in this town, even in that inn. Why? How? You, or Montaron, or Kagain... well, perhaps he passed as a local. And Branwen, Garrick - granted. But even myself, why didn't he ever accost me? Because it's awfully convenient to have us around!" "I always said it was," said Xzar. "But we will find out in a minute, we will find out in a minute." In fact, it took almost an hour. The priest, Kelddath Ormlyr, had finished the solemn incantation, had taken his hand away from the creased, time-stressed forehead of the old cook, but the awful pallor of her skin only slowly filled with a little blood. She opened her eyes and raised a dull stare to their faces. "Can you hear me?" demanded the leader. Then, relenting a little: "Please answer, if you can hear me. Erna." "I think so, sir," she said in a faint voice. "Do you remember what happened? The fire." "Yes. The kitchen..." She trailed off. "I trust it is more important to inquire of her well-being, or else let her rest," offered the priest governor grandly. Everything about him was grand: his turquoise doublet, his tones, his beard, less like silver than like platinum, his gestures that described orbits so lofty they must have been in ephemerides. Montaron, who had heard the conversation before, elbowed him in the kidneys, and the old man doubled over. The bow-carrying beauties that stood guard in the shrine turned sharply, their interminable song instantly stopped, but Kagain jumped in front, waving his big arms. "Apologies! Apologies! It's a misunderstanding! He'll be all right!" "Really!" said Garrick. "You'll see that this is important," the leader told to the governor's pain-wracked face. "Now, grandmother, tell me what you remember. We saved you from the fire, me and the others. Was there anyone else in the kitchen when it started?" "No..." "No?" "Before. He came out," she said, rather painfully and vaguely. "He said he was looking for an apple. I thought it was odd, but he's the paladin, you know? Bjornin is." This is the beginning of a story that may or may not be continued, but probably won't be. It's not enough to simply want to create or be able to create. Thanks to this try, I know I can, and there is a method ahead that is rather exciting. But the incentives and rewards for making something must always outweigh the challenges and costs, and the environment on these boards is a lot of the latter with very little of the former.

I was twining dough braids out of the toolset, trying to figure out how to make a creature a familiar of another, and it turns out that this is possible. I don't know if this is a discovery or not, but no one has made anything of this, at any rate. It takes applying opcode 195, "Drain Con and HP on death," directly to a creature, and a party member needs to be in the "Master ID" field (parameter 3). The numbers there go beyond 5, corresponding to Player6, and cycle - 6 is Player1 again, and so on. The "slave" doesn't give any bonus hit points to the "master" right away, but, strangely enough, does when he dies, just before the Constitution loss and damage equal to the "slave"'s maximum hp whip back. The bonus maximum hit points from the EFF file controlling the link are permanent, if the timing for the EFF (where it is applied, not inside the EFF) is Instant/Permanent, otherwise none of this works at all. The guide here was right about the timing, but wrong that familiars can't be had beyond FAMILIAR.2DA. The hit points bonus can be negative, too, in that case they are permanently lost in addition to the Constitution loss and damage a second later. If the hit points were negative but an equal number were added through a "Maximum hit points bonus," this would be the same as the familiar familiar bonus, gained on summoning but lost on death. I can think of some uses for this, but this would work much better if the effect could somehow be channeled through to a particular "master" instead of subjugating everyone to some one party member. Is that possible? With invisible minions, probably. Any other way?

If my name were Hurbold Duethkatha, I'd take a pseudonym too. Hey Lauriel, check out the lore on Ardenor Crush while you are at it.

I find it that I can't import a saved game from BG:EE into BG2:EE. When the button is clicked, sometimes there is no character to select there. At other times, even if I just go back and forth again, the character's name appears, but the client crashes when I click on it. Does anybody have a clue as to why? Could this be because I haven't installed the mod from the first game with some custom abilities for the character to the second game? But the error takes place earlier than that, as far as I can see.

@igi Excellent!

In the Gibberlings guide, in the section about STO files, a "tvrnqul03" is mentioned next to the "Tavern quality" check. It is a mysterious property, maybe not functional. "Tavern quality 1," "Tavern quality 2," there is no difference that I can see. And both can be checked. But to finish with this topic, what is this tvrnqul03?

I'm preparing an update for "Adventurer's Miscellany," and I'm updating this mod, too, with the new version of wine, and to remind of this mod's existence. There is only one bottle of it here. The description now hints at wine's effects without being explicit.

It has an INI? All right, I'll look there. Thanks.

Well, it's not like you could even make that. But I was talking about letting enemies surrender to the party and for party members to switch sides ("Mercy"), for paladins to fall and become blackguards and for blackguards to redeem themselves and become fighters or paladins over a series of tests ("Jacob's Ladder"), separate purses for party members and special improvements they can buy ("Hoarders"), just to name a few things I've made. And if you don't know the answer to a question, don't write your junk words in the thread.

Don't you have anything useful to say? Or make. You know, if had the answer to those, I would be closer to making something interesting for the... community. Not for the morons who don't know to use capital letters in what they type, but for the others, those who appreciate creativity, innovation, depth. There are some people like that, and they are worth keeping in mind.

First, why doesn't Remove Inventory Item delete an item held in the hand? It should do that. The item is a Long sword. It is falsely unequipped instead: disappears from the avatar and its equipped effects end, but it is still shown in the item slot and can be lifted and plunked back there. This may have something to do with the stacking of the item - more than one can be stacked for this item type, five items, to be exact, though only one is being held. I don't know if that's the reason or not, but I have removed non-stacking items before with this opcode. Second, does the SetItemFlags action change the flags for all items with that file name in the creature's inventory? Come on, you molasses, get going! Whip up that old expertise. It's morning and jogging time.

I'm looking for the BAM file used in PRO files for the hardcoded smoke type BOLT_OF_GLORY. It is a sort of small golden flash. This is not the BAM played by the spell on the target, it is the trailing smoke of the missile. Who can tell me which BAM this is?

Nobody is going to see NX. You only need that for the conversion...

Try the prefix NX) for these files.

When opcode 206 is used as a while-equipped effect, it stops the spell in question but does not display the string. Are there any solutions or workarounds? I don't know if opcode 318 would give the message, but it is limited to the Enhanced Editions and its message field works completely differently since patch 2.6. As far as I'm concerned, that change rules out messages in 318, because I would have to make two different versions of all effects with it - one for 2.6 and one for people still playing 2.5 (everyone with a 32-bit computer, for example).

When a spell is cast, then sent through Apply effects list, targeted, for example, at Self, and then a minion is supposed to be summoned by the caster, not the one the spell is directed at... targeting gets pretty complicated. At some point I'm not sure anymore which way the gun is facing. Sometimes there is a simpler, more primitive workaround, but it's not the same level of quality. Here is the situation at hand: my gliders from "Adventurer's Miscellany" in Strafe for Dirt mode. They weren't working so well before, and now I'm tightening up the mechanics. In this mode they fly around taking incriminating snapshots. The first time this happens, the glider's race changes to LICH to take account of that fact, and every time a variable is supposed to be increased. This should be a local variable, separate for every glider. The glider soars until somebody in the party gets below and hooks it with a dongle. Holding a dongle applies a combination of spell states to the character, and the glider throws a small area-of-effect around itself every second. When somebody under that combination is caught in it, a spell is applied (to Preset target) that summons an invisible minion on the glider and, after a short pause, removes the glider. The minion's script checks the local variable on its summoner in the interval the glider still exists and creates dirty snapshots that are then passed on to the party for selling on the black market. Now, I have had this all working in a rough outline, but only with a global variable, because I can't seem to figure out the targeting of the summoning effect. No matter what I try, the minion gets summoned on the fishing character, whose local variable is obviously zero, or not at all. With a global it's all simpler, I don't need to care about who the summoner is, but then the first glider caught will empty the stash for all of them in all areas. An AREA-level variable could be satisfactory, but that type can't be set through effects. So what I want to know, before I give up and stick with the simpler version, is how to target the effects. The sequence is as follows: Glider casts Caster - > AoE - > channeled effects to Preset target - > Remove creature (Original caster, delayed) + Apply effects list (Self, race: LICH) - > Display string (Original caster, says "Ejecting plates...") + Use EFF File - > Summon creature. In this final spell Display string on Original caster correctly finds the glider, but the targeting for the EFF and inside the EFF always points at the party member doing the catching; some combination of targets failed completely. I don't remember which it was, and I don't want to poke around combining them at random anymore. This is all difficult to test, because catching gliders as they go over inaccessible rooftops and impassable terrain is a chore every time, even with the improvements I made. But if someone knows just how targeting should be tuned in a case like this so that the minion's summoner is the glider, do tell.

Oh, God. No, no, no. It's like my worst nightmare come to pass. I didn't know about the Steam game, or feature, or whatever, but the thought of marking the killing of strong villains or killing lots of enemies at once with a fireball, setting map notes to commemorate that, et cetera, has crossed my mind. And every time I drove it out with a red-hot poker, because the last thing a role-playing game needs is Japanese-style badges for meaningless events. Racking up a score, going for titles (I have thought about that too) is as far removed from storytelling, immersion, imagination and interaction as three times from center to the utmost pole! I'm not saying that this is poor-quality mod, or argent didn't work hard on it, but not all ideas should be carried into practice. Players already don't know what it means to be in character, to take an imaginary world seriously. Younger ones definitely have trouble with that after years, decades now, of being subjected to manipulative time sinks and power-gaming number-crunching that has passed for gameplay in most "RPG" titles of this millennium. Neither has Beamdog tried to innovate or just get better writers on board. As a result, it's almost hopeless to try to inspire people or create a sense of mystery. All that most of them know is out of character, casual, hand-me-the-bubble gum crosses between action and quest. Do this, whack that, earn a badge. And you are adding more of that?

Your options are three: 1) ObjectActionListEmpty, 2) patch all spells with global effects that put a spell state or, better, a unique combination of rare spell states on the caster, lasting in proportion to the casting time - casting time 9 is 6 seconds, and check for those on all party members, but you might get some false alarms there, because the caster might take off and not finish the spell but this script will still prevent hiding; 3) put up with that extravagant possibility of failure and move on to something else. Because you really expect too much from Infinity Engine scripting, if you want to cover such slim eventualities. Nor would that be a disaster if someone did, in fact, lose a spell... once in a blue moon.

I tried the \b for the start of the word, too. It still didn't work. But this is all water under the bridge now.

The basic script that covers screaming for help is SHOUT.BCS, and I know one other special case that represents shouting - THIEF.BCS in Baldur's Gate 1. This script is assigned to everyone in the Thieves Guild on the ARE level, in Actor fields, and probably to the thieves in the front houses. Most likely, if you give the wrong password, the same variable gets set that does if you attack someone there. There is no actual shouting there, but that's the meaning of it. Now, I have patched all scripts that start with Heard() with conditions that will block the reactions when the hearer is under the influence of a special item. It works, and I just started to slaughter the Amnian guards in Nashkel while their comrades continued to stroll by. The patch will squash shouting everywhere, and I'm fixing the variable-setting in THIEF to be ignored under the same conditions. But I would like to know other examples of alarm-setting in scripts, not involving Shout(), to take care of them. When the player does something, and the area goes up in arms, and similar things. I already fixed the shoplifting scripts.

It is the beginning of line. But I have already done this just the way you suggest. Thanks anyway.

I want to insert a condition in front of Heard() triggers in scripts so that creatures only react to shouts unless they are deaf at the time or a special variable is set on them. This should be a simple case of REPLACE_TEXTUALLY, only that's never simple. COPY_EXISTING ~SHOUT.BCS~ ~override~ DECOMPILE_AND_PATCH BEGIN REPLACE_TEXTUALLY CASE_INSENSITIVE ~^Heard~ ~Global("JTOAD","LOCALS",0) !CheckSpellState(Myself,DEAFENED) Heard~ END There is a ^ in front of Heard to avoid the LastHeardBy trigger. I have also tried \bHeard and putting EXACT_MATCH in conditions, but decided to remove that in case it made the replacement too picky about spaces in the BCS. Any way I do it, nothing happens. What is the secret of eternal life, Brian?

I know the names of scripts with responses to failed stealing attempts in BG1 and BG2. Who can tell me their names in Icewind Dale games? If stealing at stores is possible there. Actually, I'm only interested in the scripts that summon town guards, alarm the area and so on, if any. If the script simply turns the trader hostile, I don't need it.