temnix

Yes, I'm going the way of an invisible minion myself... I was hoping to avoid that and just do it from a button. Presentation should be as elegant as possible. Now another problem comes up: how to summon the minion through the button that I can get if I make the item conversable and can give any name to? I can click the button and get the conversation with myself, which doesn't do the job, as I said, or I can get rid of the button and simply summon the minion from an item ability. But this would be the better way. I do need a conversation, because there are some choices. However, the only kind of item that gets a different button, not calling on a dialogue, are familiars. Their button kickstarts the first item ability, which only sets a global, and the engine takes it from there, creating the familiar, but the ability can contain any effects. I've used it for another item. The button, however, always says "Release." So I'm a trilemma here.

I would like to use this duration for my item effect, but it seems to work the same as Delayed/Permanent. It does not go away when the item is removed. Any workarounds?

That file doesn't exist in the "classic" engine, does it? Then there is no way to give new sounds to item categories? What is going to happen if I supply this file myself? If it's ignored, then what determines the sounds for non-standard item categories, like "Plate armor" (all real suits are in the "Armor" category)? Are they just mute? More important, custom slots for items also can't be given?

One of my items starts a dialogue from a button, where the character is supposed to be able to make poisons from berries. It takes 30 berries to make a bottle, and the dialogue checks for this with NumItemsGT("BBERRY_#",LastTalkedToBy,29). When the character chooses this response, a bottle of poison is created and two actions are run to expend the berries: TakePartyItemNum("BBERRY_#",30) DestroyItem("BBERRY_#"). The problem is that with conversable items characters really talk to themselves, and so in this case the character takes the berries from his own inventory (or from the inventory of others in the party, but in my testing only this character had any berries) and puts them again into his own backpack. He also tries to destroy what is probably the first stack of berries in the inventory, however many that one contains, one or a whole lot. The result is that the count is all wrong, and I can make three bottles from what should only be enough for one. Any suggestions about how to manipulate items in conversables' dialogues better?

When the effect "Create inventory item" is used with a temporary duration, the item will disappear when it is supposed to, but only if it is in the inventory. Clever players can and will drop conjured items on the ground or leave them in containers until the deadline passes, and then the items are theirs for the long haul. Is there any way to avoid this?

I'm not going to tell you any names, but this board is the place to watch.

So how did you "solve" it? Sounds like you had to put up with on hit sounds. A palindrome!

Look at the screens and remember one, then the other. Consider that genre on the label doesn't matter, what matters is what people play. Consider that they played such games as the former once and play such as the latter now. Draw some conclusions for the future of storytelling and imagination in general, for modding and its scope in particular. Proceed to shoot yourself in the head.

This may come in handy if someone wants to use invisible minions to carry out some actions, but not before or only before a certain time from the beginning of a playthrough. Say, before or after day 3. There is no script trigger even remotely suited to this job, but you can put a Set local variable effect (309) on the minion with a Permanent after duration timing and enter the length of time you have in mind in ticks. Then you add a condition in the minion's script such that if the variable is set, then do such-and-such, if not, the opposite. Scripts always lag behind effects. When the minion checks, Time will have been indelibly imprinted on him.

I'm using AdvanceTime() with a negative value to go back in time, and I'm surprised to discover that this causes timers to expire. They should be extended. I found this out when Safana chided the party twice for not going to Black Alaric's cave in time, and left after the second time. She had only joined not long ago, and rewinding the clock back by 7200 (one day) should not have triggered all of her timers. Edit: okay, I know what caused this. I used the time travel device on day 1, so I dipped into negative day count, and apparently that counts as distant future. Everything works when the party is on day 2, at least. Can anyone suggest a script safeguard against the use of this action until game time has advanced that far? One possibility is to build an Absolute duration-timed block into the item itself, lasting one day from the start of the game, but that's a little crude. A script check would be better.

Some VVC files are set up to play the first cycle (numbered 0 in the BAM editor, but 1 here), then the second (cycle 1 in the editor and number 2 here). When the VVC is set to loop, this arrangement plays the starting animation, the first cycle, once, and then keeps repeating the second. You can see examples in Fireshield. The first cycle are the flames rising, the second - burning evenly. I don't know who I'm explaining this for, the people who might answer my question know this already... Well, this system works for frames that are not too different. All of the fire tongues are pretty much the same. But if you try to play some different, distinct frames in the first cycle and continue the sequence in the second, there will be a glitch. Even though in the BAM editor you have arranged the frames to flow smoothly from one cycle to the next, in the game the main cycle will jumpstart from a different, elusive point. Does anybody know what the system of this hiccup is? By how many frames I need to move up the second cycle - or down, possibly? Edit: never mind! I tried one last time to move the frames about at random and I hit an amazing jackpot - the cycles started flowing exactly! Record this: the second cycle must be started earlier by 5 frames. So if your first cycle is frames 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and the sequence appears smooth in the editor when the second cycle's frames go 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (to repeat), in reality you need 10, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. I am glad.

I'm changing a melee weapon to play some custom sounds at attacks. I put them in effects, targeted Self, and they are supposed to go off when the attack is made (Original caster would play them when and if the strike landed). But they are not getting played. Thinking they may be overriden by standard attack wooshes, I used a different timing, tried casting a spell on Self instead and put the sounds there. But the spell is not getting cast. Is this some finicky trait of melee weapons? Looking into Neera's staff, I see that it has two Damage effects, one for Preset target and one for Self, so obviously the Self timing here works like Original caster. So, is there any way to do what I want, apply effects when the attack is attempted?

Rumors can't have any in-game effects. Dead in the water. You can give real information in them to the player, though: go there and there, talk to such and such to get this or that. Replayability is the main issue here. The next time people play the mod, they will already know all of the secrets without having to drink them up. As for stores, there is a script action ChangeStoreMarkup, but it was only made to work in the Enhanced Edition engine, and not in the first few patches either. If you are going to build a mod around this mechanic, know you that you will be making it only for the EEs, and for updated EEs at that. That's not a problem, but it's a limitation. And all that action does is change all prices in a given store. There is no way to tweak prices for particular items or for a selection of stores. This is a very primitive engine. The artists and composer did such an attractive job that it feels like more should be possible, but underneath there is a rusty robot. Powered by wooden logs. So don't get too invested in this, that's my advice. Tweaking this or that is fine, you can push a few limits, make a quest, but nothing sophisticated. There are modern games out there, made or being made, where your ideas would survive better.

A small one, but a good one. Let's say you cast a spell on someone and want a message to be shown when you cast it on him again. Or you use an item, e.g. a can of whoopass, and a message should appear when it is opened a second time. How do you that? Well, if you wanted to block the spell or item (more complicated), you could put a text string in the protection effect saying why it doesn't work. But you do want it to work, only the character needs to recognize this isn't the first time. What you can do is make a dud spell with no effects and cast it on the character alongside of and before everything else. You include a protection from this spell, temporary or not, in the main effects. The first time they are applied the dud spell will have already slipped in, but on subsequent tries you will get the message. It could be "Hedgehog meat tastes better and better" or "Fireman's helmet is now properly positioned, lamp first" or "This time you'll be on top" - if you direct this to Original caster on attacks that hit. Put a dud spell and a protection from it, Original caster, in Magic Missile, above the damage, and the character will say "I think I'm getting the hang of this!" the next time he casts that spell on someone. Actually, he will always say it, which could get annoying. To avoid this include another protection effect, also for Original caster, but without text, and insert it above the texted protection. Give it a Delayed/Permanent timing and duration 0. Then you will only see the message once. In principle, you could put some effects in these dud spells and have a whole ladder of them. Then the first time the item (for instance) would be used, it would put on the target subspells 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. Subspell 1, going first, would apply blocks for subspells 2-7, deliver its effects, block itself for the future and finally remove the blocks for subspells 2-7. On the next use of the item subspell 2 would go through, block the others, deliver the effects, block itself, free 3-7. And so on. Here you obviously could include a different message for every application ("The fifth time the Crown is worn, wisdom shall abandon you"). This is probably not as original as the first trick, though, which is an easy way to display messages that are right for the situation.

I didn't know about those things. I think a separate small dungeon-crawling map for deathmatch would be less interesting than playing on the familiar but different World Map as I propose here, though. The ideal would be an unknown, different, big and OUTDOOR map, with, say, winding canyons and pits and paths, something like the gnoll stronghold. That would be the most appropriate, I think. There could still be containers - idols or rocks or something. And this stone-collecting mechanic could have a place. Like so, for instance: find all three stones to win, but every stone carried damages the character over time (Diablo soulstone memories, no doubt). This wouldn't even be too difficult to code. I'm more curious about how PvP works pis-a-pis leaving the party, pausing, resting and other things. Perhaps pausing should be forbidden, and resting too. This would require some changes to the spell system, obviously, to restore spells to characters over time and so convert fighting to complete real-time, but also wouldn't be very difficult to code. What the characters would really need is a starting hit points bonus and XP accumulation over time. Party membership is the most curious detail. I've never played multiplayer, so I don't know what happens if a character leaves the party. Does he get kicked off and disconnected? Does he turn into a blue-circle NPC? If characters can act outside of the party... I went ahead and created a multiplayer game to see how it looks. And I was surprised. Look at this! It turns out the players all control different fleets, only between a company of six that usually means one character each. But a player can roll up more. This could be a MASSIVE deathmatch, if pausing is forbidden and the players agree to let some characters fight on AI autopilot. How would quitting the total party work, though, to form sides, I still don't know. As I think about this, it occurs to me that the white gaps between the area maps could appear in the deathmatch map. Yes, it would be better if someone filled them in, copied and inserted some trees, drew up some rocks and the map became seamless. But if not, they could stay like this, recolored a little, converted into trigger zones, as walls dividing the map cells. Passing through a gap would damage the character. This could be used for tactics. To lead monsters into a trap, to make pursuers think before following, to trap an enemy already hurt, and so on. That's all I'm going to say on this topic, though. This was fun to think about, and it wouldn't be impossible to construct this mode, but who is going to do it, really? All of king's horses and all of king's men on this site are not going to lift themselves up from making tweaks and do something new and interesting like this, neither individually nor together.

I updated the file with some tweaks of the way bonuses are applied. There is also a folder with no-dirt versions of slow spots. They may sometimes be drawn incorrectly over map polygons.

Updated The deep brown mud; the sagging, tiring floorboards softened by wood worms; the unexpected mousehole catching the toe of the boot; the broken, haphazardly laid tiles; the trail of feces left behind by a sick dog; the furrow; the very ordinary recession in the turf; "gravel collapses on the way, make a Dexterity check"; and on the other hand the small hillock; the helpful stone smartly installed by some stranger in the middle of the stream; the clean, well-brushed pavement; the overgrown trail surfacing underfoot and "you slide down the balustrade with ease": there are many unexceptional circumstances that now slow one down, now give a boost. This mod approximates a three-dimensional terrain for the world, out of doors and in. The uniform march on a geometric plane from one abstract point to another, from that doorway to this doorway, is no more. It is best to eject this notion as far away as possible and forget it to spare oneself consternation. There are corners and crevices. Party members and creatures will wander into zones of slow, sometimes struggling movement, and in other places run with a skip and a hop. As they follow different paths, some may become delayed while others charge ahead. The party does not fall apart from this, but it does now consist of individuals instead of dollies pulled across a flat background with an invisible croupier's rake. Although this will have some, and most unpredictable, effects on combat (trying to run from a wolf in a spot may sometimes go in favor of the runner and sometimes the wolf), the intention is to bring realistic movement to the games. Some monsters are not affected by effects of terrain either way: ghosts and incorporeals of all kinds, will-o'-wisps, beholders, air elementals because they fly and earth elementals because they are one with the soil. Real, winged fliers have received a significant speed boost and are considerably more dangerous (this means wyverns, harpies and imps/quasits/mephits). In the party characters with free action effects should be able to benefit from convenient terrain while fluttering over boggy spots. The centers of terrain patches can sometimes be made out. Elevated, favorable terrain is lighter, and foot snaggers are indicated by belts of dirt, though only out of doors. Both extend farther that these, though. Given different lighting and scenery, terrain changes are mostly invisible, and there is not much of a point to looking for them. One should simply accept that the world is not steamrolled, and that speed which is distance divided by time is in the legs. Examples. A patch of easy terrain, which, however, happens to be under a wall lamp. Difficult ground that way! Update: The dirt patches are not always perfectly laid over the tileset. They may obtrude on some objects. If you prefer, you can eliminate them: put the files in the "No dirt patches" folder in override. Also a warning: because terrain effects apply to everyone, not only the party, and are recalculated and reapplied all the time, areas with large crowds may put a strain on weak computers. Download

Yes, it is. My minions are GOODCUTOFF and scripted to react to each other's presence in the form of See([0.KEY]). KEY is their General. The visual range effect works and is very important there, I tweak it to tell them what distance from each other to tolerate before they carry out their actions. They don't have script names and script names wouldn't work, because the minions are from the same file, so See() is the only way there. And everything works. But Black Talons, xvarts (who I also tested with) and the rest are scripted to attack LastSeenBy from See([GOODCUTOFF]), and Visual range bonus does not make them attack from farther away. That is the difference. They weren't off screen either, just a little outside of the hoola hoop of light my character walked around in. The difference with subtledoctor's testing may be that I did not apply Blindness, I simply reduced the visual range, so maybe it's the STATE_BLIND that somehow counts - but not for what I'm talking about in this thread. I don't care about scripts and targeting, those are just for checking. I wanted to know about the effect and why it only works on friendlies. But I guess there is no why, it's just limited to them. Like encumbrance, maybe.

I did and got my ass punctured by an arrow of ice from an invisible Black Talon elite.

Okay! But a real deathmatch map, made for that purpose, would be better. Counter-Strike style. "Paladins win." By the way, what happens if a player quits the party? I mean, his character is ejected? Or how does that work in multiplayer, anyway?

That may all be true, but it's only theoretical. I know that the See() trigger takes the actual visual range into account, the stat. It can be changed for GOODCUTOFF creatures outside the party, helper minions, for example, restricting-expanding the scope of their scripted reactions. But for EVILCUTOFF and maybe for neutrals it seems fixed. I think Bioware likely cut corners here for the sake of performance. Obviously enemies' visibility to friendlies is very different from friendlies' visibility to enemies - ask the guy with a sniper's bullet in his head. Disappointing.

No matter what I do, I can't get that effect to improve the sight of enemies.

I wonder if it's still possible to breathe some of this spirit back into the games, or we are stuck with a Turing machine and jokes about it. That is something I just came across on the Noobermeet board, a topic. I wish I wished I could get the joke. I wish I wished I would find that sort of thing funny. Or do I? And in theory there is nothing wrong about engineering and all that, only in practice they turn out to be poison. Of course, the games are all 1s and 0s, but the fantasy isn't. To say that would be like claiming that our sight is rods and cones instead of just being made functional by them. It is not with nostalgia that I look at these very old games, before the "revival" with Baldur's Gate. Nostalgia is a lid on a lack of understanding. I sense in them a reality that has been lost. They disarm me with their supposedly outdated mechanics and pictures. Even though intellectually these skulls, maws and maidens should be insufferable, they are yet closer to the truth than the improvements on them. The isometric perspective stole the face of creatures, if you think about it, it corresponds to nothing in the real world: not quite the first person view, the great I, nor the third person, the lovely They. The book journals are gone, map-keeping has been automated by about 25 years, and I don't recognize the purpose of adventuring any more. This particular game, Savage Frontier 2, enticed the player in its first scenes not only with an opportunity to save a city, but also to find true love - perhaps. Is that on the agenda any more? Even theoretically? I should ask the Turing machine. But speaking of machines: do you remember how in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" the computer gives the answer to the great question, and the answer is 42? Everyone is floored. Adams proceeds, rather ceremoniously, to explain that the challenge before humanity and the other sentient species, in the aeons to come, is to formulate the question for that answer. I almost hear some kind of grand orchestra in the background when I think back on that scene, something from "Space Odyssey." Yet just as "Space Odyssey" is a movie pretty much about nothing, so a question that could be answered with 42 or any other number is not one worth thinking about, cogito. Who cares about the great causeway of Enlightenment? It has itself been enlightened away, though the eager beavers on the roadsides will continue painting up the signs. And they are a hopeless lot. But what do I like on this poster, what strikes me as true? 101000100: the red font of Advanced Dungeons&Dragons; her blonde hair, though not perfectly shaded; that jewel in her hands; the rings and bracelets - solid, firm, costly and quiet. The SSI design is also nice. Pictures like these are all alive, all people, like some kind of soylent. Every one is a dense jigsaw puzzle of packed inspiration, toil and innocence. I think it is time to weaponize the last.

Okay, this makes it easier for me. Less work, although also less effect. Thank you. We are short on diamonds here, I'll pay you in mod credit instead.

In the first Baldur's Gate it is clearly early autumn, yet the game starts on the 2nd of Myrtul (the equivalent of May in the calendar of Harptos). The sequel is set in some indeterminate but verdant season, most likely spring or summer of next year. Then Siege of Dragonspear must have taken take place over the winter in the North, which is obviously problematic. Perhaps the heroes have squeezed it into the spring months, scrambling over the mountains to make it to Shadows of Amn in time for summer. Technically, the second game also begins on the 2nd of Myrtul, but that is clearly an oversight, simply un uncorrected date. This mod tunes the calendar of both games to better reflect their setting. Charname will set out from Candlekeep on the 10th of Marpenoth (September) and find himself in the dungeon of Irenicus on the 25th of Flamerule (July) next year. If the games are played from start to finish as a trilogy, the date will not be automatically adjusted to suit the transition to the sequel or to SoD, whenever that takes place. The game does not take notice of these events. The installer will therefore ask which date to change (retroactively - you don't need to start a new game to see the changes). Playing the original, set the time to fall, and when you reach Athkatla, install the other component to make it summer. If installing for the sequel only, use the second component. Download