temnix

I'm beachcombing here for a way to make enemies appear, head in the direction of the party and, upon seeing the PCs, attack. I know a couple of methods, and both require sicking the enemies on specific objects. This is to say, unless the party is in sight of the enemy, commands like ActionOverride("enemy",Attack([PC])) won't work. Walking towards the party to fight requires a target like Player1, which is how standard scripts are content to do it. The drawback of this is that on their way to Player1 enemies will silently ignore the rest of the party and summoned minions, who will, of course, take the chance to pound on them as they trot by. What is worse, enemies won't stop until they have rubbed right against Player1, and if he moves, they will follow him, even around the map. This happens when either an attack command is given or the creature is simply told to approach Player1 (more appropriate for spellcasters) with MoveToObject. "Approach" means "bump into," and they bump and obstruct each other as well. This action is practically uninterruptible, even without the NoInterrupt bit. I've tried a different way: MoveToObjectOffset. This is a little better in that the enemy can be told to stop a ways from Player1, and then his fighting instincts will awaken. But there is no telling what offset coordinates to give. MoveToObjectOffset(Player1,[70.70]) makes the creature walk to a point a short distance to the right and below Player1, but if the monster happens to be coming from the upper left or another direction, he is going to go around Player1 to that point, and only there awaken, if he is still alive by then. What I'm looking for is some way to make an enemy head for Player1 and, upon seeing him or just at some range stop and draw. I could arrange for this in an individual creature's script easily, but this question is not about specially scripted creatures. I'm looking for a method that would work for all monsters, e.g.: CreateCreatureObjectOffScreen("skelet"Player1,0,0,0) ActionOverride("skelet",MoveToObject(Player1)) CreateCreatureObjectOffScreen("skelet",Player1,0,0,0) ActionOverride("skelet",MoveToObject(Player1)) CreateCreatureObjectOffScreen("skelet",Player1,0,0,0) ActionOverride("skelet",MoveToObject(Player1)) This sort of thing creates three skeletons in a seqence, each passing its script name "skelet" to the next, each ordered to go to Player1... ignoring everything... and cuddle in his brawny embrace. And they get there, but it's lousy. I want something better. Possibly AttackReevaluate(Player1,1), so that they stop right away? Magic-users and priests shouldn't spend any time on physical attacks, though, or come so close.

I'm recoloring one of the dragon animations, making it both more attractive and closer to what they are supposed to look like. This involves editing a lot of BAM files by hand... Now, in this case, I believe, changing the BAMs themselves is justified, but on the whole this sort of thing should clearly be done by applying a recoloring palette and making a new animation. How do I create a BMP palette, though? They are strange files, tiny, and somehow containing all color information. I don't see any function in Near Infinity for exporting a BAM as a palette or converting one. There is "Convert to BMP," but I don't think that is it.

I took upon myself an unfortunate obligation to rewrite some conversation and journal strings for my mod, and so I had to read a lot of the stuff. How awful the writing is, it's incomprehensible. RPGs try to keep some level of quality, usually, but here it's like Bioware hired high school dropouts on the minimum wage and told them to get stocked with nachos. Get this journal entry from the Underdark bit: The drow summoning ritual Phaere has told me of Ardulace's plan in its entirety. The drow intend to invade the surface... to what end, I don't know. But Matron Ardulace's ritual is going to summon a great demon to aid the drow. The dragon eggs will be sacrificed to the demon in return for its service, and this will place House Despana in great favor with Lolth. Phaere intends to betray Matron Ardulace and has coerced me into helping her. She wants me to go to the Despana treasury (in Lolth's temple) and replace the silver dragon's eggs with fake eggs that Phaere has had made. Then when Ardulace offers the dragon the fake eggs, Phaere can step in with the real ones. I must be careful if I go to the treasury... killing the guards, if it is done, must be done discreetly if at all. And even once I get the eggs, the city has been sealed by Matron Ardulace... there is no escaping. I must continue to play along... for now. Not only is this helpless and boring and rushed and has no vocabulary, but there are errors! "Told me of Ardulace's plan." No, you stupid motherfuckers, not OF, just told the plan! Or how about the last part: "killing the guards, if it is done, must be done discreetly if at all." Holy mother of God, a missing comma is not the problem here. But the best is that the people who wrote this didn't even bother to proofread their own stuff, even once. I didn't notice this at first, but look in the middle paragraph: "when Ardulace offers the dragon"... Of course, it's pointless to rant against a 20 year-old video game, "by nerds, for nerds," to remember Interplay's motto, one whose style and plot enchanted no one even when it came out. Put a stone around its neck and drown it in Lethe, and down a glass yourself so that you might perhaps move on. But there is something almost archetypal about this uninspired carelessness, something for all time. Games since have tried to reduce text for players' reading as much as they could, because in the Millennium the average brain size has decreased by 50% (whack a hipster and check, it's no loss), and that's the only reason why bad writing hasn't been more widespread: when there is next to no text and game after game (and film after film) comes out proudly announcing how much print they managed to shave off, or that they are completely mute, text that passes the gauntlet must be necessarily functional, targeted, always self-justifying and apologizing - or the opposite, the only thing the game has to show for itself, splashing buckets of letters in place of context which gives letters meaning and a world (I think of games like "Dear Esther"). Shadows of Amn, in comparison, is antiquated, almost 90s-style loose, wordy awfulness from when people still read, only they read pulp, "game novels," Salvadores and such. This is a tomb, and we are all here picnicking on a suspiciously lusty lawn, over and over and over until we eat the plastic cups and the ants in them. But fuck, when the grave opens, this blast from the past smells freshly awful!

How?

When using either the AddJournal action or Weidu's JOURNAL syntax journal entries only float up on the screen some of the time. At other times they only appear in the message window. This always happens if the journal @s aren't added with Weidu in the tp2 using ADD_JOURNAL, which isn't really necessary for AddJournal to work, but then they never appear on the main screen. Here, though, I did use ADD_JOURNAL, but I still don't get an info box. Why is that?

I put this line of code into my tp2. Very simple -for actions under state 153: REPLACE_TRANS_ACTION ~UDPHAE01~ BEGIN 153 END BEGIN 0 END ~SetGlobalTimer("udPhaTimer","GLOBAL",THREE_DAYS)~ ~SetGlobalTimer("udPhaTimer","GLOBAL",TWO_HOURS)~ But Weidu refuses to compile this. For the life of me, I don't see anything wrong here. Does anybody?

Right! Thanks.

I've heard a long time ago that traders can have bags of holding assigned to them and somehow tied to their inventories and stores. That way the buying or selling of an item in the store can be registered. Or something like that. I'd like to know that trick, and also whether this store takes account of the creature's gold. Is it possible to buy a bunch of stuff from a merchant and get a scripted reaction when he has, say, 10000 in cash?

I'd like a creature to not have anything for SELECT_COMMON1. What should I use for the SAY command in Weidu? Writing 0 or ~-1~ results in creating strings with that content, not in "No such index," as in CRE files of existing creatures without verbal constants.

This happens when something is wrong with application of spells, effects, possibly projectiles: there is no crash, but the party vanishes, the roster suddenly empties of portraits, and the game-over clip with the raised hand plays. Does anybody know when exactly this occurs?

Anything else you would like?

I just discovered that one RNDTRE item, put (referred to) in several places in the creature's inventory, is treated as that many items. For example, if a creature has only one RNDTRE01 item, but equipped in Quick slots 1, 2 and 3, the engine treats this as three items. And it makes three different treasure selection rolls. Normally putting a bunch of random treasure items of the same level in an inventory results in exactly the same number of identical gemstones, coin heaps and so on. If a modder wanted diverse treasure, he had to either go up or down the treasure level, like put in one RNDTRE01 and one RNDTRE02, or use different timing modes, e.g. one RNDTRE01 generated at Instant/Permanent until death and another one second later. Now, though, all you have to do is quote this placeholder a couple of times in different inventory slots. I've used it and gotten the results with an Identify scroll, a heap of 25 coins and several heaps of 1 coin each, and so on.

That problem was solved. Now I have a particular troublesome piece of script, which refuses to be replaced even with CASE_INSENSITIVE EXACT_MATCH and backslashes: REPLACE_TEXTUALLY CASE_INSENSITIVE EXACT_MATCH ~IF AreaCheck("AR2200") Global("DemonWalks","GLOBAL",5) See(\[PC\]) THEN RESPONSE #100 CreateVisualEffectObject("SPPORTAL",Myself) DestroySelf() END~ ~~ Here I'm just checking if I can do anything with the code at all. The tildas are to be filled with the actual replacement later. Ideas?

This offer still stands. Those who want to get involved in the making of my mods have an opportunity here. What it takes is going through areas and chooseing the right spots (coordinates) for plants. Here I carelessly put some down in a shady spot, where they are easy to notice, but in a sunnier area it would take looking. The images are the herb (heron's milk), first in the inventory (the text is wrong because the mod isn't installed right now) and then on the ground, without and with Tab:

Really? Which ones, for example? I watched this trailer with Keanu Reeves not long ago, where he got digitized, and that's supposed to be the latest, and none of that convinces me one bit. True, I broke off before the point where Reeves would appear, because there were other figures on the screen, moving and grunting and pushing each other, and none of that impressed me, so Reeves would be done on the same level. Bad physics are the surest giveaway, because real bodies are compressible, they flatten and stretch out all the time, deflate and inflate, and these textured polygons are like stone commendatores from Don Juan, in hosiery. But even scenes are too flat and predictable - or predictably unpredictable. Nothing in life is or looks right the way CGI is and looks right. I don't know, maybe my peripheral vision is still too good and catches all these side details people are used to ignoring, but even if I can't point out what's wrong, a scene that looks devoid of any novelty or surprise like a stale Hades is a cue for my subconscious: this is plastic. Then again, CGI's realism may just benefit from extreme "curving": the standard of reality is so low, audiences don't find it too much of a stretch to accept a couple more gimmicks. I mean, some people actually talk to their robot dogs and voice assistants, Alices and whatnots. What kind of shift in brain matter does that require?

Those issues can be dealt with. I just want cases when teleportation or gating is a must.

It's easy to stop the party from the killing the NPC. It's done with a little tweaking behind the scenes. Yes, let them try, that's proper, in fact. With this engine, though, there is no difference between walking away and running away. There is no running animation. A speed boost might be in order. Anyway, what I'm looking for from the crowd here is specific instances when teleportation or gate is a must.

Don't hurry me. I'll look at the blacksmith some time soon.

I'm thinking of a little mod that will make NPC walk onto the scene instead of popping in through teleports, and leave also by walking. There is way too much teleporting around in these games. The mod may not be problem-free, because this kind of mass patching won't take into account every particular situation, waiting times written in and so on, but that's a risk players will have to take. If the code is good, though, there should still be some situations when teleporting in and/or out makes sense. I'm not thinking of replacing real movements between areas, e.g. going to and from the Ice Island (try walking from there, anyway), only cases when a creature is actually created or destroyed with an accompanying gate oval. One exception I can think of is the Demon Knight in Durlag's Tower. He warps in, drops a fireball and warps out. The creature in this case is really created and destroyed, the Demon Knight on the bottom of the dungeon is a different file name. Another case is Albert and his dog - off they go to the Nine Hells. Winski Perorate, when he rescues Sarevok from the palace. In BG2 Cowled Wizards obviously need to teleport in and out, and they take Irenicus and Imoen on their rides. But nothing prevents, say, baron Ployer and his coterie from walking in and running off after cursing Jaheira. They escaped and the party couldn't catch them, that's all. Even some angel who only appears to speak to the party can just come in, say his piece and walk out the door. He doesn't have to rise straight to heaven. Casual teleportation helped ruin one famous fantasy show I remember... powers just didn't make an impression any more. So exceptions here have to be rare and on the case-by-case basis. I would like to hear about instances where teleportation is a must, preferably with the name of the dialogue or script.

Yes, you've mentioned that one before. I think whoever wants to make a merc mod for BG1 should look at Kagain and his shop. He is supposed to run a mercenary company, after all, but we never get to see any of the men.

I got another difficulty with replacement. This code is supposed to look at scripts and replace creatures' incoming teleportation to a point with spawning not far away from the main character and then walking to the point: REPLACE_TEXTUALLY ~CreateCreatureDoor("\([^"]+\)",\([^"]+\),S)~ ~CreateCreatureObjectOffset("\1",Player1,[-100.-100]) ActionOverride("\1",MoveToPoint(\2))~ Doesn't parse, though. Anyone know what's wrong?

Is there a better way to set flags in an area's animation than look up the offset in the unmodified file and write there? Macros exist for other area parts: regions, doors, actors... but nothing for animations. I don't mind writing directly, but there could be compatibility problems if someone else has inserted more structures higher up.

Correction: the last block does the job. It didn't trigger because I had an extra condition in, a check for a local variable that needed to be at 0. After the triggering this variable was to be set to 1. As soon as I took out the local check, the idleness trigger started to work. It's curious that, apparently, local variables are not considered to be at 0 when they haven't been set yet. A global variable is considered to be 0 if it hasn't been changed.

It's the same as the name of the BAM in this case. So it doesn't matter that this action points to SEQ.IDS?

I've got to wonder. The best computer-made monsters in movies I've seen were sort of like the real thing, until they moved or light fell on them. The texture, the geometry are all wrong, and there is absolutely no interaction with the environment. In the 1980s and 90s they used CGI for things that couldn't be created otherwise - floating letters, holograms, weird spaceship battles, but ever since the fashion took in the 2000s to use computers to render what really exists, quality has been out of the window. I look at these wonderful enormous balloons from "Batman" (1989) and I think: "Nowadays they would draw these on the computer, no question about it," and they would look like crap. Only nowadays there probably wouldn't be prop makers creative enough to come up with such designs to begin with. But do people really even suspend their disbelief when they see these gods who raise lightning bolts that don't even throw light on their arms or smooth werewolves with all the mass of a hallucination? Or ships in "Dunkirks"?