temnix

I would like to keep the party motionless and idle during a special event. If they do anything or move from the spot, something bad will happen. The trigger that works for this is ActionListEmpty() with TriggerOverride() or ObjectActionListEmpty(), but I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out a setup that would work for an incomplete party. There are some arrangements that get triggered always and others that are triggered never. For example, a party of four instantly triggers this: IF(6) !ObjectActionListEmpty(Player1) !ObjectActionListEmpty(Player2) !ObjectActionListEmpty(Player3) !ObjectActionListEmpty(Player4) !ObjectActionListEmpty(Player5) !ObjectActionListEmpty(Player6) The reason must be that Players 5-6 aren't there, so it's not true that their action lists are empty. On the other hand, no amount of running around will trigger the following: !TriggerOverride(Player1,ActionListEmpty()) !TriggerOverride(Player2,ActionListEmpty()) !TriggerOverride(Player3,ActionListEmpty()) !TriggerOverride(Player4,ActionListEmpty()) !TriggerOverride(Player5,ActionListEmpty()) !TriggerOverride(Player6,ActionListEmpty() Nor this (written to go around the question of existence): IF(6) TriggerOverride(Player1,!ActionListEmpty()) TriggerOverride(Player2,!ActionListEmpty()) TriggerOverride(Player3,!ActionListEmpty()) TriggerOverride(Player4,!ActionListEmpty()) TriggerOverride(Player5,!ActionListEmpty()) TriggerOverride(Player6,!ActionListEmpty()) Near Infinity converts this block into the one before, even though their meaning is different. Well, is there is a way to keep the party on standby?

This action should kick off a sequence in an area's BAM - rotating windmills, babbling streams and so on. Now, I don't know if the top sequence counts as 0 or as 1 for this action, but nothing happens when I use it. (I did actually add an extra sequence to this BAM, good thinking.) The Near Infinity compiler interprets this action as referring to SEQ.IDS, so StaticSequence("BAM",2) gets rewritten as StaticSequence("BAM",SEQ_CAST) the next time I look. And nothing happens. Besides a solution to this, I'd like to know how to make a static BAM vanish altogether - switch it off.

Thanks, kjeron. You are knowledgeable as always, unlike... this one. And what you said last I didn't know. But I don't think the first spell, with the plus, gets cast either. Maybe its presence throws off the whole compiler. I'll get back to this if that's the case.

Jarno, can I ask you for a favor? Never speak to me again.

Which of these actions ending a response might be preventing the spells from being cast? It's all the same if I move them around to the end. ApplySpellRES("DEMKNO_#",Player1) EraseJournalEntry(5810) EraseJournalEntry(6535) EraseJournalEntry(16529) EraseJournalEntry(6943) EraseJournalEntry(16339) EraseJournalEntry(9649) EraseJournalEntry(6405) EraseJournalEntry(6403) EraseJournalEntry(6590) EraseJournalEntry(7147) EraseJournalEntry(7148) EraseJournalEntry(15793) EraseJournalEntry(15792) EraseJournalEntry(23424) SetGlobalTimer("udEscape","GLOBAL",120) SetGlobal("DrowCityHostile","GLOBAL",0) ApplySpellRES("DMLCH+_#",Myself) CreateVisualEffectObject("SPPORTAL",Myself) Wait(1) DestroySelf()~ SOLVED_JOURNAL #207001 EXIT END Neither of the spells works, but everything else happens. This surprises me, because applying spells at the end of conversations is, of course, the most common practice in the world. For me, anyway

A file written as a D and compiled with COMPILE for the folder where it is together with other conversations (which are problem-free) ends up with states messed up. Wrong content is inserted. I suspect that this has to do with state numbers. This conversation, unlike the others, was not written from scratch - it is a edit of a pre-existing dialogue, which I exported as a D file and rewrote the contents. All of the state numbers stayed unchanged, but I rearranged the blocks up and down for my convenience and wrote some new blocks with word names instead of numbers: FREE-WILL, GOLD etc. This doesn't matter for all-new conversations, but could it be that Weidu takes states as they appear consecutively and assigns numbers to them in order? Compiling the D file separately didn't fix the problem.

I'm not going to give up on it. Testing the demon lord part is going to be a bitch, though. About the shadow dragon: in this respect and when it comes to the power of the demon lord (which is also going to be adjusted), everything is done by patching, not replacement. The mod should be compatible with what others have inflicted on them, including Sword Coast Stratagems, if that mod changes them. I rewrote some of the statistics, but the scripts etc. are intact. For the shadow dragon specifically, my script additions go on top of his script. If other mods make changes to this script, then my conditions and actions take precedence. This includes the second surprise the dragon begins to show in the fight, but the additions are written with Continue() after them, so below contents will still be reached. And the shadow dragon does indeed slink away if you destroy the Shade Lord. He is not about to mess with the heroes who took out his master. I tested the shadow dragon thoroughly myself, that part works. But you should not play this until I fix everything and put in some extras. Morgoth, from now on let's communicate about testing via PMs. This thread is getting too long.

I uploaded a slightly toned down version of the mod. The first one was suicidally difficult.

That way is really too hard. Hard enough would be to set all of the globals that the conversation expects. The strange part is that the response at which it fails was created by me and nothing but my own nodes link to it. You should never see that line from Phaere's dialogue. There may be just something with the original version of this mod. Try the file below and see if the error persists. It also has much more for the shadow dragon. That part is complete, including his second surprise when you have fought him for a while and the reverse of the threat option. Version in progress

Because glabrezu are the kind of tanarri most likely to make deals with mortals. They are subtle and not instantly violent, though they don't normally SPEAK IN THUNDERING VOICE, and they are not lords exactly. But they are quite powerful, and it is possible for one to have advanced to a lord or for a lord to look like a glabrezu. The demon lord situation is very difficult to test. The matron mother, Phaere and the demon lord only appear at the temple when a long list of conditions has been met and globals set. It's next to impossible to recreate for modding just by spawning them. There are several versions of the creatures, too. I didn't rewrite any state references in the demon's dialogue, however, only added some inside, so links should work correctly. Tell me exactly what you are doing: what did you say to Phaere after the line on the screenshot? Do you have any NPC in the party who intervened at this point? I guess not, but anything you can tell me will speed along the solution. I'll look into the shadow dragon dialogue, too. By the way, if you actually fight the dragon, there will be another surprise down along the way, but I'm improving that now. I don't want to put up another version until I've cleared the business with the demon. Hold off playing with this mod until that's fixed.

(Not available right now) Rewriting the conversation with the demon in Ust Natha, this mod allows all characters, not just evil-aligned ones, to exchange the silver dragon eggs for a boon from the demon. (This is an opportunity to do something evil, not a narrow path determined by alignment. It is up to you how to role-play the decision. If you have my mod "Jacob's Ladder" installed, swapping the eggs for anything with cause all paladins and rangers in the party to fall.) The choices are now more diverse, and all of them work. You can ask and receive gold, power, equipment or knowledge, in addition to safe passage out of the city. The choice to ask for a magic item now gives a different item of my making, useful to all characters. The one given before, the halberd Blackmist +4, is found somewhere else, out of the Underdark, and can be gotten much earlier: it is now part of the hoard of the shadow dragon in Umar Hills. The dragon has been made somewhat stronger to compensate for this extra loot and pulls off one or two surprises (in case you thought him an easy fight). He also received a proper conversation, and advanced parties stand a chance of bargaining with him, so that this fight can be avoided. In addition, the dragon no longer automatically and at any range detects the party as soon as it enters the hall without the shadow ward stone: he has normal sight, albeit quite long-reaching, so a party willing to stick to the wall can beeline past him and to the stairs farther down without getting noticed. No download right now - fixing bugs

Right, that's the one.

I don't want to keep you poking around with that shell if the dialogue simply doesn't work, as the case may be. Taerom is the man to make, or attempt to make, a suit of armor from that shell. If he says nothing, then it's an error. I'll download the file and look inside tomorrow. As for the spell that Garan invented, yes, it's 6th level magic and beyond BG1's scope. If you install the mod on both BG1 and the sequel, though, or if you have the Enhanced Edition Trilogy, it will be carried over in the spellbook. Something to look forward to.

I was surprised to find out that containers with lock difficulty 100 are unpickable. There are no special flags, only "Locked," but the text "This lock does not have a conventional" etc. appears when I try, and Knock wouldn't work too, I suppose. I've always thought the difficulty was simply a number against which the thief rolled his picking skill, and that it could go as high as the skill, but apparently 100 means 100% thief-proof. Well then, what about lesser numbers? What does 80 mean, how difficult is 90 and so on? This is strange, really.

Some people are good at recoloring portraits. Sometimes they make strange choices, black-skinned Jan continues to haunt my dreams, but they have developed a knack for that, anyway. I'm looking for someone to recolor Montaron's portrait and give him white or light gray clothes. And, if possible, retouch his face to put a kindly smile on his face.

There was a module, published, I think, on the Beamdog forum, a couple of years ago, which let you recruit just about everyone you meet with a permanent charm effect, and they could follow you from map to map as a sort of growing army of followers. I can't seem to find it on any of the three websites. Anybody remember what it was?

Right. I remember now. Thanks.

All right, thanks for the kind words. Why would personal style be a flaw for anyone, though? "Generic" just means "nothing." Let modders be as original as they want to get. It's not something that needs defending. The BG1 stuff for "Animate Dead Now" is gone for good, and so were some of the Performances I had made for "See No See." But what matters is that people's imagination be inspired even with what remains or what can be made in the future. I'll look into the followers mods, see if there is a way to keep minions around. Thanks for pointing out the typo. Do the options for the blue shell work?

I want to put scrolls of Dimension Door in magic stores for my mod. What is the standard resource name? From before scrolls were deleted from everywhere.

To Morgoth: if you want a suit of armor made from the blue ankheg shell, you know where to take it. Only, hmm, they are mutated beasts... There is new text in the journal that their controller drops, too, if you looked into that. One of the problems with changing previous gameplay is that settings, quests and items are so familiar to people, done a hundred times over, and players simply blow through them on autopilot. So it's cumbersome for me to point them to every new change here or there. The best idea is to play as if for the first time, look at everything and not be lazy to go out and explore common houses, for example. I'm sure everybody has tried entering homes and searching in all drawers the first time they played BG, but having learned that there are only the same spell scrolls that are for sale at the magic stores, people probably don't bother anymore. Well, I did put some of the new scrolls on shelves here and there and in the inventories of wizards to encourage exploration again. The "fork" is that the version of "Animate Dead Now" I was working on when I deleted all my mods in progress was already pretty far ahead in adding detail to the first BG. The spell Gift of Life can raise friendly or neutral creatures outside the party, and I went through the first game's many scattered corpses and wrote dialogue for nearly all of them for when they push off the ground, tying some to quests. There were other additions, too, but they all perished, and the mod I'm developing now will instead include a good bit of BG2 content. The Harper quest will be changed completely, the Harper base become more interesting, and Xzar and Montaron are going to appear as companions. This part is maybe half-way finished. The mechanics, on the other hand, are already in place: Animate Dead, Xzar's version of it, Gift of Life, disease, spirit wrestling, there are only a few last touches left to put. Here are some ghasts pursuing the party. Ghasts now stink as they should, always (-2 to THAC0 in a radius), not upon a hit. In the background there are some paladins the party just killed (enemies), and a short ways off-screen in that direction lie a few Shadow Thieves supposedly slain by the vampires of Bodhi. Bioware's NPC gossip over them and disperse. The thieves, being neutral, would be raisable now by Gift of Life, but they would not have any dialogue. I'm leaving this opportunity to other modders who will want to use my mod as a base, to write up conversations and quests for the dead. The thieves or the paladins could also be animated as zombies, if the caster has enough levels. Undead minions are like summoned creatures, they can't leave the area. There is a technical barrier to making permanent followers out of nameless, random creatures - a bug. I'll still look into that, one more time, but probably you'll have to be content with local zombies. They don't disappear, though. About other changes and fixes to BG2 that you are asking for, tweaking somebody else's game is much duller than creating your own stuff. I might edit BG2 here and there in small ways, but the feeling I get when reading these atrocious dialogues and quests is that they all ought to be sunk in the Trackless Sea and the whole game written from scratch. That's too much sloppy seconds, though. I might introduce a few edits here and there later, when I'm finished with what I want to create.

I have a staircase that is being watched, and so long as the guard is near, no one may come up. Accordingly, its region isn't linked to any entrance. Instead it has a script, and the script is: IF Entered([GOODCUTOFF]) Global("AttackFirstHarpers","GLOBAL",0) TriggerOverride(LastTrigger,Range("zolnte",25) !StateCheck("zolnte",STATE_HELPLESS) // Zolnte THEN RESPONSE #1 DisplayStringHead(LastTrigger,104076) // You get a distinct feeling that somebody's eyes are boring into your back, and dare not ascend. END IF Entered([GOODCUTOFF]) THEN RESPONSE #1 ActionOverride(LastTrigger,LeaveAreaLUA("AR0309","",[796.523],SE)) END Well, nothing happens. Why?

Thanks.

Okay, I looked in the debug file, expecting a problem, but it's pristine. This is nothing to do with Weidu. You have to tell me when the crash happens. What do you do before that? Casting a spell?

Sure I trust a random file. What's better than a CTD except an STD? Oh, I get it. Crash to Desktop. Well, IAGTHAIL.Two can play this game. I am going to have a look at it later. Maybe tomorrow. It shouldn't crash...

The one flying around and around. In the lower right corner on this screenshot. It's used as the projectile BAM in the Energy spear projectile of the first BG (look in any spell) and might be called SPSPEAR or something like that. The sequel uses a different animation for Energy spear, and may not include Thalantyr's bolt at all, and I don't have the first game installed right now. I have an idea for this nice bolt. I'll credit you if anything comes out of it.